Discover how to make history come alive for your homeschooling family with insights from our special guest, Michelle, who has been navigating the "Mystery of History" curriculum since 2005. Learn how this unique curriculum can be tailored to engage children of all ages, from simple projects for the little ones to more complex tasks for older students. Michelle shares her personal experiences with the curriculum’s versatile structure, designed to accommodate family-style learning and keep her nine children actively interested in history. Whether you're looking for ways to integrate hands-on activities or searching for a curriculum that offers a blend of biblical and secular history, Michelle’s journey provides invaluable tips and inspiration.
Get ready for a deep dive into a year-long curriculum that offers a holistic view of world history through a Christian lens. Hear about creative, hands-on projects like mummifying a Cornish hen, and understand how this curriculum facilitates a more engaging and relevant study of history. Learn about the importance of transitioning from public school to homeschooling and how a personalized, life-integrated approach can transform your child's education. Michelle’s story sheds light on the true benefits of moving beyond textbook learning and embracing a dynamic, real-life approach to teaching history.
Discover how to make history come alive for your homeschooling family with insights from our special guest, Michelle, who has been navigating the "Mystery of History" curriculum since 2005. Learn how this unique curriculum can be tailored to engage children of all ages, from simple projects for the little ones to more complex tasks for older students. Michelle shares her personal experiences with the curriculum’s versatile structure, designed to accommodate family-style learning and keep her nine children actively interested in history. Whether you're looking for ways to integrate hands-on activities or searching for a curriculum that offers a blend of biblical and secular history, Michelle’s journey provides invaluable tips and inspiration.
Get ready for a deep dive into a year-long curriculum that offers a holistic view of world history through a Christian lens. Hear about creative, hands-on projects like mummifying a Cornish hen, and understand how this curriculum facilitates a more engaging and relevant study of history. Learn about the importance of transitioning from public school to homeschooling and how a personalized, life-integrated approach can transform your child's education. Michelle’s story sheds light on the true benefits of moving beyond textbook learning and embracing a dynamic, real-life approach to teaching history.
Welcome to the Homeschool How-To Find my Curriculum, a series where we talk all about curriculum. I've been interviewing homeschooling families for over a year now on my main podcast, the Homeschool How-To, but I really wanted to zero in on curriculum. There's so much out there. How do I know what would work best for me and my child? How do I know what works for one child would work for the other? I might like the curriculum I'm using now, but how do I know there's not a better one out there, especially if I don't know all the curriculums? And what about supplemental curriculum? Should I be using that too? This series is to help you decide just that. I'm going to interview parents who are using all the curriculums so that you can decide the absolute best way to unfold your homeschooling journey. The absolute best way to unfold your homeschooling journey. Welcome to the Homeschool How-To Curriculum Series With me.
Speaker 1:
Today I have Michelle, michelle, welcome. Thank you for being here. Thanks for having me. You are going to talk to us today about the mystery of history. I have not heard about this one, so I'm really excited because I in my older years have really grown a love for history and the importance of it. But we have to figure out a way to teach it to our kids where it's actually entertaining. So why don't you tell me even just where? What made you decide to pick this curriculum?
Speaker 2:
Well, initially, I've been using it off and on since 2005,. So it's been a while. I didn't pick it up because I was at a curriculum fair or something like that and thought it looked good. I actually had a friend who we would get together once a week and do science and history together and she's like I found this great curriculum and I think that we should use it. And I was like okay, because I was still in my journey only about a year to a year and a half and had ditched the box curriculum and was doing something different at that point and starting to branch out and explore. So that's how I got, I guess, hooked on it. You could say.
Speaker 1:
So how old were your children when you did this curriculum with them for the first time?
Speaker 2:
Um, let's see, I have nine children.
Speaker 1:
Wait, you said you have nine children. There are nine of them. Yes, wow, that's amazing. What a fun time. Your house must just be like people everywhere all the time.
Speaker 2:
It's a constant birthday party. It just goes on and on. We don't even celebrate it anymore. No, I'm kidding.
Speaker 1:
I was gonna say do you have birthday parties for that many?
Speaker 2:
Not usually because we are the party, but we went to the roller rink last about two weeks ago to celebrate one turning five and one turning 10.
Speaker 1:
So that's it. So you just got to pick the milestone birthdays and like that's when you get the party. Ok, so have you done this curriculum with all the kids?
