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TRANSCRIPTION:

Hey everybody, this is Heidi St. John. How are you guys doing? Today is Friday, December 27th. I’m assuming y’all had a really wonderful Christmas. This is episode number 863 and it is meet my friend Friday and I have a treasured friend on the show with me today. My friend Andrew Pudewa is here and we’re going to encourage you to make the most out of the new year. We’re going to be talking about Advent, we’re going to be talking about how you can encourage your children to kind of break out of boredom and start enjoying homeschooling again. Stick around, I think you’re going to be encouraged

So thanks for tuning in today. I want to say a really big shout out to everybody who sent us Christmas cards for our Christmas card Palooza and you can keep them coming because we’re going to be celebrating all the way through January here and just enjoying those cards as they come in and so please keep them coming.

Also, it’s not too late to send a year-end donation to the nonprofit organization that sponsors this podcast and that is Firmly Planted Family. So we would really appreciate it if you are looking to make a year-end donation, the non-profit here really could use it and we would be blessed. All right. Without further ado, I want to introduce an old friend to you.

A lot of you guys already know Andrew because I’ve talked about in a bunch on the show. We’ve worked together before, but Andrew is the founder of the Institute for Excellence in Writing. He’s also a dad to seven kids. He travels and speaks around the world and he addresses issues that are related to teaching, and writing and spelling and he’s basically just an all around great guy who I’m thrilled to have back on the show with me today. So Andrew, my friend, welcome back.

[Andrew] Oh Heidi, it’s always good to be with you, wherever.

[Heidi] Yeah, and I think I’m going to see you out on the road a little bit this year.

[Andrew] That would be lovely. Yes.

[Heidi] I know. Yep. And I was talking to the staff here and you’re at the top of the list to try to get back here to Vancouver again to the Homeschool Resource Center. So I’ve just enjoyed watching and you guys just had an awesome celebration at IEW that I couldn’t come to, but I did send you a video in my defense. I did send you a video with a fireplace on the screen.

[Andrew] It was a lovely video with a beautiful fire that somehow looked like a large TV screen right behind you, but your message was touching, brought a tear to my eye. And of course anyone who would like to watch that, our 25th birthday bash and big news announcement that’s still viewable on our YouTube channel. IEWTV on YouTube. So it was a lot of fun.

[Heidi] You had a pretty great star-studded lineup at that. I got to watch it live, at least parts of it and it was fun to watch all the people who have been blessed by what you’re doing at IW. So for anyone who’s listening that’s not familiar with the Institute for Excellence in Writing, can you give me the 30-second rundown on what that is? Because and also we’ll extend it because I’d love for people to hear because you just celebrated a huge milestone. And I loved hearing the most fascinating part for me in watching your life, that big party was to hear how it started. I think it’s an inspirational story.

[Andrew] Well I can’t give the whole history in 30 seconds, we are…

[Heidi] I’ll give you more time. I won’t cut you off.

[Andrew] We are a publishing company. We publish a lot of video courses as well as printed materials. I travel and teach and do workshops quite a bit. And our goal is to equip parents and teachers and tutors and students with the tools that will allow them to communicate effectively with more structure and style and writing. And our system is based on the tried and true almost classical approach of imitation in writing.

And we cover both of the report research essay side as well as the story creative, inventive side of writing. So it’s very comprehensive. We have materials from kindergarten age level all the way up through high school. And one of the things we did after giving the history of IEW, how I got started with it 25 years ago, kind of on a whim. And now we have, I don’t know, over 40 employees and we just finished this new product line that we had been recording for two years.

So two and a half years ago, I started recording three one and a half to two-hour writing classes every Tuesday for 24 weeks for two years. So I recorded…

[Heidi] That’s a lot of work.

[Andrew] We recorded 144 one and a half to two-hour classes. Of course the the harder part is the backend, the editing as you know. But we’ve got the level A year 1 shipping now we should have level B, year 1 ready in January and level C, year 1 ready in March—all for the next convention season. And so again, you can see the trailer and promo video for that on our YouTube channel.

But for me, one of the biggest challenges, I’ll be honest, Heidi was I had to start every single class with a different joke. So that meant I had to find and practice and tell at least 144 different jokes over the course of..

[Heidi] So you got a repertoire now, a joke repertoire.

[Andrew] I do. In fact, I want to do a conference talk called 45 jokes in 55 minutes or something and do stand up on the circuit.

[Heidi] Oh man, I would do that with you. So do you have a joke that’s at the top of your head right now? Is there a favorite joke that you have?

[Andrew] Oh, a favorite joke. There’s just so many.

[Heidi] Yeah, a favorite joke. See and here’s a fun fact about me. You can tell me the same joke over and over again and it will be new to me every time. I can never remember them. It’s the truth. My friend Steve Lambert, he’s always like, “Heidi, do you remember that joke?” I’m like, “No, I don’t.” It’s terrible.

[Andrew] Well, the one that comes to mind is the, the classic missionaries horse joke. Do you know that one?

[Heidi] No, of course not. I mean, I might know it. There’s a good chance I know it.

[Andrew] It’s a guy wants to buy a horse. So he looks on Craigslist and he sees horses for sale and he sees one that looks really good. And he contacts the person selling the horse and ask a few questions. And the person selling writes back says “Yes, he’s an excellent horse, very healthy. Here’s the age, the size. He’s very fast, he jumps smoothly, can stop on a dime. But he is a little odd because he was trained by a missionary. So to make him go, you have to say “praise the Lord” or he won’t go. And to make him stop, you have to say “amen” or he won’t stop. But other than that, he’s a great horse.”

The guy buying the horse says, “Well, that doesn’t bother me too much. I’ll try out.” So he hops on the horse and he says, “Praise the Lord.” The horse takes off across the butte there and he’s going faster and faster, and then he realizes he’s heading straight for a 200-foot straight down cliff drop. And so he’s like, “Whoa, horse.” Nothing happens. The horse is going faster and faster. “Whoa, horse. Stop horse. Horse, whoa.” Nothing happens. Horse is going faster and faster.

He’s getting closer to the edge and he’s thinking there’s something I’ve got to say to make this horse stop. But he can’t remember. And he’s almost at the very edge and he finally remembers and he shouts, “Amen.” And the horse stops one foot before the edge of the cliff and his heart’s beating a million miles a minute. He’s so relieved. And he finally just says, “Oh, praise the Lord.”

[Heidi] Oh no. You know what’s funny, Andrew? Is I actually did know that joke. And as you’re telling me the joke, I’m thinking, “I know this, I know this, I’ve heard this before,” but now it’s the punchline every time. You can probably tell me the joke next week and I’ll do the same thing.

[Andrew] Well, it’s interesting because children relish hearing the same stories and the same jokes again and again. My son would tell a joke and then he’d say 15 minutes later he’d say, “Do you want to hear a joke?” Okay, fine. He’d tell the same joke. I’d say, “Son, you just told that joke 15 minutes ago.” He says, “I know, but it’s funny.”

