This Golden Hour

70. Nicolette Sowder and Wilder Child

• Timothy Eaton

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In today’s episode, we get to spend time with Nicolette Sowder from Michigan. Nicolette, founder of Wilder Child and creator of the Kids Moon Club, shares insights from her journey as a homeschooling mother who has integrated nature into education. We delve into topics such as reconnecting with nature, permaculture, the importance of play in early education, and the benefits of aligning learning with natural cycles. Nicolette provides valuable advice for parents considering homeschool and discusses the concept of 'Wild Schooling.'

Connect with Nicolette
wilderchild.com

Resources
https://www.waldorfeducation.org/waldorf-education
https://hslda.org/
https://www.nheri.org/


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Nicolette Sowder:

I think everybody is in their own situations, but my daughter by the time she was school age, she was. Like so physical all the time. And I remember the moment that I told my husband, I'm like, I really want to homeschool we were playing in the field. We were trying to put in the water lines for all of our berry bushes and my daughter and the little lamb that we had to foster was following her. And she was dancing in the sunlight. And I was looking at him like. Oh, like, I looked at the time and I was like, Oh, she would be in school right now.

Tim Eaton:

Hi, I'm Timmy Eaton, homeschool father of six and doctor of education. We've been homeschooling for more than 15 years and have watched our children go from birth to university successfully and completely without the school system. Homeschooling has grown tremendously in recent years and tons of parents are becoming interested in trying it out. But people have questions and concerns and misconceptions and lack the confidence to get started. New and seasoned homeschoolers are looking for more knowledge and peace and assurance to continue homeschooling. The guests and discussions on this podcast will empower anyone thinking of homeschooling to bring their kids home and start homeschooling. And homeschoolers at all stages of the journey will get what they need and want from these conversations. Thank you for joining us today and enjoy this episode of this Golden Hour Podcast as you exercise, drive, clean, or just chill.

Nicolette Sowder:

You're listening to this Golden Hour Podcast. In today's episode, we get to spend time with Nicolette Souder from Michigan. Nicolette, founder of WilderChild and creator of the Kids Moon Club, shares insights from her journey as a homeschooling mother who has integrated nature into education. We delve into topics such as reconnecting with nature, permaculture, The importance of play in early education and the benefits of aligning learning with natural cycles. Nicolette provides valuable advice for parents considering homeschool and discusses the concept of wild schooling.

Tim Eaton:

Welcome back to this golden hour podcast. We're very excited today to have with us Nicolette Sauter from Michigan. And I just want to do a little brief in intro of Nicolette first. She is a homeschooling mother of two and and other family members that are around as well. She told me. And she is the creator and founder of Wilder Child. Correct?

Nicolette Sowder:

Yes. Correct.

Tim Eaton:

And then also what's the kids moon club or how do you, what's the full title of that?

Nicolette Sowder:

Yeah. It's the kids moon club.

Tim Eaton:

Yeah.

Nicolette Sowder:

A year long membership where I guide families through the lunar cycle. So it's really held in the seasonal cycle and we explore each of the main faces of the moon together for an entire lunar year. So yeah, that's

Tim Eaton:

so cool. I was checking that out on your site. I like that. So yeah, that's great. And we'll get into all of that. And and I'll just let you, maybe if you don't mind do a brief biography of just your, like where you're at in your life and then what brought you to where you are now, and then we'll jump into some homeschooling questions.

Nicolette Sowder:

That sounds great. The short story is that my husband and I moved up to Michigan to try to find to be honest, just cheaper land, because we were outside of Northwest Indiana, and then my daughter turned one and we realized that we wanted to raise more animals. We really got into permaculture farming. And then it was just. It was just, wasn't going to work down there. So we started looking up towards Michigan because I had roots really just having vacationed once a year. We drove up and it was just in my memory. It was within driving distance to my parents at the time. And yeah, so we bought some land up here and started our farming journey. And then. Raising our one year old daughter. I really just had just a big awakening around reconnecting with nature. We had planned on farming the land and all these things. And of course the land was healing up and did so much more for the land that we have ever done or could ever do. So it was lots of humbling, lots of reconnection. And I started blogging about that. And this was at the time where. It was really in the zeitgeist to get kids back outside. And there was, it was at the very beginning. So that's when I created WilderChild. And it just, it resonated as did many other bloggers at the time there. Rainershinemama and Mother Natured and Louvre was huge. And so then. It started to grow and I wanted to just share what I was learning. And it wasn't till learning through nature. And then it wasn't till later that the wild schooling piece got added on, as I realized when my daughter turned five. So four years after I started the blog, really, that we wanted to homeschool.

Tim Eaton:

Wow. To

Nicolette Sowder:

its own really nature focused homeschooling.

Tim Eaton:

Yeah. They've meshed now those two worlds.

Nicolette Sowder:

Yes. Yeah.

Tim Eaton:

Um, one of my favorite interviews that I've done is with a girl in Ohio who has a store called nature and plus nurture.

Nicolette Sowder:

Yes. I love them.

Tim Eaton:

And have you listened to that one on our podcast?

Nicolette Sowder:

But I want to go back and listen to

Tim Eaton:

that. It's a beautiful episode and she's just she's great. And so we had such a good time talking to each other. And I was, I wanted to talk about a few things that you mentioned there. Like you said, permaculture was like, why was it better where you are now than it was in Northwest Indiana?

Nicolette Sowder:

I think it could have worked anywhere. I think at some point, in your life you realize like what you could have done

Tim Eaton:

had you known more or something.

Nicolette Sowder:

Yes, you could have done anywhere, but it was in the journey that you learn it so in, in reality, then it could only be done here. But for us we just had that call to to move up here. I think that's what it was all about because once we were up here, the difference was that we were dominated by nature. So I had never lived where nature was more predominant than me. There's more trees than people here

Tim Eaton:

in

Nicolette Sowder:

our yard. And so I think it was just to flip that dynamic in order for me to be able to feel all that I needed to feel and experience everything that I needed to experience. The ratios had to be

Tim Eaton:

And how did you grow up? Did you grow up exposed to a bunch of nature? Did your parents nurture that type of thing? Or like when you said you reconnected, what did you mean with that?

