The term Tiger Mom was popularized by the 2011 memoir Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. In it, Amy Chua describes a parenting style of fiercely high expectations. These moms were strict, demanding, and ruthlessly dedicated to their children’s success.

The backlash was immediate and sharp. Cries that these mothers were cruel and even abusive sprang forth from all major publications.

Battle Hymn came out three years before I became a mother, so I never gave it much thought. I wasn’t going to be that sort of parent, and I haven’t been.

But then I met a Tiger Mom… and honestly, I had a lot to learn from her.

I first met Priya (not her real name) at a piano festival. We connected on the fact that we both homeschooled, and how it was partially because we could offer our children a better education. But she wasn’t like any other homeschool mom I’d ever met. She was intensely focused on giving her kids the most exceptional education possible. Not in a gentle, floating way, but with mission-level intensity. Best classes, best extracurriculars, best programs.

She had been putting them through IQ and aptitude tests for years.

At first I was put off. Really? Is all that necessary? It’s a bit much.

As I got to know her though, a fuller story emerged. When Priya’s oldest son was 6 years old, it was clear he was gifted but she could get no accommodations from the school. She got the first IQ test so she had concrete evidence to force the system to act. Multiple tests followed, but in the end the school system couldn’t contain her son (or Priya).

Over the next decade, she tells me of finding online parent groups for gifted kids and mentors for her children. She also talks of the challenges she faced. It’s hard (and lonely) forging your own path. As I sit next to her on her couch, she looks exhausted, and she has a right to be. She works full-time, homeschools her younger son, and drives her oldest to a specialty high school a long way from home.

But here’s the thing. Her kids aren’t unhappy. Rather, they are the most driven kids I’ve been around. The youngest’s room is filled with wires and breadboards that he’s using to program a robot he’s building from scratch. Priya tells me that they had to set computer limits because he was staying up until midnight working (not watching YouTube, working).

The oldest attends high school on a college campus because he’s already doing graduate level math in 10th grade. When they came to dinner, my husband (an Engineering PhD who does data analytics for a living) had a lively conversation with him about Lie Group Theory which is an advanced mathematical concept typically taught to Systems and Controls Engineers their first year getting their PhD. Priya says it’s hard to get her oldest to do anything else besides math, and wonders what happens if he finishes his bachelors before he graduates high school.

Getting to know Priya and her remarkable children got me thinking.

What if the parenting style we’ve been told to avoid is exactly what kids need right now?

What if our children need a bulldozer to clear their path in a world that has never been more crowded? Our children won’t just be competing with other humans, but AI. It won’t be enough for them to be able to read classic literature, write a good essay, and be proficient in math.

Maybe I need to be a tiger? Certainly, I need to raise tigers: strong, resilient, and ready.

Lucky for us, we aren’t shooting in the dark. There are decades of research to fall back on… and honestly, Tiger Moms aren’t that far off.

What does the science say about the parenting styles that lead to the strongest kids (both academically and emotionally)? And how can we adapt this knowledge to our changing, modern world? Finally, like most science, not all of it is useful in the home. In the next section, I’ll break down what the research actually supports, what we can ditch, and how I’m applying it with my own kids.

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She’d been “writing” for years at that point. She’d copied sentences and written breezy descriptions of dogs and cats. But this was different. This was special.

Her curriculum asked her to write a sentence about a man in a boat. “Use adjectives,” it said. I was hoping for something like, “The old man sat in the big boat.”

She wrote, “The old man smelled of salt and sea.”

My jaw dropped — and our writing journey changed forever.

In Falling in Love with Writing, we focused on merging the physical act of writing with the mental act of thinking. The years from 8 to 10 are the payoff when writing comes fully alive. The linguistic centers of the brain are in their final growth spurt. You can fill their ears with increasingly complex books. Children still hang on your every word. It’s a wonderful, wonderful time.

So how do we harness this precious period of linguistic expansion while helping them become strong writers?

The answer may surprise you. It surprised me.

We teach them to tell great stories.

A bunch of you just sighed and thought That’s not nearly serious enough. My kid isn’t going to be a novelist. You’re not wrong, but you are also missing important context.