Speaker 2:
I have. So it is a series of five books and it's so. It's for all ages, the way it's designed, so I can teach my kindergartner at the same time I can teach, say, my 10th grader, and so because it's broken down into various activities for different age groups, you know, so it doesn't require me to purchase something for this age and this age and this age, and then I'm doing history for four hours a day, because who wants to do that? And so the selection of reading, what they get from it each time they go through the curriculum, every time you like, circle back around and go through it, they're going to get something different than they did when they first started. So, for instance, this year we are doing, we're starting back in volume one.
Speaker 2:
It is a Christian curriculum and so it starts with creation and it goes through the. I think this one volume one goes through the resurrection and then it goes into the Middle Ages and such and modern excuse me, early church and things in volume two. But for volume one I have a first grader that'll be doing it, along with a fifth grader and a seventh grader, and so my seventh grader now she has already been exposed to the material in volume one she's like oh, I remember that and but she'll be getting more out of it, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1:
Yes, it does Kind of this family-style learning. So how many kids do you have going through it right now, Right now?
Speaker 2:
we have three going through Volume 1. And then I have two high schoolers one that's exiting high school and she's kind of gone through everything and is now spending time in government, economics, that more specialized topics. And then my 10th grader actually goes to a hybrid private school, so she's away two days a week and then at home three days a week, so her curriculum looks a little bit different.
Speaker 1:
So if you're doing volume one with a couple of them and then do you have to do a volume two with some of your other kids, or how does that work? I don't have to it.
Speaker 2:
Just the way that this curriculum is is that if we do open up to any given lesson in any volume, it doesn't matter which one it is. There will be a reading selection and then there will be activities based upon suggested activities, based upon their age. So it's broken into younger, middle and older students, and so while the younger students may be, you know, making something out of Legos or some diorama or mapping, the older students are going to be researching and writing essays and doing more in-depth geography or whatever. It may be that way.
Speaker 1:
Okay, so how long does it take you to actually go through it with all the kids With? Like the activities? Are they things that you will be helping all the kids with or that they can do on their own?
Speaker 2:
So the reading selections. They, which is the way it works, is that you read three sessions a week, so three. You know less than one two and three, and then the fourth day. This is the way we use it. The fourth day and the fifth day we finish up activities. We are making a timeline because that's worked into it we're doing any mapping those fourth and fifth days.
Speaker 2:
So as far as on the days that I'm doing the reading, if you know, for my younger ones, or if my, say, this year, if my seventh grader wants to read, she surely can do that too, and I'll probably be more animated than the way I do it. But that takes about 10 minutes. So we talk about it, we answer any questions and it's interesting because even my youngest one, he will come up with questions because you can see his brain is turning with questions, because you can see his brain is turning. But if his activity is to you know color a map of, say um, egypt, or you know early Mesopotamia or something like that, I'll have him doing that while we're reading. That way he's not, you know, pinching his sisters or something like that, and then the older ones and he can finish up and, and after I'm reading, after I'm finished reading, we'll go back and, okay, so here's where this was.
Speaker 2:
Let's draw this dot here, you know, or draw whatever it may be. If it's Egypt, draw a little pyramid right here. But he's done the bulk of his work while I'm doing the reading. Where is the old ones? Then we'll come back, I'll give them their assignment and, depending on what it is, sometimes it's more hands-on than other. I'm doing the reading, whereas the old ones then we'll come back I'll give them their assignment and, depending on what it is, sometimes it's more hands on than other times. But the activities that it gives you for them for the most part are pretty independent, that they can kind of just run with it and then you can direct how deep you want them to go.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and you know, I like the idea about this too is because you're doing it all different ages together, so like if you're in a classroom and everyone is 10 years old and this is the assignment, it doesn't really mean a whole lot. Some do it, some don't. Some get some out of it, some don't. But when you're having all different ages, you have the younger ones kind of looking up to the older ones and thinking, oh gee, I, you know, look at what they're getting out of it. I want to strive to do that much or that. It's kind of cool how you have the different levels and and the older ones might be more apt to help the younger ones with it, where they're in turn getting something out of that as well, one teaching and also solidifying what they've learned, as they're kind of teaching it to the younger ones. So that's really cool. So, all right, does this curriculum go for the whole year or do you add in supplements at different times of the year? It goes for the whole year.
Speaker 2:
So volume one, I want to say it's like 104 to 108 lessons because they're shorter and there's a ton of history that's packed in to those early years as far as the history of our world. And as you get into volumes two, three, four and five, it's like 84 lessons in those texts because the reading is longer, the um, I guess the concepts are a little bit more in depth, and so it is a full year curriculum and it's. You know, sometimes we'll finish early, sometimes we'll go into. It depends on how we do our school year, how many breaks, how long.
