(upbeat music) - Welcome friends to this episode of the "Everyday Educator" podcast. I'm your host, Lisa Bailey, and I'm excited to spend some time with you today as we encourage one another, learn together, and ponder the delights and challenges that make homeschooling the adventure of a lifetime. Whether you're just considering this homeschooling possibility or deep into the daily delight of family learning, I believe you'll enjoy thinking along with us.

But don't forget, although this online community is awesome, you'll find even closer support in a local CC community. So go to classicalconversations.com and find a community near you today. Well, listeners, I'm excited to welcome you to this episode of the "Everyday Educator" podcast. We are gonna talk today about juggling acts.

Now, I don't mean at the circus, I mean the kind of juggling acts that we homeschool parents do every day. We are juggling our own lives, our own families, the health of our family, the wellbeing of our family, our housework, sometimes a part-time job, all of the education of our kids, our spouse may be working full-time outside of the home.

You might feel like a juggler, but what if you have a bunch of children that you're trying to homeschool? I remember years ago, my friend Lee looking at me and saying, "Oh, you just have two girls. You have a hobby family." And I was slightly offended. I didn't feel like it was a hobby.

I felt like they were really my vocation. But what she meant is that there are additional challenges that face moms and dads who are juggling multiple students at home. And I know that that is the case for some of you, and we don't want to ignore that. We don't want to ignore the fact that, yeah, you may have a kid in foundations and one or two in foundations and essentials and some challenge kids as well.

And what's a mom and dad to do? So I brought with me a dear friend, Denise McClain, who is a mom of six, a very experienced classical educator. And she's gonna give us all the answers to the juggling act that is our life. See, she's laughing. Denise, thank you.

Thank you for being with us today. - I'm so glad to be here, Lisa. Thanks for having me. - This is gonna be a great, enriching conversation. Every time I talk to you, Denise, I gain a little nugget of wisdom. And lots of times I write it down and I think on it after we get off the call together.

So I know that you are gonna bless the moms and dads who are listening today, who just want to, all of us, learn from one another. And so you have had some experiences as a longtime homeschool mom that are gonna benefit some of us. So let me ask you this.

How long have you been homeschooling and tell us about those six kids? - Oh, sure. The drum roll, we've been going for, since 2003 is how long we've been homeschooling. Yes, my babies. - That's awesome. - My first baby showed up then and she came out and we already had lesson plans.

- Oh my gosh. Okay, I love it. You are counting from the birth of your child. - Oh yeah. - Not from where, that's so cool though. You're not counting from where most people out in the quote unquote real world would start talking about schooling. So you homeschooled from the birth of your child.

I love it. - We did. I had the benefit of, my husband and I decided before we had kids that we wanted to classically educate our children. And then eventually we figured out, well, we're gonna do that through homeschooling. - Gotcha. - And so it was interesting to me that I went into it having this whole notion.

First time mom, all the bells and whistles that go along with that. And a mother-in-law that was super complacent in all of that. She enabled me quite a bit to help me accomplish those desires and dreams to just start out strong in setting up children who love God and love to learn, love to be with their family.

- Oh Denise, that's so beautiful. - Enjoyed that. - I love that. So you have six kids. Tell us about your family. - All right, so my eldest has graduated from Classical Conversations a few years back and she's 21 and newly engaged. So we're excited about that. Yes, and my second born graduated a year ago.

She's 19. And then we have a 16 year old girl, a 14 year old, a 12 year old, and a nine year old. - Wow. - All girls. - All girls. - Just keep going with the girls. - Six girls. - All the girls. - We're gonna have some good conversation, I can tell.

- Yes. - That's awesome. So it sounds like you've got not just a big family, but a spread out family. So you were still Foundations and Essentials when you had challenge kiddos too. - Oh, yes. Yeah, we have been doing a stint in Foundations and Essentials for quite some time.

And we've only just seen the light at the end of the tunnel because my youngest has begun her first year of Essentials. So we've been counting down. We did that chart many years ago. Like how old will everybody be when your last one starts? Yeah, so it's fun. We're excited and I'm sad at the same time because we have thoroughly enjoyed our time with Foundations and Essentials and sitting in there all these years, 10 plus years of being a parent in Essentials.