All great writing tells a story.

As an engineering professor my published scientific journal papers were telling a story. A technical, data driven story but a story nonetheless. In fact, my PhD advisor (my scientific father) would always start conversations about journal papers with “What story are we are telling?”

And we aren’t the only ones. The late, great C.S. Lewis also chose story to bring home the messages he’d spent decades trying to impart with essays. Today, few read his literary papers, but millions read The Chronicles of Narnia every year.

There’s nothing more foundational to great writing than the ability to tell a compelling story.

But before they can write a great story, children must first learn what great writing feels and sounds like… what it tastes like coming off their tongue.

And so that’s where we begin.

Fill Their Ears with Beautiful Language

Children cannot write language they’ve never heard.

My daughter wrote, “The old man smelled of salt and sea,” shortly after we listened to The Old Man and the Sea. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Children naturally absorb the cadence, vocabulary, and imagery of the books that fill their lives.

Read aloud constantly. Read books that stretch them just a little beyond what they could read on their own. Rich language quietly becomes how words are supposed to sound.

Let Them Borrow Greatness

One of the oldest tools in education is also one of the simplest: copywork.

When babies learn to talk, they imitate us. Musicians learn by playing the masters. Artists begin by copying great paintings. Writing is no different.

Give your child beautiful sentences to copy. I had my kids keep a notebook of favorite sentences. Kids these ages love a new notebook! Whenever we encountered a line that makes us stop and smile, into the notebook it went. Along the way children practice spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and grammar almost without noticing. More importantly, they begin developing an instinct for beautiful prose and how to linger of words.

Let Them Memorize Beauty

Nothing transformed my children’s writing more than memorizing Shakespeare.

We didn’t begin there, of course. We started with nursery rhymes, playful poems, and little verses about bees and puppies. But as they grew, so did the richness of the language I asked them to hold in their memories.

There are a million poets out there. Why Shakespeare? He wrote to be spoken aloud. His language has rhythm and sounds like music. He slows you down with one phrase and sweeps you forward with the next.

Long before children can fully understand each passage, they learn that it matters what words sound and feel like. Eventually that music finds its way into their own writing.

PS. If you’d like to know how I introduce Shakespeare to children as young as 6, you’ll enjoy 8 Year Olds Can Learn Shakespeare.

Inspire Their Writing Through Beauty

Once children have been surrounded by beautiful language, it’s time for them to bring forth their own beautiful words. One of my favorite exercises came from my daughter’s curriculum. She would study a beautiful painting, then answer questions like:

What would it feel like to stand there? What does the air smell like? Is the breeze cool or heavy? What can you hear?

The goal isn’t to describe the picture. It’s to imagine living inside it. Then use that to bring forth incredible words.

I still use this today. Whenever one of my children gets stuck writing, I simply ask them to close their eyes and step into the scene. Suddenly, they have something worth saying.

Teach Them to Love Revision

Great writing rarely arrives fully formed. Every writer learns to search for the right word.

One of my favorite exercises for teaching this is Variations, an exercise from the progymnasmata the ancient Greek pre-writing exercises. Start with a simple sentence and ask your child to improve it. Replace one word. Rearrange the order. Try a different verb. Add one vivid detail.

The point isn’t perfection. It’s helping children discover that writing is built one thoughtful choice at a time. Eventually they’ll begin making those choices without being asked. For an entire post on this incredible tool see Teaching Children the Art of Powerful and Precise Writing.

Tell Old Stories Before Writing New Ones

Before asking children to invent stories, ask them to retell great ones.

Aesop’s Fables are perfect. In just a few sentences they establish a setting, introduce a conflict, and arrive at a memorable conclusion. Teach your child to tell the story in their own words. Not only will they strengthen their writing, they’ll get a flavor for how stories are built. What they are supposed to feel like when you get to the end. Reading great books will do this too.

Only after children have lived inside many good stories do we ask them to tell their own.

Then Let Them Fly

There is plenty more to teach. My children wrote research papers about their favorite animals, learned punctuation, grammar, outlining, and revision (things I’ll cover more in the Q&A).

