Episode 179 with Samantha Skeete

Daring Adventures in Homeschooling:

Off-Grid Living, Learning, and the Pursuit of Joy

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SHOW TRANSCRIPT:

 179 SAMANTHA SKEETE

Ginny Yurich Welcome to the 1000 Hours Outside podcast. My name is Ginny Yurich and I am so excited for today's guest. Samantha, welcome to the podcast.

Samantha Skeete Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited too.

Ginny Yurich This is awesome. This is your first podcast, right?

Samantha Skeete First podcast. Yep.

Ginny Yurich Yeah, that's a milestone. So we've actually been connected, I think for years and years. And so it's such a gift to actually finally meet for a quick second in person. We had our videos on and then our videos off because Samantha lives off grid and it's better for the Internet. But Samantha is the founder of For the Love of Homeschooling, and she puts out amazing content for parents, for homeschoolers. And so I'm so thrilled that you're here. I think we've maybe known each other for years. Would you think?

Samantha Skeete I think so. About three or four years At least.

Ginny Yurich At least. At least. So I've been following along for a long time, getting so much encouragement. And then last night preparing for this, I did a little bit more of a deep dive into your life and it is a fascinating one. You're currently living in 350 square feet with a family of seven. Can you just take a little bit of time and tell us about your journey there? Sure.

Samantha Skeete Yeah. So we've always kind of like love, the country, lifestyle, all of that stuff. And then about three and a half years ago, we we really felt the call to go further in our country living adventure. And so for years I've been dreaming about and praying about living off grid, building our own home one day, but the doors just never opened up. And then three and a half years ago, right before the whole COVID thing, I guess right after it had started, we ended up finding a piece of land way up in northern Canada that was pretty remote. And we just started building our little home and we are building an addition. We're not super crazy to want to stay in 350 square feet with seven people. But yeah, it's been awesome.

Ginny Yurich I mean, it is absolutely incredible. Samantha And if people want you, send out an email that has some information about what you're doing and your Instagram has a little bit of information too. But if people want to find that, they can go to your website, which is for the love of homeschool income, or you have that Instagram handle, but also at this growing life, I know you don't use it all the time, but people can get a sense of what you have going there. So talk to us about being off grid. I mean, you're talking about no electricity. I mean, what's this been like?

Samantha Skeete So, yeah, so the first year and a half, we had no electricity. We hauled in water just in big jugs. And that was that was how we lived. And it's funny because my husband, he is originally from Trinidad and Tobago, and so he's someone who grew up in a little bit of a more remote lifestyle with not as many conveniences as we have here. And so for him it brought back a lot of memories. But for me and the kids, it was all like brand new, like we'd never not had running water or not, you know, just been able to turn on a light switch or plug in a laptop, right? Wow. And so for the first year and a half, that's how we lived. Eventually we did get our solar hooked up. So now we do have solar. So we can kind of have a little bit more normal power situation going on. And we got a well in a year and a half ago. So now we have running water, which is lovely because boiling water on the woodstove, well, like the novelty was nice for a while eventually, you know, it was nice to just turn on a washer.

Ginny Yurich So you were using that boiled water for baths?

Samantha Skeete Yeah, everything. Everything.

Ginny Yurich That's incredible. And you'd have to drive 30 minutes.

Samantha Skeete Oh, yeah, It was. It was a good drive too. There's a spring about 30 minutes away from us, like a natural spring where we would go and we would fill up our jugs. And so, yeah, it's been an adventure and it's been, it's been great.

Ginny Yurich I mean, it's such a cool thing because so many people live pretty much exactly the same way, and you have this completely different experience as both a mom and then for your kids. So tell us about your family. I mean, when you're going to get water, you're not getting water for two people or three people. You're getting water for seven.

Samantha Skeete Yeah. So it's myself, my husband and our five kids that are age 16 to 2. And so we've got a good stand in there. Yeah. Yeah. It's a lot of people to boil water for baths for and things like that. So it was it was a lot of work, a lot more work than I think you, you can have an idea of what it will be like, but you don't know it till you're actually in it and you're like, Man, this is a lot of work. It definitely gives you an appreciation for the modern conveniences that we have and for all the generations before us, we didn't have those, right?

Ginny Yurich Wow. Yeah. To actually live that way for an extended period of time and really to get a sense of what it was like. Yeah, that's incredible. So how have the kids adjusted? What did you move from?

Samantha Skeete Before we lived in, we lived like a fairly large farmhouse. We're still out in the country and so they still had wide open spaces. So that part hasn't really changed a lot. But the space, the space is definitely a lot smaller and I've shared little bits on this growing life. So like the behind the scenes of what that looks like, but they honestly, they love it. They love being able to be outside. They. They are very like. They love being in nature all the time. And so even though the house is small, they're always outside, they're always building things or coming up with new. We have a pond on our property. And so they're always like catching frogs or all of those types of things. And they all have adjusted really well and they really enjoy it.

Ginny Yurich Oh yeah. I mean, the videos are just stunning. So you have no I don't know if this is the same that you currently have, but I saw a video where there was a triple bunk bed. Yes. Situation. And it's like right in the kitchen. Yeah.

Samantha Skeete Yeah. So we have just like one wide open room, which is like kitchen living room. And the boys, we have four boys, one daughter, and our daughter's the oldest, so she gets the loft all to herself. And then the three middle boys, they have a triple bunk bed. That's right. They just right off the kitchen, like in the kitchen. And we have a little room. That is where my husband, myself and our two year old that's like our bedroom.