[Heidi] It’s funny. That’s right. And actually a little comic relief right now in the culture. Not a bad thing. Right? This is not a bad time to have a little comic relief, so I appreciate that. Thank you, Andrew. By the way, did you have a good Christmas? I didn’t even ask you. Christmas, you love Christmas. You’re the Christmasing king.

[Andrew] Actually, we’re in the very middle of it because we do things a little differently in our home and with our family.

[Heidi] You’re still celebrating Advent?

[Andrew] Well, advent is the period from the first of traditionally from the 1st of December through to the 25th, which is the feast day of Christmas, and then the Christmas feast lasts for 12 days. That’s where we get the expression and the song, the 12 Days of Christmas. So actually starts on the 25th and goes all the way through to epiphany, which is January 6th. So what we did in our family for the last many years is we don’t put up a Christmas tree until New Year’s Eve. Excuse me. We don’t put up a Christmas tree until Christmas Eve.

[Heidi] Really?

[Andrew] Yeah. So we’re in kind of a fasting penitential period and it’s a good penitential because you have to endure really bad Christmas music every time you walk into Target or Starbucks. So it’s a preparation time. Then the feast begins Christmas and we’ve got the 12 days of feasting and celebration. In our family, that works out very well because I have all my children are gone. I am an empty nester and it’s tough, but they have other sides of the family they have to honor.

So my kids actually are coming tomorrow on the 28th and so we’re going to basically do our big Christmas thing I think Sunday, the day after tomorrow on the 29th with all the presents and stockings and all that stuff. I will have one, two, three kids from out of town, five grandchildren. Actually a sixth grandchild. One just born, I’ve got..

[Heidi] Oh, congratulations.

[Andrew] 11 plus one and then two more, one in January, one in February. So they’re coming fast and furious here.

[Heidi] That’s so much fun.

[Andrew] Yeah. And you’re never going to catch up with me, Heidi. 

[Heidi] No and I’ve discovered with my children that when I try to make it into a competition, people just get mad at me. So I bowed out. But you and I, we can still keep score in a friendly way. Right? So, we’ll just keep doing that, I would imagine.

[Andrew] Okay. I’m sure. I don’t know. It’s possible. But there’s an interesting thing that a lot of people don’t know. Shakespeare’s play Twelfth Night, you’ve heard of that I assume?

[Heidi] Yeah.

[Andrew] That is called Twelfth Night because it was actually written to be performed as kind of the culmination of the 12 Days of Christmas.

[Heidi] I did not know that.

[Andrew] And we at our IEW actually do the 12 Days of Christmas, giving away free gifts. It’s a audio or video download or a PDF or a combination thereof and it’s not too late for your listeners to jump in and go to our link, iew.com/christmas19 and sign up and you can get one gift every day.

You have to go to the website and download it every day. And then on the last day, we actually will be mailing out a physical gift to everyone who has signed up.

[Heidi] That is very cool.

[Andrew] It’s a secret, so I can’t say what it is, but it’s worth it.

[Heidi] We participated in this last year and it really is a lot of fun. So iew.com/christmas19 and I will link back to it in the show notes today. And speaking of IEW, I’ve got a question from a listener that I really wanted to to give to you. Because I know you’re going to have a great answer for her. This is a mom who wishes to remain anonymous. You could see the homeschool mom who’s in the homeschool support group meeting. Just going, “I’d just like to be anonymous for five minutes.”

And she says that she is struggling. She said that her kids are bored with homeschooling and that they’re complaining, So in the morning she said, “I get my kids up for school and they don’t want to come down and do school. They are complaining that they’re bored and it’s frustrating me. And so I’m reacting to them in a manner of which she probably doesn’t want them to remember for the rest of their lives.”

And you and I have had this conversation before because I know you said that when you were in school you were bored as a kid and this one of the things you really love about homeschooling. So I’m wondering if you can talk to the mom who is just out of ideas and needs to hit the reset button when she starts back in again in January.

[Andrew] Yeah. It’s a good time to do that too. Because you have a little, you have that little breather and you don’t feel like you have to do school there. You can take off two, three, four 17 weeks. It’s very flexible. Did she mention how old her kids are?

[Heidi] Yes. She has a 3rd grader, a 6th grader, a 7th grader, and a high schooler. So she’s got kind of the gamut going on.

[Andrew] Well, one of the things that I’ve noticed that I’m sure you have too, is that we learn best when we feel responsible for our own learning. Right? I mean if you say, “Wow, I really want to learn about that, I want to find out about that.” It’s a much more enjoyable and I would say effective lasting process than when someone else says, “I think you need to learn this.”

So one of the tough things to do, but I think an important one, especially for teenagers and she’s one plus a couple coming into that zone, is to try and build into the homeschool universe that you create the culture at home this way for kids to be a little more proactive and responsible in making the choices of what they want to learn.

I always say to my kids, “You’ll know you’re a grownup when you’re always busy, usually tired. You can eat tomatoes and red bell peppers without complaining and you use your time well.” And so that’s part of I think what our goal is, is to make that shift from I, the teacher, dad, mom telling you what to do with every minute of your day until we’ve accomplished everything that I think you need to do. Shifting over to you organize your time and you choose to use your time responsibly. And of course, that’s a many year developmental process.

John Taylor Gatto and I know you’ve heard me talk about his book an Underground History of American Education. He said a real interesting thing once in a talk. He said, “What every 13-year-old kid in the world needs.” And I think he said 13 because he taught 8th grade English in Brooklyn, New York for decades.

[Heidi] So he knows a thing or two about 13-year-olds.

[Andrew] 13 year olds. He said, “What every 13-year-old needs more than anything else is real honest to God meaningful life and death level responsibility,” which is exactly what schools are contrived to prevent that from ever happening. So when you’ve got kids moving into that zone, 12, 13, 14, 15 looking at that deep yearning that they have to have responsibility, which really is to have dominion, to rule, to rule their world to some degree. And how do we create both a culture at home as well as a curriculum that gives them more opportunity to kind of be in charge?

That’s what I would encourage people to contemplate. There may be some things which are non-negotiable. For example, math. Okay. You’re going to do math whether you like it or not just like you brush your teeth. It’s mental hygiene. It’s life skill. We’re not going to argue about it, but there are some other things that you could probably say. Here is a list of things that are part of the curriculum? Which attract you the most? Which would you like to focus on more than others?

[Heidi] You’re giving them ownership.

[Andrew] Exactly ownership and responsibility. And with that, well ownership is two things isn’t it? It’s freedom and responsibility. To rule, you have to have dominion, which means you have to care for that which you are ruling over. And so it’s organization, it’s time management. We have a little course, it doesn’t get a lot of traction because I don’t push it very much, but it’s really quite good. It’s called Victus Study Skills System. It’s written by a wonderful lady, Susan Ison who worked for years in the corporate world and then discovered that the same principles for goal setting and time management and study skills that work in the corporate world also work in middle school.