Those skills matter. But in these early years, our greatest task isn’t producing polished papers. It’s cultivating writers.

Train their ears. Fill their minds with beautiful language. Help them notice the perfect word. Give them stories worth telling. The mechanics will come.

And one day, perhaps when you least expect it, your child will write something that makes you stop in your tracks. Maybe something as simple as: “The old man smelled of salt and sea.”

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As adults, we think of writing as essays, research papers, persuasive arguments. That’s what I remember from school and my career anyway.

But as I corrected my daughter’s “d” to a “b,” it was clear I needed to think about writing differently… very differently.

So I did what I always do when I stumble: I started reading. I read about how to combine phonics with handwriting, whether to teach cursive or print first, when to introduce typing, a deep dive into cognitive development followed and on and on.

But by far the most helpful piece of information was this…

As adults, we think and write at the same time. As I write this sentence, that’s what I’m doing. But children don't. For them, handwriting and thinking are completely separate skills.

Almost all of a child's attention is spent physically forming letters. They can’t also organize ideas, choose words, or craft beautiful sentences. So, the goal of early writing is merging the physical act of writing with the mental act of thinking.

This one reframe shifted how I thought about writing entirely.

First, learning to write letters is much closer to drawing than it is to writing essays. That changed the kinds of practice I valued. We spent more time emphasizing beauty, form, drawing, and even a few playful forays into calligraphy.

Second, I needed to train my children to speak and think well. Great writing is great thinking after all. Which meant I needed to train my children’s thinking just as much as their handwriting. They needed exposure to elegant words and a foundation of wonderful things to think and talk about!

This simple framework was so liberating. It took the pressure off. We got to just revel and enjoy these early stages. It paired beautifully and naturally extended from falling in love with reading.

Today, I’ll walk you through how I helped my young children fall in love with writing. It wasn’t always easy. As I wrote in From Writing Tears to Writing Novels, my oldest didn’t always have a love affair with writing.

But we found our way - and you will too.

Ready? Let’s begin.

✨Training the Hands for Writing

Build Strong Hands That Match Their Busy Minds

There’s a reason kids do so much coloring and cutting in kindergarten. It’s building their hands for writing. Just like runners weight lifting - your kids need to train for writing.

So let them color while you read to them - but do more than that!

Teach them finger crochet and beginner origami. Take drawing lessons and explore calligraphy. These build dexterity while training their visuospatial brain which does tremendous things for their learning not the least of which is improve their math skills (for more read: How to Improve Your Kids Math Without Doing Math).

Pair Handwriting and Phonics for Better Learning

Learning to read should be a holistic, sensory, whole body experience.

Kids should be seeing the letter, hearing the letter, saying the letter, writing the letter. This doesn’t just help them learn better, it helps connects all those different parts of their brain. This methodology is especially important for children with dyslexia, but it’s best for all kids.

Cursive First Is Worth It

Your child will prefer to write the way they were first trained. If you chose print, they will write in print. If you chose cursive, they will write in cursive. But print is easier to pick up after cursive while cursive is harder to pick up after print. For example, my oldest learned cursive first and writes like this (see below). She can do print easily. My youngest learned print first and despite a TON of practice won’t use it.

Cursive is more complex, trains the visuospatial brain (which as mentioned is really important), and for most kids it reduces letter flipping! It’s worth it friends.

Handwriting Before Typing

I’ve written extensively about this in Why Teaching Handwriting Matters in the Digital Age, but typing and handwriting are very different skills to your brain. Typing is less complex and less demanding. Make sure handwriting comes first. More on typing in Q&A section.

Make Handwriting Practice Fun by Changing Where You Practice

My kids loved dry erase books for handwriting practice. I let them use the same markers to do spelling lessons on the windows. Think outside the box. Hard to go wrong!

Copy the greats

Want your kids to write like Hemingway start by copying him. You think I’m kidding, but having kids do copywork is so beneficial. My kids loved copying pages from their favorite books. It made them feel very grown-up, and every five year old wants to feel grown up.

Copywork slows children down long enough to notice how beautiful writing actually sounds and looks.

