#82 - Less is More: Declutter Your Homeschool Pt II

In this episode of the Homeschool Unlocked podcast, Jesús and Monica explore four additional benefits of saying no within the homeschooling environment. Homeschooling is not just about academics but about preparing children for life. Can it help you reduce unhealthy comparisons or provide more time for self-reflection? Listen and consider how you can put "no" to work!

https://1lnk.page/MonicaAviles

Transcript

Well, good day Homeschool Unlocked family. Welcome to the 82nd podcast of your community, your podcast, Homeschool Unlocked. This is Jesús Avilés.

I'm joined with my beautiful wife, Monica Avilés. That's right, I like how you say it with a little Spanish accent right there. That's right, because you're Spanish.

 Yeah, that is true. All right, well welcome. So what are we talking about today, sir? Well, we're on part two of a series we started last week.

 We talked about in homeschooling, because people homeschool for a purpose. Homeschool actually resolves a slew of problems. One of the benefits of homeschooling is the power to say no.

 We're just kind of going through a couple items that talk to you about the fruit of that power to say no inside the homeschool setting. Yeah, and so we highlighted 10 things that you're able to enjoy in the homeschool setting by saying no. That's right.

 So right now I'm currently reading a book called No Excuses by Brian Tracy. Excellent book, I highly recommend it. And last week you highlighted, we highlighted three things.

We talked about how by saying no to other things in the homeschool setting, you can actually reduce your stress. And also you have more time. You are now the manager, the organizer.

You are the one who sets your schedule. And then lastly, talking about family growth and personal growth. And so this week we're going to talk about four more benefits.

Four more benefits. If you're new to homeschooling, or if you are interested in learning more about homeschooling, we hope that as we share our story with you, you're able to gain greater confidence that homeschooling is something that you take on, not because you're an expert in any particular field, but because you love your kid and you want the best for them. And so it allows this unique opportunity.

It's a unique opportunity. And if you're one of those that would probably be in the bucket of the homeschool curious, man, just sit back, relax, listen to all these benefits, recognize the power that homeschool provides you with. But those of you that are new to homeschooling, just kind of just sit back and just absorb the fact that there is a tool in your homeschool pocket called the power of know, and just kind of just be refreshed with a couple of different items.

For those of you that are seasoned veterans listening to us, you know what this is. You need to grab this. You need to like thumb it up.

You need to forward it to all the people that have heard you say it, but you know how it is. When you say it, it's okay. But when other people say it, it's like miraculous, like people get it.

So hey, let us be that second voice. That's right. So we're going to start with a true and false question.

I'm going to ask Jesús again. A true and false question, I'm ready. So the true part, the fact is that on August 21st, 1959, there was a new state inducted.

I don't know if it's inducted or what it's called, but it was admitted to be part of the United States. What year is that? Let's see, 1959. 1950, okay, okay.

1959, can you tell me what number state? Actually number 50. Number 50, oh, I know that one. Okay, what is it? Hawaii.

Correct. That's right. You are so smart.

I'm just like, wow, I married a smart man. Can I just tell you an interesting fact why I know that? Yeah, please. I happen to own a flag that has 49 stars.

So in my effort to try to figure out what's this flag about, like somebody missed a star, maybe this is like a misprint, I was told no. This was the star that came into effect when Alaska was admitted, and then less than one year later, they changed the flag to 50 because they admitted Hawaii the very next year. So it's a flag that lasted in the United States for one year, I got one.

That's true, and you know what? I remember you having that conversation. Was that at like a flea market? That was at Fairchild Botanical Garden at one of their open flea markets. Yeah, they had, you know, one of our children said when we lived in South Florida, we did, for a year, we would go to Julia Fairchild Tropical Gardens at least once a month.

We'd take our journals, we'd draw, and just see how the garden changed over the year. Because even though it's just hot and hotter in South Florida, there are still changes that happen in the plant life. Anyways, he goes, we just come here to sweat.