And so she started to do workshops and seminars for middle school and high school students and then put it all together in this program. And I taught through it a couple times with the group of homeschoolers and what I found was that some of this stuff was kind of like common sense to me. But it wasn’t necessarily to them. Such as make a list of all the things you have to do and put them in order according to priority. Have a daily schedule and a weekly schedule and a monthly schedule and keep track of all those things.

If we can pass more of that organization and accountability onto kids, I think that makes a huge difference in their engagement level, as it would for you or me. If we had a job, we would go to work and we would have a domain where we would rule over a certain part of a shop or a business or an activity and then we get engaged. We get excited about that. So that would be one suggestion. And it’s unfortunately kind of a vague, not impractical, but it’s more philosophical in terms of how do you do that while there’d be many, many ways.

[Heidi] Well, I’m a huge fan of morning. I feel like, at least for me, and I think this is true of most of the homeschool moms I know, particularly if they have a lot of children and a lot of different things or trying to manage throughout the day—if you can get up early and then what I did with our kids, I mean our kids like yours, my now are beginning to rapidly leave my house.

But when I had all seven of them at home and I was trying to homeschool a high schooler and tame a toddler and all the things, it helped me very much to sit down with the ones who are capable of doing it. So if your child is in, I would say 3rd grade or 4th grade, they can totally do this with you. I would sit down with them and we would make a list of what we had to do that day.

And in fact, I had so many children, like the little old woman in the shoe that I didn’t know what to do. So I made a template on my computer. And so every day it had math and reading and language and whatever it was that we were working on. And below it I could write down here’s what your assignment is for that day. So if I got distracted, toddler taming, my 12-year-old still had a direction that she was going.

Because what happens is I think for moms is that we look away for a half a second and the kid who was practicing her cursive is suddenly gone. Right? Or maybe her little brother is under the table playing a game with her or whatever. And this really helped me just sort of keep things moving. And I’m a huge fan. I love that you said the list because I think it’s teaching our children to be, to be able to be adults.

We’re not raising children, we’re raising adults. And so to be able to say, “Hey, let’s make a list. What do we have to do today? And then let’s look at what has to be done first.” Because oftentimes, the kids will write a list and they’ll just do the thing they want to do first. Right? Instead of the thing that needs to be done. So I love that you said that.

Also, you have a passion for making sure that kids are reading, and I’ve talked about this a lot on the podcast, the importance of reading out loud to our kids, but you and I were talking before the show about the importance of reading energizing books that are really going to engage your kids. And you were talking about doing that first thing in the morning. Can you jump off on that just a little bit? Explain what you meant.

[Andrew] Well, it fits in with the idea of doing the most important things first. And I have, you know, said in many different talks in many different ways that being read to out loud as a child is the number one predictor of good writing skills in adults. And that if what you want is your child to be a good writer and speaker of the English language 10-20 years from now, the most important thing you could do every day is read out loud to them good and great books, probably at a level slightly higher than their own decoding skills in huge quantity.

And I’m talking an hour a day, maybe two hours a day depending. And I would view that as the single most valuable and most important thing that you could accomplish any given day. So if we as homeschool parents are going to say, “Okay, I’ve gone to have this kid accomplished this and this kid accomplished this and this kid do this and this kid stay out of my way while I do this with this other kid.” And you’re kind of managing that all. But what is above all of that in terms of the most important thing to do every day?

I would say start with that and that would be getting a good or great book and sitting down with the whole family in the room and some of the kids can play with blocks or Legos, others could draw pictures, but they’re all there from the high schooler down to the toddler. They’re all in the room and you start the day by reading out loud. And I’ve talked to so many parents who have done this, who’ve kind of shifted their priority so that there’s that community building element. And when you read the whole book to all the children, you get this shared culture, you get these inside jokes, you’ve got things you can relate to and talk about together.

It’s such a wonderful way to start the day. I wish we had done more of that. I didn’t really understand it as well when I still had kids at home as I do now. And then you’ve got an hour of reading a good book and you’ve been laughing, you’ve been engaged, your heart is activated. Okay, now it’s time for us to do the things we have to do more individually, whether that’s math or the writing or reading something different. And I think it just makes such a huge difference. And I would recommend too, this is a little odd, but I think we Americans are kind of obsessed with new. Just give me the new thing.

[Heidi] The new phone. The new iPhone.

[Andrew] Yeah, yeah. I read that already. Well, yeah, it was 17 years ago, but yeah, I read it. And one of the things that I have said when talking about how do you define a classic, well that’s a book or a piece of music or art that you can experience. You can read it again and again and again and again, and get more out of it each time.

So being the season, I would share with people that for many, many, many years, I read a Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens every year and you know what? It never gets old. Not only would I read it every year, we would usually watch one or more versions of the movie every year, and when possible go see the play. Or in one case we actually produced the play. That is an example of a transformative story that can be experienced.

I would say possibly countless times and there’s more value to be gained. There’s more conversion that happens inside as we listen to the story of Scrooge and his coming to the realizations, and the second chance and the mercy and the grace and then the generosity that results from all that. So don’t be afraid to have certain books that you make an annual event.

My friend Martin Coffin, you know Martin. Martin said he read the book Penrod every year to his kids growing up. It’s kind of like a baptized Tom Sawyer. It’s just funny and delightful and insightful, and poignant in so many ways. And so you might rather than always looking for something you haven’t done before in terms of reading, look for the books that you have read before that are worth reading again, and then there’s more familiarity and even more joy and enthusiasm about it.

[Heidi] Well, and really once we realize that something is engaging our children, I saw Eric Metaxas wrote a great article about the enduring allure really of a Dickens’ Christmas Carol and why we like it. It’s because this is a story that it will resonate for all time. Right? Because it really gets to the heart of human beings. And when you’ve established that your children are enjoying a particular story. We’ve done this in our house with the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. A lot of CS Lewis that we read over and over and over again.

And over time, as our kids have gotten older, they have told us those are the most precious memories that they had from homeschooling. It was getting out a book and reading. And we did that for probably 15 years every single morning. I like to read biographies to our children. So we read a lot of missionary stories. We read a lot of CS Lewis and it was a time for us exactly what you said to engage our children. And they grew spiritually. They grew relationally.

I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world. I think sometimes people think, “Oh, it’s a waste of time to read out loud to your kids.” And actually the opposite is true. There’s nothing more important.

[Andrew] So true. And I think you’ve probably experienced this having adult children as I have. You look back over the decades and you think, “What were the most important moments and experiences?” You can even ask your kids. What do you remember as being the best things about growing up? Almost never has anyone said anything like doing math, filling in multiple choice tests, doing spelling exercise. They always talk about, those moments where there was almost a magic or I’d say maybe a supernatural, like you said, relationship connection.