Speaker 2:
We camped out in ancient egypt for about three months, um, one of the times that we went through this and so we just, wow, stayed there and learned, used it as a springboard and did anything from mummifying a cornish hen that was then named Cluckapatra and buried somewhere in a yard that some new owner of our house. We were joking about it. My older kids were like if somebody ever digs up the garden and finds Cluckapatra, you know, I wonder if she's still mummified. So things like that too. You know they built pyramids and ziggurats. We went to museums so we incorporated what was available to us on the topics that really interested them and allowed them to take the learning deeper. But it did require us to kind of close the text for a short time, to camp there and then move forward. And then one of my older he's an adult now one of my older sons. He was very interested in World War II and so he actually spent an entire year just studying World War II. But that started out of the curriculum raised in him.
Speaker 1:
Isn't that something I mean? And yeah, when you think about World War II, how much I spent on it in school, I don't know, maybe a month, or you know a blurb here and there. There's so much to it. I mean to even know who fought in it, from really down to the countries all of them involved in why, and it's so interesting and then okay, so history is an interesting one too, because you know how they always say history is written by the victor. So are there different things in this curriculum, different viewpoints than, say, we would see in a public school textbook?
Speaker 2:
Well, I think definitely, when you just approach it from the perspective that it is a biblically based Christian material, you know that that is the foundation of it, that right out the gate is going to be different than anything you would get in a public school. But as far as perspectives, the author, linda Hobart, she pulls in really obscure characters in history that we may not hear about, those that were not necessarily the victors but who experienced the hardships and you know, even death in in their fights for standing up for what they believed. Or you know, those that may have just been marginalized in life. So I think it's a nice balance in that is, and I guess where to me, this curriculum I guess really just why it stuck with us all these years is as a, as a believer.
Speaker 2:
You know, we we go to church and we may hear about this Bible story or this Bible story, and then we go to our history textbooks and we learn about this that happened in the world and that that happened in the world. But there's this chasm between the two and it's like, well, this is supposed to be fact and this is fact, but how does that weave together? And so what this curriculum does, she has woven together both of those things and so you will learn about who you know, what was going on in the scripture, but what was also going on in the secular world, and puts it all in a timeline and so you really kind of get the big picture of history and it makes to me, it makes the bible not just stories but a historical account of history, just like if I were to pick up a book on World War II, you know, or something along those lines. It brings life into it and puts it into the big picture of history.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and I'm sure the majority of conflicts throughout time have all had something to do with a religion or beliefs, and yet the public school setting pretty much removes a lot of that or puts a bad light on it. You know when you look at those textbooks. So I love that about it. Now, okay, you said there are five volumes. So would it be like your first grade year is volume one, second grade, volume two, three, four, five and then sixth grade you would circle back to volume one.
Speaker 2:
Not necessarily. If I were to say, start with my seventh grader and she had just finished say ancient history in elementary, I may not pick up volume one. I may go straight into volume two. One, I may go straight into volume two, which would have been the middle ages, or I may go into, you know, the reformation, or some you know, the reconstruction period, the industrial revolution. I may, I, you could just pick this up and start where you want to, because it's not grade based, because it has all of those different suggested activities or assignments for whatever age group it is. You don't, you're not restricted to purchasing per grade level or necessarily starting at volume one.
Speaker 1:
right start at any volume. You would just want to circle back through all of them at some point if you want the complete picture, right?
Speaker 2:
Yes.
Speaker 1:
Oh, awesome, all right, anything else about the curriculum, and I know that we just wanted to touch on to your style of homeschooling now and how this incorporates into your sort of living life as learners versus sitting down with the texts.
Speaker 2:
Right. So I think that, like the only other closing thoughts I would have on the mystery of history is it's not just a textbook. You open, you read something here's your assignment, and then you get on with it. Right, because that's pretty boring and it's not going to stick. What the students do is they, with all those different activities, they're building a notebook for the year that is separated by continents, and so not only are they doing the timeline, but they are looking back and being able to know where things happen. They're having tangible work that they can go back and look at, and it just again, I think the whole thing creates a much bigger, complete picture of history because of all the different elements that go into it.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, another thing that completely was left out in my public education was it felt like jumbled here's a little bit of information on the Mayans and here's a little bit on World War II and then we'll throw in the Spanish-American War somewhere. It didn't feel like it was on any sort of timeline or geographically made sense of what was going on in this continent versus what was going on elsewhere at the same time. Yeah, there was just if it did connect. They didn't make it apparent to us as the students, so it's harder to grasp any sort of real concept to it, because it was just kind of like learn these dates and names and that's it Not really like we were talking about earlier with the religion, like really why they were passionate about that and you know what was going on.
