Episode 171 with Julie Schultz

Homeschooling Insights and Embracing Nature’s Classroom

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SHOW TRANSCRIPT:

171 CURRICULUM GINNY AND JULIE

Ginny Yurich Welcome to 1000 Hours Outside five. Yes. My name is Ginny Yurich and the founder of 1000 Hours Outside. And you are going to be so thrilled to know that Julie Schultz is back again. Welcome.

Julie Schultz This is what you say. I'm basically here. Thanks for having me or something.

Julie Schultz I'm glad to be here.

Julie Schultz Thanks for having me. Ginny, do your lines for the whole thing. Well, that worked out well.

Julie Schultz We got to start over.

Ginny Yurich No, we're not starting over. It's already going. We can't start over. It's going. People are thrilled to have you, so I can tell you who Julie is. Julie is a mom of eight and she has homeschooled all of her children for have already graduated for us at home. And together we have written a curriculum that is probably primarily for home schoolers, but could be use really for anyone. It could be used for nature schools, it could be used for charter schools, it could be used for people who just want to further their learning. And they love nature and they want to learn more about it. So it's called ADD the wonder Nature curriculum. And what it is is it's a curriculum that can be used multi-age, which is really important. Dr. Peter Gray talks about this quite a bit there multi-age is so important and so we're aiming to get as much multi-age experience throughout childhood as we possibly can. So in a homeschool environment, this works out really well. Multi-age It is cross curricular, which means that math, history, science, geography, language, career, study, biography, history, all of these things are woven together in a cohesive way. So that makes it easier to remember. It's fascinating because we we're creative and we're when our interest is piqued, then we learn easier, we learn more, and we tend to remember those things for a lot longer of a period of time. And it is affordable. We each have large families. So for this curriculum, you just buy one per family. That's all you need. And all the kids, they'll use a notebook or a nature journal, maybe a little bit of both. And at the end of the school year, then they each have this really nice keepsake of a nature journal that they can keep in. It can serve as your portfolio. If you live in a state that requires that for homeschooling or you just keep it for your own memories and it's your special to see the growth in the learning along the way. So Julia's here because it is the summer and we're heading into a new school year and a lot of people are up in the air about what they're going to do for education and trying to figure out what to do for this coming year. And so we're talking about homeschooling some. When you talking about this curriculum and how we weave it into our day to day life, that was a lot of the questions that we got asked at the conferences that we were just at in the spring. We were at quite a bit of conferences together, and so we got to talk with a lot of you and answer questions and maybe are going to learn something today too.

Julie Schultz I think so.

Ginny Yurich I think so. So what we're going to do is walk through sort of a day in the life. You can even maybe just start with some of your thoughts on homeschooling. You were doing it for a long time.

Julie Schultz Yeah. So when we first started homeschooling, my oldest is 24 and then my next oldest is 23. So they were able to do a lot together and they were like the traditional easy kid, like they would do the workbooks. They were very happy, all the things like that. And then I got to my third born and he was different and he was later diagnosed with dyslexia, but he did not learn the workbook way and it was really hard. I had no idea what to do. And so one day I said, Luke, what do you want to learn about? And he chose something. And that's how unit studies were born into our family. He eventually did learn to read and he does all the things and he's thriving now. But I couldn't do a separate curriculum for each child. We would be schooling for 12 hours a day if I did that. And I've tried. I have definitely tried because I really thought that was the only way to ever learn. And if my kid was going to be successful, they had to do the traditional school method.

Ginny Yurich It's like they had to learn the second grade things in second grade. Yes, I'm in the third grade things, but that stuff is so arbitrary. I think from being a teacher that was eye opening for me to realize this stuff is seems like it's coming out of thin air. It's, you know, it works for a systematic approach. It's needed. It's needed if you're trying to move 25 kids through this stage of growth and learning all together, all sort of at the same time, that's what you have to do. And then you move. They go on to a new teacher. So you have to have that systematic approach. But if your kids are home or you have maybe a hybrid learning situation, it doesn't matter if your kid learned something at seven or ten or 15. If they learn it, they learn it. It doesn't necessarily matter when. And there's some scaffolding involved in math and maybe some scaffolding involved in some grammar and things like that. But for the most part, you learn what you learn when you learn it. And if you can have this full basis of information going into adulthood, you can more easily join into conversation. You just have these jumping off point that you already know about something or you've been exposed to it. So it makes it easier to learn the other things, but it doesn't necessarily matter when. And in fact I think it's super important heading into. The school year to remind people that some kids learn to read when they're three and some kids learn to read when they're 12. And every span in between is a normal time frame to learn how to read. And so we don't have to rush and it doesn't have to look the same for every single child.

Julie Schultz But the fear is they're right. And the fear was always there for me. I had three kids that didn't learn to read till ten. Only one of them was dyslexic. The other ones just didn't learn to read until they were ten. But I was in panic mode all the time. I mean, were my kids going to be able to get a job and have a family and be productive? And I would live in fear all the time. So even though my natural bent was towards learning in a cohesive way through unit studies, I was constantly battling that fear until my kids started graduating.

Ginny Yurich Wow, that's a long time to live.

Julie Schultz It was a long time. And I want people to know like, it's my passion. You do not have to live with that fear. My kids learned very gently and we did not spend 12 hours a day doing school. It was two or three even in high school. And my first two went to college and they did great. And then my next two went to trade school and college and they did great. My fourth born just finished his first year of college with a 4.0. And grades don't mean everything to me. I just share this because he's never taken a formal test in his life until he got to college. And now he's in engineering school with a 4.0 because he learned cool things and he wants to continue learning cool things. So he's constantly bringing me cool facts and things like that because he learned to love to learn.

Ginny Yurich MM Yeah, that's an incredible story. That's what people love to hear about the moves, right? Because people are nervous and they don't want to mess their kids up. But it is important to know that just because someone put something in a second grade curriculum doesn't mean that this has to be learned in second grade. And so we really can learn in a multi-age way. And if you want to learn more about that, Dr. Peter Gray, who wrote Free to Learn, and he's written many other books as well. He writes for Psychology Today. He says it's one of the most important things that should happen in childhood is that kids should have multi-age experiences. And so in our situation, we're also aiming to spend, obviously, a lot of time outside because the research is very clear that free play outside, free play with friends, multi-age, that all of those things contribute to whole self-development. So, you know, some people say, look, we got the academics down and if your kid is in school for 7 hours a day or if they're doing seat work for 2 to 3 hours, that's enough. That's enough. They need to have this time to grow as an as a person. And so when they're outside and they're moving and they're getting enormous, complex movement that's helping their brain grow, obviously people will listen to this podcast. They're hearing this all the time, but it's helping their physical bodies. You know, it's helping the very function of their brain. It's helping them emotionally, it's helping all their social skills. It's helping them spiritually. If that's something that you're interested in. And our curriculum does come with the free devotionals that are available actually to anyone, you don't even have to buy the curriculum to get the devotionals. Those are on our website, 1000 hours outside dot com for free to download. And there's devotionals that go with each unit if that's something that a family is interested in. But we wanted to have time for that and we really want to have a lot of time for community and within our homeschool life, we really have some strong community and spend a lot of time together. All the siblings are parents and things like that. And so we are also looking for kind of, like you said, a way to learn in a way that's not so segmented because then it's faster.

