Episode 26: Optimizing Your Child’s Learning Environment | Homeschool Rhythms with Lyndsey Mimnagh of Treehouse Schoolhouse
Every homeschooling mom knows what great freedom and responsibility comes with the calling to educate your children at home. In this episode, homeschool mom and curriculum developer Lyndsey of Treehouse Schoolhouse joins us as we dive into some of the most common questions about homeschooling and dig deeper to uncover the why behind so many foundational homeschooling concepts. Whether you are in the thick of homeschooling or are considering making the transition to learning at home, we hope this episode offers both inspiration and practical strategies as you create an environment where your family can thrive.
Join us as we discuss the following:
How Lyndsey knew she wanted to homeschool before she even had children
At what age should you start schooling your children?
Curating an environment of learning in your home
How to make a natural transition from the early years into formal lessons
Laying a solid foundation by figuring out what you believe about education
Bringing your personality and passions into your homeschool
Creating a homeschool that reflects your family culture
Taking ownership over your role as an educator
Designing a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly rhythm that works for your unique family
Top tips for homeschooling older children with toddlers or babies in the home
Thinking through extracurricular commitments in a way that honors your family culture and your child’s interests
How homeschool families can far exceed society’s definition of socialization
Practical strategies for nurturing your own holistic health as a full-time homeschool mom
How homeschooling promotes a deep connection between parent and child
The beauty of offering your child an individualized education
How schooling at home creates opportunities to support your child’s emotional health
About Lyndsey
Lyndsey is a homeschool mom of four and the founder of Treehouse Schoolhouse. Before motherhood, Lyndsey had a career in children's ministry and special needs education. Her home education centers around living books and ideas, hands-on learning, nature exploration, and biblical discipleship. She shares experiences and home education inspiration through her Instagram and blog, as well as creates curriculum and resources for families around the world. Her most popular curriculum titles are An Expectant Easter, A Connected Christmas, and Treehouse Nature Study.
Resources mentioned
Deschooling: What, Why, and How? (Treehouse Schoolhouse Blog)
Teaching from Rest by Sarah Mackenzie
Sally Clarkson’s books: The Lifegiving Home, The Lifegiving Table, The Lifegiving Parent
Homegrown Education Nutrition Workbooks
Treehouse Schoolhouse Homeschool Style Quiz
Connect
Lyndsey Mimnagh | Instagram | Website | YouTube | Facebook | Pinterest
“I really encourage moms: this is your career. Take it seriously. It’s an important responsibility. And you can do other things, too. Obviously, you and I have other things, other passions that we do. But I definitely view homeschooling as a responsibility that God has given me for this time in my life.”
Transcript
Kori Meloy Welcome to The Freely Rooted Podcast, where we are passionate about helping women reclaim their metabolisms, restore their youthful vitality, and rediscover God's original design for motherhood and wellness.
Fallon Lee We are your hosts, Fallon and Kori, and we're so glad you're joining us for season four. If you're new here, be sure to listen to our previous episodes where we talk through many of our favorite foundational topics. Now grab your favorite nourishing drink, and join us as we continue discussing simple, attainable, and life-changing approaches to wellness.
Fallon Lee Hi guys. Welcome back to The Freely Rooted Podcast. I'm your host, Fallon, and so sadly our lovely co-host Kori couldn't join us today, so she will be missed. But I am so excited to sit down with Lyndsey. Lyndsey has an account on Instagram @TreehouseSchoolhouse, and we are going to talk all about homeschool today. And I love this conversation because I swore that I would never homeschool my children. And then here we are in year three of homeschooling, and I literally could not imagine doing anything differently. And Lyndsey's account has become a recent complete obsession of mine. She has got just the most beautiful, gracious homeschool advice and resources. And you can just tell that she and her household are just so fun and so full of life. So, Lyndsey, I'm so honored that you're here today. Thank you so much for sitting down with us. And I would love to begin with you just telling us a little bit about yourself, your family, your homeschool journey. How did you guys decide on homeschooling? Tell us all about your family life.
Lyndsey Mimnagh Okay. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really honored to be here, too. So I have a pretty unique story in that education has always been a passion of mine, and before I was a mother, I actually had a position as a nanny, and they asked if I would be interested in homeschooling their children. So I started out as a nanny, and they wanted to pull— they had two children, and they both had some special needs, one related to being adopted and the other had some learning disabilities. So they wanted to be homeschooled, but they felt like the parents didn't have the capacity. So they asked if I would be willing to do that. And so I went to some training and did a lot of reading, and so here I am, a single woman learning about education. And I was public school educated myself, but I just started to see like the beauty of what it could be. And I'm very thankful that they gave me a lot of freedom to experiment and to learn. Like it doesn't have to look like a public school classroom in a home. And so we ended up doing school in a treehouse and in a canoe and all over the place and really adapting everything to this child's needs. So we would take workbook pages and I would turn them into games because this child needed to move and things like that. And I started to see this child who didn't want to write or read—within six months—just loving to learn and falling in love with books. And I just was like, there's no other way for me. I'm 100% homeschooling when I have kids. And so I met my husband at the same time I was working in that job, and I basically told him from the beginning, "Just so you know, this is my dream is to homeschool." And so he hadn't had much experience with it, but I think he just saw my passion and that my gifting was really in teaching as well. And so he never really questioned it. So that's kind of where it started. And we've had to go through a lot of sacrifices financially for me to stay home and do that, but it's been so worth it. So I have four children now. My oldest is nine, and then I have a seven-year-old, a three-year-old— well, actually, he's four today. He's literally going to be turning four today.
Fallon Lee Aw, happy birthday.
Lyndsey Mimnagh I know.
Fallon Lee That's so sweet.
Lyndsey Mimnagh And then I have a two-year-old. So two, four, seven, and nine. And we started dabbling in the world of homeschooling. It's such a natural transition at the beginning that it's hard to pinpoint the day. But probably when my oldest was four, four or five, we started doing a little more intentional things that had to do with education. And so, yeah, it's been on our journey this whole time. Let's see, my husband, he is a full time carpenter. He owns his own business. I run Treehouse Schoolhouse.
Fallon Lee Wow.
Lyndsey Mimnagh We are currently in the phase of him transitioning to help me more with my business and really the world that that's opened up for him to help us with homeschooling as well.
Fallon Lee I love that.
Lyndsey Mimnagh So that's kind of the vision for our family.
Fallon Lee Yeah, that's amazing. I love that you touched on your background. I did not know this about you, that you actually like nanny homeschool taught for a while, and that's so sweet. I love the emphasis that you put on kids who just need a different learning environment, and I can so relate to that because I feel like my children also very much fall into that category. And to be honest, I think a lot of kids do. I think that a lot of kids just really benefit—especially at that younger age—from space to move and, like you said, do school in different places. I mean we have a homeschool room, but we do school all over the place— on the trampoline, in the playhouse, at the outside table, in our beds. And I love the vision of just letting kids move and how that really does enhance their learning. I mean, I've seen such a difference in my kids even— you know, I know that homeschool moms a lot of the time just talk about how—year to year—you just so change your expectations and how you implement schooling with your kids. And I feel like I sort of started as wanting to be a more structured homeschool mom that like, okay, this is our homeschool table, and this is where we sit to do homeschool, and you must sit down in a chair. And I feel like that's just changed so much as you just kind of get to know the true nature of kids and their need for movement and breaks and activities. And so I love that you touched on that. And you did mention kind of the general age that you sort of started implementing some of these things with your kids. But one of the most common questions we got on Instagram when we told people you were coming on is what would you tell parents who are wondering, "What age do I start?" And "How should I start implementing homeschool?" And then I would love to hear your thoughts on timeframe. What does homeschool time commitment look like as opposed to a standard school setting? That was another big question that parents had.