It’s so hard to define and explain. I’ve come to believe that academics is possibly the least important thing about growing up. We who homeschool can very easily idolize that and be fearful and say, Oh no, if I don’t do academics well and make that a hugely important thing. I’ll fail in homeschooling.” But as we’ve talked about before, I think a lot of kids go to school and spend a tremendous amount of time being bored to death, not learning much.

If I look back, everything I really do remember learning I remember my parents teaching me, even though I sat in schools every year for 12 years. So we can, as homeschooling parents say, “Hey, we’ve got the freedom to travel more, to spend more time outside to read to our kids out loud.” We still have baseline stuff we can do, but we don’t need to idolize academics in order for our kids to grow up. Not only happier, healthy, but also intelligent, literate, and successful.

[Heidi] Yeah, I love that. And you know what I think you’ve just done? I think you just set a whole bunch of homeschooling parents free right now, because it’s important for them to hear. I mean, everyone knows that you are the guy at IEW and to hear you say, “Listen, don’t idolize academics. There are so much more to our children and we want to do those things.” And I think you’re absolutely right.

Obviously we’re teaching them English and writing and history and that kind of thing, but when it becomes the thing and we think, “Oh, I don’t have time to read with my kids. Oh, we don’t have time to go out and just sit under the stars and we don’t have time to talk about spiritual things and really nurture the hearts of our kids.” We miss it and we miss the most important thing.

[Andrew] Yeah. And the sad thing is that you almost can’t really get that and believe it and know that it’s true until your kids are all grown up when you look at them.

[Heidi] It’s so sad. It’s completely right. That’s why we’re trying to tell these parents now, “Listen, we know this goes against everything that you, that you learned from traditional school, but we’re right.” I think that’s what we’re saying.

[Andrew] You know the other book I read every year Heidi, have you read Skipping Christmas by John Grisham?

[Heidi] No, but I should. That’s bad on me. I have not.

[Andrew] Well, we don’t think of John Grisham as a classic author like we might think of Dickens or Twain or somebody. He’s quite a craft storyteller. But this book Skipping Christmas, I read it every year, I don’t know, for seven, eight, nine years in a row and now I can’t really read it. I know what’s going to happen. It just brings tears to my eyes. But there’s such a magnificent and beautiful sacrificial love for a fellow person, for humanity that is embodied in this book amidst all of the delightful humor. It’s a very funny book.

[Heidi] Skipping Christmas by John Grisham. I’ll link back to that in the show notes today.

[Andrew] Yeah. And it’s not too late because although Christmas happened, we’re still in the 12 days, we’re still in the Christmas season. But that one really had a tremendous beautiful effect. And of course you can also to go back and Little Women has a Christmas theme that’s so nice to put in.

So maybe what you could do is give people some of your favorite books or maybe I’ll list some of my favorite books and you can put that in the show notes.

[Heidi] That’s a great idea.

[Andrew] People can make a New Year’s resolution to read more out loud to the whole family getting off on the right foot here with the new year and-

[Heidi] And it really will be okay. I think a homeschool mom who’s tired and weary and just like, “Please don’t make me start school again. I don’t think I can ever come back from Christmas break.” It really will be okay. And this is a great way to start is just to grab a good book and start reading to your kids. It’s a great time to do.

[Andrew] And ease into it.

[Heidi] Ease into it.

[Andrew] Ease into it.

[Heidi] I love it. Andrew, I love it. I love you and I just am so thankful for your voice in the homeschool community and for just the graciousness with which you approach so many topics and it’s just been a joy to have you here.

[Andrew] As always, Heidi, it is a joy to talk with you in-person or virtually, and we’ll look forward to the next time we can celebrate life together again in-person.

[Heidi] I’m looking forward to that. Thank you, my friend. For more information about IEW’s 12 Days of Christmas. You guys are not going to want to miss it. It just started yesterday. Go to iew.com/christmas19 to get in on the giveaway and I will link back to you in the show notes today, some book recommendations from Andrew and from myself.

And I hope that you guys will take Andrew’s advice to heart and begin if you’re not already doing it, reading out loud to your kids. Take the time you guys, it really is worth it. Thanks for listening today, everybody. And I’ll see you back here on Monday. 

Write to [Heidi]
Heidi St. John
c/o Firmly Planted Family
11100 NE 34th Cir, Vancouver, WA 98682

Support this ministry by donating through E-giving. You can also send donations to: 11100 NE34th Cir, Vancouver, WA 98682

Submit your questions to MailBox Monday.

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Steve Lambert has worn many hats in his 68 years: Pastor, author, speaker, stockbroker and more. Together, he and his wife Jane Claire Lambert created and publish “Five in a Row” homeschool curriculum which has been a homeschool mainstay for nearly 25 years. They began homeschooling their children in 1981 and today their seven grandchildren are being homeschooled as well and range in age from 18 months to 18 years.

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Don’t Miss These!

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TRANSCRIPTION:

This podcast is brought to you by our friends at Evangelical Christian Credit Union

Hey everybody. This is Heidi St. John. Welcome to the podcast. Today is Monday, November 25th. This is episode number 849. It’s mailbox Monday and I have a treat for you guys today. In the studio with me is my friend Steve Lambert. We’re going to talk about how to make homeschooling great again. 

Stick around. I think you’re going to be encouraged.

All right you guys, thanks for tuning in today. Really love the reviews that are coming in. Also, can I just pause for a moment and say thank you to everybody who’s sending me Christmas cards. All right? So, I’m already getting a whole bunch of them. You guys are on top of it. Thank you for participating in Christmas card Palooza here at Firmly Planted Family. If you’d like to participate, we would love to hear from you. This is a great time of year to do it, to sort of let us see the faces of the people that are listening to this podcast and we’re going to put your pictures up on the wall here at the Firmly Planted Family Homeschool Resource Center in Vancouver.

So at the end of the podcast I will give you guys the address for that again. So thank you so much for doing that. Also, a couple of things that are coming up. I am going to be speaking in California next Saturday and you guys already know that the place to find that is HeidiStJohn.com/events. But I wanted to let you guys know from what I understand, this is going to be … well it’s a Christmas tea and hello, can we all just say Christmas together? I will be at Godspeak Calvary Chapel and I know it’s going to be a great time. So come on out. That event starts at six o’clock in the evening and I cannot wait to see you. For more information on that go to HeidiStJohn.com/events.

Also, we have a brand new study. We’re going to be studying sanctuary for the month of December and what does it mean to have … to see our relationship with the Lord in the light of being a sanctuary? What does it look like to worship God that way? And so you guys are going to love it. It’s going to be a great study. Join me for that. That starts on the first Monday, which will be December, 2nd.