I've learned something every single time. It's amazing. - Do you feel like just when you're beginning to get the hang of it, it's hard to hang it up? - Yes, wait a second. Now I think I understand what's going on 10 years later. - Yes. - Okay, so that is the first nugget of encouragement, family, that you keep learning and that don't berate yourself for quote unquote not getting it all right away.

I mean, Denise is super smart and super dedicated. She'd been doing this 10 years and still learned stuff. So the encouragement is that you're gonna keep learning alongside of your kids the whole time. If you're doing it right, you're still learning. You haven't stopped learning yet. So you've got a big family of homeschoolers.

What are some of the blessings of a big family of homeschoolers? And then we'll talk about the challenges, but I wanna hear the good stuff first. - Well, I laugh at the big family definition because it really depends on what circles you're in. I might just be an average size family, especially the town that we came from that we raised our girls in the last 15 years, the average family size was four.

So it was higher than the national average overall. So it's just funny to me. But anyway, it's a great size. We've thoroughly enjoyed it. Some find it big, especially if you have two. It took me six for the Lord to finish his work is what I figured. - I know, right?

- It took a lot more work for me to- - You know what? I'm just curious in his timing. - I realized that God did a lot more with me as I homeschooled my children than I feel like I did with them. I mean, they came out, they started pretty good and they ended great.

And I started kind of pitiful and ended pretty good. And so I think that's really true. The Lord works on us as parents while we are homeschooling our kids. So I love that, that it took you six kids to get your rough edges marked off. - Yes, yes. So it's definitely a grace of the Lord to give us what he has.

The blessings that we've experienced though is, I have to say, it's marked mostly with joy and laughter. That is what we have hoped to have in our home. And I'm so thankful to be able to say all these years that we have been able to maintain that joy, that sheer desire to just enjoy being with one another and learning alongside each other and strengthening one another, sharpening one another as we pursue learning about who our creator is and what he has for us to learn about him.

- That's really neat. I imagine that having six girls, you had a built-in community, you had a built... And so did they help each other? Did they buddy up? Did you have help? I'm assuming that your older girls were a big help with the younger ones when they were coming through.

- Oh, absolutely. I do, most of the time you'll find me saying that somewhere around nine years old, I think is like a magic time for little girls especially. Of course, I have experience with girls. They become so helpful. And by the time we were getting to the last few kids that we've ended up with, it's been interesting to see how those natural mothering skills come into play, caring skills for one another.

So it's not just go grab mom a diaper, it's let's sit down and read a book together. And how can I help you with this puzzle? Or let's go outside and do this activity together or do nature sketching and watching how each other develops in their skillset. They learn by watching their older siblings.

And then my older ones, they reinforce what they do know because they have to explain it to somebody else. - Right, or help them with their memory work. I can remember, yeah, my older daughter saying to my younger daughter, okay, really get this 'cause you're gonna use it in challenge.

So go ahead and remember this. Be sure that- - You're gonna want it. - Yes, that you're gonna want it. That's really true. - Absolutely. - That's nice that you had the counsel of the wiser older sisters to reinforce. 'Cause sometimes, let's be real, sometimes our kids take it better from somebody besides us.

I know there were times when my younger daughter would go to her sister first for advice, whether she thought I was an old fuddy-duddy or that I didn't quite understand her the way her sister. That was beautiful to me though, because like you said, it fosters those nurturing skills between the children.

I really like that. - It does, yes. - I feel like there's a lot of sharing of ideas and sharing of ways to do things. I remember my older daughter giving my younger daughter tips on how to make this spreadsheet or how to fix this timeline or how to format this thing or the best way to memorize something.

So that's a beauty of a larger family is that you've got all different learning styles and always somebody has something to say about all the things. That's kind of nice. - Absolutely. - And somebody who's always willing to do memory work with you. - Oh, yes. - That was very handy.