Nicolette Sowder:

Oh, my parents were, did everything that they possibly could. They were, they were always calling me to the window for birds. I grew up in suburbia. But it just was like a deepening, such a deeper experience. So it was really just building on what my parents, I talked about this too, like when they were growing up, like their generation, there was so much less self consciousness about parenting for better or worse.

Tim Eaton:

But it's

Nicolette Sowder:

you're going out for a nature walk. You're not conscious of the fact that you're getting your vitamin N.

Tim Eaton:

Yeah. Yeah.

Nicolette Sowder:

You're just getting out there. You're not like, you're not watching yourself do things like our generation is much more hyper conscious of when we do this happened. And so that's, that can be great, but that can also be very hard because it takes away some of that raw authenticity of being in the moment.

Tim Eaton:

Yes.

Nicolette Sowder:

My parents were very raw, authentic. Their connection to nature was coming from something

Tim Eaton:

very

Nicolette Sowder:

natural. And so I think building on that, I'm learning how to balance that raw authenticity with this hyper consciousness and kind of merging those and finding a way what does it look like now? Like the next generation, what is the evolution of like nature connection for

Tim Eaton:

that's interesting that you have that like desire or that interest in nature. Like you said like ideally we would all have that just because it's it's in us as humans to be, to, we're natural beings. But like you grew up in suburbia, whatever. What is it that like called you to that? Or like, why, what was your interest? Were you interested already?

Nicolette Sowder:

I always had a natural inclination towards being with the earth. Like when I was younger, I would, tell my parents that I wish the flowers had heads so I could talk to them. And I think I always had an extraordinary sensitivity. And again, my uncles were fishermen and it was, there was natural sort of just. Wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy Like my relationship with, it was always very natural. But when I came here, my daughter accelerated my connection because there was something, she was such a conduit for me

Tim Eaton:

that

Nicolette Sowder:

we were out so much. That what started to happen was that I would. And I don't know, I don't know where this extrasensory like perception came from, but it was definitely a shift in my consciousness in terms of the way I started seeing things. So she would be out there in the forest, and she'd be crawling on a log, and instead of just seeing her crawling on the log, I started to see her being helped. It was like all the science that I was reading about how children are, like their perception, their sensory perception is so much better when they're climbing and all these things. Then all of a sudden I started to synthesize that data, but I was like, Oh, it's like when people write about nature benefits, they're so stuck in like a colonized perception of it because it is a good thing to know the data. Yeah. But then what's, what happens is that we just get stuck there and Oh, those are the benefits. So it's just we're going out there, we're using it. And then that's this where it's making our children better.

Tim Eaton:

Yeah. It formalizes it or something.

Nicolette Sowder:

It's like that we're consuming it, but instead what I was saying, because I was Repairing my, what I realized now is I was like repairing my relationship with nature and through that repair, my, it was impacting my perception. So what I started seeing was relational. It was like, Oh my gosh, it's, I'm co parenting with mother nature. I started to feel not alone and started to have, that was the way that I started to see. I'm not saying that's the truth, but that's the way that I now, that's how I experienced it.

Tim Eaton:

I love that idea of co parenting with nature. There's a couple of things that I thought of when you were just saying that. One, you weren't familiar with Charlotte Mason before all this, is that right?

Nicolette Sowder:

No, I'm familiar with her now, but it wasn't until I started homeschooling that I started Yeah, just

Tim Eaton:

cause so much of what you said seems so foundational. Some of the principles that she espouses and you just seemed like you had naturally had those within you. The other thought I had was, have you ever seen the movie wild mountain time?

Nicolette Sowder:

No.

Tim Eaton:

Oh, you got to watch that

Nicolette Sowder:

song. I'm going to have to watch that.

Tim Eaton:

Yeah, exactly. And the song is a part of it, but it's it's such a strange movie, but it's so good. And when you were talking about just like your reconnection is anyway, one of the main actors, I don't remember his name, but he he basically talks with the bees and he thought he was a bee. And anyway, it's so awesome. But

Nicolette Sowder:

that sounds like, Oh no, you

Tim Eaton:

would love that movie. I think it was so good, but that, and then it also made me think of like, when you were talking about your daughter playing in the forest, it just made me think of when I was going over. Your site and some of your resources. I love what you like we're talking about with the pigs and that they're actually forest foragers and cause I didn't know that. And I just loved learning about some of the things that you are. So anyway, I just, any to anyone listening Nicolette website's fun to just peruse and check out. But anyway, I want to come back to that idea of so then homeschooling just naturally. Can converged with your experiences. And so what was your first exposure? How did you know that was an option, that kind of thing?

Nicolette Sowder:

I knew that traditional school was not going to be an option. So I think that was the first thing.

Tim Eaton:

And what, how did you know that?

Nicolette Sowder:

Like in a traditional school setting. And so I'd experienced that world. And of course I went through the traditional school system. It didn't necessarily have a strong political or spiritual or ideological sort of notion against it. I didn't come into it that way. I'm first generation homeschooler.

Tim Eaton:

Yeah.

Nicolette Sowder:

I still don't come into it that way, because I think everybody is in, there's a lot of privilege around it. I think everybody is in their own situations, but my daughter was so by the time she was school age, she was. Like so physical all the time. And I remember the moment that I told my husband, I'm like, I really want to homeschool with a, we were playing in the field. We were trying to put in the water lines for all of our berry bushes and my daughter and the little lamb that we had to foster was following her. And she was dancing in the sunlight. And I was looking at him like. Oh, this would I looked at the time and I was like, Oh, she would be in school right now.

Tim Eaton:

Yeah.

Nicolette Sowder:

And because of the way that my daughter was, and actually still is like her sensory integration is so deeply tied to her like mental wellbeing. And I'm not saying that's true for every child. I think children handle things differently, but for my daughter, her spinning and singing And the way she is with mud I can't even begin to describe the sensory that are being met for her. And I just felt Oh,

Tim Eaton:

I'm not going to take that away.

