#92 - The Magic of Pumpkins and the Power of Imagination

In this episode of Homeschool Unlocked, Jesús and I dive into the magic of pumpkins and the power of imagination! We reflect on how something as simple as a pumpkin can inspire creativity, from story-making with kids to hands-on activities like roasting seeds and drawing characters. As homeschooling parents, we want you to see that learning can be playful and meaningful—it’s not about being perfect, but about engaging with your children in the everyday moments. Tune in as we wrap up our four-part fall series, filled with ideas to spark imagination and connection. And, remember to grab our fall unit study by texting "pumpkin" to 850-750-9575! 
:), Monica
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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.Today's topic is pumpkins and the power of imagination. Hello, Homeschool Unlocked family. This is Jesus Aviles.I am the husband of my beautiful wife, Monica Aviles. I will introduce her on this particular one since she usually takes all the intros with her beautiful voice. We have been homeschooling for approximately 20 years.She is both a homeschool mom and a super entrepreneur. And the list goes on with that particular resume. And for myself, I've worked actually in the public school system for close to 20 years as a school psychologist and as a school site administrator.We bring all this to you with one beautiful thought. The thought being that homeschooling can be a vehicle to provide you experiences and opportunities you can't get anywhere else. Have you tried going other places to get these experiences? Absolutely you have.We've gone to Disney, we've gone camping, we've done kayaking, we've gone to the mountains. We've done all these things to try to gain experiences, gain opportunities with our children that are just completely memorable. And so one of the things we constantly speak about here at Homeschool Unlocked is at home, as you attempt to educate your child and in the process be educated yourself, it creates a wonderful opportunity.You may be sitting here and you think imagination. I cannot imagine homeschooling. That would require more imagination than I have.After today's episode, we pray that it becomes just that much easier for you to imagine yourself at home enjoying time with your children because somewhere along the way, you were told, you were convinced, you were hoodwinked into thinking that educating your children has to be done by a professional. And we're here to tell you when you are ready to learn and grow, that I didn't say be patient 24-7, I didn't say no at all. I said learn and grow and you love your kid, then you also can be that person.You were their one and only educator when they were first born, right? So you can continue that journey. Can I just say, hey, parents, you are professional enough. As someone who's worked in the public school system close to 20 years, I've seen new teachers blossom and grow and I've seen veteran teachers that have no business being there.And I'm here to tell you, what you get in the school can be a positive, it can be a negative, but I'm here to tell you, you got greater control at home. We talked about you texting the word pumpkin to a phone number. Give them that number one more time, sweetie.850-750-9575. And that number's gonna give you a four-part package, right? Yeah, the fall unit study. The fall unit study.As we get started into this episode, I can't tell you how encouraged I was after listening to John Taylor Gatto's book, and I think it was Dumbing Us Down, not Weapons of Mass Destruction that I remember right now. But Dumbing Us Down, he actually explains that the school system isn't broken. It's functioning exactly the way it's intended.It's intended to create confusion with subjects that don't relate to one another, with just separating by age and bells. I mean, there's just a lot of conformity that is happening and is being taught. And so, you know, pumpkins, imagination, imagine yourself teaching your child.It's possible. And we're here to help you with that. So let me bring you back.I mean, one of the things I love, and I've asked Monica to let me talk about, is just how I've, over the years, kind of cultivated all of our kids' imaginations, right? I mean, you kind of just make up stories, right? You hear things that, you know, Tolkien and The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, you hear it with regards to C.S. Lewis and his Chronicles of Narnia. These are just little stories, little bits and pieces, little vignettes, sometimes little short stories that started off as simply communications with a child, right, and so all of a sudden, you string them together, right? Because the kid comes back and says, hey, hey, what happened at that? And then all of a sudden, you got to extend, you extend this adventure that you just created in your minds. And so, for example, you know, we're talking about pumpkins and the power of imagination.I mean, I can easily just go up to Geronimo, who's our seven-year-old. I said, Geronimo, I usually give him two to three things. Hey, Geronimo, can you tell me the story, please, about the pumpkin, the mouse, and the lizard? And that's all I give him.That's the only prompting I give him at this particular point. And he begins to weave it all together, and you get to see who he decides becomes the hero. Is it the lizard? Is it the mouse? Is it somehow, someway, the pumpkin? Sometimes, one of the features just kind of make its way out of the story.All of a sudden, I'm like, hey, hey, bring that