Julie Schultz Much faster and you remember more. I mean, if I'm learning about sunflowers, which we're going to talk a little bit about today, and I learned that the sunflower was native to North America and that when the Spanish came to settle or explore North America, they found these sunflowers and they were fascinated by them. So they filled their pockets with seeds, took them back to Europe. I will forever remember that. So in these unique studies, then you're going to learn a little bit about the Spanish exploration. Our family has started. We we've always kept a timeline, but it was only for history curriculum. Like you can only keep this timeline for the history curriculum. But now we've started to put these cool history points on the timeline and it's so cool. My kids remember that way.

Ginny Yurich MM Yeah. And then even when you're doing it this cohesively as a family or some people do it as a major group, and then you're learning just through conversation, through the interaction with other people. If they're painting their picture of sunflowers, that's trying to sort of emulate something that Van Gogh did, you know, you're seeing theirs and you're seeing yours as well. And so it's not just, you know, just you one person interacting with you, you're one set of material. It's you interacting with several people. And I know in particular with the sunflowers unit, you did that one with another family.

Julie Schultz We did. And it was really, really cool. And you can do this with other families. We don't do every day with another family. We'll pick maybe two or three days out of the day, you know. It and do it together because we did do the Van Gogh Day together. We studied different artists that peanuts sunflowers because sunflowers are the happy flower. We learned about the artists. And then we were able to recreate a Van Gogh painting and it was so cool and the kids were super into it, and it sparked an interest in one of my kids to study art. And we're not an artsy family, so I thought it was fascinating. But we learned all about art because of sunflowers.

Ginny Yurich And that is another thing, too, about things that are fascinating and creativity that is going to spark interest in other areas. It's going to expose kids to a lot of different areas of study so that they can learn what they like and what causes them to light up and they can go down their own rabbit holes. And so these unit studies we tend to talk about them in particular are meant to last two weeks. But in our family and in your family too, they often last longer than two weeks just because there are a lot of rabbit holes. And it's fun to learn in context. And if there's something that interests our family, then we're going to spend a little bit more time on that. Or we might go on a field trip or something like that to further the learning. It's learning in a hands on way. So let's just talk about the day to day. So this is a big thing with homeschooling and when people are sort of sorting that through in their minds, what is their homeschool day going to look like? And I think it's good to have a rhythm. I think it helps. I think your rhythm can change season to season, week to week, even. You can try different things, but having a rhythm helps everyone from the oldest member of the family to the youngest to kind of know what to expect. It helps pull out a little bit of the chaos and you know, we never have. I mean, occasionally the kids don't want to do the kids want to do what they want to do, but because it doesn't take a super long time and because we have a rhythm, they know what to expect and there's not this butting of heads. That's kind of what I thought homeschool would be like, didn't you?

Julie Schultz Oh, yeah.

Ginny Yurich Because, like, you know, because when you're sitting in a classroom at in a school day, you're like, I don't want to be here. Kids are causing problems. They're throwing things at the teacher. You know, you're just like, you're done because but it's so long. And in this case, this and that's what I thought might happen at home. I'm going to be spitballs coming my way, throw things. No, no, No one's ever thrown anything at me. See.

Julie Schultz Because you have this rhythm.

Ginny Yurich And everyone sort of knows what to expect. And I think because we're not co-opting so much of their time, they have a lot of freedom that this rhythmic way of doing schooling, it works. It works for everyone.

Julie Schultz Yep. And we've had the same rhythm almost our entire homeschool journey. And I think this is our I don't know, my oldest is almost 25 and he's never been in school. So however long that is like 19 or 20 years, we've kind of had the same rhythm even in the years that I thought we needed to do school at home instead of homeschooling. And it always starts with morning time for us. My kids know when they get up. Sometimes we don't even eat breakfast. First we just sit and we read whatever books we're reading. Usually one read aloud and then we watch this cute little kids news thing for 10 minutes.

Ginny Yurich We love that. That's world class news. Yes, that's a one way to start the day.

Julie Schultz It's a great way.

Ginny Yurich And we really like so much used to.

Julie Schultz My family is very conversational, so I can say that that's been the best part of our homeschool years. Sometimes our morning time last two or 3 hours, it often doesn't. And if it does, sometimes we're done with school after that, and that's been okay because they've learned so much. But the daily rhythm usually is our morning time, and then they do math and language arts. With this curriculum, we add math and language arts. That's it. We do. We have history throughout occasionally. Sometimes we watch videos on history. Sometimes our read aloud are historical fiction, and we are able to plot those things on timelines and mood.

Ginny Yurich Is we that in circumstantially kind of where it fits? Yeah, based on interest maybe, or different things like that.

Julie Schultz Because Jenny can tell you it does not take that long to learn a subject. It really doesn't. And I've really learned that I don't do this unit study with my high schooler fully. But now there are certain topics that she'll sit with us and learn more about, especially if we're doing a trip like to see the caves or something. She will do that with us and she's she likes it. It's great. So we do our morning time and then math, language, arts, and we usually sit at the table for that. And that doesn't take long either. For context, my kids are second grade, third grade, sixth grade, and then we go right into our unit study and it takes less than an hour. So we're reading will read together and we do it all together, all at the table. My oldest one can do a lot of research on his own, but it's supervised, which is great. And then my younger ones, they learn how to research. I think it's super important for kids to learn how to research. I didn't want my kids regurgitating information on a test. I'd much rather have them learn something and then draw it in their nature journal. And then bullet. Like five cool facts about the thing that they just journaled and they learn that way and they revisit their nature journals so much. And we're not beautiful nature journals and you don't have to be. I would love to be, but we are not. We are pretty bad at it, but it's still things that they remember. And you know, after that we're outside because these unit studies usually have a nature challenge every day and they're easy. You don't have to go to some remote place to do them. You can do them in your backyard or you can do them in the woods. You can do them wherever you want. And our day is done after that. The rest of the day is spent being together or them just playing outside or doing Legos or anything they want. So it's like a great 2 to 3 a day.