Nicolette Sowder:

Can't, I couldn't actually take it away. Her and I, our relationship was so deep and I was too aware of her being so mothered by mother nature, like it would have been taking her away from two mothers at that point. At a critical point in her development. So there, it was just, I was too in it. I don't know if you've ever had a like part in your life where it's it's too clear. And I feel like that is a blessing to have points in your life, whether it's hard decision or a difficult decision or a good decision, but to have clarity is a special rare thing.

Tim Eaton:

It's awesome.

Nicolette Sowder:

Especially clarity around something that most of society isn't doing. To find that inner strength that came from somewhere. I don't even know where it came from. I'm just really, I think about it all the time. Like, where did that come from?

Tim Eaton:

Yeah. Yeah.

Nicolette Sowder:

That's,

Tim Eaton:

I love that. And my wife always calls them the defining moments. There's defining, there's moments. There's moments in a day where it's you're just doing your thing, but then there's this little it really is this magical moment where you're like, Oh, this is. This is what we want to be doing. And, I have to admit that I feel like the longer we've done it and the older our kids get, they get less and less, but they're still there and our commitment still remains but there's challenges, but I love what you're saying. I love the view or the. The experience you had with her and said, I can't take it away. Cause my, my, my follow up question to that was like, how did you have, A lot of people have feelings like you explained, maybe not exactly what you experienced and everybody's is going to be unique to their family and their children. People have that feeling and they'll feel like, Oh man, I want to do this. I want, I know I want to do something different. I know I'm not loving what's happening in the schools or whatever. Everyone has a different experience. But how did you have the confidence to start was the question I was going to ask, but I, it sounds like it wasn't even a question of confidence. It was just like, what else would I do? Like when I, like you said, like, how could I take her away? From this nurturing, but what, how would you respond to somebody? If they said that they said, like, how did you have the confidence to start homeschooling, even if you didn't know that much about how it would go down?

Nicolette Sowder:

I would say that it's a process that it's a journey that if you can trust that you'll trust more and more as you go, then. that if you know that you're not going to feel great about it, perfect about it in that moment. And that if you know that there's going to be cycles of up and down with it, like it's a journey. So I think trusting ourselves is something that is a really difficult thing in and of itself. So I would tell people that like, If you, if trust taking that first step and trusting something that maybe society doesn't think is a good thing, or some people in your family, or even within yourself, that is like the most important thing you could ever do is step towards that thing that nobody else agrees with is that's going to change your life more than anything else. And like a lot of it, we're always thinking about the kids and their homeschooling, but a lot of this, I can look back and say, a lot of this has been about a journey of trust for me, ideologically speaking. And just look at the storyline of homeschooling, how counterculture it is. What a beautiful experience for me to have as a human to walk in that path. So I'd say, think about it as an experience of like growth for you, not just Oh, this is the way we're gonna. School or children. This is look at how strong and how exciting and an adventure and it has its ups and downs. But to have a wild thought,

Tim Eaton:

a

Nicolette Sowder:

thought of counterculture, a countercultural thought is like think about it back in the day, making green juice was a pretty radical, if you were like eating health food,

Tim Eaton:

you

Nicolette Sowder:

were a maverick, right? My parents, that was like, My mom was baking cakes with cocoa powder or not cocoa powder, but carob. Those cakes weighed a thousand pounds.

Tim Eaton:

Oh, I love carob. It's

Nicolette Sowder:

doing that. You're like, I love, yes. It's like they, they did that when nobody else was doing that. And I think it's brave when you look throughout history and then look throughout time to do those things. that to take that step forward

Tim Eaton:

for

Nicolette Sowder:

us to do it together, to acknowledge together that we're doing this thing is where, find a community to you're alone. You think you're alone, but then you're like, Oh my gosh, we're all being pretty wild here. Like we're all stepping together. And

Tim Eaton:

this is 2024. Whereas in the 1980s, man, holy cow, that was so unconventional. They were so brave. They were even had legal, still today, but not like in the past, they had legal issues all the time and I love what you said that as you, you trust, and then you trust more and more like it just incrementally over time that trust increases because you see the, You see the fruit of what it produces, I think, and not just in your children, but like you said, even in yourself and in and it's not like you're being unconventional for the sake of being unconventional, but that you're, but it is exhilarating to do something that is so different from the crowd. And I love that. And I hope our, I wish our kids felt that more, but I really do. Cause I know sometimes it can be hard to want to stand out, especially during the youth years but man, I, it is good. So where did you go for like, when you were just starting, like how long ago did you start actually? Just doing education at home six years

Nicolette Sowder:

now.

Tim Eaton:

So where mentorship at the beginning? And what do you do now?

Nicolette Sowder:

I was, I really was on a path of unschooling at first. And because I was looking at that's why I started the wild school group, cause I wasn't really seeing the philosophy that I. Wanted to walk with, which was really learning with mother nature. Like that, that was going to be a huge component. I was looking at a lot of ancestral ways, a lot of indigenous practices and being influenced by the like Waldorf and then even more so by the Nordic. Forest kindergartens. So I was really on this path of then I was like unschooling, right? Because my daughter was five. I wasn't about to put her on a curriculum. Because I was introduced to natural learning and I started to get into natural learning because I didn't want to recreate school at home,

Tim Eaton:

but that's

Nicolette Sowder:

okay if you do, it's a spectrum and there's no wrong way, but this was like how my path was I had stepped out and I was like, Then my view was just expanded. I'm like, Oh, okay. Then I started going down the homeschooling route, but I struggled a bit with unschooling because I resonated a lot with the whole idea of deconstructing your, my experience that I've had,

Tim Eaton:

because

Nicolette Sowder:

that was a wild ride. That, that they say, I think it's, you should deconstruct. Oh gosh, I forget what it is. One year for every year you've been in. I'm saying that wrong, but they have a certain amount of time that you should de school, okay? And then I was shifting and realizing oh my gosh, no, there's a period, there's a seasonal cycle that we need to rejoin. So wild schooling is like the answer to unschooling's de schooling process. It's really just a rejoining back into the wild, the circle of wild things in Mary Oliver's words. But really, um, watch, and that's when we started to get back into the lunar cycles. And, in the way of just like simply knowing what's going on out there.

