Ep. 142: From Administrator to Homeschool Educator (A Chat with Mandy Davis)

Hello, and welcome to the MS4MOMA podcast. I'm your host, Abby Halberstadt. Happy wife, mama to 10, Bible believing Christian. And on today's show, I have a treat for all the homeschool mom listeners and watchers out there. But even if you are a traditional school mom, I think you're going to hear some great tips and parenting tidbits from my guest, Mandy Davis. We're going to dive into that conversation in just a second. But before we do, I want to highlight our podcast sponsor, Titan Your Tinkler. If you as a woman and particularly as a mom have just assumed that things like peeing a little bit when you sneeze or being in pain when you run are just par for the course after motherhood, Jen and Christina from Titan Your Tinkler want you to know that you can improve your bladder and prolapse symptoms in just 10 minutes a day without kegels, without devices, and without surgery. 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If that sounds like that would be a blessing to your family and a fun and efficient way to learn music, check it out at VoteburgMusicAcademy.com. Don't forget the code MSROMAMA20. All right, guys, I have a treat for you, especially for the homeschool moms, although I will say that for those of you that don't homeschool and that's not your primary interest, that I think this interview will still be very helpful to you just as parents in general because there's a lot of great principles in here that apply to every parent. But I have Mandy Davis on the podcast today. She is a former principal turned homeschool mom who has written something called the homeschool Bible, which that's a pretty bold claim. So we're going to dive into that. Mandy, thanks for being here. Thank you so much, Abby, for having me on. Yeah, so I gave just a little teeny tiny taste of who you are, but introduce yourself to people that have not met you before and tell us a little bit about yourself, please. Sure. My name is Mandy Davis. Many might know me from social media. My social media handle, home-built education. I actually got into the space in my first year homeschooling with really the drive not to create content, but to connect with community. I was looking to find my own pieces of inspiration and encouragement because where we were living at the time, I did not have a large homeschooling community around me. And of course, leaving my role as a school principal. We lost so much of our network and our circle that we had really raised our children around. So that's kind of how I got into the space. And now, yes, just April 7th, the homeschool Bible and the homeschool Bible parent planner release. And I'm so excited to talk to you about it. I want to rewind because when people hear that you are a former public school administrator and that you came to homeschooling, the very first question, which is the one you always get asked is why, how, like, how did that come to be? Sure. So let's go way back in time. I went through the school system myself. And I think anyone who saw my school system experience on paper would say, well, she was a great student. I got good grades. I was a great active listener. I was very quiet and obedient in class. On the inside, I really struggled. There was a lot of anxiety, a lot of performance based learning that was happening that was weighing down on me, a lot of bullying that I was dealing with. These are the reasons why I went into education in the first place. My goal was to become an educator, to create the environment that I always wished my own experience would have provided me with, somewhere where I felt warm and welcome and seen. And at 22 and right out of college becoming a teacher, not yet having, you know, a husband and children of my own, which shaped and changed everything. I'll address that in a second. But right out the gate. It was very evident that all of my goals, all of those reasons that I wanted to become an educator, they actually were so pressed far away from the actual profession. The goals of my classroom were really to keep up, to push and teach the curriculum that I was handed. I couldn't bring in anything new. It was to meet the state test requirements. It was to get my kids all out of certain grades so they could all move to the next grade level. It was to have a quiet classroom. So I had time to push this rigorous curriculum that I was being handed by the administration. And again, as a teacher, if you would look at my performance on paper, it would look great. My kids passed tests. I had good grades in my classroom, but everything else was missed. There wasn't time. There wasn't enough time in the day. And I was- What grade level were you teaching? Fifth. Fifth grade. Yeah. And I was surprised. I was frustrated that I couldn't make changes and it just fueled this fire in me to keep going. Okay. I'm in the classroom. I'm not able to do what I set out to do. I must have to get into administration because if I'm in administration, now I can change the policies. I can change the curriculum. I can make more time for movement and play and all these things that matter that brought me into education in the first place. So I did. So I finished a dual MED and I got into administration. And then finally, actually becoming the principal at my girl's school. I thought, this is it. I'm not only