back, whatever happened. And so all of a sudden, you know, just the imagination, right brain stuff, stuff you can visualize, right, super-duper appropriate, super-duper awesome, and I could only imagine. Has anyone ever invented, has anyone ever created a story involving a pumpkin? Yes, we have stories like Cinderella.Cinderella, okay, that's right, that's right. Yep, that would probably be one of the most popular ones. Okay.Yep. Actually, little fun fact, true or false, can pumpkins be used to make boats? Are we going to our, these are my true and false questions? These are your true and false questions. Okay, I'm gonna use my imagination to answer them, because once again, being from Miami, I'm into like mangoes and avocados, not pumpkins.Let's roll with it. Give me the first true-false. Okay, pumpkins can be used to make boats.Absolutely not. Actually, it is true. Some people can actually carve out giant pumpkins and use them in pumpkin regattas.Okay, all right, give it to me. In some cultures, pumpkins are carved into scary faces to ward off evil spirits. To ward off evil spirits? I don't know, sometimes they scare me themselves.Okay, yes, they ward off spirits. Yes, and that's actually, well, that's where the tradition of jack-o'-lanterns come from. Really? Yeah.Well, I was thinking in Puerto Rico, you all have masks that you use. Yeah, yeah. They're not made from pumpkins.They're big paper mache scary things that look like, you know. But you could probably, maybe at one point they were from gourds or squash or something. Yeah, yeah.All right, true or false, the world's largest pumpkin pie was over 10 feet wide. Over 10 feet wide? Yes. If I go back about three episodes, you talk to me about pumpkins coming in the size of cars and those not being necessarily champion pumpkins, just like regular pumpkin.So- But we're talking about pumpkin pie. Pumpkin pie, correct, correct. So I'm just thinking, no one's gonna grow 70,000 pies to grow a 10-foot pie.But yes, I would say yes, why not? Yes, you are correct. The world's largest pumpkin pie measured over 12 feet and weighed more than 3,600 pounds. Do we have any details where that was at? No, I'll have to look for more information.You know what? I asked that question. I don't care where they made it. I wanna know, did it taste good? Is it gluten-free? That's what I'm talking about.That's what I'm talking about. Is it gluten-free? That's right. So as we wrap up this four-week fall kind of themed podcast series that we've had, we wanna highlight a fun activity that you can do at home with your children.Now, Jesus touched on that a little bit, which is giving them different characters and having them create a story. Another thing you could do with that is have them tell you the story and you're doing the drawing, right? How cool is that for your kid to feel like you think their story's so special that you're gonna sit down and illustrate it? Maybe you can't illustrate it, but still write it down, jot it down, do something with them to bring their story to life. You could even put on a play.I like it, you can put on a play. Dress up, practice it enough, maybe at Thanksgiving, share that with your family. I mean, you could almost carve out a short story.Like, hey, let's think about, let's imagine a story involving, and I think my three characters were a mouse, a lizard, and a pumpkin. But in your particular case, it could be a moose, a pumpkin, and a horse. I mean, whatever it may be.And all of a sudden, if we could record it, and I recommend recording it, and then all of a sudden, you purchase a couple pumpkins, and instead of just simply carving some faces or stuff like that, you say, hey, man, let's take next level here. Let's carve pieces of the story so that when we repeat the story, they can follow the pumpkin trail. That's just an idea.Absolutely, absolutely. That's my husband's dungeon dragon, I think. Yeah.That's where he's coming in. Yeah. That's right.So we want you to enjoy the simplest of activities. We want to highlight the importance of imagination. We hope we've done that with you over these past few episodes.We'd love to hear more about how you've used this unit study. Share that with us. We would love to feature that on our Homeschool Unlocked Instagram page.And so again, if you're hearing this for the first time, you can still get the fall unit study, 850-750-9575. Just text the word pumpkin, and you'll start getting access to that. And if I can just add Homeschool Unlocked family, you know, we spent the last four episodes and we centered it around this lesson packet, right? Right.And we've never done that before. And so the hope is that we can get some momentum tied to that, you know, as Monica and I kind of sit down and kind of create these lessons, the intent being providing content so that in the homeschool vehicle, right, you can kind of enjoy wonderful times with your kids. I recommend grabbing one of these episodes and kind of sending them out.You know, once they get the one packet going, that'll be great. And if we get enough movement, we can just continue that and we can just do more, do more for the community with regards to content. Listen, share this episode, share these past four episodes with anybody that you think would enjoy pumpkin pie, pumpkin seeds, a pumpkin, carving a pumpkin, creating stories about pumpkins, someone who wants to make a pumpkin out of clay, whatever, whoever you want to send this to, send it to them and let them be blessed.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.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.