Tim Eaton:

Yeah.

Nicolette Sowder:

What phase are we in? I'm not even talking about anything like too deep or like where we started to orient not to like human time, but we didn't completely throw human time away. We just started to include wild time. And we started to build our cycle of growth. Which is what I like to call it and start our school year around that. Winter solstice is our beginning point. And then the winter solstice, the following winter solstice of that year is our end. Because our educational growth, our growth as people goes with the light. So as the sun goes around, we have we begin learning, and then we're like at our height at the summer solstice, and then we start integrating our educational and like the landscape, how we work the landscape aligns with that. It's we're in a, we're in the rhythm. Like our learning is being echoed. Our internal landscape is being mirrored externally. So once we did that, you're rejoining everything started to, we started layering. Curriculum layering, our growth, layering, everything, our homeschooling on top of that rhythm, if that

Tim Eaton:

makes sense. Yeah. What I like about what you're saying, like the principles that I like extrapolate out of that is when you're starting, you're man, what, there's all these categories of homeschooling and whatever. And it's good to get familiar because then you can find what matches you. But my point with everybody that I talked to about it is, It's good to be exposed to those things, but I love the example that you're putting forth that you gotta find how it is for you and yours is a really potent example of that because you really took that to nature school and I love what you're saying about the connecting with the rhythms of nature and how that works and then mirroring that with our, the way we learn in our lives, because it's not just a decision about learning, it's a decision It literally is a lifestyle decision. No matter what people are going to do, but the idea that you're looking into what's out there on schooling, all these different, I just find it so difficult to categorize people because it's just Nicolette and her family's homeschool or learning or living or their family anyway, so I like that you're saying that you just found your own way and even paved it and did you, I'm not familiar enough with it, but cause I, I know the term wild schooling, but is that is that, did that have its beginnings before you, or do you feel like that was, cause I know that there's forest schools and there's nature schools, but tell me about

Nicolette Sowder:

wild schooling. I created wild schooling. No, I wouldn't say that I created like. Every single inspiration that came into it, but the word wild schooling and the concept and the idea of having a frame, a seasonal framework on the wheel is in many cultures. I tend to pull from like a Celtic culture where they use the wheel, but many indigenous cultures have used the wheel. And yep. Wild schooling was born out of this idea to have that serve as a framework. And it doesn't matter what family you're from, you just put onto that framework. And the idea is to not pull it from some European seasonal craft. But to go into your bio, and your community, and your culture, and really start to build your culture there. And so you can put any curriculum on top of it. There's no right, like wrong or right way to do it, but some of the basic principles are like the lunar, so the overarching solar cycle, if you think about it, like that's one chapter in the book of your life. And then, so every single seasonal cycle is another chapter. And then at the end you have this book of of your life. And that is wild schooling.

Tim Eaton:

It

Nicolette Sowder:

is these seasons of renewal and decay. And essentially wild schooling is modeled after you could say the forest. And so rejoining is the first year where you're standing on the edge and then you move further and you're building you're deepening your relationship and you're starting to, you learn how to co create actually you re enter back into the cycle in which we have been quite removed. So all

Tim Eaton:

the more and

Nicolette Sowder:

more and more, yeah. So it's really just a framework within which you can lay everything on top of But it starts with entering back in because We, that is, children don't understand semesters.

Tim Eaton:

That's just imposed. It's just

Nicolette Sowder:

trying to tie up the square calendar. It's so hard. You're like, no, it wraps. You got to go back. There's a reason why it's so hard because it's not innate.

Tim Eaton:

I'm, I, we talked before that we started the interview and I'm up I'm here in Alberta, Canada and I've always said it and I actually, I teach religious courses, but I've always said to these, to my students, I'm like, man, there's no kid that should be inside right now. There's just no, especially here where it's so limited. The number of days where, and I'm just like, we need to get them out like early and more often. And I think people are making efforts towards that, but it's hard. It's hard to change. It's such a huge system. And I actually wondered that even though, even though like it seems common sense, so much of the stuff that like, and I would just say to listeners, like you gotta go to Nicolette's white website, because I love how you explain what wild schooling is and what it's not. And I thought that's really clarifying and helps people to Grasp the concepts more but just the idea that like for even though it's weird that it is unconventional because it's so natural It is unconventional but like how do you so then the common question people have even to your very traditional homeschool Mainstream homeschool, you know Even though a lot of people see it as crazy when they're not very familiar with homeschooling or it's sisters and brothers. What would you, how do you respond to people when they're like how do you participate in this conventional world when you're so unconventional, do you know what I'm saying? And that's a common question that even very mainstream homeschool families get.

Nicolette Sowder:

I think a great way to answer it is that it's like everything. You don't have to give up anything. It's just, you're way more aware of where you are within cycles. So you're still like, you can participate in any, in all the ways that you want to, that are considered normally societal, legal, but you start to feel different in terms of let's say something comes up that's hard in your life. You might, the kids might start to think what cycle am I in? Like, How can I support what do I need to move through this cycle? They start to think more like plants that they'll see themselves as part of something in addition to the human world. So it's very it's very like cumulative. It's like adding on. It's not taking away. It's not this or that.

Tim Eaton:

It doesn't have to be exclusive. It doesn't have to be. Oh, it's like you can

Nicolette Sowder:

have it all. You know what moon phase you're in like right now, tomorrow's the new moon. And. And that is the beginning of another 28 day cycle, right? And there's 12 of them. Sometimes there's 13 in a year. And it's oh, okay, I know that. I also know it's June 5th. Tomorrow's going to be June 6th. If I choose to, I could work with that cycle. I could just be aware of it. It's not like it's doing something magical inside of me. It's like a metaphor, however you want to look at it. It's a metaphor that you can anchor to that supports you. So I think kids who are in back, like connected to nature, they just feel tons more support. They feel way more supported by all the things around them. They start noticing things. They start making connections that are very deep. Let's say they see the leaves coming in. They might start to feel like, Oh, what part of me is coming? You're just making, and then in your relationships with people, you start to see yourself in others. You basically start to see yourself in the world and the world starts to see itself in you. And so you feel more whole, you feel more supported. And it's A kid is going to struggle with a semester. But if you tell a child, look at it's a whole, the moon, it's 28 days. And you're looking up, they're like, yeah, they're

Tim Eaton:

into it.