I'm just really thankful that they are willing to pour into one another and they do see it as an advantage to get to review the memory work time and time again. It comes up at the dinner table often, you say one little word and they bust out into a timeline song, right?

- I know. - And you have to wait. Sometimes that's how our kids, after they grow up and go away to college, they find each other because of the way they answer a question in class. I know one of my daughters had a girl wait for her outside a college classroom.

And she said, when my daughter came out, she said, "Are you CC?" Like, "Are you FBI?" "Are you CC?" And she could tell by the way that my daughter had answered a question in class, these kids are gonna find each other 'cause that memory work doesn't let you go.

So those are great blessings of a larger family, but what about some of the challenges, Denise? - Let's see, challenges. I would say that scheduling is definitely something that we have been, I can't say were because we're still doing it. Scheduling is definitely one of the most challenging parts of large family or just multiple levels.

- Okay, do you mean juggling the schoolwork or juggling life or both? - Both, oh yes, both. Because you want to have some kind of extracurricular sometimes, whether it be, I call it extracurriculars, not church, but church activities alone are busy. And then you have, if you introduce one sport- - Oh my word, I know.

- Ballet or dance class or something, it adds a whole nother layer of things that you have to shift around constantly. - And if they pick something different, if they each pick a different thing, that's even crazier. - And there are so many ways in which one can arrange how to pick for all of your children.

I know one mom, she lets every kid pick a different thing if they want and lets them land where they are and she manages it. I don't know how she does it. - That's really hard. - That's not a way that I could manage it. - Absolutely, especially if you live farther and everybody has to be driven to their activity, that could be really hard, okay?

So what are some other ways to manage it? - There's, well, the way that we've enjoyed doing it is I will let the oldest one pick what they would like to do because they've also gone through what everybody else has picked ahead of them. And so we all do it as a family and we try and pick something that has a large spread for the age range.

We hadn't done sports up until last year. And so we got into soccer after having done dance and theater. So now we're all doing soccer and it's a homeschool league, thankfully, but they start at age 10. So my baby, she couldn't actually do it. So what did they do?

Because it's a homeschool league. They said, "Well, she can be our mascot." She gets to go to all the practices and do some of the scrimmage games with them, but she doesn't have a jersey and she doesn't play on the Saturday games, but she is included in all of that.

And how wonderful that the community is set up that way, that they are understanding, hey, here's the little last one of the family. We're gonna just fold her in, yes. And she gets to learn and play with her sisters. And we all get to enjoy doing that together, but not being so spread apart.

So thinking outside of the box, sometimes on those sport things to see what kind of sports can you be involved in that do have a spread and will allow you to enjoy team sports or some other aspect, whether it be theater or dance. We've done that a number of times throughout the years of just switching all together and doing it together so we can learn and grow and experience it as a family.

- That is actually a really lovely idea, Denise. With my hobby family of only two girls, I was able to let them choose. And blessedly, they mostly picked the same things. They both were dancers from three years old up through high school and they played soccer, but they, well, one played longer than the other, but they picked, but I actually think that that's a lovely way to put family first and these extra activities second, keeping the perspective of family first is really beautiful.

So Denise, what was your initial experience with CC like? - Oh, sure. So my first experience with Classical Conversations was a year before my daughter, even before we could join, it wasn't in our town where we lived. And so I studied it for about a year and then I heard of a friend that was starting a community.

I went to an information meeting and she says, "I'm gonna start this community." And I said, "Well, I need it too. "And whatever you need me to do, "I'll do it to help bring this together," right? So that was my first year tutoring foundations. And it was my first year for the next 10 years, that's what I did, is tutor foundations with babies on the hip all throughout.

'Cause at that point I only had three girls and I just kept right on going. It was second nature at that point. It wasn't anything challenging or hard in the sense of going and doing. I wanted to learn alongside my girls. It really helped me stay engaged with the memory work.

I got training. - That's so awesome. - I'm gonna go to home school. - So tutoring actually was not an extra burden, but a help to you at that point. And so- - Yes, I was confused about how to employ the classical model. So it really helped me put some pieces together that I was missing on my own.