We just come here to sweat, that's it. But it was a lot of fun, it was beautiful. Yeah, so good job with that, honey.

Can I just add something, my love? Yes. I seem to be doing better with these true, false, fact questions than the jokes we used to do the last two seasons. I would think I'd be better at the jokes because I try to be funny.

You are very funny. But so far, I'm not bad. Season three, I'm getting it.

I think you're a three and O, right? Or something like that. I am, I'm undefeated. That is right, excellent.

Okay, so unlocking the power of no. We're talking about this again because we want you to enjoy your family. We want you to enjoy your kids.

We want you to enjoy being a parent. And oftentimes, in this very fast-paced and hectic world, it's very easy to feel so pulled and stretched that something that you've desired to do for very long, you actually feel overwhelmed by it or you're not sure the direction you're going. So by saying no, you're able to be more in the driver's seat and design your schooling experience, your learning experience with your family.

And as I was thinking about the four things that we're going to highlight this week, I actually wanted to bring in kind of more a little bit of storytelling and relate these four things to an area of our homeschool that we have to work with almost every day. And that is- Yeah, and I'm glad you're doing that, my love, right? Because we can very easily stand here on this side of the microphone and just say, hey, these are 10 things, 10 ways homeschool- Take our word for it. Yeah, 10 ways homeschool has empowered us with this power of no.

But I really like how, at least this particular week, you're going to bring in some very practical examples on the benefit no has produced in our homeschool life. Yeah, and one thing that I recently met with a mom who was considering homeschooling, and of course, so many things come to mind, right? Well, how can I homeschool? If they're home with me, that means that now I'm going to have to cook more. And cooking's a big responsibility.

How can I do that and homeschool? And so we're actually going to look, I'm going to actually share about cooking and how this very day-to-day activity can still help you appreciate these four benefits that I'm going to share. Yeah, benefits are great. Okay, great.

So the four benefits, I'm going to share them with you because this is just something that we've seen in our homeschooling. When we homeschool, we're actually able to learn at a deeper level than when you're trying to just get through a curriculum. If you're in a certain setting where there's no time to slow down because you have to go from chapter one to chapter 30, right? I know this is meal planning, but it still applies.

So the other one is that you can actually have less comparison. So another benefit is a reduction in comparison. And then the last two, you can actually have more time for self-reflection and then modeling decision-making.

These are all things that are a part of our homeschool that we've been able to enjoy. And because we look at homeschooling as a life and preparing our kids for life, even something as maybe not academic as meal planning actually becomes a tool, right? It becomes a subject that we study, that we work through. Excellent.

Okay, so when we're meal planning, we have certain foods that we avoid. And when I'm working through that with the kids and we're learning about how these foods affect us and why certain foods are better, I'm actually taking the time to talk to them about nutrition and diet and choices when they are eating that are going to impact them for the rest of their life, hopefully. And so instead of them learning about these things when they're 30 and 40 and 50 years old, hopefully they can, although they'll have to change how they eat as they grow older, right, and outgrow certain food restrictions and all that stuff, they have the tools to understand about their body, about nutrition, that they're building that now.

Yeah, yeah, so I mean, the power of no in the homeschool learning allows you to pause whatever you're working on and take a deeper dive into something, right? There's that, you know, that modern approach to education stays at a, not at a superficial level, but remains at one level. And it really kind of just shuffles all the subject at the same level and then spirals back and then at the comeback, attaches a second level, then at the third spiral back, then does a third level. You can skip that whole modern spiral method and pretty much just say, no, stop, let's go deep.

And so I'm glad how you can definitely do that, especially with our food intake. I mean, that's deep. Well, and so for our younger kids, I'm talking to them in the morning about, hey, I want you to have this electrolyte drink when you wake up, and here's why.

Then as they get older, we're talking about probiotics. And then later on, one of our kids is talking about GMOs. And so these things that are every day, we're talking about this, but it's not in competition.