Nicolette Sowder:

The moon names, the full moon names were so tethered to, that wasn't an accident. It was because, like, when it's the maple moon, the maple's coming in, it's a full moon. If you think about the way that we try to get children to anchor and learn information, we've forgotten like the sensory pieces of it. We don't understand that kids learn through sensory integration, like seeing a full moon, they're going to get that. So I also talk about it. Like this is more effective. Yes. Oh, this is like something that has worked for thousands of years. And instead we've got textbooks where, okay, it's chapter five. We're going to learn about bullfrogs. Now, here's the choice that you have. You have a curriculum, which most homeschoolers do. Let's say you come to the bullfrog chapter. You have a choice. And that's all I am saying

Tim Eaton:

is

Nicolette Sowder:

that

Tim Eaton:

read about it or go get the bullfrog.

Nicolette Sowder:

You can read about it and you have, you can consciously choose to study it at that time. Okay. Or you can wait until the bullfrog is. In your environment, which might be a month. It might be the following year and then you can sensorily connect to that moment through relationship.

Tim Eaton:

It's like food. It's like fruit and it's season or something like that. It literally is like food and it's like we had a watermelon the other day and we squeezed a lime on it and put some Himalayan salt on it and I just, it was the best thing in the world. Like it was the right time

Nicolette Sowder:

that you just said it at the right time. I know. The choice as to whether what you do is not a judgment. It's a choice. People have not had sovereign choices within their education. And that's where the healing comes is knowing that you have a choice and you also have a choice to like, let your world breathe a little bit. Hey, you might want to study something that touched you that day or that week. You don't have to, but let's say you had a moment with, what did you say? The watermelon. Okay. Now that would be something I'm going to build on that. Hypothetically speaking, because it's so touching because that is the thing, practically speaking, that's going to stick.

Tim Eaton:

And like you said, it's sensory. It's very sensory. Sensory.

Nicolette Sowder:

It's emotional.

Tim Eaton:

So as you're saying this, my mind is going to like the day we live in and like how old are your, how old are your daughters?

Nicolette Sowder:

They're nine and 11.

Tim Eaton:

And so I, my kids range from 10, almost 11 to 21. And I'm just thinking the day that we live in and what we're trying to accomplish with our kids, there's a lot of things that you have to constantly reprogram. And I don't mean to use this as a dramatic term, but what are the enemies to this philosophy of living? And. Way of being like what really impedes, I have stuff in my mind, but I want to hear what you would say to that what really impedes what gets in the way of nurturing this type of connection to the rhythms of, nature and just the earth and what gets in the way of that.

Nicolette Sowder:

Fear, number one, that they won't be successful. It's the number one thing I always hear from all the parents. If you do it this way, they won't be successful. They see it as a reductive thing, instead of something that is just being a healthy part that's being added back in. That they can put anything You want to study AI? You still study AI. Nobody's saying that you can't be connected to wilder cycles and not study AI. Like we do study AI. We are, I am a technical, I used to be a technical project manager. I'm

Tim Eaton:

saying, yeah, you're not throwing the baby out.

Nicolette Sowder:

They're still going to be successful. So I think fear is so prevalent. And Yeah that's massive. And I think consumerism because we are taught, I had talked about that earlier. We are taught to look at nature as something that we go out and consume educational enjoyment, and then we come out and even some of the most nature connected parents I've known still, it's hard to get out of that mind. It's

Tim Eaton:

so ingrained in everything.

Nicolette Sowder:

Oh, ingrained.

Tim Eaton:

In

Nicolette Sowder:

all the things, I think that consumptive mindset and then paired with technology. I'm not a technophobe by any means, even though I created this like very nature connected but some could argue that the internet is the mycelium of our human creation. So I'm very open minded, but I do think if you have technology and you don't have that core connection, so it's like a chicken and the egg thing, right? If you don't have some or relational connection. You run the risk, the kids run the risk of that taking its place because it's so emotive. Even when I tech, cause I came from, I'm Jen, I'm an ex senior and I can see how me and my generation have quite the emotional connection to technology, but you can see that we didn't really know what it was going to do to us when, I'm glad I love millennials, but they got it even worse.

Tim Eaton:

Yeah.

Nicolette Sowder:

That was like full on, but yeah, I can see how that. If they, I've seen it so many times with parents who are like, my kids are addicted to video games, and what do I do now? They've created an emotional connection with that and then going back.

Tim Eaton:

Mm-Hmm.

Nicolette Sowder:

Very hard because a butterfly doesn't seem as you've made this connection with this thing. And this doesn't seem as cool, there's so much repair work.

Tim Eaton:

That's what I'm saying.

Nicolette Sowder:

I would say that this is it can be done. I think if, parents don't want you to want to take away, then there's the anger, then there's the bifurcation of the parent child relationship. So I think like parents and their children, their caretakers, like that relationship has to be the most important thing. In order to like, be able to bridge into nature, it takes some foundational relationship with the family or a caretaker.

Tim Eaton:

And that is hard to do later. It's like you said, it is possible, but it's just like when that has, when it's been like that from the beginning it's, especially when they hit the years I'll be interested to know about your experiences the next few years, because we all know it, but like you hit those years of changing hormones and, it's just, it's real, man. It's so real and it does change like we keep saying like that, that that period of time up to about 12 is just so amazing and it still is. It really is. There's cool stuff to look forward to but there's challenges that just weren't there when they were, when they When they're younger, it's just a little bit smoother that way. So can, if I can, what would be, this is probably hard to do. Cause it's hard when people ask me this, I never liked to be asked that. So this isn't very fair, but what does a typical day look like? Walk us through a day. Like what do you guys do? It's Tuesday, it's Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday. What are you guys doing?