- That has got to be encouraging. Okay, listeners, you heard it here. If you volunteer, if you agree to be a tutor, you will get so much more out of it than you put into it. Because like Denise said, you'll get training, you will be employing the classical model and you'll have people who will mentor you as you learn to do that.

And once you know how to do it in community, you do it naturally at home. 'Cause that's what I was gonna ask you, Denise. Did your tutoring experience in those early years pay dividends as you became the lead learner in front of six little girls? - Oh, definitely. We thoroughly repeated what we did in class.

And so I could take what each of the girls, they were in different levels, right? And so they would come home and they would have three different versions of the way that they learned stuff in class. We would come back home together and we would get to see what each other did.

So then I facilitated another kind of class at home with the girls and they all would get their turn of demonstrating how they learned the memory work and model that for their sisters. So it was a fun way for me to incorporate all of them together and not have to sit with each child individually with their own little play in of what they were doing, which is what I had been doing up until that point.

And so it was wonderful to get to do all of this learning together and not be siloed into these individual plans. Yes. - It strikes me that it is actually a blessing to have lots of kids because you've got lots of different learning styles. And then if they're all in different foundations groups, you or classes, small groups within your own community, they've got exposure to lots of different ways of playing with the memory work and lots of different memory tools.

And so you've got a bigger pool to pull from when you've got a bunch of kids. - We do. - I suppose that it means that somebody always has a buddy too. Always has a buddy to play with, always has a buddy to practice with, always have a buddy to mentor them.

- It is funny you say that because I definitely wanted to have an even number of kids if there's anything I can do about it. I grew up with an odd number and for whatever reason, there was always two against one, right? It's somebody who was always left out.

And so the Lord was kind. And I'm gonna say, here we are 21 years down the road that I was right. Even numbers really helps. - That is so fun. Well, there's always a pair. There's always a pair that can go together. Well, that's really good. Well, let me ask you this because I know it's not just, even though we're talking homeschooling, the juggling act is not just academically.

What's harder keeping up with multiple kids physically, emotionally, relationally, or academically? - Wow, that's heavy. The, I would say the emotional side slash spiritual is harder because you want to be present with them in what they're experiencing, in what they're seeing from their vantage point, right? We're experiencing a little bit of what our heavenly father sees watching our children grow up and we're one step removed thinking, oh, I remember that or I experienced that or that's not how I experienced it.

But it's interesting to see what they see. - It's not what I would do, yeah. - Exactly, it's not exactly what I would do. But it has been challenging there because you want to be present with them and not be ruled by this academic world that we are also doing.

And so it's so important for us to keep in mind what the priorities are to remember to stay present with them, whether it be a spiritual struggle, an emotional struggle today or an academic one. Usually the academics just highlight what is already brewing, right? It's just a tool that we use to help flush out some of those other areas of life because we are just trying to grow up mature Christians that will function in a society and be a blessing to the community around them.

It's not like the academics is gonna be the only thing that carries them. - No, and I've heard you say before that what your goal, you and Brian's goal was to lean into the resources but use them to guide good conversations that would help you shape the character you wanted your daughters to have.

- That's true, it is. We focused more on that. And I did have a community of women, parents around us in our CC group and in our church that helped us keep that focus. It wasn't something that we just came up with on our own, of course, but if you keep your focus on creating that mature Christian person, that's what we're all striving to do in this Christian worldview is to generate that, then we're not going to be as easily distracted by what needs to go on the transcript or what college they're gonna go to.

It's more about how are they going, are they going to persevere in raising up their own faithful family? That's what we're trying to accomplish and not just this more present, immediate future that they have. - That is a great, great reminder for all of us. No matter how many kids we have, it's a great reminder of the eternal purpose of what we're doing.

We're not raising kids to have perfect transcripts or full transcripts or any transcript at all, really. - Right, right. - We're raising, I've heard you say before, beautiful humans that worship God. - That's our goal, beautiful humans. - And then realizing that small families, medium-sized families, big families, we get really involved with making sure that all the academics are covered and that everybody has a buddy to study with and a mentor and everybody has got a reading and a discussing buddy.

