Clarity and Systems for Your Homeschool with Rachael Alsbury
Summary:
In this episode of Show Me Homeschool, guest Rachel Alsbury shares her valuable insights and practical strategies for creating a sustainable and effective homeschool routine. Rachael discusses her concept of a "minimum viable school day" and explains how to focus on foundational elements that align with your family's values and vision for education. She emphasizes the importance of building a homeschool plan that is realistic and manageable, tailored to your unique circumstances and needs. By sharing her own experience and the systems she has developed, Rachael offers encouragement and guidance to help homeschooling parents navigate the challenges and find joy in the journey.
Resources & Links:
Find Rachel at her website, www.rachaelalsbury.com or on Instagram, @rachael.alsbury
Your Morning Basket at pambarnhill.com
The Lean Startup (the movement that is transforming how new products are built and launched, theleanstartup.com
Connect with Erin and Joe at Show Me Homeschool:
Show Me Homeschool Website
On Instagram, @show.me.homeschool
On Pinterest, @showmehomeschool
Be sure to leave a rating and review, and subscribe so you never miss an episode! For questions or comments email us: info@showmehomeschool.com
Transcript:
Erin [00:00:00]:
Welcome back to the Show Me Homeschool podcast. Today, I'm super excited to talk to my friend, Rachael. She is a powerhouse when it comes to creating organizational systems for homeschooling. She's a friend that I think everybody really wants to have in their life because for someone as scattered as I am, I call myself a type d person for distractible. She is the type a for awesome when it comes to planning and really thinking through the systems of homeschool and how to make it work.
Erin [00:00:33]:
I'm Erin.
Joe [00:00:34]:
And I'm Joe.
Erin [00:00:34]:
We're the hosts of the Show Me Homeschool podcast, where we guide parents through the wilderness of home education. Each weekly episode will focus on supporting and encouraging homeschool moms and dads through conversational interviews with like minded Christian leaders in the homeschool community.
Joe [00:00:51]:
In our experience, we've seen the lack of resources and support available for homeschool dads. So we want to address that by covering relevant topics concerning husbands and fathers as they lead their families through this lifestyle of home education.
Erin [00:01:04]:
We understand the need for creating connections and building authentic relationships to sustain a healthy homeschool environment for yourself and your children.
Joe [00:01:13]:
Our goal is not to show you how to replicate our homeschool, but to show you how you can create a home learning lifestyle that is sustainable for your family.
Erin [00:01:21]:
Show Me Homeschool is here to come alongside you.
Erin [00:01:28]:
Rachael Alsbury is a mom of 4. She is unschoolish. She's been homeschooling 7 plus years in 3 different states, so that definitely adds a different component to, her experience, which is awesome. And she's also been a writer for Wild and Free for the past 6 years. She is a wonderful help with systems and clarity and creating simple courses for homeschool moms. So, Rachael, welcome.
Rachael Alsbury [00:01:53]:
Hi, everyone. Thanks for having me.
Erin [00:01:55]:
Yeah. Okay. So I really want to jump right in because I just recently got to hear you speak at the Bloom and Blossom Conference about your systems in your homeschool and your minimal viable school day, and I just absolutely for 1, the term is just amazing, but I love what you had to share and just how applicable it is, how easy it is to implement. So before we jump into the systems part, we wanna get to know you a little bit. So do you wanna talk a little bit about yourself, your family, your homeschool?
Rachael Alsbury [00:02:26]:
Yep. So we have 4 kids. We have 3 little girls. They're 12, 11, almost 9, and then we have a little boy who is 4 years old. He'll be 5 soon. We've lived in Kansas City for about three and a half years. We relocated from, my husband's hometown in Northern California a few years ago because we have family on both coasts. So we have family in California, family in Georgia, and I just said, look.