going to be impacting a school, but my children's school. It was shocking how I was kept arms length, even from their education in classrooms. I couldn't change anything. My name was on the door, but I was even more bound by red tape than I had been previously. And as, you know, now in motherhood and having my outlook towards education shift completely from motherhood, I couldn't imagine, okay, if I am the principal of the school and I cannot impact my child's learning, what hope does any other parent have to be able to be a part of their child's journey and learning journey? The environment was not positive for me. The experience was not positive for me. And my husband and I started having very serious conversations about what it would look like for me to exit my career. And when you're having these big conversations and you're saying words like toxic environment and when you're saying words like anxiety and stress and talking about all the implications on your adult life, leaving our girls in that same place was not an option. And so the year that I left, I pulled the girls and we, my husband and myself never had had a conversation. What about homeschooling? We had tried private and we had tried public and we had experienced, you know, the COVID learning situations and switch schools. If I would switch schools, but we had never discussed homeschooling. And it just really came upon us in that moment that there wasn't going to be a best fit for our kids. We were the best fit for them. And so we brought them home and started this journey. That's so interesting that you were in the same school and were feeling like you were seeing kind of the parallel of the classroom. That's a unique perspective because you're seeing the parallel of the classroom and what your children are learning because I think there's often a remove. If someone is teaching, they're not usually teaching their own children in a classroom environment. And then if they're an administrator, they're not necessarily administrating the same school and you were able to see kind of those parallels, it sounds like, between what you felt like you were restricted from being able to do and then maybe what you felt like your kids were restricted from being able to do. Absolutely. Absolutely. So when you started considering homeschool, did you know anybody that had homeschooled before? I did not. I did not. Wow. So you just kind of started, okay, so I will ask it this way because what I'm getting is a lot of parents that have a lot of interest in homeschooling, but they don't have the background and they feel really overwhelmed with where to start. I'm assuming that's why you wrote your book, which we'll talk about more in a little bit. But what were your first steps when you're going from public, some private to all of a sudden confronting this concept that you haven't even known anyone that's done it? I think as alongside my husband, we had the big conversations first, okay, we're going to do this and boosting confidence in understanding. We didn't go into homeschooling and say, this is it for the next decade, this is what we're doing. We went and said, we're going to try this. We're going to go all in and try. And I don't think there really is a ready. I wasn't ready, but I was prepared to make a choice to try and very okay with the fact that this makes the most sense right now. This isn't the best interest of our children and should something in the future change and should the best interest of our children for their school choice change, we can evaluate it at that time. So just instead of looking at it as this, I'm going to transform the next 13 years versus, okay, we're going to try this now and just jump all in. I really appreciate that perspective, especially for those who are homeschool curious or who are considering it or who have decided but don't feel like they're ready and don't feel like they're prepared yet, that you can take it a semester or a year at a time and not feel this pressure on yourself that you have to produce something that isn't coming about, as you say, especially if you're starting in kindergarten or first grade for many years to come. I personally was homeschooled and my mom was a homeschool OG pioneer, you know, fighting for the right to do that legally in the state of Texas, which is where we live now. And I always knew I wanted to homeschool my kids because I loved my experience growing up and I was like, man, you know, this whole like, I didn't do this every day, but get up early, get all my schoolwork, the independent schoolwork done, do spelling words in history with my mom and then go like, spend the day going to the library and riding bikes and making, yeah, it sounds idyllic, but it really actually pretty, pretty well was because we had several other families in our community that were starting the same journey at the same time for which I am really grateful because I know that's not everybody's story. And maybe my mom absolutely was like, there's no other option. I know my older brother who's four years older did a year of kindergarten before my mom was like, you know what, kind of the same conclusion that you reached. I don't think this is the best option for our family. I think I'm the best option for our family. So I'm just going for it. But it does take a lot of weight off of homeschool curious families, shoulders to feel like they don't have to sign on the dotted line for the rest of their lives. Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. Um, so you've, you've decided this is what you're doing. What age are your girls at this point? My oldest was fifth and, um, my middle was third and then little guy was just a baby. Okay. So that's an interesting perspective because I didn't know the answer to that. And I was thinking they might have been younger because you, I do have a lot of moms that come to me that are like, is it possible to shift gears? To switch lanes at this point when I have someone that's going into middle school. Kind of, can you talk about what that process looked like and how you built confidence or what you would tell moms who are asking those questions? Oh, absolutely. Man, this was such a beautiful time for us. It was just so transformative in ways. I don't think any of us could have possibly expected. And my girls, similar to myself, they looked so great on paper as students. They were, they both excelled in school. School just wasn't serving them back. And so that is very hard as a child to see and internalize the difference until you've experienced something different. So when we let them know, Hey, we're going to try this. We kept the conversations very upfront and very honest. We're trying. So very similar to my husband and my conversation. It wasn't this, here's a life change. We're doing it forever and you're coming along for the ride. But Hey, as a family, we're going to go all in. We're going to try this and see how it goes. And by the way, we're all going to be talking through it the entire time. How is it feeling? Is this still serving us? You know, is your education growing? Are you happy? And we just kind of took it one day at a time. The girls overall were excited to try something new. We also made it exciting because it was, I mean, it's kind of like you share how it sounds idyllic, but it is, you know, it's hard for a child to not be excited when their mom tells them, we're going to do, you know, reading for 30 minutes and then, Hey, do you want to go to the park? Or what do you want to do? What do you want to learn? What do you want to bake? So they just went all in on it. And for us, the de-schooling process was so heavy on me. And just a little bit of a sidestep there. So many people will say to me, you know, oh, it makes sense that you homeschool, you were a teacher, you were a school principal. That makes sense. Oh, man. For me, it was so hard because I had all of these data points and rules and schedules that had been ingrained in me for, you know, over a decade, nearly two decades as to what learning and education and school were supposed to look like. To break those was very hard. And I think every parent has those ingrained, even ones who never experienced the school system, just from our society and shows and music and everything around us kind of follows that hustle mentality. But breaking that for me was so hard. So de-schooling was definitely the heaviest on me. But I did watch the girls go through it as well. What happened for them through this process was really just an opening up and a complete shift in, I was no longer seeing that post-school restraint collapse. So coming home from school, a lot of times, a parent might notice that their kids' behavior is off. You know, they'll hear from a teacher, you know, your son or your daughter is so well-behaved in school and the parent would respond to me, you know, really? Because they come home and they're melting down or they're yelling or they're not listening. But what that actually is is post-school restraint collapse. It's these small nervous systems holding it in all day because they don't want to get in trouble because they're working on someone else's schedule and pace. So when they get to their safe place, it just all comes out. When the girls didn't have that on their bodies anymore and they could just learn in their safe place and live in their safe place and be reminded again that failure is learning and mistakes are learning, it just completely transformed who they are and how they cope and how they live and how much they love learning. So it was just such a beautiful transformation to see. That's awesome. I want to speak to the mom who's currently homeschooling and does not feel like her experience is idyllic, who does not feel like maybe she's never done anything else so she doesn't have a contrast. So she's thinking, well, maybe that would have happened if we were in a different schooling environment, but I just know what I know. And what I know is that I have a resistive learner. I have a child who isn't interested in the beauty of homeschooling and nature drawing and reading, living books. They'd rather be on video games or playing Legos all day. This is not restricted to boys, but it can be especially true of boys. And what I'm hearing you say is that your girls were very good on paper at school, which means that they were ideal system learners. And a lot of times that transition, especially when they have more freedom to express their academic interest and creativity in homeschooling can be pretty smooth, but not necessarily true for every student. So I know that we cannot succumb to answering every whataboutism that comes across our desk, but I just know I get enough questions from homeschool moms