Ginny Yurich Is so incredible. So what's the addition going to be like?

Samantha Skeete The addition is going to be very spacious. My husband's a contractor by trade, and so we're doing it all ourselves. He built the house and we are working very, very slowly on doing all the finishes. So we we think we'll probably be able to move in there and probably not for another year or two just because it's a slow process when we're doing it all ourselves. But it's going to be much bigger. All the kids, all the older kids will have their own bedroom, which they're looking forward to.

Ginny Yurich Wow. So you have had just this completely unique lifestyle change. And like you said, it's been probably harder than you thought. I read a post or something somewhere where your water boiler broke.

Samantha Skeete Yeah, that was.

Ginny Yurich In the middle of winter. In the middle.

Samantha Skeete Of the coldest part of winter. Of course, that's when it had to go. It was -50 for a solid week and a half and our pump completely broke. And so we do have a woodstove in the tiny house, but when it's -50, the woodstove doesn't really it doesn't cut it. And so our wood boiler, just the pump broke. And so my husband was out there in like -50 degree weather trying to fix it and eventually were able to get a new pump in and get it all switched out. But yeah, that was we were all just huddled up in the lot for a week.

Ginny Yurich Wow. But you made it through that. Yeah. That's incredible.

Samantha Skeete Yeah. And we look back now and it's like, okay. And good memories, right? Like it? Yeah. It's funny. You. Well, you're going through things. Sometimes they seem harder, but when you look back and it's, it's I don't know we try to remember the good parts and.

Ginny Yurich Yeah, a little bit of an adventure. Yeah.

Samantha Skeete Yeah. Exactly.

Ginny Yurich What a story. It's so cool. And annual posts. I've seen some of them. You see so much wildlife up there.

Samantha Skeete We do. That's one of our favorite. Our favorite parts is being up here from just the bears and the Moose. One of our favorite was we were driving just down the road from our home and we saw a moose with two calves and she just they're so tame like that. She looked at us. We weren't for like we weren't too far away from where she was. And they just let us watch them for, I don't know, maybe a good 5 minutes before they decided to decide to. Maybe we were too nosy. But it's beautiful. We have links and wolves and black bears and we do have five Rottweilers which do keep the wildlife from getting too close, which is nice.

Ginny Yurich Five. So it's seven people, five dogs and some cats, right?

Samantha Skeete Yes. Oh, my daughter loves cats. All the kids like cats. I'm allergic. And so they're not they wouldn't it be they wouldn't it be my pet of choice? But yeah, my kids.

Ginny Yurich It's so many animals. I saw a video where you saw a bunch of fox pups.

Samantha Skeete Yeah. Oh, that was so fun. We have there are tons of we often see Fox up here. And so that was I think that was not the spring, but the spring before where we were on a drive and there was a mom, a fox, and I think there was about nine pups there. It was pretty cool.

Ginny Yurich What a thing to see. So what is your long term plan? Are you fairly self-sufficient?

Samantha Skeete There we are. We are, yeah. We're fairly self-sufficient. We are. This year we really worked on getting our garden going last year. We saw that video last year, seen so much time planting. But our soil is very heavy, okay? Only for like practically nothing came up last year. And so this year we built some raised beds, we brought in some soil. And so we have a we have a pretty decent garden this year, which is nice. I planted a little bit too many tomato plants, so we're going to be up to our eyeballs in tomatoes in a few weeks, but.

Ginny Yurich Canning four days. Oh, so just a self-sufficient off grid. I wonder what percentage of people like do you know many people that live off grid? I don't. The only other person I know of that's not even really a friend of mine is this doctor, Carla Hannaford, who wrote these different books, and she lives off grid. But besides her and you, I don't know anybody else.

Samantha Skeete Yeah, there's honestly, when we we kind of had this idea that we were leaving, kind of we lived in a more the more southern part of Ontario before so. Country. Living was common, but there's also lots of big cities nearby. We were only about an hour and a half from Toronto, and so when we came up here, we had this idea in our minds that like the lifestyle that we were seeking would be pretty common. But it's not even up here. Like when people a lot of people look at us a little. There is there is a little bit they're like, Why are you guys off grid? Why do you live like, you know, so far back in the middle of nowhere? And we're like, well, come and see. It's awesome.

Ginny Yurich And do they do people come and visit? Yeah, we've.

Samantha Skeete Had people come and just kind of see what out of curiosity will get people that come up the trail every once in a while on their ATVs and whatnot just because we're not on a main road. And so you can't really get here too easily with a normal vehicle, you need at least a 4x4. And so we'll get curious people coming to see what we're doing and when we go into town was always time to talk and have conversations, which is which is nice because it's honestly, it's such a freeing lifestyle. It really is like there are definitely challenges and you have to be up for those. But it's nice and it's kind of funny. Someone who I met on Instagram, she kind of like I was chatting and she was asking all these questions about living off grid. They ended up buying a piece of land and we found out later after they purchased it that they're only about 45 minutes away from us and they're doing the whole off grid thing too. So that's really cool.

Ginny Yurich That's a really cool. I have a friend doing it with you. Yeah, that's incredible. 45 minutes isn't that far. Yeah. So has this been a thing, Samantha, where you. You have to make all of your own decision. Do you have to figure all of it out?

Samantha Skeete Yeah, well, my husband gave us most of the hard thinking for me, but, yeah, we definitely work together to try to figure out, like, how we were going to do things. And we have done a lot of research and talked to like not people who necessarily live off grid, but people who like have like a cottage off grid or things like that. And so we've been able to get a lot of insight about that from people like that.

