Tag Archives for " Homeschool "

But underneath, I felt like I was drowning.

Almost daily, I would feel the weight of everything that I was trying to do (especially when it was time to fix dinner), and I would start to feel the tightening in my chest.

Too much. Too much.

My brain would start to shut down.

Same went when I was trying to find a new curriculum or homeschool solution.

I would see all the options, and overwhelm would wash over me.

But then I learned one simple trick that has RADICALLY shifted things when I start to feel this way.

It’s so easy .. so simple … and ANYONE can do it.

Transcript

Hey guys, ToriAnn Perkey here! From my homeschool to your homeschool, let's talk about overwhelmed. Do you feel overwhelmed in your homeschool sometimes?

I know I do.

It is totally normal sometimes to look at everything you have to do and all the responsibility you've taken on and to feel a little overwhelmed. There are books to choose and assignments to give. And there is the house to run, and there are kids to be nurtured.

And all of that is sitting on your shoulders, and you're thinking, “I have taken this on. I'm in charge of raising these little people into big people who are going to be successful, and capable, and contributing members of society that are happy.”

That's a lot. That's a lot, you guys, and it's so normal to sometimes want to climb in your closet and eat your Ben & Jerry's and hide. And I have sometimes been guilty of needing more than one shower in a day just so that I can tune out my children for a while. I totally get it.

The thing I want to teach you today is not something that's going to make everything better. I totally get that there's a lot going on in your life and there are so many things you have to figure out. But I also know that overwhelm does come more or less based on the way you're thinking.

Your mind is this amazing, amazing tool, and if you think you can't handle everything in your life, the brain starts to say, “I must save you. I must save you.” So what it does is it starts to scoop up and send out all those hormones that make you start to feel anxious and depressed because those are the things that will keep you safe. It pushes away all of the bad stuff, and it keeps your body safe because your brain's #1 job is to keep you alive.

So, if you're feeling like there's too much, your brain's going to start doing stuff to keep you alive. But you don't like those feelings because those feelings keep you from doing the very things that will help you - they keep you from problem solving, they keep you from moving forward.

So, when you start to feel overwhelmed, the simple trick that I've started to use that I love is I can actually rewrite the way I'm perceiving the things around me.

Now, it doesn't actually change anything, but it changes how I interact with them, and that is huge because if I believe that I have more power and control over the things that are all around me -- not like being a dictator control where I can suddenly force my children to do things -- but if I believe that I can control and change through problem-solving my environment, then I start to calm down. I start to feel more capable. I start to feel more confident. And this trick has made all the difference.

This is one that I use all the time. Sometimes I use it multiple times a day. So, here it is.  Any time I'm feeling overwhelmed and the thoughts are rushing at me and I'm like, “I don't know if I can do all this,” I say three simple phrases: This is simple. This is easy. This is fun. This is simple, this is easy, this is fun. I chant it over and over and over again. This is simple. This is easy. This is fun. This is simple. This is easy. This is fun.

So, if I'm looking at 15 different options for curriculum for a spelling curriculum, for example, I'm like, “You got to teach spelling, and I got to figure that out, and oh my gosh ... I think, “This is simple. This is easy. This is fun. This is simple. This is easy. This is fun.” And my brain goes, “Oh, this is simple. This is easy. This is fun.” And I can calm down, and I can start to think.

If it's 4:30 pm, and I haven't figured dinner -- or it's 5 o'clock or 6 o'clock, and I haven't figured out dinner -- and I'm thinking, “What I'm going to feed my family? What I'm going to feed my family?” And I start to feel that anxiety build -- This is simple. This is easy. This is fun. This is simple. This is easy. This is fun. And as I say that, my brain calms down. The chemicals in my brain start to dissipate, and I think, “I can do this. This is simple, this is easy, this is fun.”

Say it with me -- This is simple. This is easy. This is fun. Don't you see? When you tell your brain how you want something to be, it becomes a reality for your brain. I know it's kind of crazy, but it works. It's worked in my life over and over and over again.

It's a simple trick that I use whenever I started to feel overwhelmed, and it has radically taken the overwhelm out of my homeschool and put me in a place of peaceful, calm problem solving. Wahoo! Which is what we all want, right? This is simple. This is easy. This is fun. Awesome.