Ginny Yurich Yeah. And it's so important, I think now more than ever. I think for a while there was really such an emphasis on the stem way of life and how necessary that was. And I felt a little bit more like you had to be in a box and you would have lived through that. You know, they, you would have been home going through that. But even just in the past 3 to 4 years, it's becoming so apparent that, you know, there's a lot of books about it, about how the job market is really changing. And so we want our kids to be flexible. We want them to have quick, adaptable minds. They need to have grit, they need to have resilience, they need to be creative. And these types of skills, they need to be really good in social situations. These type of skills arise not from sitting at a desk, but from having their own time to explore and do things. And the school day, you know, it's 70 hours. A lot of times that's taking up the best of the day, the best part of the day, and then homework. My goodness. I mean, it's going younger and younger. I mean, you hear about first graders and 90 minutes of homework. And I think, my goodness, if they've already been in a city that's seated school environment for 7 hours, that's enough. And in fact, John Taylor got to who was a public school educator and one that won awards in New York, of all places. There's so many teachers in New York. And he won New York State Teacher of the year and possibly twice. And he's passed on in the past couple of years. But he said that there's ample research that it takes less than 100 hours for kids to reach functional literacy. And by that, he means that they could learn anything that they wanted to know, that they would have enough reading, writing and math skills to learn anything from that point 100 hours less than some days, he says. Less than 50, so less than 50 contact hours at the right stage.

Julie Schultz You're like a.

Ginny Yurich Four year old is not going to learn enough math that they need a reading that they need to know. But maybe if they're nine, they're at the spot where if you really put in some time a week or two, they're going to be at a place where they could learn anything. And there's millions of things of value to study. And so we really don't need quite that much time. It's sort of ingrained in society that for whatever reason, that they need this thousands and thousands of hours, But truly, and especially for the world that's coming, I think they do need a lot of time to be able to work through their boredom. So what we were looking for was we were looking for a curriculum that was multi-age. I want to be able to do it all together. And in our family, our high schooler does join in because it is just an hour. And so it's fine for him to sit with the family. We're in a different back because your oldest is in your oldest of all your kids. Right. So it's just different depending on the stage that you're in. It probably will change as our kids move through. But currently our oldest is kind of part of our pack of five, and so it's just an hour. So he'll sit through and then it's multi-age. And then we're learning all together these things that cross over and we talk about them. So we'll talk about the mushrooms. I mean, we're outside. We've been outside for 10000 hours in the past decade. And of course, I would say, you know, mushrooms exist and we've seen them here or there, but since we've done the mushrooms unit, then we all notice them and everyone notices them more. And you almost think like, did all these mushrooms grow since I did the mushrooms? And I mean, you know, they were there before, but we're noticing and everyone's pointing out the sky. And so it's something that's also bringing us together as a family unit, a way to bind us together because we're learning a lot of the same things that are in context within our day to day lives. Like. So, for example, we went on a big trip for our anniversary and there was signage at the place. You got to go snorkeling and it was talking about endemic species that were right in that right area where we were snorkeling. We learned about endemic species in our curriculum, all of us, we'd all learned about it. And so then we get to have that conversation because it wasn't like, well, the third grader was learning about that and the sixth grader was learning about it. She was like, No, we all got to learn about endemic species, so then we all got to have a conversation and it unites us as a family. So it is multi-age, it's cross regular, it's fascinating, and it's affordable, just one per family. And you don't have to get one book for everyone. We were really that was I mean, that was really important to us. Since we have large families and know that a lot of times in homeschool situations we're dealing with budgets and we're dealing with we're having to pay for all the things, you know, all the meals and all the different parts of it. And so that was an important thing for us. So what we thought about doing was walking through one of the units. Now there's 15 units in year one, 15 units, each one is. Two weeks. Could last. You three could last a month. It depends on how fast or how slow you want to go. We recommend for ages 6 to 14 or 15. Younger kids can join up. Older kids can join down. But if you just had a four and a two year old, this isn't the time. You're not quite there yet. Keep playing, keep bake and keep going at your play, though. This is not the right time to do it. But if you had an eight, a seven and a four year old, then do it together. If you just have a 19 year old or an 18 year old, nope, like you're past this. You could do it for fun. You could do one of them if you go on a vacation. But that's not the right age either. So we talk about 6 to 14 or 15 is the target age. You're going to add on math. We like math. You see, you've done different kinds of math for different kids. You're going to add in math, some language arts, but there is a lot of writing and language and reading and vocabulary and things like that in the curriculum as well. But we're going to go through one of the two week units so that someone could get a sense of.

Julie Schultz How it works.

Ginny Yurich What yeah, what it's going to be like.

Julie Schultz So they're broken down into week one week to total of eight days. There is a whole list, at least ten of recommended book lists. You don't have to use any of those, but they're so good. So we try to get all of them. All of these books have been found at my local library, so that helps. And I don't choose which books we read. We read one or two a day. I lay them out for my kids and have them choose, and it doesn't matter what order you go in. So that was great. And then whatever supplies you need and we try to make them minimal supplies, because if I see a whole list of supplies, I'm not doing those things.

Ginny Yurich Oh, absolutely. So in this particular one in Sunflower. So when you say each week is four days, so it's a monday to a Thursday, a lot of times people have on Friday, they may have co-op, you may have a field trip day, you just have a ketchup day or maybe your maybe your copter is Wednesday. So it's a four day week to 40 weeks. It just gives you a little bit of space in there. We're all about space. And the supplies list for this one is only three long, Right. So which is great is when you need a sunflower that you're going to dissect. So they had those for us. They had them at the grocery store. We've grown some of our own. You get them at a farmer's market, you need a magnifying glass and then you need a canvas for painting. And so those are the supplies for the whole two weeks. It's not anything that is going to blow your budget. And it's also a lot of times it's stuff you might have on hand or it's easy to get.

Julie Schultz Yeah, and some of them are longer than that, but not much longer. So day one is usually an overview of the topic. All of these are nature topics. So for sunflowers, we're doing an overview of sunflowers. There's a lot of cool vocabulary woven in. I'm a big believer that I just use vocabulary in everyday life and then define it right there. So we don't have vocabulary quizzes or anything. They just learn the words right in context, which we love. You'll take a lot of breaks for sketching or writing things down, but if your child's little just have them do it orally. We do that a lot, actually. My kids actually write very little. We learn the differences between heirloom plants and non heirloom plants. I never learned that growing up and it's kind of fascinating and how to pass seeds down to people, which was super cool. I loved that. And I mean, this goes on and on. We have little nature challenges. One of these is like, go and find a sunflower. So you're going to dissect it tomorrow. We couldn't find a sunflower in our backyard, so we went to the grocery store. There's a lot of geography woven in. One thing that all my college students said was that people don't know geography like to the point that they don't know there's seven continents.