who will feel like their experience doesn't match just to the point that this might be discouraging. What would you say to those moms who either haven't come out of a different system to compare it to, or just are having a different experience with their students who beautiful is not the word that they would use to describe their homeschool? Sure, absolutely. You know, leaning into your family, every child is so different and every child learns so differently. And it just changes the need and the flow of the day. I know that for our family, what gets me in having the most difficult times in our homeschool is when I start comparing my homeschool to someone else's. And I start thinking, well, gosh, they're, you know, baking at 10 a.m. and things are relaxed and my toddler is naked somewhere. And those are the tough days, right? And they sneak up on you. So first, as much as you can turn off comparison to others, to other kids, and just zone in on your kids, what do they love? Where are you seeing that spark? Because there isn't a child that dislikes learning. There are children whose behavior is trying to give us a signal. And so what is that signal? And you are very, very right when you say, especially in boys, because I know with my four-year-old son, who's vastly different than my girls were at that phase. Everything is, I've got to be climbing on it, biting on it, just so physical with everything. And that's just a part of his day. And so when the girls and I used to read out loud and they'd sit, great. When we read out loud and he is making a tent with probably furniture pieces, he should not be making a tent out of. Great. Yeah. The learning is going to be there. But the most important part is just honoring that childhood. And also your time and experience through it as well in your own motherhood. Because if every day of your home school is a fight, then it's not serving anyone. So instead just, okay, I'm going to drown out the noise. I'm going to drown out the comparison. And instead, what do we need right now to have a peaceful day? Have that peaceful day. And then at the end of it, reflect where were we learning? And I think that that's what is always surprising. And I just worked with a mom through this who had twin eight-year-old boys. She's thinking through just having a positive day and making those connection points with her boys. And then she reached back and said, what was funny is when I sat down the next morning and journaled back where the actual learning was, it was all throughout the day. But they weren't fighting through it. Yeah, that's so good. Now I do want to talk about the concept of things we still must do because as much as homeschooling is a gift because you can customize so much of it. And you can give them the freedom to pursue passions. I had a really interesting conversation with Ben Johns, who is the number one pickleball player in the world. We were on a retreat. It's his company that runs them. He is one of seven. They were homeschooled and he speaks very highly of his parents. And he basically said, no notes. They gave us the space to pursue our passions. Seven of them, different passions and people like, how, how, how? I think one of the answers is the gift of time. But you also have to compare the gift of time with great intentionality and paying attention. And he said, you know, at one point I hadn't done math in four years because I was four years ahead, so I spent my time elsewhere. And then he went on to get a degree that definitely involved math. So it wasn't that he lost his abilities. It was that his parents were like, you don't have to follow this particular track. It doesn't have to look like your peers that are in traditional schools simply because we have paid attention to how advanced you are in this area. And said, you've mastered that enough that you can shift over here. And I just found his perspective really encouraging because he was like my parents really encouraged us to work hard to do the things we had to do first. So we could get to the things that we love to do. But he didn't just kick the things we had to do out the door. Because when I hear you talking, I am agreeing with everything you're saying, but I also hear the mom again in the back of my head. It's like, wait, wait, wait, that sounds so child led and so interest led. That what if the child's never interested in math? What do we do then? Absolutely. I feel like I'm going to tie in a little bit here to the homeschool Bible because this is exactly why I wrote the book. I take the academic side so seriously because it's still a backbone to learning. And so we can talk about how fluid our days are. And that's absolutely true. But there is a reality that the learning has to happen. It just doesn't take seven to eight hours of sitting for it to happen. So in reality, for us, that formal piece of learning can happen much more quickly, but it still has to happen. What that looks like again in your home and for your child will depend on the philosophy and approach that you want to take. And there are so many that could fit or you could completely create your own. And there is going to be hard days when you need to shift and maybe math just won't happen. But it does have to happen at some point. It's just different. And I think a lot of times when we use terms like child led, the thought does come to mine