Nicolette Sowder:

Yeah, so we wake up and we first look at the regular calendar and then we also have a big wheel that is made out of grapevine and it's into separated into four quadrants and then in between those are the midpoints. So those are just like the eight main points. That's all astronomical. It's not some other calendars are, so it's secular. This is a secular thing. And I think that's very helpful for people because it's just, it's astral, it's, Astro logic, nominal, not astrological. Although the astrological science are part of that, but I'm saying there's not a philosophy

Tim Eaton:

of astronomy that you're talking about

Nicolette Sowder:

astronomy. It is based on the exact solar dates. So then we just say to the girls, like, where are we at? Where are we at on the wheel? So they're able to orient cyclically, but also like on their regular calendar. So we start there. And we just orient our souls. Where are we at? What's been going on? And that's

Tim Eaton:

on a daily basis.

Nicolette Sowder:

Yeah, we don't always talk about where we're at emotionally. But we do say, on a daily basis we look at the wheel. Although it doesn't shift much because it's like I don't have a little dot for every single day. Yeah. Yeah. But it's just like a little reminder. So we're starting there and then we have our curriculum. So we have math that we do and that we have music music. So we're doing our things until, 1130, 1130. And then we're going to

Tim Eaton:

get up with the sun. Did you, is that like a natural,

Nicolette Sowder:

actually, they've been good about that. Like they have now found their own cycle because they were sleeping in a lot.

Tim Eaton:

Yeah.

Nicolette Sowder:

And I was like, Especially the oldest. I just let it happen.

Tim Eaton:

And needed it probably, yeah.

Nicolette Sowder:

Let it happen because, she was daydreaming a lot and she had told me like it was a bad thing. She's I don't know, I just lay there and daydream. And, bed for daydreaming. I was like, never feel bad for daydreaming. It's awesome. I was like, what are you daydreaming? Tell me everything.

Tim Eaton:

Yeah, tell me about it. The whole

Nicolette Sowder:

world, she had all these, I was like, What? This is amazing. We gotta write this down. Yeah, I was

Tim Eaton:

gonna say, now you can say, Yeah, we're gonna write

Nicolette Sowder:

a story about this. Then Thanks. We go outside for a while and get, I try to forage as much as I possibly can. So we're foraging and we're doing our outside tours. So we have animals, so we're taking care of all the animals. And then coming back in for our afternoon. Sometimes after lunch, I'll do like a, something more emergent. So what's come, what has come up in our community, what has come up on our land. And we'll go deeper into that and then do our nature journaling. So we're back outside again and the sun's dependent on the weather. We're out. Yes. What do you guys do

Tim Eaton:

for nature journaling? That's a huge part of our home education. Oh, because are

Nicolette Sowder:

you guys focused on Charlotte Mason a

Tim Eaton:

lot? That and we, and actually one of my interviews was with John Muir Laws. Do you know John Muir Laws? Oh

Nicolette Sowder:

my, really? He

Tim Eaton:

was, that was like, anyway, I, it's, it was so good. His interview was so good. I don't know he just was just because he has so much if somebody goes to the Sierra Nevadas for six years and draws every single thing really connected, so yeah, he was amazing. But

Nicolette Sowder:

we tend to do our journaling around our sit spots. So I don't know if you've heard of SIT spots. I would imagine he would have talked about that a little bit.

Tim Eaton:

I'm not, my wife might be familiar with that. I'm not though.

Nicolette Sowder:

Just finding a spot outside. It's a great way to reconnect with nature. You should find your spot and a spot you feel really connected to, or usually by a tree and you keep returning to that spot. You don't have to do it every day, but you're on a rhythm. We, I've done it like at times twice a week, and bring our nature journals and you just sit you observe it when they're a little it's only like a minute or two and then you're scaffolding that up. But then the nature journaling can come from something that you see right there. Or it's something that you're, some creative aspect of it, but really that spot is a great way to you're building that you're building a relationship.

Tim Eaton:

Oh, I love it. I love it. Yeah we, the nature of journaling is and again we're probably more systematic in the way that we do it as far as. It's a certain day. If they want to do it any other day, they can, but just so that we make sure that's a part of it. We always have that. And and they do, you typically have a spot, but your winters are pretty intense, aren't they? I grew up in Chicago and yeah. Okay. So it's, and so I just noticed that it does change in the winter.

Nicolette Sowder:

Yeah

Tim Eaton:

and we do it from the inside. We just observe something.

Nicolette Sowder:

Yeah. Nature journaling is so incredible. Oh love it. I've struggled a lot with nature journaling to, I don't know why, just is this, do all your creative ideas of this? It just is it just a nature thing. And I've really learned to just be like, there's foundational aspects of it that I think are really important to learn. And then you can just build upon that.

Tim Eaton:

It's yours. It's totally yours. Although if people want direction or, ideas, John, I would just watch John Muirlaw's videos. They're just so good and yeah, there you go. Yeah. But it's totally yours and I, and it's interesting. My oldest daughter is about 21 and she's actually gone for a a service mission for a year and a half, but she brought it with her and still, it, and it just morphs and becomes totally unique to them. So Yeah. I love that. I, oh, my, my brain's going all different places, but what would you say, like for your daughters, if somebody were to ask you and just be like, so Nicolette what is the purpose of education for your daughters? What is the outcome that you hope to see by the time they leave your home? What is your thought to that? Straight A's. I'm just kidding. I'm joking.

Nicolette Sowder:

I just want them to be able to contextualize their journey here. They need to be able to do that. And In order to be able to do that, for, since the dawn of humanity, humans have done that with nature, because, here's why, nature is doing it, and this is the mind blowing thing, nature is acting out everything that's happening to us, and it's giving us a reference point to contextualize it. For example, a tree falls. Something happens in your life. That's hard. That tree goes back into the soil and it makes the soil richer. That experience that you had, what did you learn from that? How did that, what did that, how did that change you? What do you want to do? How did that teach you about what you want to do in the future? Like we, we are missing a whole, like we are not using what's there. Because

Tim Eaton:

the lessons that are taught in nature. Yeah. Yeah.