I'm ToriAnn Perkey, and from my homeschool to your homeschool, I make these videos every single week so that you can be a super successful and confident homeschool mom.

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Fortunately, you can make division a little bit easier for your kids (and yourself) by playing games that introduce division skills BEFORE you get to long division.

And today I want to share one of my FAVORITE pre-division games with you!

CLICK HERE to check out Prime Climb for your homeschool!

Transcript

Hey guys, it's ToriAnn Perkey here. From my homeschool to your homeschool, is long division or division in general something that your kids love or something that your kids not so love so much? Yeah, in my home, division is just one of those things that is not a beloved topic, and I get it.

One of my memories from elementary school is doing long division and just dreading it because it is hard. It makes the brain work. It's like [makes sound] so many steps, so many places to make mistakes.

Division is tricky, but today I want to share a resource with you that can make it just a little bit easier. Division, fractions, primes, factors -- all of that is going to be easier with this game that I want to share with you today.

It is called Prime Climb, and I love this game. I have loved this game since it showed up as a Kickstarter campaign in my newsfeed. It was about 3 or 4 years -- no, maybe -- yeah, 3 or 4 years ago. We grabbed this game. I have never regretted it.

This is one of my absolute favorite math games that we play in our house, and let me tell you all the reasons why I love this game. First of all, it's completely visual, and I was looking for visual games because I wanted games that my kids could play regardless of whether they were reading well or not -- because some of my kids have some of those struggles. And so they were old enough to be starting to learn more difficult math concepts but they couldn't read yet. So, I love the fact this math is completely visual.

Second, I love the fact that it's so visual that it works for visual learners as well as more right brain thinkers as well as the left brain thinkers -- and I have both. 

So, let me just give you an idea here. This is the game board, and let's make sure you guys can see it and this -- it's beautiful. It's absolutely beautiful. And it was put together by a couple of genuine mathematicians -- really strong ones.

And what's really, really -- oh my gosh, this is so cool -- is you'll notice down here the #2 is all gold, right? The #3 is all blue. Well, when you get to 4, you'll notice it's gold … and let me show you -- let me see if I can do this. It's got a divider in between that.

So, what you see is they've taken 2, and they've shown how by division it makes 4. If we come up to 6 -- ah, this game board. If we come up to 6, what you can see here -- maybe I can do this. Aha. If we come up to 6, it is the blue -- I can't do my colors. It's the green and the yellow combined. Did you see that? So, it's like yellow and green combined which is the 2 x 3. And then we get to 5 which is another prime, right? So, there's no -- it's just a solid prime, and then 7's a prime.

But if we come over here to say this red one, red's a 37 -- these are the prime factors. So, they don't get to be red. But once we get here ... once you get into the higher numbers ... any number that's completely prime is red, but any number that's created by other numbers is a division and a colorful combination mathematically -- visually with those.  So, 36 is a 3, a 3, and a 2, and a 2, and you'll notice that's factor trees.

Factor trees visually represented with colors.  Thirty five is your blue 5 and your purple 7. Okay, when I realized what they had one with every number up to 101, I really, really just sort of wigged out.  I was like [crazy happy sound 🙂].

So, what you do as you play this game is your goal is to move your piece all the way from the start to the center. And there's cards that give you different instructions about how fast you can move. There's dice that you roll. There's going backwards. There's going forwards. And there's the additional added step that you have to do factoring math to move forward or to move back. And depending on how complicated you make it determines how much math your kids need to know to be able to do this game. 

So, you're able to do at different levels. My 6 year old was able to figure it out, but my 10 year old and my 12 year old still enjoy playing. And as an adult and as teenagers, we still enjoy playing because it's one of those games that grows with you. It stretches your brain. It gets you thinking, so all the family can play.

So, Prime Climb is one of those games that is so packed with math at the same time it's fun, it's visual, it's going to keep you moving forward. And it's by people who understood that if they could take a math concept that was a little hard to understand and primes, factors -- all those things that go into division, into fractions -- and they could make it simpler, it was going to make everything after primes and factoring so much easier.