Lyndsey Mimnagh Okay. So I honestly don't love that question when people ask me that question of "When do you start?" Because I think what we need to do is get our minds out of "this is parenting and this is homeschooling". And realize that truly homeschooling is an extension of motherhood. It's an extension of parenting. And it's an extension of our home life. And so when we start thinking about it that way, then you start to realize that your two-year-old is technically doing school because you're stirring muffin batter with them and you're talking to them about blueberries. And then you read a book that happens to have blueberries that night, and they're making a connection. They're doing school for a two-year-old. But I didn't sit down and have a curriculum or a plan or say, "Now we're going to do this thing." And so really, the advice that I give to everyone to make it a little more practical and concrete is, "What atmosphere do you want to set in your home that will lend itself well to education?" That should be the first question we're asking. Not, "At what point do I sit my child down and say, 'Today's the first day of school.'?" But early in those early years, even if you have babies and you don't have school age children yet, the question to start asking yourself is "What culture and what atmosphere do I want in my home so that when it's really time for them to learn to read and write and learn all of these things, that it's just such a natural transition because we're already— our whole life is already set up for this?" I can't say you should start when they're age four or five or age six because there is a difference between natural learning and a formal education. And for formal education— meaning like there's expectation and we sit down, you need to learn how to write a paper. Like those types of things happen for—in our family—more like six, seven, eight years old. But until then, there are tons of other intentional things happening in my home. They're just not considered a formal lesson. But behind the scenes, in my heart and in my mind, there is a lot of intentionality going on. And to be more specific, for example, my first goal is for my children to absolutely fall in love with literature. And so from the age— from the very beginning of their life, I am making sure that my home is filled with only the best of the best books, reading constantly, and filling my home with those books, and then making real life connections from the books. There are so many ways that you can do that, and it's so much fun, especially in those early years. But that's one of my main goals. Do I call that school? I don't really call that school, but it is. You know what I'm saying?
Fallon Lee Sure. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I would love to know, too—to piggyback off of that—you said that you do introduce some formal subjects early on like literature, reading and that a lot of it is very just fluid. Because I know there's some different sort of schools of thought in terms of like, okay, when my kid is in kindergarten, first grade, second grade, what are the core subjects that I should be focusing on? There was a great conversation on an Instagram post of mine from a couple of weeks back about homeschool, where some moms were talking about how math, for example— there are some homeschool moms that really stand behind math not being introduced as a core subject until nearly second grade. And as I was thinking through that, we kind of had a loose math curriculum our first couple of years. But to be honest, I think we did about half of them each year. And I think that there was a reason for that. I think that my kids at five, six years old weren't super ready to sit down and do like a thorough math curriculum. And so I'd love to know—for your kids and in your home—what are the things that you focus on in those early years and what are the subjects that you feel like, okay, maybe we'll dive into that in a more structured way when they are a bit older.
Lyndsey Mimnagh Okay, so I've already mentioned some of those early. So when we're talking like preschool, I'm talking about life connections, practical life skills, lots of reading—like I said—and falling in love with books because that's really setting them up for the future. But then when it gets into being to like five and six years old, I allow them to lead the way. But I definitely introduce letters and numbers— just experiences with those. So getting familiar. Like my son, his name is Huck, so he's obsessed with the letter H. So he finds Hs everywhere. He draws them with sidewalk chalk— my four-year-old. I'm not going to sit down and go, "Oh, now he wants to know about H. So now let's learn all of the things about the alphabet."
Fallon Lee Sure.
Lyndsey Mimnagh It's going to happen naturally. So I would say that. And then also numbers and even skip counting. Like simple basic sorting, things like that in a very natural way. So we're walking in the forest and he's picking up rocks. And I say, "Hey, how many rocks do you have?" And we count the rocks. And then when we're cooking, "I need three scoops of this. Let's count." Things like that. So natural ways to introduce letters, numbers. And then around age probably six or seven is when I include more handwriting with an actual pencil. So until then, they pretty much have learned a lot of the ways that letters and numbers look. They can recognize them. They maybe drew them for a year in a salt tray or with sidewalk chalk. But not until age six or seven do I actually give them a pencil. At that point, their fingers are ready. And every child's different, just like with walking or anything else, but around that age I've seen that that's when they're confident and they're ready to pick up that pencil. And so we might introduce like actual handwriting paper and trying to get them to form their letters in a more structured way. But pretty much everything else— like pretty much it's math and language arts for the first couple of years that really matters in a very gentle way and lots and lots of literature. I can't emphasize that too much. And then really, history, geography, all of that starts to trickle in through story at first and then in a more structured way—I would say—around age seven, eight, nine.
Fallon Lee I love that.
Lyndsey Mimnagh And I'm already experiencing— I'm not just speaking this from I have preschoolers and I've read books about this, but I've seen children through this now. And I've seen that it's okay to relax and to let it happen naturally, you know?
Fallon Lee Yeah, I love that advice because I think that a lot of homeschool moms with the best of intentions really just stress themselves out in the early years thinking, okay, well, I have to have a science curriculum and I have to have history and I have to have all these things. And I feel like I was one of those moms in my first year of schooling thinking like— I knew a lot of other fantastic homeschool moms in person that were years ahead of me. And so I think that it's easy to look at somebody that does have older kids and think, okay, well, I've got to cram all those subjects in with my kindergartner or my first grader, and you just don't. And I think a lot of moms just set themselves up for failure, not realizing that learning is just so play-based in those early years. And it's amazing. I think back to when my kids were five, six years old, and they would swing for hours at a time. We have a little play set in the back, and they would swing for hours. And that was a great time for us to do— like we would sing our ABCs, we would skip count, we would— you know, there's so many things that you can do while kids are playing that doesn't require them to sit down at a desk. And I think that I was one of those moms that expected my kids to be ready to sit down and do handwriting at age five, six, and they just weren't. So I love that you gave that advice because I think it just gives moms a whole lot of grace in how they approach those early years. And another big question that came up quite a bit was curriculum and how it just can be such a beast to decide what to choose for your family because there's just so many resources out there which can be a beautiful thing and also kind of a curse that it's just overwhelming the amount of curriculum choices there are. And so I would love to hear what your advice would be to moms who are kind of struggling. Maybe you can address it in the sense of younger kids and maybe a bit older. But how would you encourage moms to just kind of confidently choose either curriculum or methodology or whatever that may be for their children? How do we kind of cut through the noise to figure out what works for our family?
Lyndsey Mimnagh My greatest piece of advice that I give moms is the first order of business being figuring out what you believe about education and starting there. So you can do that by— number one, if you're taking your child out of public school, you need to spend some time de-schooling is essentially what it's called. And I have a blog post about this. I have done a lot of research about this. But basically you need to unlearn everything you've learned about education, and a lot of us need to do that anyway because we were raised not in a home education environment. And so we need to unlearn all of these things. What is success in education? What am I really looking for? What are the goals for my child? Are they that they pass a test? Well, why? Why do we need to pass the test if I know everything they're learning every day? So it's asking yourself these questions and going back to the beginning and saying, okay, I want to start from scratch here. What do I believe about all of these things? And you may come to some different conclusions than I come to, and that's okay. But you need to know what you stand for before you pick a curriculum. It's like you need to know why you believe what you believe so that you know—when you're looking at something—you're going to be able to see, oh, this does not match the direction that I want in our home. And so going back to the root and the core of what you believe is first, and you can do that through— what I did, really, was reading a ton of books, reading a lot of blogs, and really just learning from people who I would watch their life on Instagram or in a blog or listen to a podcast and be like, that resonates with me. I want to learn more. And so being a student of education first, as the mom, as the parents, and deciding with your husband, deciding with the Lord, what do we believe about education? What do we want our home to be like? What do we want for our children? What are our goals? And then from there, you can pick up a piece of curriculum and you can say, okay, this has elements in it that are going to help me reach those goals. Or this is structured in such a way that does not match my student, my child's learning style or my teaching style. Or this actually wouldn't fit in my home. And so there's not a right list and a wrong list of curriculum out there. It's a more what makes sense for your family list, and you need to know what that is before you go looking for curriculum. So that's true for if you're at the very beginning of this journey, either when you have little ones or you're taking your fifth grader out of school and you're switching to homeschool. So I really want to encourage you, if you're in that position, to take some time to de-school, basically to even wait six months and allow the focus of your home to be setting that atmosphere, having good routines in your family, making connections, overcoming any hurdles or insecurities your child's having about school, all of those things before you start over in a brand new way.