But then you've helped me see, Denise, that really the thing that we need to be certain of is that we are giving every child the love and the attention that their heart needs and that their spirit needs. And yeah, if you figure out a way to do all the school with all the kids, that's great, but you also need to find a way to be there with each child as they grow towards the Lord.

That's really great. There's lots of details to manage. When did you realize you needed some help to manage all the details and what kind of help? Did you just pair the girls up? Did you have them studying the same thing, some of them studying the same things at the same time?

Did you have a schedule? Did you have a system? Did you have tutor help? How did you do it, Denise? - Oh, well, we did employ plenty of help 'cause it does take a community to support you and raise up faithful Christians. And so- - That's encouraging. Okay, I want everybody to hear that.

Yes, you don't have to do it all by yourself. Okay, that's awesome. Thank you for saying that out loud. You employed other people to help you with this big task. Gotcha. - We did do just friends down the street. We would pair up and do schedules that we could do memory work together or maybe do a strand together.

That's been one thing. There was a time period early on when we were trying to juggle all the math struggles and trying to figure out how do we meet the demands of what each child needs in all these different curricula. I had employed the use of a tutor, my friend, Joni, God bless your soul.

She's helped so many of us get through those years because trying to meet the needs of each student and keep consistent on going back and checking the lesson and grading the lesson and reviewing the questions that they have. It's a lot of work for each individual child at each individual level.

And that can be the case for several subjects the way that our traditional system has set up. So I'm thankful that homeschooling does allow you to adjust what you need, design it in a way that you can create it into a one-room schoolhouse. Joni even did that in the way that she was handling the math.

We got to all see how that was. And so it was a temporary solution that several of us used for a time because we saw how she did that. And then we figured out, okay, how can I do that at home too? Because that's not something necessarily we all wanna leave the house all the time to go do things, but you use it as a tool to help sharpen what you're doing at home.

- You have a mentor yourself. You're learning a system. I love that 'cause as parents, we don't just grow up knowing it all. So we have to learn. Good, good. We are gonna talk, 'cause I have some questions about math. Specifically, I wanna talk to you a little bit about the math map and how that makes one-room schoolhouse that you were just talking about more possible.

But I wanna hold that for a minute. I know that there are- - Hold off my gushing. - Well, there are lots of families that are just getting a toe in the water of the math map. And I want you to kind of wet our appetite a little bit more for that so that we are gonna do that.

So you had some tutors, you had some schedules. How did you stay connected to the learning that was happening? Did you have one-on-one time? Do you still have one-on-one time with everybody? And how often do you do that? And how do you choose what to talk to them about in this one-on-one time?

- Well, I will say that I used Lees, which is at the core that has the schedule in it, my age, right? And you start out with everybody all together, and then you just peel off the youngest ones as they either lose interest or you've covered what their level is at.

And so it's a review for everybody else. Start with the all together and then just peel them off. And I found that to be really helpful in the number of areas of study for our girls. And so then it allowed me a few minutes each hour to finish up with the oldest children so that they would be able to finish out or get additional one-on-one attention or two-on-one, 'cause honestly they were close enough that I was usually sitting with a couple of kids right up next to me as we were going through those essentials years.

And then even in the challenge, it's just shifted a little bit. So instead of, while we do start out all together, we do have certain subjects that I like to do together. We would like, I like to start out math, everybody together around the table, 'cause it doesn't matter what level you're doing, we're all doing the same topic and can dig into and hear each other's questions.

Well, then we can do the same thing for reading. We can do read-alouds of some of the work that challenge kids are doing so that the other kids get to experience it and come to love those stories and hear about them before they actually read and write about them themselves.

So that's been helpful over the years. And then we would also set up designated times for certain kids, for certain subjects. So you can pick a particular subject that you wanna concentrate on and grow your family and say, this year, we're gonna really concentrate on science and try and dig in deeper to this.