Nicolette Sowder:

Forgotten how to read it. We don't understand. We just see flower grow. We don't understand how to actually read it.

Tim Eaton:

Yeah. The earth doesn't get mad at the tree for falling on it and then kick it and then lament it, get depressed. It just takes it, embraces it. Re replenishes the soil. I like that. And and if we, and I want to be better at that personally, that when there is something challenging in my life, that it, that I respond to it, I don't react to it, but I respond and I choose the way I'm going to learn. And yeah that's that takes, that probably takes some shifting, doesn't it?

Nicolette Sowder:

Every lesson that we want to learn can be learned, can be supported. Through nature. That is not the only place we have to learn it. Again, people are like no, but we're, but we shouldn't leave it out. That's all I'm saying. And the more you look at it, the more that you actually realize how complex the lessons can be. That's just a, that's an example that I gave because it's fairly easy for a child to let's say cicadas. That's like easy for a kid, right? You could almost take a kid almost at any age and they'll be able to like, Get the lesson. Yeah. Okay. It's coming out of its exoskeleton. It's, what's happening there. And then has there ever been a time when you felt like you just needed to

Tim Eaton:

grow out

Nicolette Sowder:

and how beautiful of a way to teach them because they're going to learn through the cicada way more than we can say words of wisdom, but words of wisdom with a cicada exoskeleton is going to land. And almost everything that you can think of, whether it's mathematics, if you want to get more analytical, um, whatever it is, the spectrum of things, if we would try to humble ourselves and understand that those lessons have been there for thousands of years, built in, and are just waiting for us to remember how to actually Call on that wisdom and lean into that wisdom, whether it's cooking, whether it's sports, whether there's, there is a parallel for every human situation, there is a parallel that is deeper than we could ever imagine. And the great minds and spirits and hearts of our, of humanity are, this, there's so much example of people who are open to that. It's just, And it's just a little bit of an amnesia situation. I'm just, my goal is to help, my kids, just stitch that back, stitch it back. We're just re, we're just gonna get, you're gonna contextualize your journey. Something happens, we're gonna, look it, there's purpose, right? Many people do not believe there is purpose. And this is what I will tell to them. I do, it doesn't matter to me whether or not, this is probably so terrible of a thing to say, but it doesn't really matter, matter to me whether or not what I believe is actually true. Okay, if I believe the tree is speaking to me, that story. Of me believing that mother, let's put it simpler. Mother nature has a lesson

Tim Eaton:

for

Nicolette Sowder:

everything. That story is going to help me more than if I don't believe that, the belief, like I want my children to believe that they can contextualize their own story and that there's people and nature there to help do that. Without that. How can you work from your own mind and your own brain to try to figure out your own story? It's so hard, or from within the human story though, because then it's almost like an echo chamber, even though we have a lot of diverse ideas, they still come from the same general construction. So I'm like, how can I use my imagination to try to get out of my own human construct in order to turn around and look and actually analyze and contextualize and enrich my own My story, the soil that I'm in.

Tim Eaton:

Yes.

Nicolette Sowder:

I think my kids are getting it like it's, but it takes time.

Tim Eaton:

And I think what I'm gathering and I tell me if I'm off by saying this, but it sounds like what you're, first of all, I love that phrase, contextualize their journey. I feel like that, that the likelihood of that occurring is just more and more exposure. To, to those cycles into those rhythms. It's not necessarily this point forum okay, it's six o'clock. Let's go outside and look at this and that. And there is probably, like you said, like there's some cycles and there's some things to map perhaps, but it's way more just an organic way of just exposure. And maybe asking questions and a, what are you noticing and what are you observing and what are you feeling and and like you said, the amnesia is like nobody listening to this is going to go, what is she talking about? It's we're totally in touch with nature no, like the and, the more that we. Advance. It's a weird thing because the more we advance, the less we realize where we're coming from. So we're actually we get a little dumber in some ways, but anyway, so I love that. I love what you're saying. Like just contextualize their journey. That's just so different when you most people are going, yeah, that all sounds a little something. I just want my kids to get a good job and get into university and those are good things but it is so stuck in this culture of what Life has become and taking us away from the roots of where we come from and what we're connected to. So that's refreshing.

Nicolette Sowder:

To be able to contextualize your life before you can have any of that stuff. Because if you get that stuff, but you don't know why and you don't know how and you don't have any relationship to it, then you're going to be really messed up once you get it. So it's not that you don't get those things. It's the foundational work about learning how to orient to your own life. Most adults do not know how they got to where they are, how they get out of it, if they want to get out of it. Why they're there. It's, they're just like there with all the anxiety that is there. But what they don't understand is they're in a cycle now, probably a hard part,

Tim Eaton:

but if

Nicolette Sowder:

they thought about it that way, they'd start to actually work with it and be able to move through it. But if you learn that from a young age, it's built

Tim Eaton:

in. Yeah. It's built in, man. That's cool.

Nicolette Sowder:

What do I need? What am I doing? What happens? I've got if I wish I had that when I was young, like when I was an undergrad, I could not contextualize anything that was happening to me. So then what actually happened was I became the victim to my own. I had no power. I was disempowered for many years. If you can't create your own narrative, if you can't root yourself in a specific story or a state or like growth pattern, you're really vulnerable to other people and to Societal stuff.

Tim Eaton:

Like you said, your powers are easily given away.

Nicolette Sowder:

Okay. I guess I'm here because of this. Someone will tell you something and you're like, yeah, I'm that's, so anyways, it's,

Tim Eaton:

no that's great

Nicolette Sowder:

for me. I'm still learning, but I appreciate like the questions and I appreciate you bringing me on to talk about some of these things that I'm still discovering myself.