Ginny Yurich Wow. Because even things like, where are you going to put your tiny house? How are you going to set it up? Yeah, you figured it all out.

Samantha Skeete Yeah. Well, thankfully, my husband, he's a contractor, so he built houses for a living for ten years prior to us coming up here. And so he has a good bit of knowledge of those kinds of things. So we ended up putting the tiny house right up on a rock. So it was fun to do.

Ginny Yurich And then that's like in the Bible.

Samantha Skeete Exactly. But after like literally built off on the Rock. Yeah.

Ginny Yurich That's really awesome. Well, what a life. If people want to learn more about that, and I'm sure they will, it's very intriguing. They can find you on Instagram. And like I said, I know you don't post a ton about your homestead there, but it's at this growing life. But you have an email list for that too, that people could sign up for. Well, we can. You and I connected over homeschooling. Yes. So this is also a part of your off grid living is that you homeschool. And I always say, you know, not everybody that listens to the podcast homeschools, but I think they do like I think everyone homeschools at least a little bit absolute because all the time that your kid is home, I feel like homeschooling is just parenting extended. So everyone's homeschooling a little bit. And if you've got a two year old, your homeschooling and if you you know, that's what's going on. So there's premises and principles from these conversations, I think, that are helpful for all parents. But then also I think it's good sometimes to encourage parents that are homeschooling because it can be hard and there can be some hard seasons and there are some things about it that are really worth it. So can you tell us when and why you started for the love of homeschooling?

Samantha Skeete Yeah, absolutely. So originally when I started on Instagram, I had like I was not on social media at all for years, and I just I eventually started like just a private Instagram account where I would share what we were doing, homeschooling with friends and family. And from there I was encouraged to actually just start a blog, but I was like, I don't have time for that. So I started an Instagram account called For the Love of Homeschooling, and initially I was just sharing our journey, just the different things that we were doing every day. We've evolved a lot and the way we've homeschooled over the years. And so when I first started, we were very much like almost like a 9 to 3 schedule where we were constantly doing different activities and things like that. And so I started sharing that on for the love of homeschooling. And then eventually we went through some different family changes and we started homeschooling in such a structured way and we started to unspool a little bit more. And so at that time I changed my handle to this growing life because it ended up it wasn't strictly homeschooling account. I was sharing more, just more like what we were doing in our lives kind of lifestyle content. But I still really wanted to have an account dedicated for homeschooling, and so I restarted for the love of homeschooling about three years ago, just sharing different homeschool encouragement. I started creating resources for my family. I had always, ever since the kids were little, I had created a good bit of the curriculum that we used for group subjects, and so we just started kind of evolving on that, sharing those things and yeah.

Ginny Yurich Now you have a team of 17. Yeah.

Samantha Skeete It's been an incredible and incredible opportunity. There's so many talented artists and curriculum writers, content creators, photographers, and we've been able to just just friendships that have developed into working relationships. And we just we have the most amazing team right now. It's funny, it's kind of like an ongoing joke that I've like personally. I couldn't drastic people if I tried. And so creating resources with the ability to the artistic is definitely a challenge. And so we have the most amazing artists on our team right now who just the whole team is just incredible. Such a great group of women. Most of them are home schooling moms themselves. My daughter actually works for for the homeschooling. She does a lot of the recipes and things like that. Yeah. And so it it's been a great journey. It's been a great opportunity to work with and connect with other women who are on similar or maybe not the exact same lives passed on similar life past.

Ginny Yurich You might be on your own there a 350 square foot home on the rack, but you know, it's really cool. I think sometimes when you consider homeschooling, especially as a mom, you often are walking away from a career. Not always, but sometimes you're walking away. And what ends up happening, I think, for a lot of people is that other doors open. Yes. And I think that's a cool thing to talk about. Like you in the past three years have built this team and there's so many women that have walked away from careers and now they're able to team up with you and take their talents and their passions and still be able to use them in a way that really matters in the world. And I know Ainsley Arment does the same thing with Wild and Free. She's very purposeful about giving opportunities to homeschool moms. And so I think it's just a little bit of an encouragement that there's something out there for you. I think that you're not walking away from. You're not walking away from you. Yep. Steph comes up and in some ways it ends up being very fulfilling. I think maybe even in some ways more fulfilling. Like I think that what I'm doing right now I could have never imagined, ever. But it's definitely at least as fulfilling as when I was teaching high school math, if not a bit more. So it's just a little thing to say that there's stuff out there for you and. And it comes in time.

Samantha Skeete Yeah, absolutely. Quite a few of the of the ladies on the team, they join the team by reaching out and saying, hey, I think, you know, I'm homeschooling my kids. You know, here are my skills, my qualifications. I would love to be able to bring in an income, to be able to continue to homeschool and support my family. And I'm like, all right, let's do it. Like, just jump on board.

Ginny Yurich Wow.

Samantha Skeete And so we yeah, we have a team of I think it's about 18 right now. And then we also work with about 30 to 50 other contributors, small shops who are most of them are homeschooling families to create resources which enable them to be able to stay home as well. And so it's more of a blessing than I could ever have imagined. When I started homeschooling, I was I was very young. I had my daughter, I got married at 18, had my daughter at 19, or I guess I would turn 20 by the time I had her. And so I was in university. So for me, it wasn't leaving a career, but it was leaving the path to a career when I decided that, you know what, I'm going to stay home with her and homeschooling, I had no idea. I didn't even know about anything about it. It was just it seemed very natural that I wanted to be home with her. I wanted to teach her. So I have a huge spot in my heart for parents who have that same desire but don't have a way to meet it. And so that's part of the reason why, for the love of homeschooling, we do our very best to make sure our products are very affordable. We offer weekly freebies so that we have a huge amount of homeschoolers who homeschool basically for free using our freebies. Wow, it's been such a blessing.