Fallon Lee Yeah. And I think, too, I was so shocked that it took really a few years to kind of figure out what worked for my family and for my kids. And I have to laugh— like we've done a different math curriculum every single year because every year I chose something that I thought, okay, this is going to be great. And then it just didn't really fit our family. And so it's hard sometimes to find that balance of like, okay, it's okay to commit to something and it's okay to change. You just have so much time and fluidity. And you had actually recommended the book Teaching from Rest somewhere on your account. And I loved that book. So, so good. That and the Life-Giving Home by Sally Clarkson just are so beautiful. And I think those are just really good resources to kind of help you figure out what you want your home to look like. And I love just the freedom that we have as homeschool moms to kind of include our own interests and our own desires. I think it was Teaching from Rest that really talked about as a mom, as a homeschool mom, it is important to sit down and make a list of things that you need to thrive and make a list of things that you want to see included in your homeschool curriculum. And I think that's one of the best pieces of homeschool advice I've ever gotten was that you as a homeschool mom need to have a connection to your curriculum or teaching or whatever that looks like. Things that make you thrive and make you tick. So we include, for example— Homegrown Education has a fantastic elementary age nutrition workbook. And so I love that, and so I bring that into our homeschool. And read-alouds. I'm such a huge reader, and I know that we have that in common, and it's just so sweet to be able to pull that into your homeschool rhythm and really honor yourself as a teacher, as a mom when you're choosing your curriculum. I'd love to hear if you have any other resources to add about finding your homeschool style or— you know, whether that's books. And I know there's all these quizzes about are you Charlotte Mason? Are you Waldorf?
Lyndsey Mimnagh I have one of those on my website.
Fallon Lee I love it. Okay. Yeah. So go take Lyndsey's quiz, first of all. Do you want to talk about that at all? Finding your sort of homeschool style and if you feel like that has really influenced the way that you teach or did you sort of have a style that fleshed out regardless of a quiz or not?
Lyndsey Mimnagh Yeah, I definitely didn't start with nothing, take a quiz, and go, "Now I'm going to be all that."
Fallon Lee Yeah.
Lyndsey Mimnagh The quiz and those kinds of things—I think—are more for figuring out what you're already inclined to be, what you're already leaning towards. If you completely have no idea, it can definitely give you a starting point for research.
Fallon Lee Sure.
Lyndsey Mimnagh But I always want to encourage moms that you can be eclectic and you can have a little bit of this and a little bit of that. And I really love what you said about honoring you as the mother in your home with the curriculum that you choose. But I also think passing down a legacy of your family culture, of who you are as a parent and who your husband is. Like, for me, I'm a very creative person, and so I could not homeschool without creativity being a part of it. That's just who we are. Whereas a friend next door might be obsessed with Classical Conversations because they're all into Latin and all these things, and that just makes my head hurt. And then bringing in your husband, like my husband is a hiker and an outdoorsman and a woodworker, so he teaches them skills and things. And I think that's such a beautiful gift that we can pass to our children that we are the Mimnagh family, this is who we are, this is what we love. And including what our kids love. My son is very musical. None of us are so much. But now we're including that into our home education because it's who he is. Anyway, back to the methods, though. I feel like you could really do that in any of those methodologies, but if you're just starting out, finding out what those methods are, starting to dig deep like, okay, what is a Charlotte Mason education? Reading books about it, listening to podcasts about it, and then going, "I resonate with that. I resonate with that part, but not that part." Take notes. I really encourage moms like this is your career. Take it seriously. It's an important responsibility. And you can do other things, too. Like, obviously, you and I have other things, other passions that we do. But I definitely view homeschooling as like, this is a responsibility that God has given me for this time in my life. I'm going to take it seriously. It can be fun and free and all of that, but I need to take it seriously and go, "Lord, what do you want me to do with this?" And He can also guide us in the best ways that our children need to learn and the ways that we as moms can thrive. Because this is a long journey. Homeschooling is a long commitment. So we need to be feeling like we're in this for the long haul, and we can be, and setting ourselves up for success in that, too.
Fallon Lee Yeah. I love so much of what you said. I love just the thought process of your family culture and really curating that. And I think that is so beautiful because, I mean, we do have our own desires and passions as parents. And I had mentioned the book by Sally Clarkson, The Life-Giving—I mean, she's got a series Life-Giving Home, Life-Giving Parent, Life-Giving Table—and it's really focused in on creating that family culture. And I think that's just beautiful. I think that it's so important to really hone in on that. And then the other thing you said that I wanted to touch back on— the commitment. I want to hone in on that because that was such a good point. So I had this sort of personal revelation this year in our schooling. We're entering our third or third and a half year— because we pulled my son from kindergarten midway. So we also had to do that like sort of unschooling or de-schooling for a bit. But I realized as I was planning this year, I had this moment where I sort of had to get real with myself. And I realized that I had not been giving homeschool the commitment that it deserved. I had not really been owning my role as an educator. I had been using suggestions from friends or whoever that were really beautiful and wonderful. But I had not taken the time to evaluate what I need as a homeschool mom and what I want my family culture to look like. And I think that's one of the biggest things that really made a shift in the way that education happens in my home is that I—at the beginning of this year—had to take the time to dive into resources, to read life-giving books, to read those books that I mentioned that you had suggested. To really dive into different methodologies and different rhythms and morning basket ideas and all of the things that go into a homeschool culture. I feel like I had not really owned that yet, that I had been kind of going off other people's suggestions, which are wonderful. And that's where ultimately a lot of my stuff comes from because there are other moms who have been homeschooling for decades now that have beautiful, wonderful advice. But it was important for me to take the time to sift through that with my own family culture in mind, with the education habits that my kids have had for the past couple of years in mind. And that kind of led me, I think, to your resources. And that's really how I started diving into your account and your website so much, because I had this moment where I was like, I've got to own my role as an educator. I've been kind of dilly dallying in this a little bit and not really taking on this role. And I had several weeks where I planned our curriculum and our year and our days and our weeks. And I would love to hear— I know you have so many good resources on planning and on structuring your days, your weeks, your year. I would love to know how that process looks for you, what advice you have for moms who are in that planning stage, and then what is kind of your typical rhythm for your days, weeks, and years with your kiddos at this point?
Lyndsey Mimnagh Sure. This question is— like, I can give overarching advice, but then when it gets down to the nitty-gritty, it's going to be so individualized to your family. The biggest reason—well, there's a few reasons—the biggest reason is ages of your children. I have a two- and four-year-old who rule our home.
Fallon Lee Right. As they do at two and four.
Lyndsey Mimnagh As they do at two and four. And so I have to keep that in mind. I also have to keep in mind having a part-time job with my business. That is the beauty of homeschooling, though, is that I can tell you what my daily rhythm is, and you can glean ideas, but then you can sit down and make it your own. When it comes to a full school year, we personally have chosen to school year round. The reason we do that is because I want to take two weeks off whenever I want and go travel. I also want to— maybe I have a big product launch and it's too stressful for me to homeschool a full load and then switch gears and do a full launch that week. And so I say, "We're going to do a half school week. Lighter days." Or one of my kids is sick, and so we just— all the kids are not doing school that week. So I just like the flexibility, personally. I do take like two to three weeks off in the summer so I can switch everything to the new year. And we do pretend like, "Whoo, new school year!" But schooling year round has really been beneficial to us. Also, I've had a baby like I feel like every year of my life. But you know, when you have a baby, you take a lot— at the end of my pregnancy, I would take time off. At the beginning of newborn stage, I would take time off. We've also moved a lot. So any of those big life changes— you know, the reality is homeschool— like you're not just homeschooling. Like you're also mothering, and you're also cleaning a house, and you're also still a wife and a friend. You can't just turn it on and turn it off like you drop your kid off at school and pick them up. Like the dishwasher is imploding and then someone's knocking on the door and you're in the middle of math lessons. Yesterday my two-year-old peed on the floor while my four-year-old slipped in it while I was teaching math.