All right you guys, this is mailbox Monday and I love that you guys are sending us so many questions. Remember what I said last time, when you submit questions to the podcast, it really helps me if you will say really briefly what it’s about. So, it’s about homeschooling. Maybe it’s about marriage. Maybe it’s about parenting. It can be something that’s detailed, like maybe you want a specific type of parenting. Maybe you’ve got an issue with pornography. If it’s a one word thing, that’s great and then a couple of sentences that tells me what’s going on and what your question is that helps the staff kind of go through those questions and categorize them.

Today we’re going to be spending a little bit of time talking about homeschooling, particularly as it relates to reading and the importance of reading aloud. This is a fantastic time of year to start reading aloud to your kids because hello, it’s winter time weather coming up. So it’s hanging around the fireplace. It’s sitting around the couch season. And no person … There’s no person I can think of on the earth that’s better to talk to you about this than my friend Steve Lambert. I’ve been hanging out with the Lamberts for a long time and in fact they podcasted with me when I was still a podcasting from my closet many years ago and now we’re in the studio. So Steve Lambert, my friend, welcome. You’re here in Vancouver.

[Steve] Yeah, we’re excited to be here this weekend. It’s fun to be here with you.

[Heidi] So you guys came for the play. So we did Anne of Green Gables and you liked it, right?

[Steve] What a remarkable opportunity for those children, for the audience, for … It was just an amazing thing and I love Lucy Maud Montgomery. We love Anne Green Gables. We’ve watched the Megan Follows movies so many times.

[Heidi] That’s the best one.

[Steve] It really is.

[Heidi] The Megan Follows version, hands down. If you’re going to go to Amazon or Netflix or wherever, Megan Follows is the one to see.

[Steve] For sure. Yeah.

[Heidi] And not the new ones.

[Steve] No, no, no. That’s the one. So we … knowing your kids for all these years and knowing that several of them were in the play, we had to come out to see it. And I’m so glad we did. It was a wonderful, wonderful thing. And to see what’s going on here at the resource center is just remarkable.

[Heidi] Yeah. It’s changed a lot, because you guys haven’t been at it for almost a year, I think, right? It’s been awhile.

[Steve] Yeah, it’s been about a year probably.

[Heidi] Yeah. And the resource center grown. Here you are in the studio. This is fun.

[Steve] I know. This is way better than your closet. Little roomier.

[Heidi] Little roomier. Not having to fight your way through the dresses and kick the shoes out of the way.

[Steve] Exactly.

[Heidi] Yeah. So this is better. I know. I’m appreciating it. You guys have been hanging out with us for a long time since well, way before Sailor was ever even born.

[Steve] Yeah. About 12 years, I think, we’ve been hanging around together now.

[Heidi] Yeah. And we met you guys when you came out to speak for … Because I was thinking it’s been a long time since you’ve been on my podcast and there’ll be a lot of new listeners who don’t know who you guys are. And I think it’s fun to sort of introduce. Like I had Mark Brotherton on here a couple of weeks ago. We went to college together and we were like, yeah, back when mullets were cool. So I met you after the mullet years.

[Steve] Yeah, yeah.

[Heidi] But before the resource centers. So kind of in that space. But you came out to Spokane to keynote an event and Jay and I were in charge of a homeschool conference at that time as I … Am I right, as I recall?

[Steve] Yeah, no, that’s exactly right. Somebody, a mutual friend had recommended me and you hired me. And Jane and I came out and that’s where we got acquainted. And we’ve been hanging around together ever since.

[Heidi] That’s true. We met over breakfast as I recall, and I’m not sure that you thought that I was in charge of the conference or not. Jay and I, it seemed like we didn’t quite meet your expectations.

[Steve] Well the presidents and the organizers of most State Homeschool Conventions are empty nesters whose kids are grown and gone and now they’ve got time to, you know, donate and coordinate for the state and help younger families. And somebody said that, you know, your name was Heidi and I thought well that’s a name from the 1950s, that makes sense.

[Heidi] Old German lady.

[Steve] And that you were coming in your motor home. I didn’t know that it was, you know, just a kind of a beater motor home. So I envisioned you as like full time, you know, snowbird retirees. And then to meet at breakfast and there you were 30 something years old. And I said, I think as I recall, I said, you know….

[Heidi] Where is your parents?

[Steve] Yeah. “Are your parents coming down soon because I need to talk with your mom before we start the event this weekend.”

[Heidi] And things just got better. They just got better from there. I think it’s fair to say.

[Steve] Yeah, for sure.

[Heidi] Well, and you guys are better known for, and Janem writing a curriculum, Five in a Row, which you guys began publishing, what, over 25 years ago.

[Steve] Yeah.

[Heidi] And that curriculum has been used by bazillions of kids for all these years and it’s rooted in unit study. Right? And what a joy that is for kids to be able to learn in a way that’s not stifling, not stuffy, not boring. One of the things we love to talk about here is just how to make education anything but boring, which it shouldn’t be boring, right? Because there’s so many things to learn about and Jane has really done a good job of capturing an entire generation of homeschooled kids in particular. So you guys have a brand new edition. The second edition of Five in a Row is out. And I kind of want to talk to you about reading out loud because that’s really the basis for Five in a Row, right? Is reading to kids and getting them involved in the stories and making those stories come to life.

And there are so many moms who write to me every single week here at the podcast and there’s no life in their homeschooling and they’re bored and they call their kids down for school and the kids are like, do we have to do that again? And before 9:00 in the morning, mom’s already tired. She’s already burned out, she’s gone through, you know, three workbooks and there’s no life in it.

And you have a really interesting and I think life-giving approach to homeschooling that really stems from reading out loud with your kids. Kind of something that we have a hard time doing right now because our faces are in our laptops and our iPads and our phones. And so I wanted to sort of go that direction with you today and see if you can help me encourage some of these moms that are listening, because it seems to me, and you and I have had this conversation a lot, this generation of homeschool moms are not like the generation 25 and 30 years ago.

[Steve] Very different.

[Heidi] Very, very different. What do you see that’s different right off the top of your head? When you look at a mom who say her oldest kid now is five years old as opposed to 25 years ago, what do you see happening in the homeschool movement?

[Steve] Well, I think that the, you know, there’s no saying about comparison is the death of contentment.

[Heidi] Yeah.

[Steve] So there are so many…

[Heidi] Thank you Pinterest.

[Steve] Exactly. So yeah, you need to take the pledge to stay off of Pinterest if you’re homeschooling because…

[Heidi] There should be a pledge for that.

[Steve] That’s right.

[Heidi] That’s really … We should make a website Steve.

[Steve] Yeah.

[Heidi] Takethepledge.com.

[Steve] That’s it, take the pledge. We’re off of Pinterest because you know, back in those early days, we were all kind of pioneering. I mean, we began homeschooling in 1981 and probably most of your listeners weren’t even born in 1981 and that’s kind of awkward. But it was a very different time. And so today the pressure is so much on these parents or they sense that it is in terms of academic achievement and well my neighbor’s child is already doing Chinese and Latin and English and they’re only four.