like, oh, you know, my son would just lead me to play with Legos all day. When really there's a way we can incorporate Legos into the math lesson. Okay. My son loves Legos. We're doing counting by Tuesday. I'm going to lay out the Legos and those are the manipulatives we're using. Child led because they love it. You're still getting in the academics that you need to put in and it's not going to take you that long because you're one on one at this point teaching. Yeah. Yeah. I have, and you have three children. So you have multiple children, multiple ages. They are more spread out than some of my parents who have, you know, kind of more of my age range. I had 10 kids in 14 years and so, and two sets of multiples. And so sometimes it's like, well, I have, I have two toddlers and a five year old and a seven year old. Um, and they really want some nitty gritty help with how to order their day so that there is some peace. Um, I have often found that I have to encourage people that there are seasons that are less peaceful than others. And being okay with that, knowing that you're working for better habits for more peace can help you not drown in those moments. Do you agree? Do you have some more perspective on kind of how to get through those times when the toddlers are derailing everything and it just feels like too much? Oh, absolutely. And those moments are going to happen. Our goal, um, in our house is to encourage the kids to learn independently and work independently. And we've reached the phase with my older girls where they're able to take on so much of their learning on their own. They like to, they want to, because we really drilled in not memorize this fact and memorize this, but instead how to think about learning. What do you do when you're stuck? What do you do when mom can't answer a question for you? Where do you look? Because if we don't teach those minor skills, then it's going to be mom, mom, mom, mom, mom for a very long time. And now I'm to the point where, okay, like she understands how to, how to start her day, how to schedule her day, how to ask questions. And I can check in. It was hard upfront. So this hard work, those hard seasons, please pray over it and remind yourself. This season's hard. It has to be so the next seasons can be easier, but it's all worth it. Yeah. That's great. That, that perspective shift of, um, I'm putting in the work now to reap a harvest. It's not a guaranteed equal harvest in every child or anything like that, or the same amount of time for every child. I have a seven year old who just had a reading breakthrough last week. Um, whereas I've had other ones that had the same leap at five and a half or six. And I'm not worried about it. He's my number eight. And I knew it was coming. It always does. At some point, yes, it has taken longer for him and that's fine. But that moment that we've been working for, for a while, um, and it probably, if it had been my first or second, would have stressed me out because I probably would have been doing more of the comparison. Like, uh-oh, uh-oh, I've got this friend over here that whose child did this in this amount of time. Why isn't mine following that formula? But homeschooling really does give you the freedom, especially if you have several kids, you get to kind of see the process unfold for to say, Oh, okay. I preach this every child is unique thing. Now let's, let's apply it and actually give this child the space he needs to achieve in his own timeline. Oh, absolutely. And with my girls too, something that we continue to do today is not only encourage them to lead their learning, but to encourage the other. So especially when they were in the younger grades, if my then sixth grader learned something that was really interesting, she would teach my middle and it would reinforce her mastery, it would teach my middle something new and it would create a different kind of dynamic to our school day as well, to our learning time as well. So just looking for those little pockets that the kids can also be reliant on each other through their learning journeys is something that I always think about it again, because that big age gap, my kids would never even be in the same school building, all three. Right. So being able to be together in this, I try to utilize that every corner I can. Absolutely. And I found this to be true, not just in academic subjects or in facts, but also in just good behavior, good habits. There are things that I have not had to train as much in my younger children. I mean, I still have to, I'm still the mom, absolutely. But I've noticed that they will tell each other, like, we're not allowed to do that. Or, hey, we need to be doing this because they are observing siblings who are having that trickle down effect. So it actually is really sweet to have those different ages together that wouldn't normally be in the same space and be spending that amount of time together and see the effects that that positive kind of peer pressure from your older kids can have. I love that. Yes. That's also the reaping, right? Because you put in that work in those hard seasons and now it just continues to get better. Yeah, absolutely. So at this point, your oldest is a sophomore? Freshman? Freshman. I get a lot of questions. Do you guys do any kind of co-op or any kind of anything where you're combining your learning with someone