Fallon Lee Oh, no. Just a typical day in the life.
Lyndsey Mimnagh Yeah. And that's like, okay, but the reality is it's okay for us to take a pause and go a little slower and maybe cut lessons that day because I school year round. So it helps me relax to do that. And so that's a year. And then I do choose curriculum and for the year as a core, normally they are set up for anywhere between like 26 and 34 weeks is a typical year of school for a lot of these curriculum. Sometimes I might take one week and expand it to two weeks. I might like do whatever. I'm the boss.
Fallon Lee Right.
Lyndsey Mimnagh But you know, like, that's kind of the big thing. But I like to plan it chunks at a time, like a month at a time. I like to look ahead, get my materials. I do best if I'm just incredibly prepared ahead of time rather than trying to do it every weekend. I like to plan in big batches, get all my library books for four weeks, try to order all my stuff, and then also look at our calendar and go, "I think we're going to go apple picking. Okay, I'm going to learn about apples that week." So it's also to adapt our life to what we're learning and make it more of a fun experience for all of us. And then some weekly planning. But as far as a day in the life, currently— I'm going to include my little ones, and I'll move through it sort of quickly. But I am an early riser. I need time alone before my children get up. That's when I spend time in the Word. It's when I even sometimes I bake. This morning I got up at 5:00 and baked bread because I just enjoy time in the kitchen with no children. Some mornings I work out. And so I'm usually up between 4:30 and 5:00. I know many of you are rolling your eyes at that. It's okay. I do go to bed at like 8:30 or 9:00, so everybody can do their own thing, but this is what works for me. My kids are also up pretty early, so they're up between 6:00 and 7:00. And so one thing that we've prioritized in the last few years is my husband— since he owns his own business, he doesn't start his day till about 8:00, 8:30, so that he can help lead us in the Bible over breakfast. And so that's been a priority for us. That's like a first big step we've taken for him to be more involved in our day and in our education. And so I kind of manage the little ones while he leads Bible while we eat breakfast, and then around 8:00 he leaves. We do some family chores, family responsibilities. Everybody has their own chores that we do. And we gather back again for like that morning time, that morning basket around 9:30, 9:00, 9:30. And at that time, I try to do things that include my little ones as well. And that's when I use the nature study curriculum that I have created because I wanted to create something that was family-centered. And so there are things in there that your two-year-old will enjoy all the way up to your early middle schoolers. And so that's when we really dive into that. And it's just like a really inviting way to start our day, too, with songs and picture books and things like that. So we do that, and then my little ones go off to play, and my older children have independent work for about an hour, and I kind of hop between them while keeping the little ones alive while they're peeing on the floor, you know? All the good stuff. And then when my little ones have nap time and rest time is when I save the most intense part of our lessons where I need to be one-on-one. I need to read aloud. I need to help them with their writing. Things like that. And that's about another hour. So all of that added up, we probably do school between three and four hours a day at this point with a second and fourth grader. And so that answers that question as well as kind of how much. It's a gradual thing, but I think one rule of thumb I've heard is one hour per year. So if they're first graders, you really only need about one hour. Second graders, two hours. Ours is a little on the longer side because we do so much art.
Fallon Lee Sure.
Lyndsey Mimnagh And because my kids love to do that. And so if we took out art and baking and things like that—which is hard to even consider school, but it is—it would be less. And then the rest of the day my children spend outside or they spend doing projects. They are building a cardboard house, they are climbing trees, they're building forts. We have friends over. I mean, so much of their day is a continuing of their education. My kids are like crazy readers. Hours and hours a day reading that I don't consider their actual school time, but it is. So all of these things. Or we'll learn something in school, and then the next thing I know, the afternoon my daughter's in the woods playing Pocahontas because we read a book about her. Okay, so that is school. So again, it's setting up your home and your atmosphere. Leaving margins in your day for play, not turning on the television, not overscheduling your kids with activities so that they have this room to process the information in which you presented to them in these short stints of learning in formal education. And so I see our whole day as learning, but basically the rest of the day is that. I'm either working in the afternoons or I'm doing all those things with them, doing housework, dinner, and we do read-alouds at night, and that's kind of our full day. We don't run around and do a bunch of sports, a bunch of activities.
Fallon Lee Sure.
Lyndsey Mimnagh We have a pretty slow life. And I think that that aids itself to peace.
Fallon Lee Yeah. Absolutely.
Lyndsey Mimnagh It lends itself to peace and to allowing your children to have self-education as well like I mentioned.
Fallon Lee I love that. That's beautiful. I feel like we're so similar in our approach to kind of the flow of our day, and we school year round, too. And this year something I'm excited about is we're going to do six weeks on and one week off just as a constant rotation, which is new to us. I have never done it this way before. Last year we took Fridays off because my husband worked half a day on Fridays, but he's home with us now, and so I'm like, you know what? I'm just going to do this for us. We're going to have like a Sabbath week every six weeks. We're going to just take a week off to rest, regroup, evaluate curriculum, what's working and what's not working. And I think that it just is such an important concept that you touched on that leaving margins in your day, in your year, in your week is just so important because—like you said—you're not just homeschooling. You are doing so many other things, spinning so many plates. And not just you; every mom is carrying—to some level—their own constant to-do lists and constant things that they're keeping up with. And so I think leaving that space for peace, for fluidity, is so important. And I think the other hard thing that I learned as a homeschool mom, because I am just such a I'm a flow person and not a schedule person. And so I think in my first couple of years of homeschooling, I leaned into that too heavily and I didn't have a good plan and a structure for our entire year and didn't have kind of a— at least a loose framework for what I wanted the year to look like, the day to look like, the week to look like. And I kind of had to learn the hard way because I think we're in the season now where we found sort of this perfect balance between structure and flexibility because it's wild to me how much I've watched my kids change in their attitudes to homeschooling because we're so much more structured this year. You know, for the first couple of years, I feel like we were kind of surviving. And so it was like, okay, let's power through language arts and let's power through math. Because my kids were little, and I was probably expecting just way too much from them. But now that they have the capacity to sit down and school for longer periods of time, and they know that— like I said, I feel like our day is very similar. We do breakfast as a family. And then we will probably do a Bible time, and then chores, and then morning time where we do handwriting, read-aloud. We have your wonderful morning time binder with a calendar and time and weather and all that fun stuff that my kids love. And then we'll do emotional concepts in that time and things that don't really fit into our core subjects and then come back to those later. But my kids are doing so much better with that rhythm as opposed to like, okay, well, we might do school at 10:00. I don't know, we might do it at 2:00. And I think there's this really great middle ground that we can fall into as moms, because I was just so free flowing that it was like, oh, we're just so flexible. And I didn't commit enough to having a structure. And so I think it's beautiful that you have really communicated well that your family does so well and most families do so well of having a structure, but also tons of flexibility because I think there's just this perfect sweet spot that we can fall into. And I know you talked about, you know, you currently have young ones in tow. I would love to hear— you kind of touched on how you include them in morning time. And they do have their own rest time. But I know this is a big struggle for moms, myself included. I've got a three-year-old right now who's very busy. He's our third kid. So he's a quintessential third tornado child where he just does what he wants and is just precious and wild. And I know that's a big struggle for many moms that have young ones is they're like, "How do I do this with a toddler?" So I know you have resources about this on your website and profile, but I would love to hear, functionally, how can we make it easier as moms when we do have babies and toddlers in tow? What activities can we include for them? Functionally, how do we make this work with little bitty ones?