[Heidi] Right, they play five different instruments.

[Steve] Yeah. Exactly.

[Heidi] They can juggle while they play them.

[Steve] Exactly. And that’s just … It takes all the life and all the joy and just sucks the enjoyment out of the process that God intended to be a joy for you and your children. And instead it turns into this Mortal Kombat kind of a thing that’s not so fun. So yeah, Jane wrote Five in a Row and it was first published in 1994. So 26 years, almost 26 years ago. We’ve had about 600,000 children use it in about 60 different countries and most of them here in the United States. But it’s based on the concept of reading aloud with your child. And out of that comes all the different topics. So, rather than having a history book and a geography book and a science book, you discover history and geography and science as you go.

And you know, the naturalist John Muir said, “In nature you can begin anywhere and you’ll eventually end up everywhere,” because the whole world is interconnected. So when we systematically slice and dice academic information into categories, it’s really like trying to enjoy a teaspoon full of Sanka frozen.

[Heidi] I haven’t had Sanka in a while.

[Steve] Yeah. So, well I’m old, you know, so what do you have now? Folgers frozen crystals. No wait, isn’t there a … Doesn’t Starbucks have some kind of an instant?

[Heidi] They do. Like a freeze dried.

[Steve] Yeah, so like just taking the freeze dried powder and putting it on your tongue and enjoying a nice cup of coffee because there’s no life in that.

[Heidi] Right, yeah.

[Steve] And so reading opens those doors and disarms kids because the first thing that almost every child wants to do is to sit on your lap and have you read a wonderful story.

[Heidi] Well, so here’s a really great question because I know that there are moms listening to this and they’re like, yeah, but that’s not school. Like this is so much of the issues that we get, right, is a mom who feels like she’s not doing it if she hasn’t opened her, you know, her workbook to the 13th lesson of the language arts curriculum workbook. And then we need all these workbooks. We need …and really what I have discovered, because I’ve been homeschooling now for coming up on 25 years, what I’ve been discovering, because I started out that way, we typically do with our children what was done to us, right?

[Steve] Yeah.

[Heidi] So if we went to school and we got, you know, three or four different workbooks shoved in our face every day, and we, you know, we had recess at a particular time. A lot of these moms are bringing their kids home from school and they’re trying to recreate school at home. And then they’re shocked to discover that their kids are bored, that they’re burned out, that they’re stressed out. And what you have discovered long before I did and what I discovered, you know, probably I wish, I mean to really laid into it, I wish I would have … someone would have held my hand when I was much younger as a homeschool mom. That there’s so much life in reading and what you just said is right. I mean what you’ve just described is a unit study, right? So you’re taking a book and through reading that book, you’re able to talk about the history of the character and where they were and all of a sudden it’s science and it’s the language arts and all these things are coming to life and the kids get an emotional investment because you’re reading a story to them.

There’s a reason that Jesus told parables, right? He knew we would remember them because you have this emotional connection to whatever it is you’re reading about. And really that’s kind of the magic behind Five in a Row. It’s having the kids they become invested with the character in the story. And you can kind of put yourself in the story. A lot more life giving than here’s your workbook, open to page 14 and here’s your timer for 20 minutes and mom will come back and check it and then we wonder why our kids are burning out.

[Steve] Yeah, no, that’s exactly right. And kids understand that that becomes largely an exercise primarily for type A moms to be able to check off their to-do list. That there’s no life in it. And if we’re honest with ourselves, we know that as well. I mean if I were to give you your fifth grade social studies test today and ask you, you know, who signed the Magna Carta.

[Heidi] No, please don’t do that.

[Steve] And who is the Norman Conquer, when did the Norman Conquest take place? You’d say, you know, I remember talking about all those things in fourth grade or fifth grade, but the truth is I just learned them long enough to take the test and then I forgot it. When your kids are just like you. So they learn to play the game as well. And the game grows stale quickly.

[Heidi] Yeah.

[Steve] And so rather than doing school at home, homeschool is an entirely different proposition and you know, there’s more and more information. I told some people the other day, if you only read one book this year, I’d encourage you to read a book called The Enchanted Hour by Meghan Gurdon. She is a children’s book editor for the Wall Street Journal. The book just came out this year. I’ve poured over it twice. Can’t recommend it highly enough. But it unearths the science behind the value of reading aloud, the connections that it makes, the neural connections. There’s mounting evidence, a significant research that suggests that reading to your child in utero actually helps their academic achievement.

Why would that be? Well, because we speak differently than the written word. We have a different cadence, a different rhythm. And so when you read aloud, even before your child is born, it associates that sound that it loves more than any other, the sound of his mother’s voice, comforting and safe with the rhythm of the written language. And it predisposes them then to become interested readers later on, and to be more energetic when it comes to reading. So even for infants, they’re now discovering the value of children going to the nursing homes and reading to elderly parents.

[Heidi] Well there’s so much value in that.

[Steve] Yeah.

[Heidi] And not even just for the elderly, right? But for teaching our children these people are important. We don’t, you know, we don’t cast them away because they’re in nursing homes. You know, we’re investing and we’re spending time and wow. So it’s like a double blessing. It’s a blessing for the elderly person that you’re reading too, but also a blessing for the kids.

[Steve] There’s new programs now to have … to arrange to take books into prisons, to have prisoners read stories aloud to their children who are outside. To have military families stationed overseas have an opportunity to read books aloud that are sent back home for their children to listen to because it builds a common literary legacy and a history together that you then share the same lines, same story, same characters, same, all the same settings and places that you’ve read together. And that stays with you for a lifetime. And children. You know, if you’ve noticed little ones, you know, two, three years old quickly began to kind of quote, read the book themselves. They’ve memorized word on every page and they want you to read…

[Heidi] Yes, and then the mom thinks that you’ve taught the kid to read, but really they’re just reciting to you.

[Steve] Exactly. They’re just reciting, but they will often want you to read the same book 10 times in the same day or 10 nights in a row at bedtime. And so capitalizing, leveraging that reading intimacy that reading produces. Somebody said once, if you want to … The two single best investments you can make to improve the quality of your homeschool experience is to get a library card and a more comfortable sofa. And if that’s all you do is sit on the sofa together and read books, you’ve got a huge jumpstart on most of your friends who are using workbooks and textbooks and trying to have tests every Friday to memorize.

[Heidi] Well, I’m going to stop you right there because I think you just hit on probably the most important thing we’re going to say all day, which is that when you invest in your kids, when you’re reading aloud to them, you’re not wasting time. This is not a waste of time. And I feel like this …What’s happened is, you know the homeschool mom who feels all this pressure, this academic pressure, and I’m not knocking academics, but I feel like boy we push it too soon on our kids. We put too much emphasis on it and we decide that reading out loud is something that we can do if everything else gets done.