Rachael Alsbury [00:02:50]:
I I need to have more access to my family. Like, nobody really drops by the state of California very often. And I wanted my kids to have some Midwest experiences, because I did grow up here. And so, we relocated our family, and we've been living here for a few years and just kind of on an adventure. So we're gonna be headed back there soon, but, we started homeschooling because we in California, there was some legislation that passed that I just we just weren't comfortable with as parents And that though I never set out to homeschool as, like, 99% of us did, I decided that it really would be the best thing for our family even though I didn't know what I was doing, and I really didn't wanna do it. And it's actually been so life changing. It's we've found so much freedom, and it's honestly been one of the best decisions I think we've made as a family. Excellent.
Erin [00:03:41]:
Yeah. I I agree. I think you go into homeschooling with an ideal, and I like to tell people the first thing that dies in homeschool is your expectations because they just, you know, it doesn't turn out like you want, but in many ways, it's so much better. So talk us through when you first made that choice to homeschool, what you felt like going into that and how you came by your your processes. Yeah.
Rachael Alsbury [00:04:08]:
I was absolutely kicking and screaming. I I was literally, like, I crying. Like, I do not wanna do this. So I was like, who can do this for me? And how can I pay them? Except I can't afford private school. So what we ended up doing was signing up with a charter school. And part of the story is that they gave me this huge spreadsheet of curriculum to pick. And I literally never seen the inside of a homeschool curriculum in my life. Like, I had done zero preparation, no research whatsoever.
Rachael Alsbury [00:04:38]:
So I was super overwhelmed, and I just told the teacher, just pick something for me. Like, just somebody do this for me. And so she picked a curriculum for me. It came in the mail, and I opened it up. It was a curriculum that I I think is fine now. Like, I I I've used it, but at the time, it was so intimidating. It was a huge thick binder and all these books. And so we started, quote, homeschooling.
Rachael Alsbury [00:05:01]:
And a week or 2 in, I realized I've been doing, like, 2 of the subjects out of, like, the 6. Like, I that's how little I knew what I would do. I was so confused. I was like, how am I gonna do this? This is gonna take me 8 hours a day. When am I doing this? Because I have 2 other, you know, 2 other little girls that I'm, you know, trying to parent. I was just over my head, and I just I sat down at the my kitchen island with that big binder of curriculum, and I just cried. And it was like anger. Like, it was like, why do I have to do this? Like, I don't wanna do this.
Rachael Alsbury [00:05:29]:
And so that week, my friend sent me a podcast. It's a wild and free podcast. And they were talking about this concept of a morning basket. I think it was Pam Barnhill was on there. Mhmm. And I was like, wait. What? I can homeschool. Like, I can ditch all this, and I can take great well written books, put them in a basket, and read out loud to my kids every day, and that can be, like, 80% of school.
Rachael Alsbury [00:05:55]:
Like, it blew my mind. And that was the first system that anyone had ever given me. You know, because you you can give somebody curriculum and you can give them a system. It's 2 different worlds. Mhmm. And that was like, okay. I know I can implement this. I know that it works for thousands of families, and it's something that's really natural to my kids' age and their stage and something that I love to do.
Rachael Alsbury [00:06:19]:
And so I started to get really passionate about how can I take, you know, this idea of homeschool and make it into really simple systems that I know I can execute every day and that I know our family can sustain? And so that was the first one I came across. So thank you, Pam Barnhill. And all the moms that went before that came up with I don't know who to, like, even credit with that concept, but this idea of a morning basket was life changing for me.
Erin [00:06:43]:
Yes. And I agree. Pam has been pivotal in helping me understand, you know, she's got a book out called Plan Your Year. And that even as a seasoned homeschool mom, when I picked that up at a convention 1 year, I was just like, oh, this is what I've been needing. This is so helpful. So, yeah, finding the system that works, I think like you touched on, you know, you love reading. You you found what worked for you as mom, and that is so important when we're talking about curriculum, when we're talking about systems. The thing that's gonna work is the thing that you're gonna do and find joy in.
Erin [00:07:16]:
So how did that morph from morning time to you have so many resources on your blog. I was just poking through it today, but I've yeah. I I subscribed to your newsletters. And each one you talk through, you know, your meal plan or your your day, your favorite curriculum, how to implement those things. So how did you go from morning time to all of that? Well, so I have blogged for the past 12 years, and so I've always just blogged whatever we were doing, you
Rachael Alsbury [00:07:44]:
know, just as just fun because I like to ride. I like to take pictures. And so I started doing that. And as I did that, I said, hey. We were homeschooling, and I was blogging about my homeschooling struggles. And people were like, tell us more. Tell us more about homeschooling. And I'm like, I don't really know.