And all the other ones, you do what you need to do to get through that year, but then you can really dig in deep on that one subject. So that was a favorite way. Another friend had explained to me that that's how she did it. I loved that. - Did you let each girl pick the subject that they wanted to dive deep with you on?

Or did you guys just, did everybody dove deep into science in the same year? Did you do it? - It was the same subject for the whole family for that year. And it was picked by mom because it was usually an observation of what I thought we needed to strengthen as a family or what we needed to prepare, perhaps the oldest one, depending on where we were in the transcript years, the challenge years of what do I wanna ensure that we hone in on their comprehension and understanding so that they can continue to learn because it wasn't like I was gonna teach them everything they were gonna need to ever learn about this topic.

It was, what do they need to know so that they will persevere in learning throughout their lifetime? - Yeah, that's really true. That is a hard key for us who were not classically educated to grab ahold of is that we're not teaching the exhaustive list of all the things about every subject.

We are teaching the skills of learning. I'm teaching my girls, not everything they'll ever need to know about biology, but how to learn whatever it is that they need to learn about biology even after they leave my home. - Right, exactly. - I like that. That's really good. Did you ever have like one-on-one times that you had with each girl?

Maybe, I know I had one daughter who, if I did not sit and do her math with her, it was probably not gonna happen 'cause there's always a good reason to move on. And I had one that I did, I remember doing foundations geography with her at one point because she got really flustered by all the big strange names of African capitals.

And I can remember sitting down and doing all of chemistry with one just so that we kept moving forward. Did you have check-in times or with your girls or special one-on-ones for subjects that were either troublesome or delightful for them? - Absolutely. Having the schedule written out or on a device, whatever needs your family has in that area, it definitely requires planning.

So we would pick specific blocks of time for a specific child and say, this is gonna be your opportunity to ask questions. I would really love to hear about this particular subject or this strand that you're studying and have a check-in. But if you have other questions that are more pressing, I would be really glad to chat with you about those.

And so teaching them how to use their time wisely so they could come forward and ask questions that are gonna help them persevere in their studies is really a skill that they have to learn because I told them, I don't wanna sit here and figure out whether or not you added something correctly or multiplied something correctly on your math.

I'd rather spend an hour with you digging into one problem that really stumped you. - Yes, good. - And have fun with that, right? And so it was teaching them how to use that time effectively was something that we worked on over time. - That's really good. That really trains them to expect that consistency of time with you and it trains them to use the time well.

I like that, I like that. You know what I discovered too is that even as my girls got older, if we had a scheduled time, if they knew every day at this time, I'm gonna have mom's full attention. I'm gonna have mama just to myself and she's not gonna let any work bother her or my sister come in, nothing's gonna...

It somehow was comforting to them. I mean, they could kind of rest in that. - It is. They do enjoy having that thing to look forward to, that time to look forward to. They can count on it and the Lord willing, we work out that schedule and each time, maybe we'll flex if there's something weird in a week, but they do look for and ask for their time.

It's definitely something that they've leaned into and appreciate the time that we do spend with them 'cause my husband and I do it together. It's not that I'm doing all of this on my own, not by any sense of the imagination. So we will pair off and pick different subjects that we enjoy, especially that we're more gifted in and bless the children that way by spending that time and demonstrating the kind of joy that you have and learning beyond where they are at this point.

- So much good riches in there, you guys. I mean, she's just talked a lot about a lot of things, about having the spouse help, not doing it all by yourself and really focusing in on the relationship you have with your individual child, giving them something, some time that they can count on.

And then two, modeling for your child the skills of lifelong learning. Let them see you learning with them. Just let learning be something your family does, no matter what size your family is. That's really good. You have mentioned One Room Schoolhouse a bunch today in our conversation, and we've talked about the One Room Schoolhouse and how that's such a goal.

And Leigh, in a lot of the books that Leigh has written, she talks about how great the One Room Schoolhouse concept is and how that should be our goal. Sometimes that's really hard to wrap our modern minds around that we could all do something together, a six-year-old and a 10-year-old and a 16-year-old and a 35-year-old.

