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Kelly joins us today to talk home management skills. She shares valuable insights on keeping a home, building routines and homeschool planning. We talk about creating a rhythm to our day and slowing down to focus on what's important.



0:14 - Welcome Kelly!
2:37 - Simple home management: planning, routines and chores 
11:22 - What's your process for planning?
19:57 - How do you plan for your homeschool year?
25:00 - What kind of planners do you offer?
32:47 - What is loop planning?
38:25 - What do you do for homeschool record keeping?




Simple Home Mom & Etsy Shop
Instagram @simplehomemom




Tyranny of the Urgent




Bullet Journal




Looping: Task Management for the (Recovering) Type A Mom  - Read Aloud Revival




top half full (blog post)




#makejoynormal #homeschool #homemanagement #routine #organize #planning #loopscheduling #relationships 




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In this episode, dedicated and darling listener, Bianca, brings her questions (and her baby boy!) to the show.  We focus on our kid's faith.  When they're little, they just gotta go with what their parents do, but as they get older, what?  We talk about why I don't talk about my adult kids, and building a family culture.  We also address what it's like to be shallow: the pros, the cons.  I know you're dying to know. 



2:14 - Welcome Bianca!  Faith and family background
12:17 - How can faith be maintained for our kids as they get older?
20:25 - What I wish I had done in creating a family culture   
23:06 - Daily mass and when feeling overwhelmed by it



Ever Ancient, Ever New:
Art History, Appreciation, Theory and Practice by Catholic Heritage Curricula




growing alongside our kids in faith (podcast)




my Lord and my God (blog post)





#makejoynormal #homeschool #mentorship #spiritualgrowth #familyculture #prayer 




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To wrap up this little series on creating homes, I'll add part two for record keeping.  This includes some course planning and working with our high schoolers strengths and weaknesses and our own!

If your kids aren't at high school yet, you'll still get a sense of how education happens in all the places. 



3:17 - Write down everything
6:46 - Creating a creditable course   
12:38 - Important conversations to have with our teens
13:47 - We can always be educated
16:18 - Building a course of study
17:36 - Critical thinking resources
18:34 - Developing an English course
21:08 - Read aloud and discuss together as a family
26:19 - Working with our children and working with what they love


creating homes: record keeping and home education, part one

homeschooling high school

high school resources

freebies - planning pages for high school

language arts in high school

questions to foster socractic discussion

The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White

Teaching the Classics - Center For Lit




#makejoynormal #homeschool #interestbased #flourish #outsource #guidance #readaloud #socraticdiscussion #joy




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Today I interview Elissa Frankham, who has gone through the Woman School program, and recently begun her own mentorship.  She shares with us her journey with honesty and empathy...we've all known moments in our lives where things just "aren't right." How do we get unstuck? 



00:18 - Welcome Elissa!
2:27 - When isolation and overwhelm took over 
7:27 - What was the catalyst for change in your life?
9:36 - How did you come across the Woman School program?
14:17 - Taking an honest look at ourselves and growing in self-worth
22:14 - When did you begin to feel unstuck?
23:23 - Program details and courses offered with Elissa
32:34 - What advice would you give a mom who is feeling overwhelmed?


Elissa's instagram
and free guide for setting a morning routine for busy mamas



The Woman School



deep dark past (blog post)



#makejoynormal #homeschool #wholeness #peace #personalgrowth #resilience #mindset #healing #mentorship




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Elizabeth and I talk about ways to think about plotting out our homeschool year.  We cover organization, lesson planning, the philosophy of planning and how curricula can be used without it owning us. 


2:47 - Planning the school year - start here!
8:38 -  Choosing what you're going to study as a family
11:25 - Planning for individual children and including the child's input 
12:45 - Should kids wake up at a certain time?
15:32 - Getting things ready the night before
20:35 - Things to remember when using curriculum




Mother of Divine Grace School 


three things you learn in 30 years of homeschooling: not even kidding version (blog post)



#makejoynormal #homeschool #planning #familylearning #tenderness #joy  




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Well, how does this play into creating the kinds of homes we want to raise our families in?  In my opinion - HUGE.  Chaos undermines kindness.  Order is a form of beauty, and order in our brains, and reducing brain clutter makes us more available to the people that we love.  Because I have a scrambly sort of brain, I had to find ways to record what we do and how we educate that was simple and sustainable.  This is part one, part two will deal more with high school and creating a transcript.   