Rachael Alsbury [00:07:58]:
I'm not an expert. I'll just tell you what we're doing. And so I started to share just some of the systems that we were doing, and that comes naturally to me. I'm the oldest of 7. I was literally born as an organized person. I see the world that way. Not everybody does. It's just what I do.
Rachael Alsbury [00:08:14]:
And so I was like, well, let me just break down, you know, what I do and how I see it. So one of the first things I shared was this concept that I have of daily anchors, which is, you know, when you are at home with lots of little children, which most of you listening or either are or have been, it is really hard to do a conventional schedule where it's like static activity stacked 1 on top of the other. Like, we're gonna do this and we're gonna do that. Like, one thing happens and it all just, like, crumbles. And everybody's, like, kind of looking for that secret, like, what's your daily rhythm? Like, what it's this secret daily rhythm that's finally gonna work for me. And the truth is you can't really superimpose that over your life. You have to life has to come first. Right? Being a mom has to come first and our kids have to come first.
Rachael Alsbury [00:08:57]:
But how can we still be intentional and purposeful and, you know, get things done that we wanna do? So I came up with the idea of daily anchors. I was talking with my sister, actually. I I'm the person that talks to my sister, like, every other day. And so we were just, you know, talking about that. So I came up with the idea of, you know what? I'm gonna take what are the 5 to 7 things that I absolutely really wanna get done today? They could be things I have to do and things I wanna do, but, like, what are the primary things that if I couldn't get anything else done, it would be this? And for me, that was mealtime. So making meal times, since I have to do it anyway, let's make it a quality time of being together. Bedtime. Let's make sure we get bedtime because as a homeschool mom, I hold my kids all day.
Rachael Alsbury [00:09:39]:
I don't get a break, and I needed some break in the day. We do a, we would do a daily rest time. We don't do that now anymore. Everybody's older, but at the time that I had little kids, daily rest time. We did a little chore time. So had a list of, like, 5 to 7 things. And the beauty of the those things is they don't have to happen in the exact set order. Like, there's obviously some things that are gonna, you know, bedtime and mealtime and things like that.
Rachael Alsbury [00:10:01]:
But you don't have to have them in an exact order. And that really freed me up to say, you know what? I'm being intentional and being purposeful. I'm prioritizing the things that matter to us. So, like, reading aloud and playing outdoors, those were 2 daily anchors. But I'm not put putting this pressure on myself of just getting it done at exact like, from 10 to 12, we have to do this. Like, maybe we wanna do it in the afternoon. Maybe we wanna do our read aloud time in the evening and or maybe we wanna do it in the morning one day. Like, I don't actually do the exact same things every single day in the exact same order, but we will put that pressure on ourselves.
Rachael Alsbury [00:10:34]:
And we don't even know why. We just think, well, that's what makes a good organized person. Like, that's what makes a good organized homeschool mom. And it's like, no. Actually, we can be really responsive homeschool moms and have intention and purpose in our day. So daily anchors was the first kind of system. It was my own internal system, and then I shared it. And that so as I started developing more of my own systems, I would share them on there.
Rachael Alsbury [00:10:53]:
So I'm another system called the 4 way school day, which I can explain that one later, but they're all on my blog. You can just go I'll read them all for free.
Erin [00:11:01]:
Yeah. I love it. Yeah. I I love what you said too because as moms, we don't wanna be reactive. We wanna be responsive. And I think what can happen and what I noticed having homeschooled for over a decade now is when I start feeling frazzled, it's because something has shifted in those anchors, those things that I need to get done every day. And then I feel them piling up And maybe I don't have a good system in place to catch back up. And so I love what you're talking about that.
Erin [00:11:31]:
So from the daily anchors, those are kind of just your core things, and those aren't necessarily homeschool related. Right? Those are just the things in your day that keep your household functional.
