#83 - Less is More: Declutter Your Homeschool Pt III

What are the last 3 benefits that saying "no" unlocks? In this episode of the Homeschool Unlocked podcast, Jesús and Monica discuss the final 3 that made their top 10 list. Homeschooling is not just about academics but about preparing children for life. Listen and consider how you can put "no" to work!

https://1lnk.page/MonicaAviles

https://1lnk.page/MonicaAviles

Transcript

Welcome to the Homeschool Unlocked podcast, the show that helps parents see homeschooling as a unique opportunity. So forget fear, you can inspire, you can guide your child. Homeschool Unlocked, it's not school, it's life.

Welcome Homeschool Unlocked family. It is episode 83, and we are so glad to be here with you today. Yes, we are.

I obviously missed my cue. But you know, because me and Monica tended like, you know, this isn't all scripted, right? I hope people understand this, right? I hope you know, I'm sometimes staring off into space or staring off into my wife's beautiful eyes and she's talking about, I don't know. And then all of a sudden she looks at me and I'm like, Jesus.

I guess that's, you know, I'm thinking church and that's the typical answer. But no, no, yeah, I missed my cue on that one. Hey baby, how you doing? That is my honey pie.

We have been married 25 years and we have six kids together. We've graduated our oldest two and our third one is a senior this year. So we're here to share the joys of homeschooling so that you can homeschool with confidence in less time.

Or if you've never homeschooled, well, then we're here to encourage you to consider it. Fantastic. So whether you're curious, whether you're new to the homeschool game or you're experienced, today we're gonna talk about, or we're gonna continue talking about the power of know, right? Properly used in the homeschool setting and all the benefits that it provides you.

Yeah. It unlocks. It unlocks the greatness.

So let's unlock greatness number eight because we covered in two episodes ago, we covered three of them. And last episode we covered four of them. So here's number eight.

You ready for number eight? Okay, can I ask you my true and false question first? I guess the answer to that is true. All right. During World War I, was it Italy or was it Austria declared war on Germany on August 28th? I think Italy was part of the axis of evil.

And I think Austria in the movie with the Mary Poppins lady. What was that movie? Mary Poppins. No, not Mary Poppins.

The Mary Poppins lady. Oh, Sound of Music. Sound of Music.

I think that took place in Austria and they were running from the Germans. I just don't know what war that was. I think that was World War II though.

Okay. So. Fine, am I correct though? No.

Yeah. Ended your streak, I'm so sorry. So the answer is Italy? Italy.

Italy declared Germany the enemy in World War I. Well, it declared war on Germany. In World War I. Yeah, so it basically, it was significant expansion of the conflict and solidified Italy's position with the allies against the central powers. I think you're thinking.

World War II. Yeah. Because who were the axis of evil? Germany, Italy, and who else? And Japan.

Yeah, okay. That was World War II. World War II.

Yes. I got my wars mixed up. Yes.

Okay, no problem. Okay. All right.

Hey, in baseball, listen, in baseball, if I get on base 30% of the time, I might become a professional. So in homeschool, true, false questions, hey, I'm doing pretty well. That's right, that's right.

And so we're so glad to be talking with you. We've homeschooled for all 21 years with our kids. And some benefits of homeschooling is what we're sharing with you.

We want you to enjoy parenting. We want you to enjoy your kids and your family. Mark Twain actually said, there are a thousand excuses for failure, but never a good reason.

And there is never a good reason not to design your life, your homeschool experience in this case, right? Failing to design, even in small ways, it's just not God's best for you. Yeah, so here is benefit number eight. Again, episode one had three, episode two had four, here's number eight.

Benefit number eight, the power of no in the homeschool setting. No allows and improves your focus. I want you to imagine that there are tons of things to do.

No actually helps you declutter. No helps the whole concept of quantity over quality, right? How many times, right? Or we'll give you an example. I'll let Monica give you an example.

An example of, okay, let's think of subject matter. An assignment is given. Is it possible to say no to pieces of assignments and still determine mastery of the material? That's the question.

I've been involved in hundreds of meetings at the public school level where mastery is the subject that we're talking about. Does this kid know how to do X? Oh, you know, he doesn't finish his work or she doesn't finish her work. And what do we do here? First of all, I know you've given assignments that are like 15 questions long.