And this is one of those games that when my kids then get to division, get to those higher level things, they already understand what's going on. When they look at fractions, and they're trying to figure out how to come up with multiples, how to come up with all those things, these concepts that we've learned in Prime Climb and in other games like this are now embedded in their brain and moving them forward faster because they can see the concepts.

I love it, love it, love it.  So, if this is something you're interested in, fortunately you don't have to wait for another Kickstarter campaign. You can pick it up on Amazon. Just check up the link up above or down below -- wherever it is based on where you're watching this video. It's definitely going to be worth your time to check this out.

I'm ToriAnn Perkey, and I bring you these videos every week so that you can be a super successful and confident homeschool mom.

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Sometimes it feels like I’m herding cats to get everybody into one place to try and do one thing all together.

BUT … I also know that I tend to get distracted too! And when I get distracted, our homeschool REALLY gets off track!

So today I’m sharing the number one thing I do so that I keep MY biggest distraction at bay.

Transcript

Hey guys, ToriAnn Perkey here. From my homeschool to your homeschool, does your homeschool sometimes get off track? Do you wake up in the morning, and you think you got this great plan and everything's going to go really well and by about 9:15 AM things are starting to fall apart and you're thinking argh. And this happens day after day after day?

Oh, staying on track is tricky when you're a homeschool mom. 

You have all of these different factors that you're trying to keep in control.  You're trying to corral one or many children. And trying to take all these disparate personalities and say hey, we're all going to do the same thing every single day.

And on top of that you're trying to be a mom and deal with the fact that sometimes kids are having a hard day or they're not getting along. And you're trying to run a house, which means that you're also doing laundry and you're also cooking.

Keeping track and staying on track is really hard.  And today I want to tell you the #1 hack that I use in my home to keep us just a little more on track every single day, because distractions are the biggest bane to any homeschool.

Of all the things I mentioned the thing that will get you off track the fastest is distractions.  Distractions come in all shapes and sizes.  They can look like all sorts of things and what distracts me may not distract you but I know one distraction that distracts almost all of us and it's this.  

It is your phone.

Your little phone -- your window to the world that is so wonderful, that is in your pocket. It gives you so many answers.

It is also the thing that dings and beeps and clicks and rings all the time.  I know because mine dings and clicks and rings and beeps all the time. And it's so hard when it makes those noises to not look at it.

And I have been guilty of being in the middle of reading a book to my children and having my phone ring and say, hey, just hold on just a second, I'm going to get this. And then the next thing I know, I'm on my phone talking to someone, and my kids are scattered to the four winds, and the reading is over.  

Or I'll be in the middle of helping a kid with math, and it will ding, and I'll have a notification, and I think okay, I can just kind of look at this while I'm helping them. And before I know it I'm over here on my phone doing this, and I've totally lost the kid.

Of course -- this right here is so distracting.  So, here's my #1 hack that I've started doing that makes such a difference in my homeschool.  I put my phone on airplane mode during school hours.  I put it on airplane mode.  I don't silence it because then I can pick it up, and it has all those little notes that say things happened.  Still distracting.  Argh!

And you guys, it's totally normal to be distracted. Our brains actually release dopamine -- the feel good chemical -- whenever our phone goes off.  It's like a little reward that says, ding, something happy just happened. And your brain wants that.  So, of course you're going to go look at it.  It's totally normal.

But it is something that you get to be in charge of.  So, put your phone on airplane mode when it's school time.  That for me means a couple hours in the morning.  

I flip it up. I put it on airplane mode. I put it over to the side. And then after lunch, I totally pick it up, I turn it on and then it's like Christmas because my phone's like Brrrrrrnnnnnnng, and then it's super exciting, right?

There are so few times when someone has to get a hold of me that I figured that having my phone on airplane mode is kind of like being in a movie or in the doctor's office or some other place where I can't look at my phone.  It's like it's okay to not be available all the time because if I'm not available for everyone all of the time, I'm really available for my kids some of the time, which is part of making your homeschool work -- making your homeschool stay on track.  Because if you're not distracted, then you can stay focused on the reading. You can stay focused on the math. You can stay on target just a little bit better.