Learning about what is good to eat and meal planning and all these things is not taking away from their education. It's part of educating them because they're a whole person. Another thing, it reduces comparison.

I mean, I remember going into the cafeteria and it wasn't very often because I usually ate school lunches, but there is that moment where you're unpacking your lunchbox and what do you have, and there's trading. And I understand that's cute and it sounds fun. It can actually also, you're already conditioning, like you're building this comparison that even happens at lunchtime.

If you have food restrictions and you eat differently, that can actually be stressful. And so just allowing the kids to be able to eat good and healthy food without the stress of comparison, I think is a benefit. So that's right.

You know, hey, when we step into a cafeteria and we look at what everybody's eating, right, because our topic is eating and the concept of homeschool and the power of no allows you to reduce comparisons. Listen, we step into the lunchroom, we look around, we see these people with these meals and these people with whatever they're eating, and we can easily differentiate, right, which means that there's obviously a difference. But when we attach value to these differences, now we begin the comparison.

This lunch is better than that lunch. This looks better than this, yeah. Sometimes they're not even necessarily eating because they want to eat X, Y, Z. They're eating because that's the cool thing to eat.

I mean, it does happen. It absolutely does. Even in the area of, I mean, we're not even talking about shoes and backpacks and clothing.

Being able to homeschool, you're able to focus on things that are of greater importance in the long run and not always getting kind of sidetracked with these other issues. And because we're talking about food, I'm bringing up school lunches, but it could be anything. Also, more time, it allows for more time for self-reflection.

So when you are homeschooling, you have the opportunity to go at a different pace. You're able to slow down and reflect and not just, again, always having to move. Like it allows for deeper learning.

It also allows for more time of self-reflection. And then when it comes to food and eating, it allows you to think about, why am I cooking this way? What does mealtime mean? Let's slow down and eat together, right? So oftentimes, we have at least breakfast or lunch together during our homeschool day, and we are able to talk. The older ones are kind of off in their own little areas doing their work, but we come together during a meal and we're able to talk and reflect.

What are you learning? What are you doing? Again, having to do with a meal, but because we homeschool, we have that time. So if we go back to benefit number two from the 81st episode, our last episode, it was time management. And we had mentioned that time management is equivalent to priority management. 

And so if one of your priorities is self-reflection, guess what? Know gives you that space, just like Monica said. And one of the things you'll notice is, we're giving you 10. I think we can easily pop out like 30 benefits tied to know and using know in the homeschool setting.

There will be overlap. There will be overlap. So this concept of self-reflection, man, that's tied to item number one, stress reduction, health improvement.

It's tied with number two, time management, priority management. I mean, this is all working together, very good. And lastly, we're talking about, the last benefit we're going to talk about today is modeling decision-making.

So when we are planning our meals, when we're doing our budget, when we're going grocery shopping, all these are opportunities to model decision-making. When they're seeing me make certain decisions, that is, I'm being a role model to them. And so when you, if you're considering homeschooling, don't think, oh gosh, well, how am I going to homeschool and cook and do laundry and X, Y, Z? You bring your kids into that because that's the benefit of homeschooling.

Every opportunity, everything becomes an opportunity to build skills, to build character and to enjoy learning together. And if I can say, I mean, we've probably not said this often, but everyone's heard it. Anytime you say yes to something, you're saying no to something else.

So here we are saying yes to homeschooling and that empowers us to say no to some other things. And look at all the benefits of that power. Well, beautiful people, that's a wrap for episode 82.

I want to thank you guys for joining us. I want to say, share this, share this, move it forward. We not only want you to like it, we want you to grab it, we want you to send it to somebody.

Homeschooling's a movement. So hey, come do it, come join us. We love you guys.

Thank you for spending time with us today. Check out our link below and subscribe to our podcast. We hope that we helped you by unlocking a new way of seeing homeschooling.

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