Speaker 1:
I think about you know what, how, like 9-11 or even COVID will be written about in textbooks and it's just going to be living through that. A lot of us would have different opinions on how that went down or different ways we would write that you know perspective than what will probably be in those history books too. So, yeah, why don't you tell me a little bit about how you guys are living life versus living through textbooks?
Speaker 2:
Absolutely so. You know, way back when we started our homeschooling journey, I basically got mad at teachers and I pulled my kids out of school. And then I went oh no, what have I done? I was a product of a public school so I had no clue, but I think I'm just rebel enough to do that sort of thing. So here I am, and so we started out in a panic. I was like, what are we going to buy? And I bought a box curriculum Don't know if I should say the name or not, but a big box, very expensive curriculum. You know history, science, math and language arts, all the things broken down.
Speaker 2:
And I quickly found out that myself or my children were not wired like that, that if we did all those things we would sit around a table and not live life. It would get us full. Do your chores. I'm an angry mama by then. And so now I'm going to slap some dinner on the table, probably fairly resentful, and then go to bed, pass out and wake up and do it all over again. And that just didn't sound fun to me. That didn't sound like the life I wanted for my kids. In fact, it sounded a lot like the way I grew up and I didn't want that.
Speaker 2:
So over the years we have morphed into different seasons of, I guess, learning styles and having children with different specific needs and really have just tried to tailor our education methods and styles toward those. And you can't do that with a box, you have to do that through life. You can't do that with a box, you have to do that through life. And so we will have really the only curriculum we use anymore that is open book is a math and mystery of history. That's it. The rest of it. We lead together a lot. I have one that loves poetry. She writes poetry and we discuss it. Uh, we just we talk a lot as a family. So there's a lot of what are you reading, what do you think that means? And someone on this many people, they all have an opinion and it's always different than everyone else. So there's a lot of opinions to discuss.
Speaker 2:
You know we, we go out and we do things that interest this kids let's. You know we've always had a garden, we've always raised animals. You know we'll go. For instance, if I'm in my head going, we need to be doing biology at this point in your education Rather than buying a biology text. Let's go and actually go to places.
Speaker 2:
We lived in Northern California for much of our years before moving in 2020. And so we would go to UC Davis, to the entomology centers we would go to you know the various different workshops they would put on. It was all very hands-on in life and again it was the whole family, so they were learning at the same things but at different levels that they were mature enough to absorb. You know a lot of just we just call it living. We are educated through life because there's so much that happens around us.
Speaker 2:
It's not unschooling per se, because I'm actually intentional about incorporating educational opportunities, but we don't do it around a table with a pencil and paper. We're usually outside, you know. We're meeting with other groups and people of different professions, different workshops that the local university is putting on, things like that, and that has made all the difference and homeschooling and their interest level and my sanity level and it's just made it more fun to now where I have adult children and they're like, oh, we're homeschooling Definitely, you know, like there's no other way. Why would I put my kid in the classroom around a table, you know, for that many hours a day that sounds like drudgery around a table. You know for that many hours a day that sounds like drudgery, so you know it's. It has really just transformed not only our educational experience but our family experience and made us very tight knit in that way.
Speaker 2:
Road trips are still rough with that many people sitting that close together. But lots of good memories. Do you have a bus? Oh, we actually downsized to a regular size SUV. It was quite an experience. No more passenger van.
Speaker 1:
Because I do have friends that have five boys and they do have a bus, like they don't take it everywhere, but they have it. We need it sometimes. Yeah, and that's only five, so that doesn't even seem like a lot. Now that I've talked to you. Yeah, that in you know, I think everybody kind of does that falls into that. Oh, I took my kids out of public school and so we're going to replicate it at home because that's all we know as adults.
Speaker 1:
But if there's anything, one main takeaway that I have taken away from talking to homeschoolers for a year and a half now, it is that there is nothing, there's no law that says your kid has to know X, y and Z by any certain age. Yes, there are laws in some states that say you have to teach your kids things and we want to know what it is and prove it to us. But that's a little bit different than they need to know how the biology of a frog is like. There, you, you don't have to cut, dissect a frog. There are different ways to do things and there's different things to learn, uh, which can go off of their interests. You know, it doesn't have to be like cause. This is what I did in ninth grade. This is what we have to do, um, or this is what the kid down the road that goes to school is doing. So this is what we have to do, absolutely not. There's other ways to learn it.