Now, airplane mode is not going to help you with kids fighting.  We'll have to talk about that another time. But it will help you with that little dinging and that little ringing that pulls you away all the time.

I'm ToriAnn Perkey, and I make these videos every single week so that you can be a super successful and confident homeschool mom.

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It’s the first resource I pull out when I teach teenagers creative writing, and we still pull it out at home when we need creative juices to flow.

But it also works so well for kindergarten and preschool ages - although you'll have to modify how you play with the cards if your child can't read yet.

CLICK HERE to check out Storymatic for your homeschool.

Transcript

Hey guys! ToriAnn Perkey here. From my homeschool to your homeschool, are the writing assignments in your home getting a little boring? Or do your kids feel just a little confined because they feel like the writing assignments they have to do are coming out of a book that maybe they're not super interested in? Or maybe you're not using a curriculum at all, but you know that you want your kids to be creative doing creative writing, and you're not quite sure how to get them started?

Well, today I've got something that's going to knock your socks off that I love to help kids get the creative juices flowing. It is called “Storymatic,” and it is a fabulous, fabulous resource for generating creative stories. In fact, they say “6 gazillion stories in one little box,” and I'm not kidding you, it's totally true.

So, let me tell you all about this amazing resource for your homeschool family. When you open it up, it has two kinds of cards -- the yellow cards and the blue cards -- and they do different things. The blue cards are characters or -- yeah, so, “family members are robots” or “flying blanket.”  So, it's a character or it's a situation. “Homesick.” Here's another one, “mysterious stranger comes to town.” So, the cards -- nice quality cards ... I love the fact that they're not flimsy at all ... all have -- the blue cards have that kind of thing written on it.

Now, on this side, we get things like “someone with a secret,” “fortuneteller,” “thumb sucker.” So, what happens is in the most basic way of using these cards -- you get a blue card and you get a yellow card, and you put them together, and you start to generate a story.  In this case, we would have a fortuneteller and a flying blanket. Suddenly, my brain starts to think how could I create a story about a flying blanket and a fortuneteller, and I can promise, you and your kids will start to have lots and lots of fun.

You can make it more interesting if you want to add extra card. So, you could have a “fortuneteller,” a “thumb sucker” (two characters), and a “flying blanket.”  And these are character cards that are super fun. So, you can actually take two character cards, add a situation and create that. So, here we have a gentle giant. So, now new story -- what if you had a thumb sucker, a gentle giant, and family members that are robots? Totally different story.

Now, if you're looking for more than one way to use these cards -- and there's a gazillion ways to use the cards just like there's a gazillion stories -- it comes with this really amazing little booklet full of ideas on how to use the cards. And that's what I really, really like about it, is they understand that you may want to use the cards in different ways, and you may need a little bit of a starter help to figure out different ways to use the cards. And this is full of ideas just over and over and over again from “flash” to “double time” to “write it,” “draw it,” which is where you get to draw and write word by word -- where you do tandem telling, and one person starts the story and then says one word and then the next word goes to the next person, the next person. Things like that. Group games, individual games -- so many ways to use these cards. 

Now, these cards are a little pricier than some of the other storytelling resources that I've recommended before. And I hesitated ... I waited a while to buy these. I was a little worried because I thought “I don't know. I don't know.” But I'm here to tell you, I have never ever ever regretted purchasing Storymatic. Of all my storytelling resources, this one's one of my favorites.

Okay. The other thing I want to tell you is there's a kid's version and an adult version. I only own the kid version, because I was a little nervous about what might be in the adult version because it's definitely designed for adults. But I was also worried that it would be really too kiddish to use with my teenagers. Not at all. I feel like adults can get -- and teenagers -- can get just as much out of the kid version of the game as anybody. And, in fact, I think as an adult you could totally get Storymatic and have a blast. So, I've never bothered with the adult version because well, I really don't think I need it.

So, there you go.  If you are looking for a brand new way to just radically up-level your writing assignments or your storytelling or any of that creative, fun playing that's going on in your house, this is definitely a resource you want to look at. And you can check it out at the link up above or down below or wherever it shows up wherever you're watching this video.

I'm ToriAnn Perkey, and I'm here every week making these videos for you so that you can be a successful, confident homeschool mom.