Lyndsey Mimnagh Yeah, I think that it's hard. It's hard no matter what. I will give you some tips, but I think in general, it's just something that everybody has to realize like this is a short season and we're going to do our best. And if our older children are getting less school or if it's not as ideal as we want, or if we can't do all the projects that we want right now, there will be a time where it will be easier. So just want to encourage you first that it's a season, and I'm encouraging myself. But I've already seen how quickly it's changed. Whereas a year ago, I was stopping to nurse every 30 minutes, and I'm like wearing my one-year-old and all of this where now all of a sudden she's two, and she just stopped nursing.
Fallon Lee Aw.
Lyndsey Mimnagh My last baby. Stop for a moment to cry.
Fallon Lee Right.
Lyndsey Mimnagh But now it's just she's all of a sudden going up the stairs and playing blocks for a while by herself. And I can put on an audio book in the next room and they stay occupied for longer. So it happens so fast. But there are some practical things that I recommend for sure doing from experience. The first one being to set up your school area in a place where—in a close by room or if not in the same room—you can have a designated play area for those children. So we school right at our dining room table, and we have a setup in our living room where it's like, this is where they play while we're doing school. Even better is if you can have a safe outdoor space that's off of where you do school, or if you can also do school outside. Set up a table outside where you can take your lessons out there and your little ones are safe. Have a sandbox, have a mud kitchen. If there's like a fenced in area or if they're really good about knowing their boundaries. We'll take our read-aloud outside because that's a good 45 minutes where I need to read, and there's no way my little ones are going to sit quietly at the table, but they'll play in a sandbox, and I can read on a blanket. And then having a good rotation of quiet-ish toys that are special for school time that you can pull out. If they'll sit in a high chair— my two-year-old will still sit in her IKEA high chair buckled in. And so we will just ride that until it dies because she will sit there tucked under the table and she'll play sand, kinetic sand, or Play-Doh, or dry erase markers on her little preschool morning time menu. She doesn't understand it yet, but she's coloring on those numbers every day. So all of those little activities, setting up those. And I have a blog post of 50 ideas for this with links and free stuff around your house because it's one of the number one problems that people do have. And then structuring your day—like I mentioned—where you are filling up their bucket at the beginning of your day. So before we even sit down to do morning time during that chores time, I will intentionally put my phone down, go sit on the floor and play with them for 30 minutes, read them books, fill up their love tank so that they're not just hungry for your attention. And then they're going to do a lot better running off to play. And then between— I structured it so that that independent time for my big kids is in between these two other blocks of time. So while my big kids are doing this independent work, I can again go back to my little ones, take them outside on a quick bike ride, show them some attention, bring them into the kitchen to help make lunches. Just trying to be intentional with any way that you can possibly give them attention during that school time to do that. You might not be able to sit down and do all these crafts like you did when your big kids were preschoolers. But you can be intentional, and that's really what matters is that quality time. So those are some of my tips. And then trying to be creative with your time, too. Like it's so hard to read aloud with them, and so I give that to my husband to do at night. So he does like an hour of reading aloud to my big kids while I take the little ones upstairs and read picture books. It's not in our school day. I kind of wish it could be, but it can't right now. And so we're figuring it out, and we're being creative with the time that we do have.
Fallon Lee Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's another thing that's just so beautiful about homeschool is that it doesn't have to necessarily fit into this window. We've kind of adopted that same rhythm, too, is that we do read-alouds— I mean, during the day when we can, but before bed when my toddler is already down. And that's some of our most precious time is that we do read-alouds before bed. And again, I consider that schooling still. It's not fitting within the window of time that you would consider standard schooling, but that's why the fluidity of being at home is just so precious and so beautiful. And speaking of that kind of flexibility and freedom, you touched on sports and activities a little bit, and I would love to come back to this conversation. It's super fresh on my mind because— I'll share a little bit of our own recent experience just to kind of put myself out there a bit. And then I would love to hear your answer because I think our answers are going to be similar. So I'd love to just, again, put myself out there first. But we had registered my eight-year-old for baseball. He's never played before. My husband and I both played growing up. And so we thought, okay, if he's going to have any chance at being good at something athletic-wise, it's probably going to be this. So I had enrolled him. He's never played before. He already missed like the T-ball era and the coach pitch era. So he's like thrown into kid pitch, and out of the gate— I know baseball is one of the more intense sports, but out of the gate they want like two practices and two games a week. And I got the schedule back and I just had this week of just evaluating, is this what I want for my family? Do I want this rhythm where we are toting somebody to and from a practice or a game— it was going to be almost every single day of the week. And I had this, again, several day period where I just was thinking through— back to that family culture. And I was thinking through, okay, what do I want my kids to pursue long-term? And the answer that I kind of came up with for our own family is that— again, my husband and I played organized team sports growing up. You know, he was in private school, I was in public, but we had organized sports that we were a part of. And I think that there was a lot that I took away from that experience in one way or another. But the truth is, I don't go play softball on the weekends. I'm not really utilizing that skill set anymore. I think if I had done something like piano or guitar, that I would have brought that into my adult years. And that's actually one of the biggest regrets of my childhood, is that I'm like, I was in all these sports and I— you know, I was musical. I grew up singing and in show choir and things like that. But I did not have formal lessons of any kind for piano, for guitar. And I'm like, I would have loved that. I would have loved to bring that into my adulthood. And so I just started thinking about, in terms of my kids, I don't think there's anything wrong with doing organized sports if you feel like that works as a family. For me personally, I landed on I want to be cultivating hobbies and interests that my kids can bring into adulthood. Sure, there are some sports that you can bring into adulthood. You know, my husband goes and plays basketball at a church here a couple of times a week. And he and I love to go play tennis or disc golf or things like that. But there are certain things that you really can bring into your adult years and some that you can't. I don't envision my kids playing pickup football on the weekends as 40-year-old men. Who knows? Maybe they will. But I just was stopping to think, okay, what are the things that we can curate in our home that are both going to respect the flow and the rhythm that we have as a family and is going to respect their long-term development and interests. So the moral of the story is that I pulled my son from baseball because I just— I'm like, he's eight years old. The games were going to be at 7:45 PM. They were going to be an hour and a half long.
Lyndsey Mimnagh My goodness.
Fallon Lee And there were going to be several practices and games per week.
Lyndsey Mimnagh There goes your read-aloud hour.
Fallon Lee I know. And that's the most important thing we do, to me. So I just had this moment where I'm like, okay, I know my son wants to play and he wants to be involved in something that is a little bit more organized. And I just had to take a step back and try to honor both him and our family culture. And what we decided to do is kind of shift from an organized baseball league, and we talked about getting together with other families and friends that we have for like a pickup baseball game. And we're going to pursue piano lessons and things like rock climbing and things that they'll truly be able to take into their adult years. And that was just a really important week for me as I enrolled my son in baseball and then thought, what am I doing? Is this what I actually want for my family? And again, some do not hear me say that I'm saying like, "Oh, you probably shouldn't put your kids in organized sports." That's not what I'm saying at all. I think that there are ways to find that balance and make that work for your family. For me personally, I feel like I just have really so wanted to protect the space of mealtimes together and bedtimes together and having that read-aloud time and having that peace and fluidity in our home. And I feel like we would align here a little bit. So I, again, wanted to set you up with my own response so that you didn't feel like you have to answer a certain way. But I would love to hear a little bit more details on how your family has handled things like sports and activities because you do have several children. And that's another big thing is that one child being involved in activities is different than having a family with three or four kids where— I mean, imagine that everyone wanted to participate in something. And your entire week is then dedicated to constantly coming and going. So I would love to hear—currently and long-term—what's the vision that you have for your family in terms of kind of extracurricular commitments?
Lyndsey Mimnagh Yeah, I mean, we haven't made a whole plan for the long haul, but I agree with you with honoring your family culture and your time and then how many hours a day I want my children to be free to choose what they do with their day. The amount of things they come up with that blow my mind— just the creativity and the pursuing of their own interests that they do. And I want to leave margin where if I see one of my children interested in something, that I have the margin and they have the margin and we have the time to research that thing, to learn that thing, for me to find a little class on it or something like that. But just to do a blanket, "We're going to put you in this sport." Like, to me, that's not actually honoring them as a whole person.
