Summer Life Skills | Learning Without a Curriculum

[Music] We are in the peak of summer and while we're not doing formal academic work, our kids are learning so much. And this is the kind of learning that sticks. It's learning that happens without a curriculum. John Hol said, "Children learn from everything and anything they see, not just in special learning spaces." And this is the kind of learning that's happening in our home this summer. [Music] Yeah. Bump up. There you go. 14 up 17 up. He's struggling. Our kids have been busy this summer. We have a lot of work that needs to be done around our farm. We have some animals we raise. We have a garden. But they've also had time to just play. And I love when I see little groups of them here and there throughout the house just making up some game or some competition. It seems that everywhere I turn, there is something new that the kids are learning in the summer. So much so that if I were to write it down, I really think we could count most days as a day of school. One thing our kids do every summer is they collect the caterpillars off of the milkeed and some of the dill weed that we have around our house. Even before we lived on a place with a little bit of land like we do now, we would go out hiking every summer with our co-op and the kids would find these monarch caterpillars. We would take them home with a bunch of milkweed and they would keep them and watch them form a cryis and turn into butterflies. This is really fun, especially for the younger ones who are seeing it for the first time. Hey everyone, I want to tell you some important information about Brave 2025. This is an online homechool conference. Mark your calendars for July 31st through August 2nd. You're going to hear from over 20 amazing speakers. There are live panels I'm going to be sitting in on the panel about elementary, homeschooling in elementary. There's a high school panel, special needs panel, getting started, so much more. You can get into Brave 2025 for free. There is a free tier. I will leave the link below if you'd like to register. I've had so many people comment on my YouTube channel that they feel the Lord is leading them to homeschool and they're so intimidated, but they know this is the right choice and they just want some direction. If this is you, you will want to be at Brave 2025. It's going to be an incredible weekend of encouragement and direction to help you get started in homeschooling. If you're already homeschooling, it's going to encourage you. It's going to be a great start to your year. You don't want to miss Brave 2025. I'm going to be there. I am looking forward to being on a live panel for the first time for Brave 2025. I hope I'll see you there. [Music] One thing that's been fun for me as a mom over the years of homeschooling is to plant more and more different varieties of flowers. And this is actually something I'm always working to improve. There are more varieties that I want to bring here to our home. But just between the cultivated plants and the wild flowers that we've seen, I really enjoyed learning about the different varieties of flowers and it's catchy. You know, my kids have picked up on it and they've learned what different plants are, how to spot them. One thing that I've learned as a mom for 20 years, we have a 20-year-old all the way down to a two-year-old. So, our oldest is graduated. We have seven in school and then two preschoolers. We've been homeschooling for 15 years. I've learned that kids are learning all the time. And we really give ourselves too much credit when we assume that all of their education is on us. that if we don't do it just a certain way, if we leave this one thing out, or if we forget to teach them a certain skill, that they're just going to be crippled and behind in their education. And this is simply not true. Now, while we do spend a good amount of time on formal academic work, I think it's very important, it's just not everything. Kids are learning so much in the quiet times, in watching mom and dad. Are you developing hobbies? Are you constantly learning yourself? How do you spend your time? Your kids are going to be a lot like you. Kids are born with an insatiable desire to learn. And that does not stop when the book work ends. My husband loves to build things for fun, for a hobby. He's built so many interesting pieces around our house and I love it because the kids are often right beside him watching, helping. I asked him if he would make some shelves for our house inside. I just have a few antique pieces that I wanted to set out and I needed just the perfect place to put them. So, he made me this beautiful shelf. Because of watching him, my kids have learned so many things. how to change the oil in a car, how to change a tire, how to use a drill. He has taught them to build so many interesting things. Even I'm thinking back to when our 17-year-old son was like 8 years old. He and my husband worked together to make a stool for our bathroom. It was something, you know, kind of small, but at the same time, it was a big deal for our son Luke. And it was something practical. He was able to put the stool in the bathroom