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This was LONG before I knew the arguments about socialization and the benefits of homeschooling.

All I knew is that the homeschooled kids I’d known in high school were weird. So I assumed ALL homeschooled kids were weird.

Her answer is something I’ll NEVER forget.

It stayed with me when we decided to homeschool.

And now, it’s the answer I give every single time someone asks me the question.

It’s based on one simple question you can ask yourself … and depending on your answer determines whether your kids will be weird.

Watch the video to find out more ...

Transcript

Hey guys! ToriAnn Perkey here! From my homeschool to your homeschool. I've got a question for you.

Are you ever worried that your kids are gonna turn weird?

Or do you ever sense that the people around you who aren't so sure about you homeschooling? Thinking your kids are gonna turn out weird?

Yeah, it seems to be kind of this prevalent thing that kind of surfaces over and over again in the homeschool community. Either because we're bringing it up or because we're hearing questions about it.

So today, I want to peel back the curtain just a little bit. Talk about where the question comes from. Whether or not your kids are actually going to be weird. And how you can know right now whether or not they're gonna be weird or not. And what you can do about it if you're thinking that they might be weird.

Okay so first of all, where does this question come from? I think it comes from the fact that our generation. So my generation, I graduated from high school in 1995. And I only knew one or two homeschoolers in my high school. They would come to highs school part-time and they would stay home. I knew someone else who'd been homeschooled and they were weird. Like they didn't fit in. They were awkward socially, they had different ideas about education. They didn't seem "normal".

So when I was thinking about homeschooling over and over again, I kept referencing those examples and I kept thinking yeah, homeschool kids are weird. No way I want my kids to be like that. But there are lots of reasons why I started homeschooling and the more I got to know other homeschoolers, I realized we run the gamut of weirdness to not weirdness. And frankly, I fall way far I think kind of on the weird corky side way more than the normal side. We're gonna talk about that in just a minute.

But what I started to realize is that the reason kids are weird has nothing to do with whether they're homeschooled or not. Instead, it has everything to do with whether their parents are weird. What kind of family are they being raised in?

I mean think about it. There are super normal kids who homeschool. And if you look at their parents, they're super normal. They're like picture-perfect, come out of magazine. Everybody looks great and put together normal.

And then there are other homeschoolers I meet who really seem pretty weird. Like totally different than the norm. Let's define weird as not necessarily odd or yucky but just different. And then I look at their parents and guess what, their parents are different. They're different than the norm. They have different attitudes about things, they're interested in different things, and they socially interact in maybe some different kind of ways.

So if you want to know whether your kids are gonna be weird, you have to look at you.

If you're weird, your kids are gonna be weird. If you're not weird, your kids aren't going to be weird. And to just reinforce this, I want you to think back to your school experience. Were there kids in your school who were "weird"? Yeah. My public high school had lots of kids who were weird. And lots of kids who were normal and lots of kids who were lots of different things. And I'm guessing that if I went and met their parents, and I met a lot of parents, their parents were a lot like them.

So the reality is our culture is not how you choose to educate your child. It's actually how you choose to live your life as a family that determines whether your kids are gonna be weird or not. So what do you want to do about that? 

Well, if you are worried about your kids being able to interact effectively in society. If you're worried about your kids being "weird", then it's time to look at how can you change the culture in your family? How can you talk differently? How can you act differently? Can you be engaged in different things?

But I'm here to tell you that it's probably a good thing. Because once your kids get out into society, there's room for everybody. And kids who are different who think differently and act differently and move differently through the world are the ones who change the world.

And if you're a family that's chosen to homeschool, well maybe the word we should use instead is you're gonna be a little peculiar. You're gonna be called peculiar because you've moved outside of the norm. And isn't that what weird is? Is being outside of the norm? Don't you want to be outside of the norm if you're homeschooling? Well, yeah.

So yes, we want our kids to be able to interact socially. Yes, we want them to be able to interview for a job and get a job or just start a business. Yes, we want them to be able to go a party and have friends. Absolutely! But I want to embrace the fact that we're kinda quirky over here at the Perkey house. We're kinda peculiar. And not just because we homeschool, because that's what makes us Perkey's. And I kinda like that.