Fallon Lee Sure.
Lyndsey Mimnagh I will say, though, if I saw that one of my children was really inclined to a certain sport— and so you have to figure out how to find that out. And so if I saw that, then I would revisit that. And I would say—just like I would with allowing piano or allowing these things in our schedule, then I would maybe chase down that sport a little bit more. But one thing that I found is a community P.E. class that we were doing for a while where it visits a bunch of different sports with a P.E. coach, and it's not super competitive. They're teaching them skills. And then you can see like, oh, wow, he's actually really good at that and really loves that and he's asking for more of that. Okay, well then what can we find that still honors our family within that realm? The other thing I wanted to throw in there is sports—while they're not like my favorite thing and they're not something, I'm like, oh, I really hope my child is a football player. I do think there's more than just the sport that your child is gaining by being on a sports team especially as a homeschool family where there aren't a lot of other authorities in your child's life. I think that's a huge thing that's really important to our family is to put our children in positions where they have other authorities, other teachers, other trainers that we trust that can give them direction and they learn how to listen. They learn how to obey them, they learn how to respect them. And so that doesn't have to be in a sports situation, but I would like some situations like that for my children. And then the other thing is working with others. Working on a team to accomplish a goal, practicing hard so that they can get better. That can be done with music, that can be done with a lot of things. But that's something we've talked a lot about for our children that we want to put them in positions where there's a little bit of pressure to have to go home and practice something so that they can do well, so that they can get better at something. And then also losing. One of my children is really bad at losing. And so as uncomfortable as it is for us as parents, we put him in positions that he might lose so that he can work on his emotional regulation in that environment. And so rather than putting him on a team that doesn't honor our family, that I don't know the coach, that I'm not there to help him. An alternative is something like this sports camp that we did over the summer. It was one week, they chose a sport, he did basketball, my daughter did soccer. I was there on the sidelines, able to support him if he struggled. And then at the end of the week, I said, "Did you guys like that sport? Would you be interested in learning more about that?" One said no. One said yes. The one that said yes, I found out that same company that does that one week camp does a six week in the fall where it's like one night a week for six weeks and like one game every other week. So, like trying to find— you can do sports in a way that honors your family, in a way that honors your child. But I'm with you on there's a lot of other things. You know, sports seems to be the thing in our country where it's like every student is doing it, every child is doing a sport. But there are so many amazing resources, at least in my city, and even specifically for homeschoolers, that I want my children to be exposed to. Woodworking class, working at a farm. You know, this year my kids are going to be going to a sewing class, music. There's so many things that—creative things—that you can really track down and be like, my child's inclined to love Legos. Well, he could be involved in a Lego engineering course. And that's something with homeschooling that I feel like opens up a huge world for children is you're being able to curate your life and your schedule and what they do to their specific desires, needs, interests. When it comes to having lots of children and honoring our schedule, practically speaking, if I can find someone that will come to my house and do a piano lesson or somewhere that's really nearby that doesn't cut into dinner time or doesn't cut into our evening time, I mean, that's the sweet spot for me. If it's between our school time and dinner time and also doesn't interrupt my toddler's nap—so it's got to be like the exact time—then I'll do it.
Fallon Lee Right.
Lyndsey Mimnagh But if it's 30 minutes away at a wrong time, it's an immediate no for me.
Fallon Lee Right.
Lyndsey Mimnagh Because there's no way that I can stay on top of being faithful at our homeschooling, honoring— I mean, it's important to us to eat dinner together every single night. I don't want to be running out at dinnertime trying to find food. Like, that's not the life I want. And so those are some of the things. And then carpooling with other friends that their kids are doing activities. When you have little ones, and you don't want to be running around. You know, we might do— like this sewing class, I have a friend that's going to be doing it, so we're going to take turns doing pickup and drop off and things like that. So those are just some practical things that I've done to kind of still maintain our rhythm where we're home-based, slow living, and really just choose things that are really honoring to that.
Fallon Lee For sure. I love so many things that you said, and I think that it's so important. You kind of touched on really evaluating your kid and their needs and talents because my answer to sports, for example, is coming from a family where none of my kids are going to grow up to be professional athletes. They're just not. We have not seen that inclination in any of them. I think there's kind of two sides of the coin here that I want to highlight. One, to give grace to families that, hey, your kids don't have to play organized sports. You know, I think that that was kind of like— because I grew up in Oklahoma and Texas where football is life and sports are life, and so I think that I had this idea early on in parenting that like, oh, my kids have to play sports. That's just what you do because we live in Texas. And then once I realized like, oh, they actually don't. They can pursue other athletic interests. Like, my kids love to play disc golf and they're really good at it. And I would have never considered that as an option because I and my husband both grew up with the very traditional sports— basketball and football and track, things that are a little bit more common. And so, again, I want to give grace that like, hey, if you find that something different works for your family, then there's grace for that. You know, your kids don't have to play organized sports. And then again, like you said, if your kid has an interest in something, then I think there is space to figure out how to make that work while still honoring your own family culture and your child's interests, your needs as a parent. And so I just really loved your answer to all of that. And I also do love the point that you made about just having other people instructing your kids. And that, I think, is such a big priority or needs to be a priority for homeschool families because our kids are receiving their instruction primarily from us as moms and dads. And I think that it's so important to have exposure to other trusted adults that they can submit to and respond to. And on that note, I would love to talk through the conversation of homeschooling in the light of it being like sheltering to our kids. And how do we pursue socialization? I would love to kind of dive into this conversation because I think that's what I personally always thought about homeschool. You know, as someone who grew up in public school, that was always the sort of standard answer that people gave when talking about homeschool is that like, oh, homeschool kids are sheltered and they're not socialized. And it's funny now as a homeschool mom, I'm like, I don't find that to be true, actually, because my kids are getting a lot of interaction with adults and with kids who are older than them as opposed to being confined to, okay, my six-year-old is around six-year-olds all day. Now, my kids are around teenagers that are just precious, sweet children who still respect their mom and dad. Who would have thought that teenagers could do that? And they're around adults at the grocery store. And I would just love to hear your take on this and how this is fleshed out in your family culture, because I think that's just one of the biggest lies around homeschool, is that the kids are sheltered or they're not around people enough. And I'm like, I feel like the opposite is actually true if you are intentional about it.
Lyndsey Mimnagh Yeah, I mean, that's what I was going to say. Like, it kind of comes back to is the mom antisocial? Okay, well, the kids probably will be. Because then, no, they're not around a whole bunch of other kids if the mom is not finding groups and getting out there. I have the opposite problem where my kids have too many friends. Like we have— it's hard for us to say no to all the things that all of our homeschool friends want to do. And I'm like, okay, we actually need to do school.
Fallon Lee Right.