Ginny Yurich Yeah, it doesn't have to cost much. A library card. Yeah. Use some of those freebies and people can find those freebies out for the love of homeschooling. And right now what's going on is a mega bundle. Yeah, it's the back to school mega bundle. So this is coming out on Tuesday, August 15th. It's going for three days. So if people listen to it after the three days, then it'll be over. But these come up somewhat regularly. Can you tell us what a mega bundle is?

Samantha Skeete Yeah, absolutely. So for about ten days we collaborate with 32. Sometimes we've had as many as 50 other shops that all provide homeschooling resources or just learning resources. If you're not homeschooling and we come together and we put them all in one big bundle and we sell them for just $25 individually, if you were to purchase all the resources, it would be well over $800. And yeah, it's a ten day sale. We can do them every 2 to 3 months. So this one's the back to school bundle. We'll have another one in October. So if you are hearing this after, we will have a bundle that's steam focused. So I'm coming out in October. And yeah, it's just it's really the best way to stock up on homeschool resources that you can use for years to. Once you purchase the product, it's yours. You can print as many times as you want. They really are great deals. I personally like before I was a part of the whole social media scene. I would go online and look for hostel freebies in my early days and I remember buying a bundle myself years and years ago. And so it's just kind of all come full circle.

Ginny Yurich I mean, same actually. That's so interesting. Same. And I've got one with like recipes and different things that we have continued to use year over year. They become little traditions and so they're really cool. So this is the third volume of the back to school and people can find the link for in the show notes. And like you said, they come out every few months. So if you missed this one, there will be other ones to come.

Samantha Skeete And each one is a completely new collection. I'll say that like the first and second about this little bundle, they were completely different than this one. We make sure that each one is brand new resources, so if you've purchased the first two, you'll find a whole bunch of new things. We actually personally, for the love of homeschooling itself, has 25 brand new products included in this in this bundle.

Ginny Yurich Wow. Yeah, that's so awesome. So lots of amazing things to help people on their journeys. There is this philosopher and I don't I can't say his name. It's really long. He's like a Jewish philosopher and he talks about charity. I thought this was super interesting. I learned it earlier this year, but he ranks the levels of charity. So for example, I would think that the highest level of charity would be giving anonymously. But he said that the highest level of charity is giving someone a job. And so it's a really cool thing, what you're providing for these homeschool families, both for the ones that are on your actual team and then the ones that are joining in to contribute. It's great for everyone. So what a cool thing. Lots to learn about for the love of homeschooling dot com. If you had to give advice to a new homeschool mom who wanted to know where to start, what would you say?

Samantha Skeete I would say is start with finding out what interests your child and build from that. I think when you're going from a traditional school setting to a homeschool model, it can be easy to try to just replicate school. But if you look at it like you're learning together with your child and they all learn so differently. So in our home, we have some that really do well with books and with audiobooks, and that's the best way that they learn. We have others who are very hands on, so they need to be building something, They need to be putting something together. So I think my biggest advice would be to find out what your child's interested in and learn together. Look at it as a journey of you learning together. Don't get caught up in the to do lists and the checklists and having to have it all right and all perfect. It's a learning journey for both of you. And one of the principles that I've tried and of course, I'm not nowhere near perfect at it, but in my early parenting days, even before homeschooling, I remember I had two very young children and I was feeling very overwhelmed and stressed quite often. And I remember the scriptures seek joy and pursue it. And so I decided, you know what? I'm going to take that into my days. And no matter what we were doing, I was like, If this is bringing us joy, then we're going to continue with it. And if it's not, then we're going to lay it aside. And I have taken that into homeschooling as well, and it has been just such a blessing. Your kids are really, really good teachers. They're really good leaders. And I think looking at it as a way to learn together, do things that you're going to look back on five years from now and you're going to just smile and be like, We did that together.

Ginny Yurich It's so freeing. Yeah. So what would you say to someone who is really confused by that? Because someone might be listening and be very confused by that, seek joy and pursue it and say, Well, what about the things that they have to learn? Or isn't that going to basically give them the short end of the stick for the rest of their life? What would you say to them?

Samantha Skeete Well, I think it's obviously you have to go along and find out what your state laws are when it comes to homeschooling. Meet your state requirements, of course. But outside of that, the philosophy that I had in my home was if something was bringing my child, if they were stressed about it, if it wasn't coming easily to them, and if it was something that if there were tears, if there were ever tears over a subject, I would put it away, no questions asked. Because a child being frustrated about a concept and not able to comprehend something at the age that maybe we're told they need to, that's not doing any favors, that's not helping that. And so that was a principle I had in my home, and it's something that has done my children a world of good, because when they don't feel like they're being compared to others we don't like. I've had one of my children started reading out of three and other one didn't really start reading until after ten, and now they're all great readers. And so I think a lot of the pressure we put on ourselves Now, again, if you have state requirements, you do have to meet those. And so I have to say that. But outside of that, a lot of the pressure and the stress I think we put on kids to meet requirements at certain ages that just comes from us. And I know that as a mother, I would I would never want to be compared with other mothers and be like, well, this person is you know, they make the best sour dough bread when I can't even figure out how to. Right. And so I think that if if we don't put that pressure on our kids of comparing them to each other and expecting them to be at certain levels at certain times and figure out how they learn and build memories that you're going to look back on and be grateful for, because they'll be grateful for them, too.