So rather than pushing it away, I'm gonna embrace the fact that we're kinda weird. And kinda peculiar and kinda different. And that's okay. And I hope that you can embrace what makes you different and unique and exciting and amazing. Because when we all come together in this beautiful planet, it's pretty awesome.

I'm ToriAnn Perkey, and I bring you these videos every week to help you be a confident, successful homeschool mom.

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But over the years, I made one crucial mistake that made my oldest not care about what she did after high school.

In this video, I talk about the mistake I made and what I did to fix it.

My only regret is that I didn’t start fixing it sooner!

Transcript

Hey guys! It's ToriAnn Perkey here! From my homeschool to your homeschool, I want to tell you the number one most important thing to do if you want your kids to go to college. And it's probably not what you think it is.

Because I know that when I first started thinking about the whole, "How am I gonna get my homeschool kid into college?" I started thinking in terms of ACT, SAT scores.

Or I started thinking about, "Well, do we have to have grades? Do we have to have a diploma?"

I started thinking about what subjects do we have to cover and can my kids get a scholarship?

I had all of these questions rumbling around in my mind, so I started researching like crazy. And it wasn't until after I'd done a bunch of research that I realized I was skipping the most important question. And in order to understand this, I have to tell you a little story.

So in our homeschool, I think it's really important that my kids have a choice. That there's lots of alternatives to being able to be a successful adult and college is only one of them. And so for years and years and years, when we would talk about college, to my oldest and all my kids, we would say, "You can go to college if you want, or if you want to do something else, you totally can."

Because I totally believe that's true. And for a long time I thought I was doing my kids this amazing service because I was opening up their horizons and making it possible for them to do all sorts of things. And then what I noticed was that my oldest started to say ... I would say, "Do you wanna go to college?" and she'd say, "Not really." And I'd say, "Okay, so what are you gonna do instead?” “Yeah, I don't know." 

And I realized that in my desire to make sure that she knew she had options, I had actually created this place where she had no vision at all. And I also know that even though there's lots of options, college really is kind of the gateway to a lot of opportunities unless you have something else in mind. 

So I started to change the way we talked about it. And I started to say, "You need to go to college, unless you have another option. You need to go to college." And this shifted everything. Because once we started having this conversation, my daughter started to realize that she needed to think more about college.

And when she started thinking more about college, then we could start saying, "Okay, what do you see? What kind of college would you wanna go to? What kind of experience do you wanna have? And I can see you in college, and I can see you doing this, and I can see you doing this. And … oh … you're really gonna enjoy this."

And then we would also talk about entrepreneurship. We talk about these things. And her mind went from, "I don't know" to "Huh. Well, I think I would do this if went to college, and I think I would wanna study this." And she changed the way she could see herself in the future.

So what's the number one thing you need to do if you want your kids to be college bound? 

You need to set a foundation that says, "I see you in college. I see you being successful. I see you studying different topics. I see you making friends. I see you launching into a beautiful, successful life." The number one thing you have to do is create vision. Create a vision of what they're going to look like in college and that they're going to college. 

And you can create a vision that they'll also be entrepreneurs. Or you can create a vision that they're going to be living whatever dream that they have. If they start to express a different dream, you can totally support that and talk about that.

But if you don't have vision, and your kids don't have vision, then it doesn't matter. All of the other research you're gonna do about SAT and ACT and grades and diplomas. I can make a totally other video about How to Get Into College and whether any of those things are important.

We can talk about that later.

But before you can research that and have it mean anything ... have any value ... you have to have a vision that you're going.

So don't make the same mistake I did. Make sure that your kids know that college is definitely where you want them to be unless they have another plan. And that's how we talk about it all the time now. You're going to college unless you have another plan.

And it shifted everything in our home, and I know that it's making a difference for my younger kids, and they're talking about it sooner. And they have a different sense of where they're headed more so than my oldest who really did feel kinda lost for a while. Because I wasn't helping her create the vision. 

So create a vision of where you want your kids to end up. And then help them get there by doing all the other things that move them in that direction.

Alright, I'm ToriAnn Perkey. And I make these videos every week so that you can be a confident, successful homeschool mom.

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