So, if you guys get your math done, and your language done, and your history done, and your writing done, then if you’re really lucky, mama will read to you. And this is the reward. And I think what I hear you saying, and certainly what my husband and I discovered over 25 years of homeschooling our kids is it is the thing. We spent many years in the mornings just reading to our kids. So my kids would, you know, get out of bed and there’d be cereal on the counter for them or whatever it was, and we’d come and we’d sit on the floor, they’d be in their nightgowns oftentimes. This is where the joke, you know, homeschoolers homeschool in their pajamas.

What better time than in the early morning to sit around with your kids? We read missionary stories. They loved stories as simple as Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, which we read over and over again. The lessons you can learn. You know, someone says, that’s a child’s book. You know, there’s some fantastic lessons that we can learn in these children’s books. And really, and you talk to my kids now, which four of them have graduated from our homeschool. The things that they remember the most about our homeschooling is the reading aloud that we did, that we did for so many years.

And the investment that you’re making, the return on that investment is so much greater than if you were to just throw a workbook in front of them every day and say here’s what you’re going to do, 20 minutes for this and 30 minutes for that, which you’re right, it’s the type A homeschool mom that feels like this is the checklist. And I think what I hear you saying is let’s envision the checklist differently.

[Steve] Yeah, that’s exactly right Heidi. And it’s, you know, as you said, rather than using the reading aloud as the reward at the end of the day, it’s a great way to set an entirely different tone. You know, come sit by momma, sit on my lap, let’s read a story together, shall we? Is a whole different flavor then I hope that you did your homework last night, now turn to page 48 in your workbook and we’re going to have a pop quiz this morning.

And there are, you know, the skill areas of learning. Things like reading mechanics and mass skills and penmanship, those are things that require a systematic approach, a sequential approach to learning, but all of the rest of the subjects, I mean science and history and art and the humanities, all of those, there’s no particular sequence in which to learn those things. You don’t have to know anything about the weather before you study insects in science. You don’t have to know anything about the Peloponnesian Wars before you learn about World War II. So you tackle those subjects as they come up in the course of life and reading and you create a legacy that goes far beyond this semester or this year or even high school graduation. But a legacy that lasts a lifetime with your children.

[Heidi] Yeah, because they’re going to pass it on to their kids.

[Steve] Yeah, exactly. There’s a lot of … There’s a new study out right now called the 3 Million Word Deficit or something that suggests that if you don’t read aloud to your child, by fifth grade that child is already 3 million words in deficit to other kids who’ve been read to and it reflects in vocabulary. It reflects in fluency, literacy. Just in a dozen different areas. And so reading aloud to us became the foundation of education. And so what happens is, you know … You know, Jane and I were just talking the other day and I said there’s that old saying about you can buy a man a fish and feed him for today or you can teach a man to fish and he can become self-sufficient. And that’s the problem with what education has historically been in this country, whether it’s in classrooms or in homeschool, is that we’re buying a man a fish. Every day where we’re buying stacks of workbooks and textbooks each year, and then we use the pages and have to throw them away and buy another stack for next year.

And we are hand feeding these children when if we could just teach them how to fish for themselves, to teach them how to fall in love with learning, teach them how to become fluent readers, teach them how to discover and access resources and to nurture the natural curiosity that God placed inside our children that makes them want to learn, until we strangle that out, usually about first grade. But I think the average two year old, I read, asked something like 460 questions a day or something like that.

[Heidi] Yeah, that’s a starting point.

[Steve] God creates them to want to learn and they’re excited about it and so by…

[Heidi] Until we squeeze it out of them.

[Steve] Exactly. So by opening books, opening the world wide to them and letting their curiosity engage and letting them ask questions.

[Steve] You know the best days that Jane ever had homeschooling our kids were the days when the kids would say, “Mama, how come so-and-so?” And she’d say, “I have no idea. What a wonderful question. Where would we go to find out?” So education…

[Heidi] That’s so important for homeschool moms listening to this. You don’t have to know all the answers.

[Steve] No absolutely.

[Heidi] If your kids come to you and they say, mama, I don’t understand this, you can go, you know what that’s a great … I love that. That’s a great question. Let’s look it up. Let’s figure it out. And you’re demonstrating for your child you don’t have to know all the answers. We can learn together.

[Steve] Now you’re becoming a resource person. You’re becoming a coach.

[Heidi] Yes, which is life giving.

[Steve] Completely different relationship than the traditional classroom model of I’m the teacher, you listen, you be quiet. I do the talking and we’re going to have a test and see if you paid attention on Friday.

[Heidi] There was a woman who wrote to me a couple of weeks ago and she said that she had given up on homeschooling and she put her child back in school because she was just so glad to not be her child’s teacher anymore. She could focus just on being a mother.  And my initial thought, this isn’t what I said to her, but my initial thought was to say, you weren’t doing it right because this role of mother and teacher, they are intertwined from the moment your child is born. You are both the mother and the teacher.

And what the culture has done, the culture has divided those two roles up so that parents feel like, oh, the teacher at the school does that and I’m just the parent. But really that’s not how God intended. God made us to be both parent and teacher. They really are intertwined. And when you realize how intertwined they are and how beautiful that intertwinement is, it becomes life giving as opposed to here now I’m going to put my teacher hat on and here’s your assignment, one, two, three, four and your timer and the chore chart and all those.

I mean, I’m saying this stuff with such passion because I did it this way for so long and I burned my kids out and I burned myself out. And it wasn’t until we started going— okay, there’s got to be a better way. And for me it started with missionary stories. You and I have had this conversation a lot.

[Steve] Yeah, right.

[Heidi] I was introduced to missionary stories and I started reading biographies to my kids and all of a sudden the kids would wake up in the morning, come running into the living room and, “Mom, I’ve got the book. Can we … You know, I got the book and you know, Bullet Trios and can we sit down and read?” And I went from my kids just, you know, me dragging them into, you know, here’s your workbook, here’s your assignment, to running into the living room in the morning, couldn’t wait to sit down, wanted to hear what happened next in the story. And that became life-giving.

And that was the moment when I realized, oh, I don’t take off my momma hat and put my teacher hat on. I wear them all the time. And that is life giving. And you’re right, it goes on to the next generation.

[Steve] No, that’s exactly right. If you stop and think about a traditional classroom model, it is by definition an adversarial relationship. You sit on opposite, facing opposite directions. The teacher’s desk faces South. Every student’s desk faces North.

[Heidi] Yeah.

[Steve] And the teacher is in charge of doling out information and the children’s responsibility is to be quiet and to sit and keep their hands to themselves and not interrupt the teacher. And then the teacher has the power to hold them back next year, give them a test on Friday, whatever.

[Steve] That’s, I mean, that’s just a recipe for disaster when you try to apply that traditional model of classroom and do school at home because you know what you need to do is get on the same side of the desk.

[Heidi] Yeah, the couch.