else? Yes, yes. So my youngest too, we just started this year. A co-op had never worked for us just based on NAP schedule alone with my older two. But this year we started at a homeschool learning center local here, which is just fantastic homeschool parents teaching large groups, depending on what their skill, what the homeschool's parents skill set is and what they'd like to teach. And then my oldest is hybridding locally. So many states have this option in high school to be able to participate in sports and extracurriculars at the local school. And you need five credit hours in order to do that, which equates to one class a semester. So she'll go during the day to choir. And now this year was able to participate in the school musicals and then show choir. And it's been such a gift. That's awesome. So that's the big question that I get a lot. You know, really, it's kind of how to get started. That's a really big one. And we'll talk about that more in just a second. And then what do you do when they reach that age where they want more extracurriculars? Because we keep extracurriculars pretty simple and pretty minimal when they're all very small. And then we, as they're getting more toward driving age and they have more specific interests, we start to kind of individualize there more and focus more on that. So for example, my senior that's graduating, he's my second son that's graduating this year, has been in the basketball for the last three years. He's driven himself to most of his practices. If there's a far away game he has, and we're not all able to go. He's either ridden with someone or been able to drive there. And he's just thrown himself into it and loved it. He just wrapped up his last basketball season. It's been really fun to watch him do something that he's so passionate about, but he didn't really know he was passionate about basketball when he was in second grade, you know, and it didn't make sense for our family to do that. So now that I have high schoolers and we, we do a one day a week co-op as well. Same, it is parent led and the people that have the interest of their expertise in that particular subject lead those classes. And, but I have a lot of parents that are worried that they won't have the skills and the knowledge and the resources for their high school kids specifically once they hit that age where homeschooling feels a little more and yeah, maybe, maybe just a little more information heavy. What kind of encouragement do you have either in your book or here for them? Sure. So it's hard. I would say don't think about it until you are entering the high school phase because God's not going to equip you until you're there, right? So, so I know it can be stressful trying to think ahead, but unless you're entering high school, you're probably not going to feel ready anyway. And I know that's certainly true for myself. And you won't know what your child's interests or needs are. I mean, you, you could have a kid that really wants more sports and you could have a kid that's not interested in them at all. So if you're trying to figure out a, an education path for a child so that he will be able to play sports in the future and then he doesn't end up interested, you will have put a lot of effort into something that doesn't necessarily produce much fruit. Oh, absolutely. And I, I receive that question a lot. Also, um, sometimes from very well intentioned families and other times from naysayers who are doubting that a homeschool or could homeschool in high school. Here's the thing. And I'm just going to come back to it. You put in that hard work in those hard seasons and you do watch it continue to pay off. Teaching our kids from a young age to chase curiosity and how to learn what to do when they're stuck, how to read, to understand a text versus a novel, how to understand a main idea. I watched my oldest get to the point of there's less time from me where I'm sitting down and teaching material and more time from me where I'm able to sit down, reflect with her to encourage her to go deeper because she's really able to do so much of her learning on her own. She's autonomous in, okay, I know how to do this. And now I just keep going and advancing in those areas that I love. And so it's, it was a big shift for me, you know, pushing away. Okay, this is less just I'm going to instruct and more, I'm going to sit back and then let you really take the reins and then be kind of that soft landing spot so we can expand together. So not getting too caught in the weeds of what will I do in the future? Because I think it's too hard to think about until both you and your child are there. Sure. And then just practically speaking now versus, for example, 20 years ago, when my mom was doing all this 25 goodness, I should probably say closer to 28 or many years ago, because I started college early, because I remember my mom said, basically, you can do the last two years of high school, and these will be your classes, then you're going to do them again in your first two years of college prerequisite or college requisites, or you can just go ahead and do them in college. And I was like, yeah, I don't want to do those twice. So and that was that was her solution. Because at the time, dual credit wasn't really a thing. There were no co-ops. She actually started her own co-op very, very, very small one. That was my first two