Ginny Yurich Jimmy Yeah, it's tricky. I mean, that's is the thing. It's like, you know, you sit in school for so long, you know, so if they're in college, they've sent school for 15000 hours and they get to college and they don't know the seven continents, and then they're like, well, where did that time go? What was everyone.

Julie Schultz Doing for.

Ginny Yurich 15000 hours? And it makes it harder to join into conversation, I think, if you don't have a baseline of information. So, Josh, he's got a really good memory and he can join in on any conversation, like any time people will be talking about whatever. And I'll be like, how do you insurance having that conversation? But he just has this really large base of cohesive information in his mind and he can join in on different conversations. So it's important to know where things are and where things are located. This one talks about I don't know if you've gotten there yet, but where the leaves are placed on the on the stems yet. And maybe you haven't gotten there yet. Oh, it's coming. Okay. I know. I jumped.

Julie Schultz I jumped.

Ginny Yurich Okay. So day one, one hour is talking about the overview of sunflowers. You're talking about circadian rhythm. I mean, sunflowers are fascinating. Fascinating that they completely turn to see the sun and a really cool thing to study. And it's one of those things that all of these nature topics are things that like clouds or caves. They're things that are everywhere. Maybe you don't have a massive cave system near you, but you know, everyone can see clouds and everyone has seen a cave or. You know, you know, if a cave is not something that's really obscure. Same with sunflowers. If it's the right season, you're going to be driving through your town and people have grown them. And so then you start to notice them more that they come. I mean, I thought really up until we started gardening, I guess I would have thought that all sunflowers were yellow.

Julie Schultz Mm. No, they're so. And there's purple.

Ginny Yurich I mean yeah.

Julie Schultz He on one.

Ginny Yurich Yeah. And then you start to notice all of the different varieties of them. And observation is a great skill to. And so what this has helped our family do is to become better observers because when you're learning about something, then you notice it more.

Julie Schultz Mm hmm. So this is the one we did with another family. And Jenny was talking about the leaf placement, which is called Fellow Taxi, and that's the arrangement of leaves and the stock or stem of the plant. And they can be alternately arranged opposite all sorts of things. But then we went on a nature hike and we were not even searching for this. It was like a just a general nature hike through the woods for fun. And this little five or six year old, he found every single one of those.

Ginny Yurich Wow.

Julie Schultz And he's like, look, it's what we learned. And I think that's so cool.

Ginny Yurich I mean, I have never thought to look. I guess I wouldn't have even thought that there were varieties. But on a stem, the leaves can be right next to each other and they can be alternating on different sides. They can be in little clumps. And I would have never thought to look at that. And they all have different names, but once you learn it, then you start to notice it when you're out and about. And it does make your day to day hikes because sometimes I'll say people say, well, hikes, you know, they can get a little boring. But when you have these different pieces of information, there's more to look for and there's more to engage with because you have this foundational information. And I think it's fun. Like, if you ever want to hike or walk and you're with someone that knows things, they're like the most popular person.

Julie Schultz Yeah.

Ginny Yurich Mm hmm. If they know what kind of butterfly that was or they know this and you're like, Oh, because, you know, I feel like I would go on hikes. I'm like, I don't really know anything, you know? But now, now we know more and.

Julie Schultz You could know everything if you did the add the Wonder Nature.

Julie Schultz Curriculum.

Ginny Yurich Yes. Yes. I mean, it is interesting, though, because it's all around us. These are the things that are all around us. So it makes it easy to jump into those situations and to be able to engage in new ways.

Julie Schultz Yeah. So this nature challenge was go on a nature hike and try to find plants that fit in all of these categories. And you know what? Maybe your yard doesn't have all those categories. That's totally fine because they will see it in the future and there they'll remember. It's kind of cool and it is true. They will notice everything and your nature hikes will take a lot longer. That's the warning because they will notice everything you have studied. So then day three is all the sunflower varieties. Like Jenny said, she only thought there were yellow ones. Nope, there was.

Ginny Yurich Time and I would have thought they were all tall. But there's the teddy bear sunflowers that are shorter and they're so cute. We grew Mexican sunflowers last year and those are red and they're tall, but they're they're way smaller, like the, you know, the diameter across. And then there's the tight end. I mean, there's so many different types of sunflowers. And I think that's a fun thing to to open a child's eyes to the variety, the wonder that's in the world around us. Right. I mean, I think if there was only one type of sunflower, that would be really cool. Yeah, but the fact is, is there are so many different types and this just exposes them to a few different types and even the seeds are different. So that's a cool thing. The seed from one sunflower to the next type, they look different so you can identify those. And as you're dissecting, you see how many seeds there are. But from one to the next, they're different depending on the variety. And so I love learning about the I mean, this is a big thing in nature that there's not just one type of fish or one type of tree or one type of summer. There's so many. And they're learning that through this as well.

Julie Schultz And you can eat the whole sunflower.

Ginny Yurich You can eat the whole.

Julie Schultz Entire.

Ginny Yurich Thing. I've seen it. I've seen people grilling up the sunflower head.

Julie Schultz My kids tried it all. And we learn like on day four, it's sunflower uses. And some of this information isn't anything they would learn in school, but it's just super fun. We learned that sunflower seeds started to be eaten in the 1860s. In 1926, there was a grocery store in California that began roasting and selling their sunflower seeds, and this eventually became the David brand of sunflower seeds. And I know if you're in the United States, you've seen them there in every grocery store checkout lane.

Ginny Yurich So what was a year is 1926. So, I mean, this has not even been a hundred years. Yeah. So this is another interesting thing. And we were talking about this with clouds. Clouds is one of the units that the classifications of clouds didn't come about until 1802. And I would have thought that people have been studying clouds and naming clouds. These names are hundreds of thousands of years old. See? And the same thing with eating sunflower seeds, roasting and selling them and consuming them and all those types of things that people have been doing this forever. But no, it's just been 100 less than a hundred years that stores started doing it.

Julie Schultz And so now we would take this now. And write that on our history timeline. I mean, it's kind of useless history, but it makes the connection in their brain. And then there's another piece of useless history. But I thought this was super cool and it happened in 1968, which was not that long ago. A famous baseball player, Reggie Jackson, started chewing sunflower seeds during his baseball games because in 1980, sunflower seeds were banned from Major League Baseball are not sunflower seeds. Tobacco. Sunflower seeds would not be banned. Tobacco, they realized.

Ginny Yurich Was banned, so they switched to something else. Seeds.

