Homeschool Confessions

Join Erica and Lori this week as we discuss attempting to connect with our community, children, and God through stories and writing.

Conversations with our older kids start when they're younger. Start early, remember to focus on the most important things, and converse often. It's not easy.

It's the great wind down, or it's time to sprint. Actually, it's a bit of both. Join Erica and Lori as we share how we prepare to end the school year strong.

A Friday conversation in which Erica and Lori change the name of sick days into enrichment days.

Erica shares her insights on good music, art, and literature.

Choosing curriculum is some of the hardest decisions we make as homeschoolers. Join Erica and Lori as we speak briefly on how we try to stay on the straight and narrow with good curriculum, but usually come up wondering why we are listening to Bob Dylan.

Spring is coming, whether outside or inside our homes in the forms of seedlings, but how do we help ourselves and our children handle all of the emotions. Join Erica and Lori as we discuss our struggles and learn together about emotions, forgiveness, and walking in obedience to the truth together.

Join Erica and Lori as we wrestle with helping our children and each other work out our salvation through repentance, confession, and obedience. Also, check out Erics' blog post here: https://www.tributeblog.me/blog/the-disinherited

Have you noticed how some days your kids know everything and other days they don't even know the simplest things? This week join Erica and Lori as we talk about how to try to help our kids truly learn and review material.

In which Lori & Erica wrestle with the idea of mentors, empathy, and willpower

Some weeks seem so mundane with the same old schedule, but it's in those mundane schedules that we build character, culture, and good habits. Join Erica and Lori this week as we talk about our families' eating habits, expectations, and exercises.

Today, Erica asks the question: How do we accomplish things in our homeschool while still being available for interruptions? While they may not have the answers, Lori and Erica didn't shy away from trying to find them.

Join Erica and Lori as we share our genius methods for keeping good records. All of the systems in the world can't measure up to success if you don't follow it. This is why we have the simplest record keeping systems in the world!

Last week we started a conversation launched by the philosophy of math, today we finish it with some real life.

A Friday conversation in which Lori shares what she was reading this week and Erica takes it to a whole new level, again.

Do you make resolutions? Yeah, we don't either. In this episode Lori confesses of failing to teach her kids how to make good goals, while Erica explains how Lori should have been modeling good habits and goals from the beginning.

Join Lori and Erica as we share how we do simple small things to make our family's birthdays something special, even when they fall amid the Christmas season.

Clearly, Lori and Erica could talk about the books they read this year for hours! Join us as we share our favorite reads for 2021.

Do you celebrate advent? Join Lori and Erica as we share how we remember the season of advent despite the busy homeschool schedule.

Join Erica and Lori this week as we talk about helping our children choose good books. Finding good literature for our young adults is one of the most challenging parts of raising voracious readers. We really could use a list, well Erica could anyway.

What do you do when you find your sins in your kids? Lori may find math fascinating, but her kids don't. Erica loves history, but Clara is less impressed. How do we help our children mature in Christ when we are still maturing?

As our kids grow, we are sometimes hit with nostalgia. How do we truly enjoy the stage that we are in now? Join Erica and Lori as we share about what makes parenting teenagers awesome and also what we miss about our littles.

This week, Erica and Lori address the most serious question: If your kids were playing chess instead of doing their schoolwork, would you stop them? Apparently, neither would we. How do you weigh these important decisions? That's what we are here to figure out.

It's fall, which means midterms, or not. Do you really need to give your elementary child a midterm exam? nope. You really don't. Join Erica and Lori as we discuss the goals and methods of assessing our children.

What special observations does homeschooling allow you? Also, how do you help your child with that math concept he seriously knew yesterday, but totally forgot today?! Join Erica and Lori as we share our struggles with keeping our priorities right, helping our kids learn, and relishing the relationships that homeschool fosters in our families.

Life doesn't always go as planned. Maybe you can't seem to pull dinner together for 5:30 or like Erica's daughter, you don't like reading Dickens. We are all different and we wouldn't have it any other way.

Join Erica and Lori as we share our woes of shopping for our families, trying to get outside in the fall, and helping our kids transition into their own schedules and responsibilities. Fall is a very busy season in our families.

What do you do when you are reading through Genesis with all of your kids? You keep reading, thinking, and pointing to the Truth. Some things are just hard to read, but it's important that our kids see the need for redemption from us. Even if it does mean we have to talk about Lot and his daughters.

Your plans are set, your books are bought, now it's just time to start your homeschool year. Don't worry, our plans never work out the way we expect either. Join Erica and Lori as we share how our children derail our plans every single year, but more importantly, how we also somehow thrive in the process. 

Join Erica and Lori as they talk about how they've prepared for school each year: both the good and the bad. The beauty of homeschooling is being able to laugh and learn together about what has worked for our families. In this podcast, we share why homeschool conventions aren't our favorite events and what we implemented in our young homeschools that worked well.

When Lori first saw Erica juggling her toddlers in church she thought, "That woman needs help, I know exactly how she feels." They've been friends ever since. Join Lori and Erica as they introduce themselves, share some books that are challenging them these days, and just have a great Friday conversation. Had a tough week? Sometimes all we need is a good laugh, reminder of our purpose, and a friend to share the moment. Erica's and Lori's weekly confessions of homeschool and family failures and successes involves sharing life together in a way that makes us laugh and enjoy the quirkiness of living with and educating a small group of humans. It's the perfect way to end the week.