years of high school. So again, she was facilitating all these things that we have a lot more in place for now. Now, you may not be in an area where you have a lot of resources, but we have the internet now. And while that can be a curse, there are many cases in which you have, for example, Potter's school is a great example of online classes where you have a teacher, a real teacher, that is giving you information. So if a parent, for example, is overwhelmed by doing pre-cal or something like that, and they just don't feel equipped, they can still have their kid with that schedule freedom to pursue hobbies, part-time jobs, but then study from home. So I feel like parents need to know that they have these resources, that they can enroll their kids in dual credit. They can do online classes. They can do a co-op. They can do a grade swap with or a subject swap with another parent who is confident in pre-cal. Just like you said, don't worry about it too much until you're there and then start preparing when you're when you're on that kind of runway to take off. Yes. Okay. So yeah, go ahead. Oh, no matter the ages of your children, homeschooling is not a solo sport. You do not have to take all of it on your own shoulders and looking for those online courses and looking for the support locally. It's something that's so interestingly talked about online, in my opinion, where it'll be debated, is using an online school, is that homeschooling? You know, or if I rely on a micro school half the day, is that homeschooling? A home education is one that you are intentionally building out from your home. That does not mean it's one where you're putting everything on one parent at home. Yes. Yeah. That is so important to note. Okay. So you mentioned a while back that there are different philosophies and that's another question I get asked all the time. What's your homeschooling philosophy? How did you reach it? Mine is absolutely a hybrid of a lot of different things. I am not the person that likes to be pigeonholed into one label, nor do I find that practices usually serve me best if I go like whole hog into every single thing on the list of Charlotte Mason, for example, although we do love reading aloud and living books and narration and things like that. So there are some people that would prefer to have like the list of things and to be like, this is, man, I really align with this and this is what I want to continue with. I'm assuming you talk about these in your book. I do. I do. I walk through the philosophies, not because you have to choose one, but sometimes one will sing so strongly to your heart. It can actually guide your homeschool in ways you hadn't anticipated. So if you're reading through and you reach unschooling and that really speaks to you, then when you're looking at curriculum, when you're looking at activities, you might be more drawn to those same activities, curriculums that align with that philosophy. If you start out the gate by looking for a curriculum, but you don't have any guide to your compass as to what your philosophy might be, it's going to be more overwhelming because curriculum is just vast. There's just so much to look at. So just understanding what your family is most aligned to is helpful. And I'm the same where I really do not line up to anything. And so taking kind of an eclectic, a little bit of this, a little bit of that approach, I actually find curriculum in the same ways, a little bit of this and a little bit of that. And that's okay. We're not, you're not nailed down to a philosophy, even if one speaks more clearly to you in this season, it could shift. Yes. And you're not nailed down to that curriculum, even though you paid money for it. I have definitely felt the homeschool guilt of committing to an entire box curriculum and realizing I don't like 50% of it and being like, but I spent money on it and it goes back to what you were talking about with serving your family. Yes, you want to be frugal. Yes, you want to be wise with your money, but part of being wise with your money would be that even if it's already spent, that you get library books. I mean, I have parents that are like, I homeschooled 30 years ago with a library card and some paper and pencil and my kids went on to do everything their hearts desired because they learned to love learning. And they were so self motivated in these areas. And I facilitated that and I invested in them. So while I don't think either you or I are saying like, whatever, throw your hands in the air and just see what falls at all. There is a lot of freedom, like you say, to pursue things in a way that aligns well with your family and then to adjust. If you find out you didn't actually understand what aligned with your family, I feel like that happens too. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I always share to you that I am a recovering completionist. And a lot of that comes from leaving the school system mentality of, you know, if the curriculum says to do it, we have to do it. And if it's on, if it's included on this workbook page, we have to complete it until I move on to the next workbook page. And that was something I really had to shake out of my mind in that first year because if you get to a page and your child knows it, there's no need to do the page. If you get to a page and it doesn't serve your family, it doesn't serve the goal of learning, skip the page. And so with curriculum, I have bought the wrong ones too many times and use them in ways that they weren't intended to be used, but that took us down a better path of learning where I was able to say, OK, this doesn't fit, but oh, light bulb. OK, here's what would work. Here's the small piece from this curriculum we can use. And we're just going to scrap the rest. No guilt in that. No, in fact, there's a lot of agency in realizing that you, the parent, the educator have the freedom like you don't have to. I mean, there are states that require more oversight that you do have to check some boxes if they're going to allow you to homeschool in Texas. We have the freedom to say this isn't serving us or we're going to take the day off and do this or we went to the grocery store and math for the day was adding up our total or working out what the percentage discount was or doing fractions while we baked, which, by the way, don't replace formal learning. But a lot of times ingrain what formal learning you have done in such a more concrete way than the worksheets do. And I'm a fan of worksheets. Worksheets have their place and they are very useful. Absolutely. So give me an overview before we sign off here. Give me an overview of what people who are homeschool curious in their first couple of years needing to restructure whatever kind of reason why they would be opening a book called the homeschool Bible would be receiving as they're reading your book. Oh, gosh, I know. And also the planner that goes with it. Sure. I know it's a big name, the homeschool Bible, but I just needed a book to include all the big topics. When I got into homeschooling right away, I was looking for all the book recs. You know, what should I be reading? How can I be learning? And there were so many books that were referred to me. Fantastic books. Inspiration. I just wanted one place to know how, how to do everything. And that's really why I wrote the homeschool Bible. I wanted parents to be able to open it and know what to do on day one through graduation and to come back to it. The glossary is vast. I also remember getting online and hearing, Oh, did you do a block schedule or a loop schedule and thinking to myself, I really wish I knew what those terms meant. And so I just included all of it. Hey, here's the letter to include to your district when you're looking to leave. Hey, this is what you need for legal. This is how you can consider a philosophy. And this is how it might shape your curriculum. These are the kinds of schedules. Here's how you can build a community. All of it. And it goes all the way through again to what does planning look like after homeschool, the college route, the career route, how can we really get our children ready and send them off well? And then of course the planner sitting next to it. If you're like me and love to journal and write, it just brings it all home in a very practical format. Okay. Now I'm going to fill this in with my master plan. Hmm. Yeah. And as a Christian, I definitely, I love what you're saying. And then I would add, like, bring that all under the authority of God and his master plan. Like there's so much that we, I mean, the Bible says that a man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps. So having that open handed, if the Lord wills, absolutely do all things to the glory of God, do all things with excellence instead of just winging it and hoping for the best. And I love that you've provided these resources so that people can be best informed because these are the questions that I'm getting asked that I love that there's something I can go, Hey, there's, there's an answer here that you can go look and I'll put the everything in the show notes, but that posture of holding it loosely and saying, this is my master plan, but Lord, you're will be done. Absolutely. Um, Mandy, where can people find you and find all your resources? And then if you have one thing you would leave with the parent who's considering homeschooling, struggling with homeschooling, loving it, looking forward to it in the future, what would that be? Sure. You can find me daily on Instagram, homebuilt education, just leaving inspiration and resources. You can find my book at the homeschoolbible.com and everywhere books are sold. Christian book.com, Amazon Barnes and Noble target. One lasting thought for today. If you're on the fence with homeschooling, try it. If you're sitting in a season right now that's feeling uncomfortable, you're not alone grace, give yourself a lot of grace, give yourself the time to reset and go into it in the next day with the mentality of we are not going to do someone else's plan. We're going to live out our family's plan. We're going to remember why we brought it all home. Hmm. That's so good. So good. Mandy, thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for sharing and for providing this resource. And I just appreciate your knowledge and your passion for this. Thank you. Thank you so much, Abby, for having me on. Yeah. All right, we'll see you back here next week. If you enjoyed the MS for Mama podcast, I would be so honored if you would subscribe and follow along, maybe share with friends or even leave a review. And if you want more content on motherhood and biblical responses to cultural issues, be sure to follow along on Instagram at m.is.for.mama.