Julie Schultz So, I mean, that's cool. I'm adding that to our timeline.

Ginny Yurich Mm hmm. And that's a really good connection point. And I've got a kid that likes sports, that likes baseball. Yeah. And, you know, like, you go and they people are spitting out they're always spitting out the kissing part of it, Right? And then they're eating sunflower seeds and so they're all spit on the ground. Yeah. And so that's just the interesting thing.

Julie Schultz It's very cool. We learn all about sunflower dyes. They have the opportunity to make a dye out of sunflowers. And then they learned about how so many birds love sunflower seeds. It's like the universal bird food. So we did it this year. We filled a bird feeder with just sunflower seeds and then a bird feeder with just like the mix of seeds. And the sunflower seeds were gone every other day. Wow. But the cool thing about that is I've tried to plant sunflowers for my entire life and they never grow. And I have about 40 sunflowers growing at the bottom of this bird feeder because the birds planted them and the birds know how to plant.

Ginny Yurich They can be tricky to grow because they get eaten. Things do they get eaten at they're you know, they're once they've sprouted, sometimes they get eaten. And the sunflower seeds help keep birds warm in the winter. There's something about the whales in them and just the unique way that they're made and it's really cool. You ha you'd harvest it right before the winter comes and you would have, you know, you plant one seed and you just are getting like thousands and it's very it's unbelievable. So we're actually already into week two here and we're just really it's a it's a rough overview, but you can start to see how it's cohesive and it all weaves together so that you are learning all sorts of things through the study of one topic. So you know, you've done week one, you've learned about sunflowers, you learned all these different things that you could apply in other areas of life, like so the leaf placement, for example, you're going to see that no matter if it's on a sunflower or any type of plant, you can take that into other areas of life. So we're into week two.

Julie Schultz Which is history, and we already touched on this Spanish and we get into history more with Ukraine because it's the Ukrainian national flower, which is super cool because remember, it was only in North America until the Spanish took it over to Europe, which was really neat. It's also the state flower of Kansas. We try to weave little country and state studies in here kind of quickly, but I think it's neat. I don't live in Kansas. Ginny doesn't live in Kansas, but we know where Kansas is now because we learned about Kansas and we put fun facts in here too. So when we did the Kansas study, we do the normal things like the bird and the fog and the state animal. But we also learn that Wichita, Kansas, is home to the first airplane factory. We learned there's a grasshopper church there because a church was in the process of building and there was a grasshopper plague and they were like, Forget it. We're just putting the foundation over the grasshoppers. We learn that helium was discovered there, so my kids would be like, What's helium? And then we learn about helium.

Ginny Yurich Sure. Yeah, it's super interesting. And then from that, you learn a little bit about your own state, which that would be a part of. Most people's curriculum, you know, where you're learning more. Like in our case, it would be Michigan history and Michigan, you know, the state bird and state flower and that type of thing. So it starts by learning about Kansas, finding it on the map, you know, learning what the capital is and then talking about your own state. What are some interesting things about your own state? So it all weaves together and you just end up with a lot more information than if you just learned about Michigan. I mean, we only learned about Michigan.

Julie Schultz Yeah, we.

Ginny Yurich Only there Michigan history. We only learned and I don't remember learning about Kansas, but it's cool to know that Kansas is the Sunflower State and that just helps you to know more about that particular. So I won't forget that you won't.

Julie Schultz Forget that it's illegal to sing the alphabet song on the streets of Topeka and.

Ginny Yurich They have all those funny little It's.

Julie Schultz Actually a fact.

Ginny Yurich I love learning all those funny laws. Those are fun. But then it makes you think about your own place. Where do you live? Maybe you don't live in the U.S., maybe you live in another spot. And so you start to learn about do you have it, you know, a reptile that represent your area or a tree or a flower or something like that. So Kansas is the Sunflower State.

Julie Schultz School and it has it's home to the most civil war casualties. So when we did sunflowers, my kids are like, what's the Civil War? I mean, they're second and third grade. They don't know. But we were able to write that on the timeline and learn a tiny bit about it, because I think it's about exposure too, right?

Ginny Yurich Yeah. So who would think that, okay, when you learn about Kansas, then you learn that fact about the Civil War and you're learning about Kansas. Because we're talking about sunflowers and all weaves together and then they start to have these this basis of information. And then when they learn about the Civil War later, they've already learned about it once in a cohesive way. And so they have something to connect that new knowledge to. Kansas is the windiest. There's a windiest city in America. Anybody lives in Dodge City, send us a message. We want to hear from you. That sounds interesting.

Julie Schultz And shooting rabbits from a motorboat is illegal here.

Ginny Yurich Yeah, definitely.

Julie Schultz Don't do that. Don't do that. You'll end up in jail.

Ginny Yurich This is a fun way to start the week.

Julie Schultz It's you. It's super fun owning.

Ginny Yurich About Kansas and learning about your own.

Julie Schultz State and education and learning is not linear. And I've learned that over the past 20 years. I mean, you think your kids are going to learn this and then this and then this and are like on a line, like on a timeline or is this like a web? Yeah, we're learning all sorts of things are all sorts of times. And they don't need to learn all about the Civil War in second or third grade, but they can learn a little bit about it.

Ginny Yurich And it yeah, I mean, that's like how our brains are. Our brains are these massive webs. They're not like straight lines, they're not linear. And so I think this is a fun way to learn about our world.

Julie Schultz Now we're up to day six, which is Jenny's expertise. Jenny talked about this, and I was like, Why? She's like, you know, the Fibonacci sequence? And I'm like, What?

Ginny Yurich But isn't it interesting? Here we are grown up raising kids and there's things that we've never heard of were learned in the Fibonacci sequence, in the golden ratio. There's ways that things grow in nature. That's the optimal way for them to grow. So the way that the sunflower seeds are arrayed within the head of a sunflower is the optimal way for them to get the most sunlight and the Fibonacci sequence. This spiral is seen everywhere. It's seen in the Milky Way, it's seen in an embryo, it's seen in a shell, it's seen in a pinecone. So through Fibonacci, then you're also learning history, you're learning geography, you're learning math, and it's real world math. And I think it makes math for those that are maybe a little more math averse, it makes it more exciting and more accessible to see like, Oh, these concepts in math are all around us all the time. Even within the stars in the sky, down to the seashore you might find at the beach.

Julie Schultz This was fascinating. When we learned about the Fibonacci sequence, it was super fascinating. I had never heard of it before and now I see it in everything. And at the end of this unit they actually do a Fibonacci hike. So that was really neat. But backing up to history, there's more history in here. Fibonacci, The man who was a mathematician, he lived during the Middle Ages. And then we talk a tiny bit about the Middle Ages and they can timeline that.