Lyndsey Mimnagh Yeah. I feel like this is the funniest lie because, to me, some of the other ones have some validity where I'm like, okay, I can understand why you believe that, but this one is just hilarious to me because in school they're sitting in a desk and they're told to be quiet. Okay? And then just because they have a "friend at school", how much more are they seeing that friend, getting to know that friend, really engaging with them? And then you switch school years and you don't even see that person anymore unless the parent is intentional. So it really comes back to intentionality regardless. But in homeschooling, we have more time to be intentional. And the relationships can span years and years and years. So I lead a Wild and Free group. It's a homeschool community group. We meet every single Friday in the woods. I've been leading it for four years now. My kids have the closest, best friends that honestly I don't foresee ever ending. Like these relationships— we go on a yearly hiking trip with them. This is every single Friday. We're out in the woods with 15 other families with loads and loads of nature kids running around barefoot, and they're their very best friends. And then during the week— we're closer to some than others, so we have them over for dinner. We know the parents. We know their siblings. These are lifelong connections that our kids are going to have forever. And then the parents are involved because I'm there, so I'm getting to know this person's mom. Well, that means we're going to see them more, so that means their friendship is going to have more time to grow because I'm going to be hanging out with the mom, going different places, going to their house for dinner, things like that. And then, yeah, all the different ages. That's a point I always make that when in your life are you ever segregated with only your age? And so my children don't even think of that. My four-year-old's very best friend is a seven-year-old girl because their personalities clicked. They had similar interests at Wild and Free, so now they're best friends, and nobody thinks it's weird because you would be close with your seven-year-old sister, so why not this girl? And they're best buddies. And so I think that that whole segregation that school has really put on children in general, like, oh, you're a freshman hanging out with the senior? That's so nerdy or whatever. Why? And that's just not something my kids even know exists. Like, you can just be friends with anybody, any age. And like you said, they're around teenagers in our church community that love their parents, are honoring to their parents. They're helping in their kids' classes and they're building relationships with them because that's who they're around. My kids have zero problem with socialization. It is the biggest lie, but it does take some intentionality on the mom's part. And for someone who's not a very social person, it might be a little more difficult. For me, it has not been a problem whatsoever to socialize my children.
Fallon Lee Yeah, I love that answer. We've touched on a couple of things in light of this question. I would love to talk more about supporting our own emotional, physical, spiritual health and energy as moms. I know that you said that you have this very cherished, carved out time in the morning that's just for you. And I would love to talk through other ways. How can we really make sure that we as moms are not like spiraling toward burnout? How can we curate and support our own, you know, hobbies, desires and needs as homeschool moms? I'd love to hear how you do that for yourself. And I would love to share kind of my own journey here, too. But I would love to talk through how we can really prioritize our own mental, physical health while being a full-time homeschool mom.
Lyndsey Mimnagh Yeah, I mean, I recently— I've been talking a lot about this on Instagram lately because I feel like that's one of people's fears, like I'm going to lose myself. And I think motherhood in general, this is a question for all mothers. How do you care for yourself? And it is those different categories— asking yourself what do I need spiritually? How do I get that time? And going back to a daily rhythm, because truly there's no other way for me than to actually be intentional with my time, then to have a plan, even if it's a loose plan. If I don't have a plan to spend time in the Word first thing, then it's not going to happen. Or if I don't have a meal plan for the week, then I'm not going to have nourishing food in my home to make sure that I'm supported in that way. All these different things. I think writing down what those things are for you and then planning them into your life and into your rhythms to help make sure that you're hitting those things and just constantly trying. It's like you can't do everything. So just trying harder and constantly trying new things and seeing what works. So some of the main ones for me are connecting with my husband, making sure that our marriage is strong. We both get up early, so we spend some time early in the morning, even if I'm baking bread or looking over my homeschool lessons, he's sitting there and we're having a 30 minute conversation about our day and about our hearts and whatever. Every other Friday night, we have a sitter, and we go on a date. And we try to do things that are— we try to cultivate our friendship. So go mountain biking. Go listen to live music. Like, not just go sit somewhere at a restaurant and talk about our kids, but try to do things that remind us of who we are as people and who we are as friends. So our relationship. And then spiritually— reading books, listening to podcasts, reading the Word of God, journaling, praying. I'm involved in a women's group. Even though I'm so tired, I go to this woman's group every Tuesday night. Every week, I'm like, oh, I'm just so tired. I don't even know how I'm going to do this. But then I get there and I leave feeling so filled up by other followers of Jesus that are encouraging me. And I'm watching them flesh out their faith and it's challenging me. Attending a church and trying to just like intentionally in my mind, like, this is the time I'm going to worship, and I'm going to not be distracted by all the other things. It's a discipline of the mind a lot of times to engage spiritually. And then emotionally and relationally, we can get so caught up in our everyday life that it's hard to cultivate friendships. But I think it's super important as women to have women in our lives. And so even if it's through texting, or I love the app Marco Polo. Have you ever heard of this app?
Fallon Lee Oh, I'm obsessed. You should see my screen time on Marco Polo.
Lyndsey Mimnagh Oh, exactly. So I Marco Polo my friends all day long. Like I'm doing dishes. Rather than just scrolling on social media, like, investing in a relationship that's real is something that I really cherish. And then really trying to invest in the friendships. Choose who those people are and be a good friend. What you put in is what's going to— you're going to receive as well. So being vulnerable with the people in your life and supporting them and encouraging them and being there for them. As much as that might seem like more work, having those strong relationships is actually also feeding our souls. So those are just some of the things. And then on a physical level— moving our bodies and eating nourishing food, which is how I found you, because I was on a journey of— I actually have a similar health background with paleo and stuff and a little bit of keto which lasted 2 minutes because I felt terrible.
Fallon Lee Right. Because it's the worst.
Lyndsey Mimnagh Because it's the worst. But yeah, probably in the last year, learning more about ancestral eating and nourishing my body. And that's when I found you, and in that is also kind of a hobby for me is learning how to make sourdough bread and researching these things. It's fun for me. I enjoy being in the kitchen. I enjoy those kinds of things. And so I like finding hobbies that also support my family.
Fallon Lee Yeah.
Lyndsey Mimnagh And so it's like, okay, if I'm spending all this energy doing a hobby and it fills me up and it also helps my family, then that's a win. And so cooking and learning all of these things and researching and listening to podcasts about these things and geeking out over food like that fills me up emotionally. And so, yeah, those are just some of the things that I try to do and fit into my life. And I think if you're going to say yes to something, you always have to say no to something else. And so I don't watch television. It doesn't support my brain. It might for someone else actually be a good way for them to check out and feel energetic after. It is not for me. I have very strict social media boundaries, even though people are always blown away by that because like my whole life is on social media. Well, I can't do everything I do and have a creative mind and be free to think and be engaged with my children if I'm also addicted to social media. And so setting up some of those boundaries that have really given me the margin to be a creator and to do all the things that I do is because I had to say no to something. So what's sucking the life out of you? What's not filling your cup? And saying no to those things so that you can say yes to the things that really do.
Fallon Lee That was such a beautiful answer. I love that you touched on the requirement sometimes that you do have to sacrifice something that's not life-giving to pursue something that is life-giving. And I think that's where a lot of moms struggle is because we exist in such a technology driven society that a lot of the time, our "refreshment time" is actually draining because we're sitting there on our phones or watching TV or whatever that might be. And so I love that you really gave such a beautiful, holistic answer that your refreshment as a homeschool mom often has little to do with homeschool. That you're pouring into your marriage, your friendships, your time in Scripture. All of these things just give you this well-rounded refreshment as opposed to something that's maybe fleeting, like again, sitting on your phone or whatever tendencies that we might have to kind of just feel a bit mindless for a bit. You're pouring into things that truly are life-giving to you and then in turn, your family. And I just think that's such a beautiful answer. And then in terms of homeschool, too— I'm not going to add anything to the other elements because I think you just answered it so beautifully and so perfectly that having time with your spouse and your friends and community. And another thing that I found just so refreshing for me in this season is, again pulling in my own interests and desires into homeschool. So the love of read-alouds and classic stories and simply pulling that into our homeschool year this year has made me exponentially more excited about being an educator. And so I think that it's also so important to cultivate this homeschool life where it doesn't feel like you need a constant break from it. And I think that's how I felt in past years. Granted, some of this has to do with the life season you're in, the age of your kids, their capacity for learning. All of that plays a part. But I do think that we as home educators can create this environment where school is fun for everybody involved, including mom. And then you have these beautiful life-giving things that you get to supplement it with instead of feeling like, oh my gosh, I can't wait for the school day to be over so that I can do all these other things that are life-giving. But I think that we can really make every area of our life just so beautiful. And so I just love the answer that you gave there. To kind of wrap up—this has been a beautiful conversation—I want to ask a couple more kind of big picture things. I would love to hear what are your top five favorite things about homeschooling?