[Steve] We’re in this together on the couch. We’re in this together. We’re going on a learning adventure together. You know, God’s the ultimate multi-tasker and any mother who’s homeschooled more than six months will tell you that on any given day, the person who learns the most in a homeschool classroom is not the child, it’s the mother.

[Heidi] It’s the mother. That’s right, that’s right.

[Steve] And not only are you learning about things that you never learned or you learned and forgot, but God has a unique way of dealing with some of your character issues and you find your children there as constant little living witnesses to remind you, “you know, mom, why do you always wait till the last minute to do things? Momma, why do you get so angry and lose your temper?”

And so God’s molding your children’s character while he’s molding your character and together you’re going on a learning adventure that will last for a lifetime if you can get away and break away from that model that has been ingrained in a classroom.

[Heidi] Man, I just needed that so. So, tomorrow when I start school, I’ll have a better attitude.

[Steve] Absolutely.

[Heidi] I’ll have a better attitude. If people want to find out about Five in a Row because really this is the core of what you and Jane have been doing for all these years now, is to really have these books come alive and you’re teaching mothers is what you’re doing. You’re teaching mothers how to make these books come alive for their children and they turn into the most amazing mothers/teachers for their children as they take their kids along on this learning adventure. Where can people find you? It’s Five in a Row.

[Steve] That’s right. www.Fiveinarow.com. And you can go to our website there. We have materials for children from about age two up to about age 12. Beyond that in secondary school, children are beginning to go off in different directions and some are going towards pre-med and some are going towards journalism. But the foundation that every child needs from birth up to about age 12 or so is that foundation to learn to fish for themselves, to learn to develop their God-given curiosity, to become self-motivated learners, to love reading, to love books, to love God’s creation and to know how and where to go and find the information they need.

You know, we live in an information saturated society. It’s not that we lack information anymore, it’s that we lack the discernment, what’s important, what’s not, what’s a distraction. And so those are the skills that we teach kids through Five in a Row. We’ve been around now 26 years. And it’s just a fun way to teach kids and most of our…

[Heidi] It’s relationship building.

[Steve] Yeah.

[Heidi] I think that’s what I love about it the most. The focus is not so much on the academics, they’re going to get that part.

[Steve] Absolutely.

[Heidi] But the focus is relationships. And I’m telling you what, having several kids graduated from my own homeschool, now I’m watching my daughter shepherding her own kids, it’s the relationship that you want to foster more than anything else. So long after you close the last page of your math book, long after you’ve done the very last thing on the very last day that you’ve been doing for 18 years or whatever with your kids, you want them by God’s grace to call you up and ask you for a crock pot recipe and want to come over for dinner and want to hang out and tell you about what’s going on in their life. And you’re laying that foundation right now every day with the choices that you’re making with your kids.

[Steve] That’s exactly right. And you know, I’ll be 70 on my next birthday. I’m not a spring chicken anymore. But you know, the Bible says that it’s appointed to each of us to live once and to die once and somewhere God in his eternal appointment book has an appointment with me for death. And when we, you know, when we all get to that point, when you’re laying on that hospital bed and that little monitor is beeping and your family is gathered around and your children, your grandchildren are crying, your children are not going to look at you and say, oh mama, mama, I just wish we could go back and you could tell me these diagram sentences just one more time and you’re not going to be thinking…

[Heidi] Right. I sure wish I could do lesson number 20 in that Saxon math book.

[Steve] Yes.

[Heidi] We shouldn’t have skipped it that day.

[Steve] Exactly. And you’re not going to be saying, you know, I could die a happy woman and meet my maker if I just knew for sure that you understood quadratic equations.

[Heidi] Right.

[Steve] What you’re going to say is, “momma, I love those times that we read those stories. I’ll never forget when we read Little House in the Prairie. I’ll never forget when we read Grandma’s Attic or I’ll never forget that when we read” whatever. And those are the memories that lasts for a lifetime. Those are the memories that build relationship and relationship exists long, long after the last pop quiz is over.

[Heidi] That’s so good. It’s a great way to wrap it up. This is Thanksgiving week.

[Steve] I know. Exciting.

[Heidi] It’s Thanksgiving week.

[Steve] Family time.

[Heidi] Yeah, and there’s never been a better time. You can pull your kids around and you can read to them. You just did this with my daughter the other day, right?

[Steve] I did.

[Heidi] Sailor brought you a book.

[Steve] I did. I said, “Sailor, is there a book you want to read?” And she went and brought me a book.

[Heidi] Yeah.

[Steve] And you know, that’s your chance by the way, mom to be Meryl Streep or you know, whoever. To put on your best drama and if you can pretend to do a nice Texas drawl or an Irish accent, or whatever it is, just to make the book come to life. That’s the fun way to do it. And kids eat that stuff up.

[Heidi] Yeah. I watched Sailor sitting on your lap. She’s nine years old now and she’s still just was like, she’s just so drawn in because you took the time. You know, I think this is so much of it. I took the time and so often we don’t want to take the time. Right? We got more important things to do. We got to check Facebook after all. You know, you never know. Someone might need your opinion, right? And so you guys have demonstrated in such a beautiful way, this is a great time to be thinking about this and talking about this. People can find you guys at fiveinarow.com. 

Steve Lambert, my friend, thank you so much for coming on this show. It’s always a joy.

[Steve] Always fun to be with you, Heidi. Thanks so much.

[Heidi] For more information on Steve and Jane Lambert and Five in a Row, please visit me online, HeidiStJohn.com/podcast. I will link back to all things Five in a Row in the show notes today.

Also coming up in January, I will be from the 4th through the 12th at the FPEA Marriage cruise. I am told that that particular cruise is sold out, but they have cabins available at a regular price. Just want to be sure and let us know that you’re coming and we will link you into the group activities.

On the 24th and 25th of this month, I will be speaking for the THSC Homeschool Moms Winter Summit in Frisco, Texas. And on the 31st I will be at the Homeschool Mom Winter Summit in Houston, Texas. So, I’m going to be getting on my Southern drawl a little bit this year. Starting out my year at the bang in the Southern part of the United States.

Want to let you guys know that the podcast was sponsored today by our friends at ECCU. As moms, it’s hard to think about our kids growing up. We’ve been talking about that today, right? What are our kids going to remember when they grow up? It’s hard to think about them growing up and going out into the world on their own. And one way to do this is by teaching them about money management early. Our sponsor today, ECCU, has designed special accounts and debit specifically with your kids and their parents in mind. You’ll breathe easier knowing that you’ve helped your children develop stewardship and godly values about money. Check them out at ECCU.com/Heidi.

Thanks for listening today everybody. Have a great Monday and I’ll see you back here with my friend Steve Arterburn on Wednesday. 

Write to [Heidi]
Heidi St. John
c/o Firmly Planted Family
11100 NE 34th Cir, Vancouver, WA 98682

Support this ministry by donating through E-giving. You can also send donations to: 11100 NE34th Cir, Vancouver, WA 98682