And how could we all be getting something out of this together? What did you think about the One Room Schoolhouse when that was first presented to you? It's funny that you bring that part up in particular. And I might use that word a lot just because that was my keyhole that I was missing that could not open the door to how to manage homeschooling.

That's what I was most overwhelmed by when I first was homeschooling. I was a few years in and I did one cycle with one kid. And then when the next one started kindergarten, I started her on cycle one again. And so I'm doing cycle three over here. I don't remember which curriculum it was now, but it's like what we have our cycles in Classical Conversations, but it was that kind of track.

And I'm thinking, how in the world am I gonna track two different parts of history and two different sciences and all this kind of stuff? So I didn't really understand how to put that together until we were with our Classical Conversations community and got the training in there. So I was amazed at how simple it was and how it just completely, I was completely obscured in seeing how to play that out with my three little people that I had at the time.

- Yes, it does make life easier. If you can wrap your modern mind around the whole concept, it does make life easier. It's not that you're doing history at three different levels. It's that your children may be taking it in in three different ways and to three different degrees, but you are sharing the same information.

You are all bathing in the same pool of water and some people are just getting wetter than others, okay? - I love that analogy. - So I like that. And that is the ideal that is attached to the MathMap now. The MathMap is the new classical math curriculum that CC is rolling out and that some families have begun to use now.

Talk about, I know, Denise, that you are a big proponent of the MathMap. So I want you to talk about MathMap and how it's revolutionizing your math education at your house. - Thank you. Certainly, I am so thankful at how the concept is put together that you can have one lesson for mom to teach from and reach all the children that you have sitting around you.

For my many years of math, we often, it was easy to just say it, we had four levels of math going. Throughout many of our homeschool years that we've been going through. And there was never a time in which I had four hours to dedicate to my children in order to accomplish their math lesson.

- Okay, let me just-- - So each one needed a separate window of time just for that one subject. - Just let me say this for a minute. That's why a lot of our listeners are listening to this podcast because they've got four or five or six or seven children and everybody needs math and everybody needs language arts and everybody needs something different.

And I don't have 14 hours in every day to do this individually. What am I supposed to do? All right, tell us how this works. - Well, what I have found is that the lesson does go from a very high level view of seeing what beauty there is in this particular dimension, this particular level or week that we're studying in.

And you can go as deep as your children comprehend and then take them just a little bit farther to whet their appetite for another time of exposure that they're gonna get down the road. But there is such a feast that's offered that we, I am stretched in what I am learning and understanding the language of math in my own understanding.

I love the pages of invention that we get to look over and see what's familiar and what's unfamiliar. And that's not a threat to what we have experienced in the past is my child, for some reason, several of my children would get frustrated at the lesson and thinking I should already know this.

- Yes. - Right? - Yes. - And then their emotions start riling up all over the place and it makes math last two hours. It's really frustrating, right? But then with this, I feel like the frustration level has been significantly dropped because it is about exploring, discovering, wondering and fanning that flame about their study of this particular topic instead of why don't you know this already?

Why don't you understand this layer that you should have comprehended two lessons ago? So it's relieving a lot of pressure, frustration on them in the way that we are approaching our studies at this point. - Well, I remember as a child, there were some math concepts that were hard for me.

And I look back now and I blame the way it was presented. But for me, there was a lot of blame and shame connected with math. And it's not that my parents shamed me and probably not that my teachers did, but I felt it. I felt ashamed if I didn't, like you said, already know something.

And so I love what you said about the math map that it brings us into a discussion. It ushers us into wonder and it's okay for us to observe and to compare and to attend to things. The whole point is that we're noticing things, that the point is thinking and conversation.

- Yes. - And I like it that- - Reading, a lot of reading. - Yes, there's a lot of reading. I love that the connections sometimes are not made during the lesson, but later during the day. Has that happened to you? - Oh, absolutely. Their playtime, they are allowed to contemplate whatever's going through their little brains.

And with their playtime, the studies have shown that during playtime, it does allow them to put ideas and concepts together. And the children are coming back and my neighbor can attest to this. Her son is putting ideas together about the concept of fractions and relationship of numbers. - Oh, cool.