Ginny Yurich That's a huge statement. I've never thought about that. Now, what if we took the same model of this is what you need to know in second grade and this is what you need to know by third grade? What if we took the same model for adults? I actually just had a friend the other day who, you know, they're struggling financially. They've had some mishaps, as so many of us do. And she said someone said to her, You're too old for this. And I thought, Well, how rude.

Samantha Skeete Yeah, that's not very encouraging, is it?

Ginny Yurich No, but it is sort of that thought of when you become an adult, you kind of are free from that. Like, yeah, you can make your decisions, you can make your own mistakes, you can go at your own pace. And so what a freeing thing to look at our children and to sort of see it through our own eyes like what we want to be like. By the time you're 24, you should be able to do this and by the time you're 26. So that's really an interesting thought. I think it takes some trust. It takes some trust in understanding a little bit of the logic behind it and just rolling it around in your head to understand that kids grow and they grow in their own time, in their own way. And it is scarier when they're six than when they're 16. Absolutely. Because you've had ten years to see that it works, and that's how it's been in our family. But I would say I was scared for four or five or six years and then all of a sudden was kind of like, okay, this is working fine. Yeah, our kids are growing, they're thriving, they're happy, they're learning through living. And we do a lot of things together. And so it's a great thing. But I think at the beginning it does feel a little scary. You just have to stick with it. And I love that. Seek joy and pursue it. What a great model. What do you talk to homeschool moms who are in a spot where it's just isn't going as they planned or they're really struggling. They're feeling like giving up.

Samantha Skeete I would say to, well, one of the things that because I've been there too, we've gone through so many different seasons in our homeschooling, and I definitely love that you pointed that out. But this is me being able to look back and look at, you know, the last 12 years that we have home schooled and definitely on in year like four and five. I was definitely more worried about when one of my kids wasn't reading at six years old. I was like, Oh no, this is horrible, right? It's only now that I look back, but I can see that it all worked out. But for someone who's kind of feeling like giving up, I would say if the plan isn't working, throw the plan away. Like if you're set with a certain philosophy and you're like, You know what? We are going to be whatever. Charlotte Mason Home schoolers, if that's not working for your child, look into different alternatives and really seek joy. Seek the things that are fun because they will learn through those things. And so it's often the parents I find it's like, at least in my personal experience, it's often me that needs to readjust the way I'm looking at things and the way I'm doing things. Because our kids want to learn. They're like, they want to take up information. Now, they might not be super excited to learn fractions when they're seven years old, but if you can find a subject that they're into and somehow relate them, that works. One of the things that we offer and we offer these things for free often is we have learning packs that will be themed so that if the kids love dinosaurs, right, they're learning about dinosaurs. But then there's also math in there that they can learn as well. Just things like that. Yeah. Just go with what sparks joy in your child. What makes their eyes up and what. Yeah, what they're interested in and ask them say, hey, this is, I feel like this is a little bit stressful for you. I feel like this is going well, you know, What would you like to do? What would you like to change? And I know that can be scary from a certain perspective, but I think that at least for me, looking back, those are some of the best choices that I made.

Ginny Yurich It's interesting because I think that just about every kid and maybe I could be wrong, but it seems like it that when they hit, you know, five, six, seven, eight, nine, they end up having things that they're very interested in. So I play the piano. I was really interested in the piano. I had a brother that was really interested in baseball and he knew all the baseball stats and my little niece is super interested in space. So she was talking about the planets and the dwarf planets. And so like you said, if you take any of those things, like for me with the piano, you can study history, you can study the old composers, you're learning math with all the time signatures. So any field of study is cohesive. It includes all of the subjects, and it's just such a fun way to learn. I think it makes it easier to remember. So if the kid's interest is already there, you can know that you can learn all the subjects through that instead of having to have it be broken up. So I think that's interesting. I love that. Throw the plan away, and I've talked about this a bunch of times. People are probably so sick of hearing it. But John Taylor gotto wrote this book called Dumbing US Down. Usually I don't even say the title because it's kind of offensive, but it's. Called Dumbing US Down, and he's written a couple of books. He was a schoolteacher, a public school teacher, and he says there's ample research to show that it only takes 50 to 100 contact hours for kids to become functionally literate, meaning they know enough writing, math and reading to learn anything that they would ever want to learn ever again, 50 to 100 hours. And so it's just a freeing number because I think you can have a lot of downtime, you can have a lot of rest time. You could take a couple of weeks off and just go on some field trips or lay around the house and read books and bake and you're not going to fall behind. Your kid's not going to fall behind.

Samantha Skeete There is that. That's a big thing that I know that I've shared about a lot over the years. I know the homeschool conference that you and I did together a couple of years ago, that was what my talk was on was on the concept of falling behind and how it's just it's not true if you're not comparing them to anybody else and there's no way for them to fall behind. Yeah, it's been something in our home that I thought that you brought up baking because that is one thing that we would pivot to often. I often felt like in February and February would often be, you know, we've been homeschooling for four or five months. We kind of start to feel some burnout. And so I just put away kind of all the curriculum stuff that we were doing and we would spend the month just doing art in the kitchen. We would learn about different countries and we would cook the food from different countries and all of those types of things. And I felt like that always gave us a really nice break.