Ginny Yurich Yeah, and that's a really big thing. The Renaissance, the Middle Ages, all those like I, you know, like I have a little bit of recall, like I learned about the Dark ages. I remember learning about those things, but I don't have a lot of other touch points beyond just knowing the words. And so in this way, the kids are learning that, Oh, this guy because we're learning about sunflowers and there's, you know, Fibonacci is from the Middle Ages. And so then they just have a little bit more information in that part, a little more things that they can draw from.

Julie Schultz Yeah, and there's geography in there too. He was from Italy, so they have to map where Italy is on the map and they're slowly learning geography through the study of sunflowers. Jenny talked about the pine cones and they have a certain spiral and I didn't believe it. I mean, that's cool. And I'm like, this is this is not how great. What's witchcraft? Anyway, they went and got the pine cones and those virus were in every single one of those playgrounds.

Ginny Yurich It's unbelievable because it's an optimal way for them to grow.

Julie Schultz Yeah, it was kind of crazy. Or tree branches. We talk about how they grow using the Fibonacci sequence and you already talked about the galaxies and the Nautilus shell and humans.

Ginny Yurich Yeah, Yeah. That's how the embryo grows. It's so neat. And then like we said, these are the things that are all around us. You know, everyone can find a pinecone. It might be a different kind of pine cone. Well, I don't know if everybody can find pine cone. Probably everybody can have kind of like, Oh, that's not you. But if you can't find a pine cone, then you can find a shell. I mean, everybody can find something that showcases the Fibonacci sequence, and that's probably a better way to put it.

Julie Schultz Yeah, definitely. I think most people have seen pictures of Yeah.

Ginny Yurich Or you've traveled somewhere and you see a pine cone and the pine cones themselves are interesting how they open and close depending on the heat. I mean, it's fascinating now.

Julie Schultz And so then day seven, we move into the artist's in picture study, which we already talked about. There's so many artists that painted sunflowers. And actually the artists we studied, they all kind of had a relationship with each other.

Ginny Yurich Which is so cool. It's Van Gogh images.

Julie Schultz Yeah. And this guy that I always pronounce his name wrong. Oh, I'm like, You pronounce it wrong. And I'm like, How.

Ginny Yurich Does she pronounce.

Julie Schultz It? I don't know. But I'm like, Paul Gauguin. Yeah, I don't know.

Ginny Yurich Paul Gauguin. Sure. And we're just going to say it.

Julie Schultz Yeah, we're sure that's you.

Ginny Yurich I mean, I just think that's also part of learning. And I think when you're a homeschool parent, sometimes you feel like you have. I have to be an expert on everything and it's embarrassing if you don't know stuff, but it's okay. I mean, we're all learning, and I think that life should be a process of learning. Our kids should see us learning and messing up names and things like that. And we then yeah, and then it helps. You know, it's really interesting too, is that Van Gogh in particular? Because and then they they're doing some different paintings and things, but Van Gogh comes up in clouds. Yes. So a lot of these crossover even between the different units. So Van Gogh comes up in clouds because there's a certain type of cloud called the Kevin Kelvin. Kelvin whom.

Julie Schultz I.

Julie Schultz Am. Yeah, he doesn't do that.

Ginny Yurich Why do they do. Because it, it's the one that it's named after. Two sides of it. Yeah, that's their names.

Julie Schultz Kelvin Haim.

Ginny Yurich Paul Haim. Hold in their hats. A cloud that looks like a wave, which I've actually never seen him blossom. But one starry night, I think, is possibly the painting that has that. Yeah, He has some other cool paintings of clouds, too. But these topics are not just coming up once they're coming up in several ways that are unique to that unit, but also cross over to the other things. So you can do these one off, but you can buy them individually, you can buy them digitally and just print it out or do it off your iPad. You could buy a single unit as a book or you can buy the whole curriculum all 15 weeks. It's a little bit cheaper. But if you do that, what you'll start to see is you'll start to see a little bit crossover here in there.

Julie Schultz And you can do them in any order because even if we introduce a topic and we're in, it's we already introduced it in another unit, it doesn't matter.

Ginny Yurich Right? So you could learn about.

Julie Schultz Van Gogh.

Ginny Yurich Clouds first you're a man, Van Gogh, sunflowers second. But you're talking to Impressionism. Post-impressionism.

Julie Schultz Yeah, we learned all about that.

Ginny Yurich This is history as well. So beyond that, then we're also talking about these are careers. Yeah, you're talking about artists and we're talking about mariners in the Clouds unit, all these different careers that you could have, you know, historians. And so I like that part too.

Julie Schultz I do too. I in early homeschool days, I always skipped picture study and like poetry and stuff because I'm like and now, I mean, I'm doing it because there are so many cool things to see. I wish I would have done it all along, But yeah, that's a really fun one. And then we move to day eight, which the last day of every unit is usually somewhat of an activity day. So in this one you're going to learn how to build a sunflower house, which Jenny.

Ginny Yurich I'm trying to build, but it's never actually worked out for me. But the concept of it is really cool. And if you're going to build a sunflower house, you can learn about circumference. Yeah, and circumference and diameter, area and perimeter. All these things are great to learn hands on because a lot of times kids don't remember. And these are questions as a math teacher that got brought up a lot, which I thought was funny because I feel like the word is right in there, like perimeter. It has a word rim. I don't know how many times I said that it's the rim perimeter rim, but you know, if you go out in the garden and you actually have to put in a raised bed or something, then you learn, you know, I need to know how much wood goes all the way around the outside and I need to know how much space I have to actually plant my things or if I want to do a sunflower house and I want to make it in a circle shape, how many sunflower seeds do I need to go around the outer edge? But I want to leave two feet for the door. So this is math in real life, in real contexts. It's really for most of us, the only math that we are actually going to use as we grow up and become adults. And that is something that kids complain about to no end is when am I going to use this? So you can learn about the circumference. Is pi times a day ometer or two pi are. So then you're learning. You could do either one and they're learning why that matters.

Julie Schultz And they learn that right in here. They also learn how to grow sunflowers. We just let the birds do it at our house. But if you wanted to do it, you learn how to do it. You learn how to protect from heavy winds because they're a top heavy plant.

Ginny Yurich Yeah, they definitely will fall over.

Julie Schultz Yeah. Yeah. You learn that you can start them indoors, but they're super picky flowers and they might die from transplant shock and then they learn what transplant shock is. And those are cool things to learn.