- And we're seeing that with our girls as well, of how they're thinking about bigger ideas and the concept of the idea of what we're talking about and not getting hung up on the actual numbers or the computation of numbers. It's what are the big ideas? What are the bigger shapes that we're looking at?

How is this a conversation that has been going on for centuries, right? And we are getting to jump in the pool at this level and see what's been happening all around us. And now we get to learn about it and start contributing and asking questions. - That is so cool.

And the cool thing about what you just said is that, so a six-year-old is having exposure to the same thing that the 10-year-old is having exposure to. But that means that when the six-year-old is 10 years old, he or she is gonna be exposed to those ideas again. So it's a restful way to learn, knowing that you're gonna come back to these concepts, to these ideas over and over again.

And as your understanding deepens, then the hold it will have on your mind and your heart and your life will also deepen. So that's cool. It's kind of like a feast and we eat a little bit now and we're gonna eat a little bit next year and we're gonna eat a little bit the year after that.

And eventually our palates will be really well-developed. - Eventually. And that's what I'm counting on. I can see the fruit of what we've done in these other subjects. Latin is one that I have just grown to love because of the way that it's just been the repetition of me going back through and starting over with another kid and doing the foundation's memory work and seeing the connections as I learned and taught essentials.

It's been really fascinating. And so I have that same hope for this conversation in math that we are all going to grow up and love this together. I am a person who does love and enjoy math. I thought physics was the coolest thing ever when I was in high school.

- My husband loves physics. - I could not translate that or explain it to anybody else, right? And it's hard to do that. Well, this is giving us the shared common language that we can use with one another and converse with one another and share these tidbits that I've picked up and share the excitement so that we can all journey down this conversation together over the next however many years we're gonna be doing this.

- That is so cool. And because you have lots of voices in the conversation, your conversation is richer and richer every day. That is so cool. Yet another blessing of juggling multiple students is that you have enough voices to make a chorus, not just a solo or a duet.

That's kind of nice. I love that. Okay, Denise, we have to bring it to a close. Although this has been the best part of my day so far, I have to tell you. Let me ask you, if you had one encouraging word to say to families with lots of students and to parents who are worried that they're juggling but they're almost dropping something, what would you say?

- I would say, know that we've all heard the adage, the days are long and the years are short. Keep focused on the point that you are building worshipers of God and that this academics, the academics that you're dealing with right there in front of you is such a very temporal time of their life.

It's such a small percentage of their life. It does set them up for a lot, for many, many years, but really the goal is to set up really strong, faithful worshipers of God. And if your school is impeding on that, we need to rethink and we have the conversation with your household about how to repair that.

You're not gonna end up winning or checking all your boxes if you've left your children's heart behind. - That is so deeply true. I appreciate that. What I hear is that if I'm juggling a lot of balls and I have to let one drop, it needs to be the academics.

We need to hold those heart balls and those spirit balls and keep juggling. Thank you, Denise, for sharing that. I appreciate you sharing your heart. This has been awesome. Families, I know that you have gleaned lots of nuggets that you're gonna chew on again and again. If we have families who are listening today who've thought, "Hmm, what do you mean "you homeschool classically?" Or, "What is this classical conversations foundations "of which you speak?" And, "How are you guys learning all about things together?" And, "Could I go actually see a one-room schoolhouse?" Well, actually you could.

I wanna tell you that you can observe a classical conversations community day in action for yourself by visiting an open house. During an open house, you and your children will get some hands-on experience with homeschooling within community. And, you'll see firsthand what classical conversations is all about. So, if you're curious, if you wanna visit, here's what you do.

Go to classicalconversations.com/events/, okay? And, you will be able to find an open house near you. You'll be able to see what Denise has described in action. So, classicalconversations.com/events/, all right? Denise, thank you again. This has been awesome. Listeners-- - Always a pleasure, thank you. - I loved it. Listeners, I will see you next week, all right?

Bye-bye. (gentle music) you