Ginny Yurich I love that idea. February is a hard month. Yeah, especially if you live in or in northern parts of the world and it gets you a cold. It's one of the hardest months, I think, of the year. So I love that idea. Yeah. Throw the plan away. Do something else. Know that your kid isn't going to fall behind. And there's good statistics that say that home schoolers do fine on standardized tests. So if you get to that point where they want to be a doctor or they want to be a lawyer, they're going to be able to. Yeah. And there are homeschool students, graduates in every realm of life. And so they're going to do fine. They say that the home schoolers do just as well, if not sometimes better on those standardized tests, regardless of your methodology. Yeah, because when you become a homeschool or, you know, people do things very differently, they do this unschooled method following the kids lead and people do, like you said, show it. Mason And they do classical. They have these different philosophies or a mix of all of them. So it's not even dependent on philosophy. How about lonely homeschool moms? So for me, I would say for me, the hardest part of homeschooling is the social piece because it rides on our shoulders. So if I sent our kids on the bus, they would make their own relationships and I wouldn't have to be a part of it. Though I do know that sometimes are issues. So for example, when I was growing up, I would always get in trouble with this one other friend and my parents tried to be like, We'll stop hanging out with that friend. But they, you know, they didn't have any say when I was gone at school. So it's a thing, right? So I kind of like this thought that no decision that you make is easy. Yeah, there's always hard edges either way. So this part of finding friendships and maintaining friendships is difficult, but then there's also difficult things on the other side as well. So what would you say to lonely moms who feel like they don't have a support system, especially maybe if they're getting a little bit of flack from family, What advice would you give them?

Samantha Skeete That can be hard. I would say that I feel like nowadays homeschooling has become like it's increasingly becoming more and more popular. And so finding the community I feel like in most areas might not be as hard as one would think. There are tons of like the wild and free groups are just about everywhere nowadays. I know that we have the way up here in nowhere, Canada in house, and so finding like minded homeschoolers if you get online. I know when I first started out, there were Yahoo! Groups where you could connect with other homeschoolers. And nowadays with Instagram, I mean, there are so many opportunities to connect, to learn from others, and to have local meetups. A lot of places, if you live close enough to a big city, a lot of places even have discounts for homeschoolers. So they'll have homeschool days where homeschool families can come and you can meet other homeschoolers and things like that. So really be purposeful in searching for that if that's something you desire. I know that one of the next projects we have for the level of homeschooling is we started creating a forum and so we hope to have that up and running soon where people will be able to connect with homeschoolers locally and be able to plan meetups and things like that. Find those who have similar goals and who follow similar philosophies and all those types of things. But I think you can find it online and like you said, you have to choose your heart because there are going to be days that feel lonely as a homeschool mom. But on the alternative, there's also if you were having to work a job away from your kids all day and they were in school, you'd have only times to just in a different sense, right? And so.

Ginny Yurich Yeah, there.

Samantha Skeete Are things everywhere and you choose your heart and you do your best to make the best of it. And I know that for me personally, I, I've connected with so many homeschool families online and. So it might not be it might not be like an in person situation. But yeah, it's been a long time since I've felt that loneliness. And so I think that all the negatives that social media can bring, I think that is one really nice thing is just being able to find and connect with other like minded parents and families and really not feel so alone.

Ginny Yurich Yeah, I just was on this podcast or I wasn't on it. I had them on. It's called the Boom Clap Podcast and it was one mom that lives in Canada and then one mom that lives in the States and they, they have a podcast. So we have that, but they never met in person, so you really can form. I thought it was wild and actually I just did one with Cheeky and Roo with Lauren and Laura and Stephanie, who came out with this book Nature School, and they've never met in person. So you really can form these deep relationships, I think.

Samantha Skeete Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

Ginny Yurich Everything's online. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, to have a podcast together, to have written a book together, those are huge deal. Yeah. Never met in person. So that's an encouraging thing. I just finished reading Abby Halberstadt has a new book coming out called Heart is not the Same Thing as Bad. I think that's the title of it. And she has a list in there of ten or 11 ideas for friendships, and they were really good. It was like invite people, you know. I mean, that's one of them. Yeah, it sounds simple. I know it. It can be hard and tricky and sometimes you get rejected, but invite people. One of the things she said was do it distracted. And I think that sometimes we wait. Do we wait until we don't have toddlers underfoot or nursing babies so you can finish a conversation? But I think that those friendships that are forged during those early years are very lasting and you really bond over the situations that you're in. So such good advice for lonely homeschool moms. You have a great article on your blog. So for the love of homeschooling dot com, there's a blog and one of the articles is ten Things I've Learned in ten Years of Homeschooling. So a great thing for people to go back and read and now you're at 12 years, so I'm sure there's some extra things.

Samantha Skeete You have to do that. Yeah.

Ginny Yurich But one of the things that you talk about is knowing your why. Yeah. And I think even our wise change, maybe they don't even change. Like they just get added on to like our first reason for homeschooling was simply time. And now I have a very, very long list of reasons why we do it. But can you tell us your why?

Samantha Skeete Yeah, absolutely. My wife from right from the beginning was time wanting to be with my kids, wanting to also be sure that the worldview that they were being raised with was one that my husband and I hold to as well, that we were the greatest influence in their life. I think that especially nowadays, as children get older, there's a tendency to and it was the same when I was a teenager too. But there's the tendency where the friends and friendships are made to be like the all in all right. And we always wanted to just have that. We wanted to be our kids best friends right from the beginning. And so being able to spend all of this time with them, being able to be the ones who are creating memories with them, who they're, you know, if they had an option to go out with their friends, they'd want to stay home in some cases. And so that has been again, looking back, it's it's really nice to see the fruit of that. And when you're in it, you can question like, am I doing this right? Am I doing that right? But for us, yeah, it was just we we wanted to be with our kids. We wanted that time together. We wanted to be able to just build those memories.