The kid, because of X disability or X issue, can't complete the 15. But when they submit the homework that had seven completed, are they right? Can you determine if they know enough addition to not give them an F on that? Are we measuring mastery? So here's an example where no allows us to declutter, improve focus, and improve quality over quantity. Give us that example, my love.

Well, for our oldest, we are in a homeschool group. And so one of the assignments was a science research paper. And it was, I don't know if it was 10 or 15 pages.

And because we're able to design our homeschool and focus on what is most important as we see it, I said, you will not be doing a 15-page paper. You will not be doing a 10 or a five-page paper. Here's what we're gonna do.

We're going to write, we're gonna research. That was actually the main thing that we did. We research, we cited our sources, and we created a keyword outline.

So instead of writing and focusing on writing, we were focusing on researching, created the outline, and he did have to write the conclusion and then the introduction so that there was writing involved. But we were able to declutter, right? And focus on the skill at hand, which was researching. So no, improved your focus on that particular assignment.

Yes, it did. Don't give me 15 pages of a bunch of sentences. If I'm trying to measure your ability to kind of structure an argument, and maybe I do wanna see like your handwriting and your ability to write complete sentences.

Okay, I'll let you do the intro and the conclusion, but that's one way of saying no and decluttering, right? So here's number two, right? Number two benefit for today, actually number nine in our 10 that we're gonna give you. It gives you an opportunity to be spontaneous. I mean, listen, we all have schedules.

For those of you that are considering homeschooling that are probably sitting with schedules of tons of things you have to do, imagine being able to put your finger on one of those things and say, no, I'm gonna do this today, right? So listen, homeschool, we're gonna admit to you, it requires some structure, it requires scheduling, but this power of no allows you, when the opportunity provides itself or opens itself up to be spontaneous, to break up that schedule just a little bit. Sweetie, you got an example of something like that? Well, I do think of the time that you had a trip for your, a work-related trip, and instead of staying in the hotel, you were able to get an Airbnb, and so we were able to stay with you, and we were able to pull away and enjoy that trip with you because we have that space in our schedule. We can take the homeschooling with us.

We can focus on something that's happening in that area, a site, something, tour some place, and learn and grow that way, but we have that flexibility. It's awesome. It's super awesome.

So for those of you that are considering homeschooling, for those of you that maybe work from home while attempting to homeschool, I mean, we know this benefit. If you're going somewhere, wouldn't it be nice to not have to try to figure out a schedule on how to get a kid from point A to point B when you're not with them? Bring them with you. You convert the assignment, and you can go back several different episodes when we went to a conference, and Monica kind of gave us the structure on how to convert any conference into actual learning environment, a learning opportunity, but okay, going back, spontaneity, item number nine, and item number 10.

Everybody find item number 10? Again, we actually are sitting with a list of about 20-something. We've picked 10, but the 10th one I wanna pick out is tied to finances. There are some things, not everything is free.

There are some times when we just need to push no and just simply commit to a fewer number of things. I know we talked about saying no to improve focus to kind of break down assignments, but taking just a bigger step back, for the longest time, Monica and I wouldn't do anything extracurricular with one kid unless another child was also involved, right? Karate. Hey, listen, if no one else wants karate, we can't do it.

We're not gonna chop ourselves up into 10 different pieces and Uber here and two cars there, and we're not gonna do that. We're gonna just settle down. We're gonna make some hard choices, and these hard choices had financial benefits, right? Only because time and drive and effort, and so that's just one of my little examples in terms of item number 10, saying no, actually has a financial impact tied to that.

I mean, after all, how easy is it to continue to work longer hours because you're having to spend more money, and again, your schedule is filling up, you're feeling pulled in 100 different directions. When you are homeschooling and able to slow down and saying no to a million different activities, you're saying yes to prioritizing, yes to putting your money to work for you in the way that you want. So I hope in listening to these past three episodes and us talking about the power of no within the homeschool setting, it attracts you.

For those that are already doing homeschooling, hey, listen, these are more rational points that you can bring to somebody that might be considering it. If you're one of those that are just simply considering it, maybe ready to do it, or maybe just simply curious about it, look at that. We gave you 10 of a list of tons of reasons to homeschool.

Again, homeschool has tons of benefits. We want you to enjoy it. Come alongside us, forward us, be a part of the movement.

We love you guys. Love you guys. Thank you for spending time with us today.

We hope that we helped you by unlocking a new way of seeing homeschooling. Who else needs to hear this? Only you know. So take action and share it.

Because remember, homeschool unlocked. It's not school, it's life.