Ginny Yurich Yeah, it's important, especially for gardening. So when we plant indoors and I like to start seeds indoors, just because they extend your growing season, you have to give them time to harden off. Yeah, you have to give them time to spend time basically on the open air. So we would maybe do 2 hours in the middle of the day, one day and then 3 hours maybe we'd actually start in the morning. It's less sun and they're getting used to the wind and the breeze and that type of thing. So just practical life skills of planting and harvesting and gardening and that type of thing.

Julie Schultz Yep. Very cool. And then we end with a Fibonacci hike. So knowing that the final day is an activity day, it's fun to kind of go back and look what you're going to be doing because this is something I would do with friends. This is we like to do a lot of we did a mushroom hike together.

Ginny Yurich Yeah.

Julie Schultz And it was really fun. And it's a good way to build community.

Ginny Yurich I mean, okay, this is or this is the thing that happened. So this is what I said at the beginning. You know, we've hiked now for for ten years. I mean, this is how we've been living our life. And I mean, I don't. I've never really noticed the mushroom. So then I told the kids, You know, we're trying to be like pictures of the curriculum. I was like, I'll pay everyone $0.50 for every mushroom they find. Well, then they found like 1 million mushrooms. And I was like, I take it back.

Julie Schultz The kids are rich now.

Ginny Yurich I take it back. They're like, Mom, where's my $65? I was like, Never mind, because we didn't notice them prior to really learning about them and studying them. And then they were everywhere and they found a really cool one, really just in random spots. You know, they grow really well on the sandy soil, which was surprising to me. We were up in Ludington along the shores of Lake Michigan, where we did the hike, and there were just all the orange and the red ones and purple and huge and small, like little teeny. And they the kids loved it. And they were and they do it all the time.

Julie Schultz Now they do. And then this Fibonacci hike is fun. And I think it's a big deal to have and build your own little homeschool community. I mean, the kids need to know how to do that. My older kids are still involved in the community that we have now and they're adults. They still come to things. And so these are great ways to do.

Ginny Yurich This goes back to the multi-age. Yeah, because nature it hit every age. Your infant, if you have a baby in arms, your infant is interested in nature. They're going to love to watch the trees, the leaves swaying in the wind, and they're going to love to see the birds hopping and the rabbits and whatever it is as near you, your infant is going to love it. If your great grandma is 92 and she wants to come on your Fibonacci hike, she can come and you can invite your friends. And even if your friends have kids that are different ages, it doesn't have to be two third grade girls.

Julie Schultz Yeah, you.

Ginny Yurich Know, it can just be a group of kids and they'll come and they have fun together and they help each other. The older kids help the the younger ones get to a higher level. The younger kids help the older ones be more empathetic and learn how to be nurturing by being in a multi-age environment. It allows your child to fit in. Yes, no matter what skill level that they're at. And maybe they are not reading that well yet, and they could fit in a little bit better with maybe a younger kid or maybe even just their physical skills are developed differently. And when you have these multi-age environments, it's everyone fits.

Julie Schultz They do. And I think that people will say, Julie, how do you have such good community time?

Ginny Yurich Because you're funny.

Julie Schultz That's why that's what they say.

Julie Schultz So you say cause you're funny.

Ginny Yurich And she would say you're funny because you drink.

Julie Schultz Diet.

Ginny Yurich Coke.

Julie Schultz And that's how to say that on the podcast.

Julie Schultz That is what she makes, though.

Ginny Yurich She's she's like, How could I become very funny? She's like, Maybe if I drink Diet Coke, I was like, No.

Julie Schultz I.

Julie Schultz Guess the answer.

Julie Schultz Or it could be time, Like time spent with these people has built community over years and years and years. People will say, Julie, how are your kids so close? And my kids are very close with one another time learning together, not separating them into 100 different subjects at their grade level. I mean, there are no formulas. If I had to say that's a formula. That's a formula. I'm just that one word. Yeah.

Ginny Yurich And this allows them to have their own time and time together.

Julie Schultz Yeah.

Ginny Yurich And so then each book ends with dinner time, family discussion questions, because sometimes maybe you have a kid, maybe that's off doing something else during the day. You've got older kids that are off working, but they come home for dinner. You have a spouse that's out of the house for the day and they come home. And so at dinner you can bring everyone together over some of the questions. So I'm going to ask you, are you ready?

Julie Schultz I'm ready.

Ginny Yurich Okay. If you could design your own sunflower, what color would you make it?

Julie Schultz Yellow.

Julie Schultz Yes.

Julie Schultz There's already orange. I think all the colors are there.

Ginny Yurich Jenny, I. Would you like teal? Oh, blue.

Julie Schultz Would be cool.

Ginny Yurich Yeah. Blue is the least common. Blue. Is Elise out? Okay?

Julie Schultz Yeah, that would be a cool one. Fun fact about these dinnertime discussion questions. I'm terrible at writing these. And my 18 year old, I made him read every single one of these curriculum books, and then I had him.

Ginny Yurich These are Caleb questions. These are.

Julie Schultz Caleb questions. Shout out to Caleb. And he would get he actually did one. I forget what unit but it was he talked about. Oh it was he gave the fact that you can often find bumblebees sleeping in flowers and like that's so not true. I've never seen that in my entire 48 years. He's like, No, ma'am, it's true. So that we said that fact. And then we said, Where is the most unique place you've slept? And I'm not even joking. Two weeks later, I look at a flower and there is a mom away.

Ginny Yurich Sleeping, sleeping. I mean, that's a great place to sleep, you know, to sleep inside of a flower. We actually I mean, that's a really cool question because we just went on this trip to Moab maybe and went to the Moab Adventure Center, and we did this rafting trip down the Desolation Canyon, and there was a fair amount of mosquitoes when we went because the water levels are high. I think normally there's no bugs, but we happened on this freak random time where there was quite a bit, but the last night there weren't as many. And so we slept under the stars on a cot. So it's like the most unique place that I've ever slept is like along the shore of the Green River in Moab, Utah. Anna-Kat, you know, in a place that I would venture to say hardly any. But he said, you know, very few people over the course of history have slept in the spot where we slept. And so that is a really unique question. And I think it would spur kids on to think, well, where in a where is a unique place I could go sleep and just to envision of be sleeping in a flower. So it ends with these dinnertime discussion questions. And like you said earlier, I mean, these are questions that you could ask at grandma. I think having good questions in your arsenal is a good life skill, too.

Julie Schultz Yes. So if you know that don't talk or something. Yeah, sure. And ask them where the most.

Julie Schultz You can ask where they slept.

Julie Schultz And they wouldn't think you're weird at all.