and the kids at that time used it every day when they were brushing their teeth, washing their hands. Formal academic work has its place, but teaching your kids life skills, bringing them alongside you in your hobbies in the projects around the home. They learn things that stick. They learn skills that no curriculum could ever teach them. I love how this shelf turned out and I really enjoyed putting the pieces on it that I had picked out for it. And honestly, now I want my husband to make a couple more of these because it just turned out so pretty. I've even found that when our kids have just blank time, an afternoon where I'm busy doing something, there's nothing much going on, they're kind of bored, they are still learning skills that really surprise me. The other day, uh, it was really quiet. It was afternoon time. The baby was down for a nap, and four of my kids sat down together and had a contest, a poem writing contest, and they wanted to see whose poem was the best. This is something that had they been in school, it might have been an assignment for them. But here they were on a quiet summer afternoon doing this for fun, just out of their fresh imaginations. Something that's been so good for our kids is to have work to do around our house that contributes to the family. During summer, it's very busy around here because we raise all the meat that our family eats on our small property. We also have a large garden and try to preserve as much food as we can throughout the summer. Now, there are a couple reasons we do this. We do it obviously to feed our family and it's it's just such a huge help. We don't buy any meat at the grocery store. We're able to get all of it from what we raise here at our home. Um but we also do it to teach our kids these skills and it also gives our kids work to do that in a real way meets the needs of our family. They are contributors. This is the food that our family eats for the whole year and they are a big part of it. We raise 160 broiler hens throughout the summer. We get them in two batches of 80. Um, and they're here for only 8 weeks. So, it's it's kind of a shortterm thing. Um, and it's a lot more work when they're here. We also have four pigs. Two of them feed our family for the whole year and the other two we exchange with a friend of mine who raises beef. We also have about 20 laying hens for eggs. So between all of these animals in the summer, this keeps us very busy. The way we've worked it in our family is to have one person that is responsible for animals each day. And this way we it just kind of simplifies it. It's not like we have to remember who's doing each different section or different animal. It just makes it simpler if one person is responsible each day. And then it's also with the idea that everybody's chipping in because these animals are our livelihood. [Music] Something else that keeps us busy is our garden. And today we're canning cucumbers, making some pickled cucumbers. This is something that's really easy to do and specifically something that kids can help with. I have this recipe on the blog. I did a post on seven easy foods to preserve with kids and pickles is one of them. Um, I put just a little bit of garlic powder and dill seed in the bottom of each jar and then the kids cut up the cucumbers. I usually just try to do a caner a day. So that would be seven quart jars. So, we just fill up those seven jars and really kind of push those cucumbers down till they're completely full. Then, we put a little bit more garlic powder and dill seed on top. I make a brine from vinegar, sugar, salt, and water. And we fill the jars up with that. And then they're ready to go in the caner. Starting about mid July, we are getting a lot of produce from our garden. So, right here, it's cucumbers. Um, but we're also starting to get green beans. And this is something else that's so easy for kids. They can help pick them and then we bring them in. They just cut off the ends, help cut them in half. I sometimes I can them, sometimes I freeze them. They're so easy to blanch and freeze. So that's often what I do. Um, but this is something that keeps kids busy. And when it's finished, they can look back. My kids can tell me how we make cucumbers. It's a skill that they're learning. Not everyone has the capability to raise animals on their property, but I think anyone can have a garden. You can have container pots on your deck if you have little to no yard. You can raise some of your own vegetables. And it's just so great for kids to be a part of this, watching things grow. Every day they go out and they pick something from the garden. It's interesting. It keeps them busy. I'm not looking for things for my kids to do in the summer all that much. I mean, sometimes we go out and do some fun things. Um, that's important to us, too. But it's not like we have nothing to do. We are busy. Even when we lived in town with a much smaller property, um, our backyard was completely shaded. So, we couldn't have a garden in our backyard. So, we put a garden in our front yard. And I was a little nervous about this because I just I you know, people don't usually have gardens in their front yard. We