00:15 - Keeping things less chaotic, bringing peace and order into the home
4:17 - Plotting out the school year, learning as a family and for individual children
14:06 - Wrapping up the school year
16:03 - Weekly record keeping sheet
18:13 - How much do we need to keep track?
22:01 - Checklist System 
24:56 - High school and how to grade your children


Free Homeschool Planning Pages


why order matters (podcast)


planning our school year and keeping track of knowledge, data, details and learning (blog)



#makejoynormal #homeschool #order #beauty #peace #kindness #simplicity #planning #familylearning #recordkeeping



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Welcome, Mariette!  And apologies on my end for the background noise; I had inadvertently left a secondary mic on, picking up my noise...thank you for your patience with my technical inabilities, my dear listeners.

Mariette, the natural Catholic mom, joins me for a beautiful conversation about health, homes and holiness.  Listen as she guides us gently to living a life in closer accord to God's design.   

We cover diet, toxins, birth and so much more. 



2:14 - Welcome Mariette
16:36 - How does natural living affect our spiritual lives?
20:39 - Where do we start on the journey?
25:56 - How would you guide a young mom in natural childbirth?
30:49 - What resources really helped you in the beginning?
36:15 - Creating good habits around food and benefits of natural living
43:57 - For when you feel overwhelmed, knowing your limits
46:51 - How to be open to mentorship



Ever Ancient, Ever New:
Art History, Appreciation, Theory and Practice by Catholic Heritage Curricula



Mariette's website and blog
https://thenaturalcatholicmom.com/




Breastfeeding and Catholic Motherhood: God's Plan for You and Your Baby by Sheila Kippley

Made for This: The Catholic Mom's Guide to Birth by Mary Haseltine

The Mama Natural Week-by-Week Guide to Pregnancy and Childbirth

100 Days of Real Food Cookbook and website

why community matters and how to be part of one (podcast)

my own personal - a birth story (blog post)




#makejoynormal #homeschooling #natural #healthy #attachment #birth #breastfeeding #connection #mentorship #realfood  #community




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Christina and I continue in this part two of the little series "creating homes".  We talk about order and its part in our sanity and spiritual life.  The seasons of motherhood and developing order when order seems like a distant reality...



00:59 - Feeling overwhelmed and keeping up with housework
8:43 - Reaching out for help when we need it and building community
17:50 - Encouraging children to contribute in the home
22:31 - A simple structure for keeping order
26:01 - Filling our children's tanks and blessings of homeschooling



kids helping out around the house (podcast)

sleep matters: an interview with Heather, a woman supporting tired parents (podcast) 



low days: getting support (blog post)



#makejoynormal #homeschooling #buildingcommunity #findingorder #seasons #gettinghelp #prayer #simplestructure #blessings



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I am starting a little series for the next few weeks on creating the homes we desire for our family life.  The idea came from this article in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2223:
2223 Parents have the first responsibility for the education of their children. They bear witness to this responsibility first by creating a home where tenderness, forgiveness, respect, fidelity, and disinterested service are the rule. The home is well suited for education in the virtues.

Wow.  Tenderness.  Forgiveness. Respect.  Fidelity. 

We'll start with marriage.  I have with me today Monica and Renzo Ortega, who have a beautiful marriage ministry, through their website and their podcast, Two Become Family. Their story is beautiful and they tenderly draw us to greater depth and appreciation of marriage.   

We discuss why we've lost confidence in marriage, nature and grace, ways to build self control, developing a family culture, over discernment, and how we can get ourselves out from places in our marriage that we don't want to be.   



00:13 - Creating homes series, welcome Monica and Renzo
6:54 - Importance of finding support in the first ten years of marriage
10:03 - How did we lose confidence in the family and what is the role of grace?
22:24 - Practicing self-discipline impacts the whole family
26:39 - Creating a family culture of kindness, fortitude, prayer
30:23 - Guidance for vocational discernment 
42:06 - Where do we start when discord has crept into the marriage?



Two Become Family - Restoring Confidence in Family Life
Pre-Cana with the Pope Podcast



Go to Joseph: 10 Day Preparation for Consecration to St. Joseph by Renzo Ortega

Go to Joseph for Children by Renzo and Monica Ortega

Familiaris Consortio - Pope John Paul II

Love and Responsibility by Karol Wojtyla

compassion  (blog post)



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In this episode, Elizabeth and I talk about car travel, and summer and road trips approach.  We share some of our little life hacks for making the car trip a little better.  Share your ideas with us in the comments!  


00:13 - Recap, we've been away for a long time!
5:05 - Bringing a soccer ball for travel stops 
8:07 - Our favourite audiobooks, listening together as a family  
13:26 - Road trip games to play in the car 
20:03 - Stuff for older kids 
22:13 - Best travel hack ever 
28:37 - Something the kids will love 

Toniebox


Charlotte's Web audiobook narrated by E.B. White

The Hobbit audiobook narrated by Andy Serkis

Disney Winnie the Pooh - tonies

Wild Kratts: Martin - tonies

Wild Kratts: Chris - tonies



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