Ginny Yurich You don't lead with that one. Save that talk. That one in a way for a leader. That's a good read. I mean, talks about traffic jams because there's a place in Ontario, Canada. And this is another important point, is that these curriculums are not location specific like this. In this one, we talk about Candace, we talk about Canada, we talk about Spain, we talk about Ukraine. You know, wherever you live, you can download. There's downloadable versions you can get to. So it doesn't matter where you live. All of the different ones are going to highlight places all across the world. So it's not just strictly US based, but in Ontario there is this huge sunflower field and 7000 people showed up to take pictures and there was this huge traffic jam. So the question is about being in a traffic jam. So just interesting ways to incorporate our everyday learning and experiences and real life things all together. We incorporate it all together and kids learn and they grow. So we are going to tell you the 15 that we have.

Julie Schultz Yep.

Ginny Yurich And those are available now both digitally and in print, and then there will be 15 more coming for the 2023, 20, 24 school year. So for those people who are early adopters, there are new ones that are coming. But if you're new to this and this has been out for a full school year and we have gotten a ton of feedback already, so people are loving doing it with multiple age of kids all together, it takes one hour. In fact, we were at a conference together and people were coming up and they buy the whole thing or they by an individual one. And we were walking through the hotel area and there was a boy who maybe just he had the book right up and he was probably 11. You look like the boy, right? Yeah, the book. Right. Open his face in it, walking and reading.

Julie Schultz It was so.

Ginny Yurich Cool. It was natural disasters. Yeah.

Julie Schultz So it's so cool. And that one gets a lot of question questions, natural disasters, because you're not visiting a volcano or anything at which some of these you're not going to be able to visit. Like you might not be in a place with some flowers. You will always be in a place with clouds. You might not be in a place with caves. That's okay, because chances are you're going to visit a cave.

Ginny Yurich Or you just be by one. We went on a kayak trip in Tennessee just the other day, and there was caves always in the rocks on the side. So everyone's looking at them and noticing which ones are big, which ones are small. And so that was exciting. So year one is clouds and they're all fantastic. People ask, What's the one to start with or What's a favorite? And I don't have a favorite.

Julie Schultz With whatever.

Ginny Yurich In and start with whatever interest you have. So clouds, sand and soil, owls, mushrooms, eyed couples, which is about symbiosis, That's so fascinating. The symbiosis in nature is so cool. Animal travelers is about migratory animals. So you're learning about the monarch, you're learning about the humpback whale, the reindeer, a lot of animals that I mean, it is fascinating and these are fascinating things that they know where to go and when to go. Mighty Trees is about how trees can touch, taste, smell, hear, just like how humans can. So that's a fascinating one. Scat and tracks is a popular one because it's really about poop. About poop? Yeah, it's about poop. And we did that one. And then we went and saw we saw bear poop. And I don't think I would have known that it was bear poop had we not been studying that. And it was in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, we were together. Yeah, we were on this pretty cool trail that left me kind of chafed.

Julie Schultz Yeah. At the end.

Ginny Yurich Because we were wet, so everyone was kind of uncomfortable. I do, But we hiked to this beach. It was beautiful, but it was a hefty hike.

Julie Schultz But we stopped for the poop.

Ginny Yurich And it was on the way back, and it was on a boardwalk. And so to think you're in the middle of nowhere and you think, okay, I am walking in a place where a bear just pooped. It was filled with berries, so it's really cool to learn about poop sunflowers like we just talked about river animals. Is that right? What's the.

Julie Schultz River? It's river creatures. Yeah, River cruises.

Ginny Yurich We have adapted some of the names. The animals, river creatures. I think it's a.

Julie Schultz River or something.

Ginny Yurich Caves, seeds, bears. Animal homes. Which animal homes are so cool, so sweet. They really are the way that they can build their homes. I mean, sometimes you just watch the birds going and collecting the little things and they use their spit and they.

Julie Schultz Learn and they get they get to build a nest in that one, too. Yeah.

Ginny Yurich A lot of hands on. And then natural disasters. So those are the 15 that are available now. You can find them. I'm 1000 hours outside dotcom and we're going to give you a coupon code.

Julie Schultz Okay.

Ginny Yurich You can get 10%. Ask the add the Wonder curriculum 10% off and it's only really reasonable priced yet and the coupon is going to be 80 W.

Julie Schultz Look at that ad the one at the Wonder.

Ginny Yurich Podcast two 1080 W podcast ten though you can get 10% off, you could get 10% off the digital or the print. The print are beautiful. It's a matte finish. It's a book that you would keep forever. They're gorgeous, different colors. Obviously you can't see this through the screen, but they are beautiful. That's one of the things that I liked as a homeschool moms. I like beautiful resources.

Julie Schultz I do.

Ginny Yurich Because if I'm going to be spending time with that, I want to really like to look.

Julie Schultz At it.

Ginny Yurich And there are original drawings, original illustrations in there that are only found in this set of curriculum and even some of the covers and things like that's original artwork and we just think your family will love it. Our family has thrived on it over the past year. We have learned, I have learned, I've.

Julie Schultz Learned a lot. I've learned so.

Ginny Yurich Much. Which is kind of a funny thing to say, like when you put out your own curriculum and then you say you've learned. But really, truly it is because you learn as you do it with your children. You see what fascinates them, and it's a reminder to you of things that you've learned so you can keep keep an ear out to, because we are going to be doing some different podcasts that highlight some of the different topics. And it'll be a fun one to listen to with your kids, with your family, so that you can know more about these fascinating nature topics. But once again, if you're interested in implementing the curriculum in your homeschool at year four school with your charter school, with your nature group, with your church, you could do this with your Sunday school. It would be a great idea. You could just do one day every Sunday and the kids could learn about all the different things that are in our world and the devotions that go along with them are for free on our website. But you go to 1000 hours outside dot com, look for the curriculum and you can get 10% off with 80 W podcast ten. It was a pleasure if we got to meet you this year, which I think we got to meet so many of you at these different conferences. It was an absolute pleasure to meet you. It was fun to see people look at the books. It was like a life or death situation, what they were going to choose. They're like, I want to pick one book. Which 1 a.m. I going to pick? Sometimes I stand there for like 45 minutes and then other people come up and I'll bet we'll take all of them right now. So it was fun just to talk to all the families. And we just want to encourage you that if you are in a spot where you feel afraid that you just dig in, keep going, what you're doing matters. It's very important and learning in different ways is fine.

Julie Schultz It's totally fine. Your kids are going to be so great.

Ginny Yurich Yeah, Follow your heart. Follow what you know is best for your family. John Taylor Gallo says there's as many ways to be educated as there are fingerprints. So make it unique. Make it your own. And if you're interested in learning through unit studies and through the topics of nature, we've got you.

Julie Schultz Covered. All right.

Ginny Yurich Thanks for being here.