Tim Eaton:

Yeah. That way, and I appreciate all your sentiment. Can I ask one final question before we wrap up? And I love that. I love how throughout that conversation really kind of, brought together the two things, what you're doing to serve families through your business and through, and I almost hate to call it a business because I feel like you're just serving families with so many resources and things you're helping them with, but what would your counsel be to, Families that are just starting out on like the homeschooling journaling journey in particular, like what and I love that idea of the framework of contextualizing that what advice would you have? What counsel when, especially when you know that somebody feels a little, like you said, vulnerable or incompetent or scared. What do you tell them?

Nicolette Sowder:

If they're young children, look at the Nordic actual data, because they're gonna get, if they look at the data, like the Finnish schools, seven and under is usually just play. And I direct people to the data because that makes people feel better.

Tim Eaton:

Yes,

Nicolette Sowder:

it's you. You essentially have seven years to figure it out. That's quite a long time. If you can quell your internal fears, and you can rejoin a little and look at what happened in the traditional school and get a little bit of confidence.

Tim Eaton:

Yes,

Nicolette Sowder:

at least five and under. Please play. So first, so that's the first thing I'd say. I buy some people some time. You have time.

Tim Eaton:

Yes.

Nicolette Sowder:

It's amazing. Let them heal, let them play. Play is how you grow. There's so much research, so many resources around play being the work of childhood. It's not my favorite. And

Tim Eaton:

the win of that is that the, as the parent deconstructs, like you were saying before, deconstructs and de schools, the kid is just enjoying Nature and life and like you said, just playing and learning through all that. So anyway, carry on

Nicolette Sowder:

learning. If you're a little bit nervous and get a reading curriculum that focuses on, like not just memorization, and just do tons of research around read alouds. Read aloud, that the data is there., suddenly you've got it. You're reading, you're playing, you're you are, Waldorf, look at Waldorf. Because Waldorf is all if that, then you can get a rhythm. Because I know that makes people very nervous too. Then you have a rhythm, you feel a little bit in control, you don't feel like things are, yeah, your confidence

Tim Eaton:

is building

Nicolette Sowder:

your confidence. It's like you said,

Tim Eaton:

your trust is increasing incrementally.

Nicolette Sowder:

Exactly. And then do your re your rejoining through, and then all of a sudden you're back, your nature's got, now you've got mother nature on your side. And so now you're starting to feel confident and then you can start exploring curriculum. What I do, this is a really solid piece of advice that has helped me a lot. I print out my state standards. And I just have them every year I have the state standards. So I just, I know like we're in a society, I don't want to give my kids, like if they want to go to college, they can totally go to college. So I'm always checking what we're doing every year against the state standards. And every state is different. Sometimes you have to do a lot more like in Michigan, we don't have to report. So you start your reports, I think, I don't know, sometimes it's earlier, sometimes it's later. State

Tim Eaton:

to state and province to province. Yep.

Nicolette Sowder:

Just take your state curriculum and state standards. And then you're just, and then you can start experimenting with different curriculums. But you go into find a philosophy, a Facebook group, Facebook groups have been incredible. Like it's a way for you to feel like they're. So many homeschoolers.

Tim Eaton:

Yeah.

Nicolette Sowder:

Yes. And that curriculum question has been asked a million times, do I want a Nature-based curriculum? I want a new loose I, what's my best planner? All those questions will be answered. So I would say I also joined as A-H-D-S-L.

Tim Eaton:

S-L-D-A-H-S-L-D-A.

Nicolette Sowder:

I've joined them just to have some home

Tim Eaton:

Homeschool Legal Defense Association. They're

Nicolette Sowder:

amazing resource. And I've joined them. I have a membership there, yearly membership. And it just feels like I've got my bases covered there like legally and their resources are all like, they will speak to the absolute baseline roots of anything that you could ever want to know. If you want the nitty gritty, you're that type of person. That's going to be where you start. And the

Tim Eaton:

cool thing about them is they know the public side too, because they have to know what they're up, not up against. I don't want to say, but they have to know what is acceptable. And so they know both sides so well, and that same thing in Canada and the same thing with the NHGRI. So that those are a couple of places, but anyway.

Nicolette Sowder:

All brainers. And then the last thing that I would say is take a big breath because guess what? It's all changing. I write down when I get nervous about the societal pressures. I have a little book where I wrote down my statements and the one being in tech, I laugh because what we think is happening with AI, we can't even imagine. It is so much beyond what, where we all perceive it to be. And so our, what we think we're, we just have a limited perception as adults. It's okay. It is going to be unbelievable, the changes, and as homeschoolers, we've got an edge on that because we're more flexible, we're more open, we're more responsive, and we can start putting in some of those things that they're not even talking about in school. I'm like, how can you not be talking about this? This is so fundamental. It's like not teaching a kid to know their ABCs at this point. So take a breath. It's changing. And that's nature. Like nature changes all the time. Another lesson.

Tim Eaton:

That is such a, that is such a great ending. I love that. It's just like the idea, take a breath cause it's changing. That's just, I should just end every episode with that

Nicolette Sowder:

line. We're in the good, we're in the river where we're able to like navigate a lot easier. So I'm excited for all the homeschoolers right now, more than I think I've ever been.

Tim Eaton:

It's booming.

Nicolette Sowder:

It's booming.

Tim Eaton:

People

Nicolette Sowder:

know instinctively that they have to get more flexible and we're facing a very, the future we're facing is very unknown.

Tim Eaton:

This has been an amazing conversation. I really appreciate you taking time. This has been Nicolette Sauter. Nicolette, I'll just give you the final word. Anything you want to say as we part?

Nicolette Sowder:

Just so much gratitude. Thank you. And thanks to everybody out there who is learning how to trust themselves, learning how to trust their children. It's really inspiring.

Tim Eaton:

Oh, thank you so much. I appreciate that. Have a great rest of your day.

Nicolette Sowder:

You too. Thank you.

Bye bye. That wraps up another edition of This Golden Hour podcast. If you haven't done so already, I would totally appreciate it if you would take a minute and give us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It helps out a lot. And if you've done that already, thank you much. Please consider sharing this show with friends and family members that you think would get something out of it. And thank you for listening and for your support. I'm your host, Tim Eaton. Until next time, remember to cherish this golden hour with your children and family.