Lyndsey Mimnagh Oh, gosh, that's a loaded question.
Fallon Lee How can you narrow it down, right?
Lyndsey Mimnagh I'll be quick. I think we've touched on a lot of that, so it's probably going to be more of like a summary of what I've shared. But I think number one would be like just the margins that you can create for your family. I'm not rushing out the door. At 8:00 in the morning this morning, I'm outside in my pajamas with my cup of coffee, my kids are riding bikes, and they don't know what time it is and nobody cares. And I'm chatting with the neighbor and it's just the slow life. It's a slower life than running people around all the time and what that offers for my children, not just for me. But that time to pursue their own interests and to just play and have unstructured time so many hours of their day. I think, too, the connections. The next thing would be like the connections that I have with my children because of the amount of time that I get with my children. You can have an amazing relationship with your children if your children go to school, for sure. But the hours that I'm spent with my children is going to produce a deeper connection with them. And so connections with— we read this book together and we're laughing together over this book. And then a week later, we see this thing in the store that reminds us of this book, so then we're laughing about that and we're like, "Oh, do you remember when we learned about that thing?" You know, we're traveling and we see a Cherokee Indian reservation and my daughter brings up, "Oh, I remember when we learned about that." So it's all these life connections that make me feel more involved in my kids' lives. It makes me feel more connected to their hearts, their minds. It makes me understand them more. That makes me love them so much. It makes me enjoy them as a person more because we have all these inside jokes and these connections and this shared connection and enjoyment mostly through books and experiences would be the two things. And then number three would be that we are the main influence. So whatever my husband and I value, we're going to pour into them. Do we value my children to understand, have a biblical worldview? Then that's what we're going to prioritize in our homeschool. Do we value that they would honor each other or have emotional regulation or good teamwork? Like whatever those things are that are important to your family, you can make those a part of the priority of your days. And so you literally get to be the number one influence in their lives and teach whatever things are important to you as a person and as a family. An individualized education would be another one. Really being able to let your child go at their own pace. So my third grader might be doing fifth grade math, and he doesn't even know it. He's just moving along at the pace that's good for him. While my second grader might be doing first grade math, and she doesn't even know it. She's just progressing as makes sense for her. She's challenged. She feels confident. She's not comparing herself to anyone else. She has an individualized education, and that's the way that it should be. And then not only subject levels but interests. You know, if my child is obsessed with dinosaurs, then you better believe that we're going to be learning math or whatever the struggle is through the lens of dinosaurs because they're going to be excited about it. If they hate workbooks, we're going to turn it into a game. If everybody's tired, we're going to go outside and do our schoolwork. So it's individualized per child, per family, per mom, per day. I mean, everything can be adapted to your needs, your desires, your wants. That is just a gift, a huge gift. And then I think just this ability to invest in them as a whole person. Like the other day we were in the middle of a lesson. My son was super frustrated and he had a major meltdown. If he was in a classroom setting, it would be, "You need to be separated from us because we have a goal here to move forward in this lesson." There is no other choice in a classroom. He would need to be sent somewhere else or sat down and he would not be supported in that moment to grow as a person. What we did instead was, "We're going to take a break from what we're learning because right now the bigger lesson is helping him get through his emotions." And so I spent 30 minutes working through that, and that was school for him for that 30 minutes, not the lesson we were doing because at the end of the day, I want him to be able to handle his emotions and frustration and know how to respond when he's overwhelmed more than I care if he understands this lesson right now. And so it's seeing them as a whole person and being able to pour into them as a whole being, spiritual being. Investing in that side of them all day, every day because you're with them. And viewing education as that and putting that as priorities in your homeschool life. So those were kind of quick, but those are kind of my top.
Fallon Lee I love it. It's beautiful. I will never forget— I feel like one of the biggest revelations that I've had about homeschooling because I mentioned my oldest did go to public kindergarten for the first like three-fourths of a year before he came home. And the first several months of adjusting to him being home were just chaotic. It just felt like he was used to being in a public school setting. We had to adjust. And I remember just feeling so overwhelmed and frustrated that he would be so overwhelmed and frustrated with the lessons and that sometimes he would have these big emotional responses— tears or frustration or whatever it was. And I think through some conversations with some friends, there was this moment where it just hit me that, okay, if he were in a school setting, he would have been feeling these same emotions about whatever it is that he was struggling with. He would have internally felt the frustration that he didn't know what was going on. He would have felt that internal sadness that he couldn't master a principal. But at home, he has the safety to express that. And I think that's one of the most beautiful things about homeschooling. Although, yes, like you said, we do have to just stop a lesson sometimes because our kids' emotional health and talking through those feelings and those responses is the most important thing we can do in that moment. We have the gift as homeschool moms to be able to walk through those emotions with them instead of them being suppressed in an organized school setting. And I think that's— it's really easy to look at your child having an outburst and think, gosh, this is just so hard. They wouldn't act like this at school. It's just so hard. But the truth is, they're getting to reveal their innermost feelings in the safety of mom's presence. And I think that that was just such a huge revelation to me as an early homeschool mom that my kids feel safe enough with me that they can process these emotions and we can stop the lesson and we can focus on that.
Lyndsey Mimnagh And that's actually serving them better. That's serving them better because you're teaching them how to manage that so that when they are in an environment where that is not the norm or they don't feel as safe— because they will be in those environments, and we need to equip them so that they know what to do with those emotions. But if they're never given an opportunity to be equipped with us in a safe place, then what are they going to do? They're just going to keep suppressing and suppressing.
Fallon Lee Right. Oh, man. It's such a huge concept and such a freeing thing to just give our kids and ourselves a grace. And to wrap up—our last kind of big picture question—I would love to hear what your top pieces of advice are for homeschool moms.
Lyndsey Mimnagh I think take a deep breath. Relax. And to realize that—like I said at the very beginning, so we're kind of coming full circle—that homeschooling is an extension of parenting. And so you're already a mother, you already have your children's best interest at heart. So adding in this idea of home education, it's not a new role. It's just an extension of what you already do. You already put your children first. You already look out for their best interests. And so not to be intimidated by this thing that you're adding to your life, but realize that you're just integrating something new in your routine and your rhythm. But the same way that you teach them to cook or you teach them to tie your shoe, you can teach them to read. You don't have to have some special training. Nobody trained you on how to love your child. You just do it. And it's the same thing with all of these things. And there's so many resources out there that can help you with the actual content of what you're teaching them. That's not the biggest question. That's not the biggest hurdle. And so that's so easy to handle. It's the getting to that point where you're ready to commit. Like I'm ready to actually— like we said earlier there's a lot out there of like, "Oh, it's just free and fun." And it is. But there is a responsibility to it. And I try to speak into that because we need to own that responsibility and say, "I'm going to take this seriously. I'm going to invest in this." And when you do that, it's so beautiful and it's so wonderful when you surrender to that and say, "This is an important calling that I have, and I can do this, and I will do this excellently."
Fallon Lee I love that. Lyndsey, this has been such a good conversation. I appreciate you coming on so, so much. And for you guys listening, we will absolutely include links to Lyndsey's Instagram, her website. You have got to go just binge her profile for a while. She's got free downloads. She has some beautiful homeschool resources, curriculum. I have an embarrassing amount of her stuff at this point. Her planner has been just a godsend this year. This is the first year I've done a homeschool planner and I absolutely have loved yours. So we will link all of Lyndsey's goodies in the show notes, and I also do keep a discount code for some of her stuff in my Instagram bio link. So definitely go connect with Lyndsey and look through her stuff online. She's got stuff for co-ops, she's got stuff for individual use. Just a lot of really beautiful resources, free downloads. Again, she's got this great list of read-alouds that I just absolutely loved. So Lyndsey is just a fantastic voice and resource and is just so cute and fun on Instagram. I love her profile. So Lyndsey, thank you again for joining us today. You've just been such a gift to have on. Yeah, and thank you guys for listening. We will see you on the next episode.