Rachael Alsbury [00:11:42]:
Right? Right. I'm a big fan of starting small with homeschool plans, because what do we usually do and what did I do? I think about homeschooling, and I'm envisioning, like, the a plus version of myself. Like, the person that gets everything done that I've ever dreamed of doing. And, like, I've done this so many times before I played a homeschool year, and I'm like, this is gonna be the year that I'm gonna show up exactly like I imagine, and we're gonna do this year, and then it never works that way. So I'm like, what if I came at it from the opposite angle? What if I said, let me start really small with a core of exactly what I know I can do? I know I could do my daily anchors for sure. We're gonna get that done. And it's honestly the daily anchors' permission to do less. I'm obviously gonna do more things in my day than the the daily anchors, but those are the things that I'm saying I'm getting those things done.
Rachael Alsbury [00:12:29]:
And it's less than maybe what I normally would have put on a to do list. That is what I call my minimum viable day. That's the concept of this is my day with no school in it at all. You need that day because I bounce back to that day lots of times. You know? Like, I come home from a conference or somebody's been sick or we're moving or whatever transitional thing is going on our lives because our lives are not insulate. Homeschool cannot be insulated from real life. Like, it's all happening at the same time. Somehow we think we can.
Rachael Alsbury [00:12:58]:
Like, if we just make a separate school room, like, we can, but we can't. So I'm like, I need that base day. Then I like to build on that day with school. So then I build a school day onto that. That makes it more realistic. It makes it more sustainable. So I don't know if your listeners have heard of the book, the lean startup, but the lean startup is just a it's a business book about tech startups. And the idea is that a lot of people will fail at their tech startup because they started too big, and they're wasting all this time and resource.
Rachael Alsbury [00:13:26]:
They're not actually solving the problem that's in front of them or solving the problem for the person they're trying to serve. And so I borrowed that term, minimum viable, because they the term is minimum viable product. I borrow that day for homeschool. I think it's brilliant. I do my minimum viable day, and then I have a minimum viable homeschool day as well that I build on top of that.
Erin [00:13:44]:
Okay. So can you give us, like, a sample minimum vile viable school day so that people can kinda get a picture of what you're talking about? So my my minimum bible school day so you can do this however you want. You build this the
Rachael Alsbury [00:13:57]:
way that you want to. That's the beauty of it. Doesn't matter, you know, what type of homeschool you do, how many kids you have, what your values are. You put your values into this, but I'll tell you what mine are. I like to know I got the basics done. For me, even though we're unschoolish, I still like to do a little bit of math, a little bit of language arts, and a family read aloud time. And that family read aloud time covers our topical subjects. So the history, science, literature, and geography.
Rachael Alsbury [00:14:21]:
Because we live in Missouri, we need to get those subjects done. And so what that looks like for me is I'll have our family read aloud time, and then I'll have table time. So family read aloud time is where we're all just gonna gather around every age in the family, and I'm gonna read out of full books together that, you know, biographies or nonfiction or maybe we'll have a fiction read aloud that covers those, you know, topical subjects of history and science. We do a lot of our learning through whole books. And then I will have table time, and that's where we sit down at the table together or, you know, at the computer or whatever that is. And Mhmm. Everybody does 20 minutes of math and 20 minutes of language arts, and everybody can pick, you know, what they want their language arts to be. So very fluid on that.
Rachael Alsbury [00:15:01]:
It could be writing. It could be do Mad Libs. You know? Do your selling book. And though that's the base of our day. If I get that stuff done, I feel like I've done a core school day. And then, we, you know, we build on that as well. Like, I have my optimal school day. Like, for me, an optimal school day is since we're on school age, looks like everybody working on their own projects, their own passion projects later on in the day.
Rachael Alsbury [00:15:24]:
But that could look different for you. Maybe you're like, my learning bible school day, I wanna have poetry or I wanna have art. Like, I want to be doing that every day, and you can do it that way. You can add that and make it part of your base day. But I encourage people to keep it really small. Keep it to something you know you can literally do every day. And then give yourself room to build on that too. Because sometimes we are a plus.