Ginny Yurich Mm hmm. And you're at the spot where it's for your daughter. Your years are sort of coming to a close.

Samantha Skeete I know they are. They definitely are.

Ginny Yurich And we're in the same spot where our oldest is going into the 10th grade. Okay? He's 15 years old. And yours daughter's 16 now. So, I mean, I tell people I have no regrets.

Samantha Skeete Yeah. I mean.

Ginny Yurich And not.

Samantha Skeete Want. No, my only regrets are the times where maybe I wasn't where I wasn't as active. And like, we've gone through some difficult things. I've I've had three stillbirths over the last five years or six years now. And during those times, it was often it was difficult to kind of just, you know, carry on with certain things. And so my only regrets are the time that I feel like I miss. But at the same time, I believe that God is able to redeem the time. And he has done that beautifully. And I'm so grateful for the choices that we've made because now, yeah, my daughter, she's 16 and going into grade 11 and she's just we're just the best of friends. We yeah, we have such a great relationship.

Ginny Yurich We've had all this time together. Yeah. Yeah. And she's gotten to really delve into her own interests. And I think the thing you I know you talk about your stillbirths online, three sons, and it is also a way to teach our kids how we walk through really the hardest of things. And so even if sometimes it feels like you said, it feels like a regret or a miss, but also they had the opportunity. To walk through that with you and see how you handled it. And yeah, I don't think it's ever amiss when you homeschool. I think you have the time for those really hard and grieving seasons and days and ones that just never really end. It's always there.

Samantha Skeete Exactly. Yeah. No, it's always there. Look like we're growing together. And that's the one thing that, you know, I tell my kids often, you know, like, this is my first time being a parent. And so we're growing together and we're learning together and just being able to walk through even the hard seasons and.

Ginny Yurich Mhm. Yeah. And to learn because you know, everyone has hard seasons in their life and they look different. From family to family. But we do need to have those skills. And I think I felt like, you know, I liked school, I went to school, I a good friends went for 13 years like most people do. Good friends, good memories, good relationships, good teachers. I learned a lot of things. But then there were also a lot of holes because you do step out of that situation, not necessarily being able to transfer those into a real life or adult life situation. It is real life, but into the adult world. So if you're surrounded by kids, but then you go into a job where everyone's different age, or you find a career where you don't have any coworkers or, you know, like the meal planning, the cooking, the keeping up with the house, the dealing with grief, all of those types of things. And so it is a benefit of homeschooling to be able to model that even when it seems really hard and even maybe when it feels off like my kids are missing out. But no, really, they're getting a front row seat to how you build a life.

Samantha Skeete Exactly. That's a beautiful way to put it.

Ginny Yurich And it's a good thing for them. So you do talk to about exploring outside. You brought it up earlier. You wrote in this post exploring outside beats, sitting at a desk every single time. So of course I had to bring it up since it's the 1000 Hours Outside podcast.

Samantha Skeete Yeah.

Ginny Yurich Talk to us about just ditching the worksheets and ditching the curriculum and had an outside.

Samantha Skeete Yeah. All, all the time. And like I said, especially I want to say especially with boys, but in my experience, my daughter, she does really well. She's like me. I, I really thrived on like a textbook style of learning and growing up I loved writing. Like I would write essays for fun, like that type of stuff. And so she's similar in that way, whereas my boys have quite a bit more energy. And so we'll often just we'll put the textbooks down and we'll head outside. And they are just they're very free to build and to create and to explore. And they just love it. They're always coming up with things. And right now I'm a little embarrassed to say this, but right now they actually we've been we have a pond on our property and so they have been catching baby my baby fish, and then we're raising them inside the house. And so I have like I have some fish hanging out of my 350 square foot house right now. And that's over the years. I'll have woken up in the morning to like one of them bringing a snake into the bedroom and being like, Mom, look what I caught. And I'm like, okay, let's go put it back outside. And they love nature. They love being outside. They catch all the things and we want to watch everything grow. And they've had some really cool experiences. We found an injured and a kestrel. It was a kestrel and we were able to nurse it back to health and it was like, come to my son's hand and like eat out of his hand and sit on his head. And so they just had some amazing experiences like that.

Ginny Yurich Wow. Yeah, what a child said. I always think, like in the end, if you can be successful in a lot of different ways, a lot of different paths can lead to success, then if this one is an option for you, why not use it if you know of all outcomes in the end are okay, like the homeschoolers are okay, like they're doing great. And especially now, like you talked about, it's more popular than it used to be. I think because of COVID, it's more accepted. I mean, for a long time it was really hard to even talk about it. People would get pretty upset. But that has changed. And so there's a lot of people that are doing it, but there's also a lot of second generation homeschoolers. So people that have grown up and were homeschooled, like in the eighties, in the nineties, maybe when it was more illegal. Yeah, now they're adults and you meet them and they're great. Yeah, they're not super weird. They have careers, they are interesting, and a lot of times they're pretty self-reliant. And that's a neat thing to see. Like a lot of times entrepreneurs or they're, they're brave because they've had time to be able to try things out and they haven't spent 13 years. I mean, I say like I spent 13 years being told what to do. And then when you try and branch out and become an entrepreneur, you try and set up a homestead off grid. No one is giving you any directions. Yeah, and that can be tricky.