Speaker 1:
And most of the stuff that we learned in school we don't remember anyway. I know I didn't. I didn't partake in the dissecting of the frog I made, whoever the partner was do it, and I probably was talking to someone else and didn't pay attention. Anyway, somehow I survived and graduated and moved on with my life. So, yeah, we have to remember that, that it can be living life. And I have to remind myself every day too, when I'm like, gee, we should probably sit down and do that math, but there's math all around us. So, gee, we should probably sit down and do that math, but there's math all around us. So, no, I don't really have to do that.
Speaker 2:
And I think the thing, like you hit on it, is that you know, yeah, we dissected these frogs. Now Is dissecting the frog or the earthworm or whatever that I did in high school biology? Is that benefiting in some way today in what I'm doing? No, not at all. So as and I guess this goes back into like our lifestyle of education is one I ask myself is there any other more practical way that we can learn what we're going to learn outside of a textbook, in real life, where it's actually, you know, being useful? But then, secondly, looking at each of our children, because maybe they are going to need that frog dissection later in life. You know they have a future in biology or an interest in whatever it may be, you know, and so it's.
Speaker 2:
I kind of look at it as my responsibility as their mom, and the husband is their father, to look at each of them as unique individuals, not as stamped out. You're going to do this in this grade and that in that grade and tailor their education to their unique gifts or abilities and empower them to do those things without any restrictions. You know, for example, my oldest. He always wanted to be a pilot and was always very interested in flying and we had connections and were having means to put him in flight school. I think he was 12 and he flew airplanes before he got a driver's license, because that was his passion and interest and, like our daughter, she's still in Southern California, hated school. Oh that girl. It was like if I can survive homeschooling this one. But it was because she didn't learn like that she. We took her co-op class of photography and the photographer said you have an eye and Gave her she was upgrading her cameras, anyways, ended up gifting her her old right uh equipment, which was professional equipment that springboarded her. We laid off. All of this was when our transition of homeschooling. We laid off the academics and the books and as a young teenager she started a photography business.
Speaker 2:
Now she's in her early 20s, one making more money than a lot of people and living her dream. She was just shooting a wedding in Italy last week. Oh, wow. And it's interesting because she fought me homeschooling. I hate this. This is awful, I'm missing out on all the things, right, and I was talking to her about a year ago and I said I, you know, I'm tired, I've been doing this forever and she goes. You know, mom, she, you. Homeschooling is what allowed me to follow my dreams, to do what I'm good at and not have to do all the other things that didn't really matter to my life. So don't give up and don't quit on homeschooling, because it doesn't make a difference and that was the booster shot, but that's just kind of the lifestyle.
Speaker 1:
Right, and I think about that sometimes. I'm like, oh my goodness, is my child or my kids going to resent me because they didn't have the homecoming dance or the prom or, you know, the football games with all their, their student counterparts, and does that stuff matter? I mean, it's one little bit of time, but when you allow them the time and creativity and ability to chase after, first of all, find an interest, because they keep kids so busy these days that they don't even have time to find an interest and then two, to actually go after it and think that, hey, this is achievable, this is something I can do, that's so awesome. So I hope all the parents listening just know that someday, someday, they will come back and say thank you. Well, michelle, thank you so much. I loved hearing about the mystery of history and just your philosophy on homeschooling. Thank you so much. Is there anything else you'd like to say? Before closing out, I like to give everyone an opportunity.
Speaker 2:
Oh, well, thank you, you know, I think just you know, reiterating that each child has unique abilities and their, their passions, and it's if we just to, I would encourage parents to cultivate those things, not neglect the other stuff, right, because you're going to need those other things in life, but really pour into and letting them grow into those things and giving them the opportunity and the freedom to do so Awesome.
Speaker 1:
Thank you so much for joining me today. You're welcome.
Speaker 2:
Thanks for having me, it was fun.
Speaker 1:
I hope you enjoyed this episode. Thank you so much for listening. Please consider sharing this podcast or my main podcast, the Homeschool how To with friends, family, on Instagram or in your favorite homeschool group Facebook page. The more this podcast is shared, the longer we can keep it going and the more hope we have for the future. Thank you.