Rachael Alsbury [00:15:45]:
You know? Most of the time, I'm a b minus mom and a b minus mom is a great mom. And I encourage moms to get do a b minus system right off the bat. So my minimum viable minimum viable school day is a b minus system. Like, I hey. I did 80%. That's awesome. If I do that regularly, my kids are gonna get an amazing education.
Erin [00:16:05]:
Yes. Absolutely. I am listening to you talk and I'm thinking, you know, in some people's minds, maybe they're thinking you're unschoolish, but you are so organized or you have this great plan, and it just does not compute for for people. I know, like, as I was starting out, I felt like you've got your checklist. And if you're not doing your checklist off of your school curriculum that you've got, then you're failing or you're behind. But I love that concept of your you know, be the b minus mom. You're still gonna be awesome and doing way more than you think, but you're just setting your expectation level at something that's more realistic most days because I'm a all in type person. And if I'm thinking that I'm not succeeding or that a plus version of myself, then I'm going to feel really bad.
Erin [00:16:51]:
And then maybe I'm not even gonna get anything done because I'm wallowing in that. You know? But I think what you're saying sounds very doable. So you've had this system in your homeschool for how long?
Rachael Alsbury [00:17:03]:
I mean, I've unknowingly just naturally done it. So a lot of my stuff is reverse engineered. I've naturally done this and, like, I would feel bad about it. I probably would say for the last 4 years Uh-huh. 4 to 5 years where I was just like, oh, I can see there are things in my homeschool that really do move the needle. And then there's things I'm doing that don't move the needle, don't really align with my values, but I sort of feel like I have to do them. So what if I were just to focus on the things that move the needle? And I just found out that I can do that sustainably. Those things I listed, the reading aloud, the 20 minutes of language arts, the 20 minutes of math, and then whatever else, you know, naturally happens in our day, that covers everything.
Rachael Alsbury [00:17:42]:
That actually does move the needle, and it's something I can wake up and do every single day no matter what crazy thing is going on in life. Mhmm. So I've probably been doing that for the past 4 years and, you know, feeling like, oh, man. Like, I don't know if I'm doing enough. You know? Like, I don't know what everyone else is doing, but I see everybody else's, like, composer study, artist study, like Uh-huh. All these, you know, deep things, these unit studies, and I'm just doing basics over here.
Erin [00:18:05]:
But once I started to share
Rachael Alsbury [00:18:06]:
that, people were like, oh my goodness. And they started to feel freed up. And it's like, yeah, I just reverse engineered what I did, but it really works. And you can add, you know, all those beautiful things, but you don't have to do all of the things all of the time for your kids to have a great education. It's just gonna burn you out, and you're gonna feel like, I can't do this.
Erin [00:18:25]:
Yeah. So how how would you address a mom who's at that stage right now? She's burnout. She's at her wit's end. She's had this curriculum that she's using and it's just, she's feeling it. What would you say to her?
Rachael Alsbury [00:18:38]:
Gosh. I would sit her down, and I would give her some really probing question prompts about what do you visualize, you know, your homeschool being? What is your ideal day? Where Where do you visualize your family going? Now what do you value? And that's a hard thing to answer because, like, that's it could be anything. But that is actually a cool thing too is it could be anything. So, like, I created for one of my courses, we have, something called the charted values where I just listed out every possible value that I've ever heard people say that they homeschool for. Sibling connection, faith based reason. Maybe they want a really rigorous education where their child is taking college classes really or, like, everything under the sun and say, okay. Take this chart. You pick your 5 to 7 values off of here.
Rachael Alsbury [00:19:18]:
Okay. Now we've we got your vision. We've got your values. Now let's talk about guiding philosophies because every homeschool guiding philosophy has underlying values. And I would really coach that mom through identifying what does she actually value for her and her husband. What do you value? What what is your vision for your family? And let that be your filter for the things that you're doing. Because a lot of times, we're not doing that internal work. We're looking outward, and we're looking at, like, what is a successful person doing? And, like, let me replicate that, which is not a bad thing.