Samantha Skeete Absolutely. And I think that is one of the. You mentioned it earlier about how homeschoolers, though, often do just as well or exceed their peers on standardized testing and things like that. And I think part of the reason is, is because when you homeschool, you have the opportunity to teach them not just what to learn, but how to learn, how to find information for themselves, how to if they're interested in a subject, they'll know how to go and how to research it, how to learn more about it, how to, you know, all of those things. And so for any parents who might get worried about, you know, I want my kid to be a doctor, this or that, and they might not be able to. Well, if that's what your child's passionate about, they'll do. Okay. Right. Like they'll if you plant those seeds and if you teach them one, one thing to do is let them know you're their biggest supporter, that they can do it and that you're there for them and you're cheering them on. And that's where the no comparison thing comes into. Because if a child's constantly feeling like they're not measuring up, they're not where they're supposed to be, they're not all of these things. That's discouraging. Right. And sometimes they won't even want to try. And so just letting them know that you're there for them, you're supporting them, and they now have the tools to go into, do and be whatever it is that they desire.

Ginny Yurich Yeah, that's so beautiful. Let's say one more quick topic. Minimalism. How? Because how did you pare down seven people in 350 square feet?

Samantha Skeete Oh, yeah. We had to definitely pare down a lot. Now, I didn't get rid of all of our school stuff that's in storage, but for the most part, I've always I'm not I'm definitely not a minimalist, but I'm pretty good with letting things go. And so I wasn't too difficult. So I miss our book collection. We had a really nice book collection, and now we have with a smaller book collection, but we still have a good bit. Yeah, it wasn't as difficult for me.

Ginny Yurich Okay, you made it work. Clothes and kitchen things and yeah, this is an incredible amount of skill sets, truly. Like you have the homeschooling, but then you also have this off grid and you built a home and you've learned how to live in cold temperatures. I mean, that's another thing. You're not doing it in Florida.

Samantha Skeete But in Florida.

Ginny Yurich You know, you're doing it when the temperatures get frigid cold and it's harder to get outside and you're basically in. We live close to an IKEA. So IKEA's got all those small little spaces set up and you can walk through them and the 300 square feet, it's relief.

Samantha Skeete It is. It is. That's funny.

Ginny Yurich What? An inventor. Yeah, Well, that's incredible. Well, people want to find more about you and all the things that you offer, which is quite a bit they can go to for the love of homeschooling dot com on Instagram for the love of homeschooling. And at this growing life, if you're listening and you want to check out the mega bundle volume three for back to school, the link is right in the show notes. Easy to find and there will be more that are to come, so just be sure you're following along for that. Samantha, I really appreciate your time. I think that this is really going to encourage homeschoolers, especially heading into the back to school season, and I hope that encourages those who are on the fence. I think a lot of people are on the fence. They're feeling it. They feel like I really want to do that. And they're wide eyed about it, but also scared. So I know that this will give them some confidence and a little bit of vision and some help to get started. Well, we always end our podcast with the same question. So my question for you is what's a favorite memory from your childhood that was outside? Um.

Samantha Skeete My dad and I used to go for bike rides. My dad, I grew up in Toronto and there were these big hills that would go down to the beach and I would sit on the back of his bike, not in the proper seat. Now that I think about it, he, like, struck bucketloads at the back of the bike and I'd sit there and hold on and we'd go down these big hills. That was always a lot of fun.

Ginny Yurich What a thrill. That's so sweet. I love that. Wow. Yeah. There's the little things, isn't it? The little things that we remember.

Samantha Skeete And I didn't have a ton of outside time like I was in. I was in regular school, I was in daycare, so I honestly wasn't outside a ton as a kid. So I think I'm making up for it now.

Ginny Yurich Yeah, you are. So that's awesome. Well, Samantha, I so appreciate this and I love to connect in this way. How do you feel like your first podcast went? I thought it was amazing.

Samantha Skeete Oh, it was so fun. I'm so grateful that you invited me on. And I hope it's I hope it's an encouragement. I hope that people are just left with knowing that if you have the desire to homeschool, you can do it. You really can. There are ways to make it work. We even have a scholarship program, um, for the love of homeschooling, where we financially do our best to help families, whether through free resources or we have a $500 a month scholarship we give out. And so if you have the desire to homeschool, go for it. You can do it. There's a huge community of moms that are supporting you and cheering you on and yeah.

Ginny Yurich Oh, I love that. People definitely have to check out for the love of homeschooling dot com. There's so much. There's so much there. A book club I didn't even get into. Do you want to do a rundown real quick. What are people going to find when they go there?

Samantha Skeete We have three monthly subscription programs. One is a world Explorer's club where each month we go over a new country. So we learn about. The country. We cook different meals from the country, do different crafts. We have a nature study club, which is a great way to get outside and just we explore new nature topics each month. And then we have a Bird of the Month club where we learn about a new bird each month. Those are all priced very affordably. So yeah, just about any family can join. And then we have our seasonal book clubs. Our next one is going to be released early September and it's gonna be a homesteading theme. So it's centered around a whole bunch of homesteading themed books and topics and we're really excited about that. We have our weekly freebies, we have our scholarship, and then of course, our bundles.

Ginny Yurich Yeah, a lot going on there. So a lot of ways that people can find support and community. It's incredible what you're doing. Really appreciate your time and I hope we get to connect again. This was awesome. It's so neat to be able to talk to you. Well, you're off grid in the middle of nowhere, so what a cool thing. Thanks so much, man.

Samantha Skeete Thanks, Ginny.