put a garden in our front yard. It got bigger every year. And I can't tell you how many people stopped to mention how beautiful they thought it was to see a a vegetable garden in someone's front yard. We are always looking for opportunities for our kids to learn life skills, whatever it may be. Whether it's gardening, whether it's raising animals, whether it's carpentry or learning automotive skills. Now, while we were busy pickling cucumbers, Benjamin wanted to play with water at the sink. And sometimes when you have a 2-year-old, you just let them do something like this, and you pay for it later, which is what happened. He made a huge mess. There was water everywhere. I had to come over with a towel and clean all this up, but it helped us to get some of these pickles done. So, it was worth it. [Music] [Music] Mommy on. Turn. No. Turn this off. No. No. Look. You made a big mess. Look. We have to clean this up here. Okay. We're done cleaning water. Okay. No. No. No. Put this on. Okay. Help mommy dry off your shirt. Here. Come over here. Let's dry it off. Get it all dry. All dry. I can't I can't find my cup. Okay, we're all done. Oh, where? Yeah. Sometimes the kids will help make the brine. But once it's hot, I pour it into the jars. I fill it to I think a/ an inch or maybe an inch. I'm not sure. And then I processed them for 5 to 10 minutes in the caner. So, it's really a pretty simple project. While we were making these pickles, William wanted me to play this game with him. He found these pick cards and there were no instructions, so he made up his own game and he wanted me to play it with him. It was pretty fun. When these pickles come out of the caner, they need to set for about 2 to 3 weeks until they're edible. But for us, really, they sit quite a bit longer. We just put them down in our basement. And then when fall comes, we pull them out and it's great to have with sandwiches or even just a side to any dinner. With everything that's going on in summer, I don't read to our kids every afternoon, but whenever we have a quiet day without much going on, I do try to read to them. Our older boys are working and then we have a daughter who works just occasionally. So, just a lot of coming and going. And if but if we have a quiet afternoon, I am continuing with our read aloud. This week, we finished up Wind in the Willows. We've loved reading this book. I read this to our younger kids um basically ages eight and down. The older kids have already heard it. And then another book that I'm working on, I usually do one younger book and one older book as a readaloud. And so the older book we started is The Endless Step. This is such a great story. Our kids have loved it. It's about a young Jewish family that's taken to Siberia to a gypsum mine during World War II. And um there's a lot of geography in this book. Uh they pass the Eural Mountains. So um whenever we're doing a readaloud, I try to get out the atlas and have the kids find where these places are on the map. I think it's really fitting to do this. the kids are already wondering about the setting any anyway where they are and um it's a way that I fit in geography without even planning. It's it's not formal, but it just makes sense to look it up as we're reading about it. This week we got our second batch of broiler chicks. These are delivered to us by mail. Sometimes I've had to pick them up at the post office, but usually they just drop them off at our house. And they're pretty fragile when we get them, so they need to go right in the broiler. They need food and water right away. And they The most important thing is heat. They need a heat lamp. Our daughter is teaching herself to play the flute. She's been out here every day practicing. Not because I've made her. I haven't had anything to do with it. She wanted to learn to play the flute. We were able to get a flute for her and she's just been practicing and she's getting better every day. It's really amazing to me if kids have enough free time, enough raw materials, what they'll pick up and try, what how they'll spend their time. They are naturally curious and they're always busy doing and learning. And I don't worry about them too much in the summer getting bored because the very moment they get bored then they come up with something interesting like William making up this game or like our kids spending an afternoon writing poems. Kids are learning all the time. It wasn't too many days after we had these caterpillars that they formed a chrysalis. Our kids, some of them saw this happening and for the rest of them it was really fun to see the formed chrysalis. Mom, look. Mom look at this one. Careful. Yeah, our green beans are in. So, this is the next project that we are all going to be working on. I think beans are one of the easiest things for kids to help with, and they're constantly coming in. If you enjoyed this video, you might like seeing the one I did last week where I'm going back to the basics and talking about exactly what I would do if I were homeschooling for the very first time. Thanks for watching. I do one video a week on homeschooling encouragement for everyday moms. I'll see you next week.