Rachael Alsbury [00:19:47]:
That's natural thing to do. The problem is that you have your own unique set of circumstances and challenges as a family, and those things are going to bleed into your homeschool. You cannot separate those things from your homeschool. They're the things that make your family unique, your diagnoses, you know, your level of education, the resources that you have access to. Sometimes when we're looking at somebody else that has access to resources that we don't, we're like, well, how can we get that? And it's like, maybe maybe you should look at the resources you have and use that for your homeschool Mhmm. Because that makes your family unique. And so I would guide her through that. Then from there, I would say, let's build your minimum viable school day based on what really matters to you.
Rachael Alsbury [00:20:24]:
What is important to you? What where do you wanna go with your child's education versus, like, oh, here's a formula that's gonna work for everybody. You know? Mhmm.
Erin [00:20:32]:
Yeah. I love that because we can get so preoccupied with the practical curriculum side of things. You know, what are the tools that are gonna teach my kid the thing that I think that they need to know or that society says that they need to know? And really what you're talking about is shifting back to what does our family need to be cohesive and successful in our home to be peaceful and then working school into that. And I love that you you don't focus on a specific curriculum or philosophy of education because really what you're talking about is applicable to anybody. It's not, set like that. Absolutely. There are many ways
Rachael Alsbury [00:21:08]:
to become an educated person. That's one of the hardest things to wrap your mind around when you start homeschooling is you're like, oh, there's one way to do this. And it's not like, actually, there's so many ways that people have become successful and educated. Mhmm. And thriving humans, you can do this so many ways. A lot of people just aren't aware of their options. And then once you know what your options are and you can start to define philosophies and a little bit of your values, then, like you said, you can take the tools and build that on the top of it. Because sometimes we're just going straight for the tools that work for somebody else or well, I like to say that your curriculum's like a GPS.
Rachael Alsbury [00:21:40]:
It's gonna work best when you already have your destination in mind. And sometimes people will just take the GPS and set it, and that's the thing's taking them someplace they never wanted to go, and they're like, I hate this. I hate homeschooling. It's like, no, no, no. You don't hate homeschooling. You just don't like that curriculum. That's just not for you. You know? Yeah.
Rachael Alsbury [00:21:56]:
So helping people build from and it's just a hard thing to do because there's a knowledge gap. You know? There's an information gap for a lot of people of knowing what actually could be a legitimate education or, like, what are my options for, you know, how this could look.
Joe [00:22:09]:
Mhmm.
Erin [00:22:10]:
Yeah. That's excellent. So we're running close to time. I would love to keep talking about this with you and maybe incorporate some of your tips as a also a working homeschool mom and how that plays into your daily rhythm. Would you mind recording another episode with me and doing a part 2?
Rachael Alsbury [00:22:31]:
Oh, I would love to.
Erin [00:22:32]:
Okay. So why don't we close here and tell everybody how they can find you and, like website, Instagram, that kind
Rachael Alsbury [00:22:39]:
of thing? So the best place to find me where I hang out is on Instagram. So that's rachel, r a c h a e l, dot alsbury, on Instagram. And then my blog is rachaelalsbury.com. I have tons of freebies, free downloads. I have homeschool year recaps. I've got years of blog posts on there and all my courses. So you guys should go check that out. It's just a a treasure trove of bingeable content for you.
Erin [00:23:04]:
It is. It truly is. I was binging on it earlier.
Erin [00:23:07]:
I'm like, this is amazing.
Erin [00:23:09]:
So thank you, Rachael, and we will be back with you next time.
Erin [00:23:13]:
This episode was sponsored by Podcast with Faith, our favorite Christian podcast production company. For more information, visit them at www.podcastwithfaith.com. To learn more about booking 1 on 1 or group homeschool coaching sessions with us, upcoming events, see our speaking schedule, or to get access to more resources, be sure to check out our website www.showmeschool.com and sign up for our weekly newsletter. You can also follow us on Instagram at show.me.homeschool on Pinterest at show me homeschool or email us at info@showmehomeschool.com.