Whatever your kid loves - a poem, a novel, a magazine - let them copy it into a special notebook. Ensure they are copying proper punctuation. This is a natural way, and delightful way, for them to train their hand and absorb grammar (advanced grammar must still be taught but we’ll get to more of that in ages 8-10).

Learn a Second Alphabet Too

My kids traced and learned how to write Tamil letters (my husband’s native language). Teaching this skill makes it easier for them to learn English letters which are far simpler. If there is an foreign language that you’re thinking about introducing your kid to long-term, have them do some copywork early. you won’t regret it!

✨Raise a Child Who Has Something Worth Saying

Great Speaking Comes Before Great Writing

Children can’t think and write simultaneously yet.

They can, however, think and speak.

When you ask a little kid Who is this book about? often they’ll say Bob. We want them to say This book is about Bob, a complete sentence. It sounds pedantic, but kids must speak with confidence and clarity.

You can help best by getting really, really engaged in language with them. The more comfortable they are sharing and expressing their ideas to you orally, the better and better their writing will be.

NOW is the time to have incredible, rich conversations about everything. Kids these ages love anything you are excited about. Take them on field trips, explore your backyard. Ask them How do you think this works? Why do you think the butterflies all like that plant? If they ask you a question, model thinking out loud on your feet or figuring the answer out together.

There are few things better for your kids than having rich conversations with them.

Your Most Powerful Tool? Narration

I loved listening to my children tell me their stories. Sometimes it was what happened in dance class or what a friend told them. But I also remember how hard it was to understand right away. The teacher said what? How did you guys get outside?

Children don’t quite yet know how to organize their thoughts.

So have them practice through narration.

Have them tell you about the story they just read - or tell Dad, Granddad or sister! Kids love to share and by doing this over and over kids will learn how to carefully explain a situation. What is important. What can be left out. How to make it amusing. Ensure you are an active listener. Ask questions. Be attentive. Do this enough and great speakers and writers you will make of them.

Read the Best Books

One of the more frustrating advice I receive is “Teach your kids HOW to think not what to think” Sure. Totally agree. But HOW do you teach kids HOW to think?

Well, it starts with giving them something to think about. The best places are rich literature, science, and history. Everyone knows that reading a ton enhances writing skills, but they often think it’s just about syntax, grammar, and vocabulary. That’s just the beginning. It’s about having context, depth, and the ability to compare from a deep background.

So, read to your kids the best — the very, very best. Great thinking will come.

Celebrate Big Words and Rich Language

Whenever your child uses a complex word, the first words out of your mouth should be an enthusiastic Excellent Word! I recently started this with my nephew and it was immediately clear that he upped his word game. Kids also need to hear you using complex words fluidly. If that feels daunting, classic literature is the most pleasant way to increases exposure to both complex vocabulary and syntax/grammar which they will then use in their own writing. But above all, just love talking and reveling in language with your kids.

Memorize and Recite Poems, Epic Stories, and Speeches

Let kids get a taste for what great oration sounds and feels like. My children’s writing was transformed by memorizing Shakespeare. They started using alliteration naturally and carefully selecting words. Such a simple habit that goes a long way towards helping your children become exceptional writers!

✨When Thinking Meets Writing

I’ve spent a lot of time talking about handwriting and about building your child’s thinking and language. Now comes the beautiful part: the merging.

It sounds difficult, but if you’ve been nurturing both skills separately, it happens more naturally than you might expect. There aren’t many tricks -just be patient.

Don’t push. Don’t overcorrect. First, help them write single words with care. Then a sentence. Then a paragraph. If you are doing things in this post, they will naturally start to play with language, vary sentence lengths, experiment with unique words or complex syntax. Let them. Gently correct when needed. Patience will reward you.

You’ve now laid the foundation for exceptional writing.

The next stage (ages 8–10) is where writing truly begins to come alive. That’s when children discover their voice and learn to write with purpose, confidence, and creativity. I can’t wait to share that journey with you next!

🌺For now, take a deep breath. These years are precious. Enjoy every minute of it.

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Hello everyone, I’m Dr. Claire Honeycutt of ClarifiEd, and this is Tried & True Homeschooling — where we talk with real parents who have actually graduated their kids. They are filled with the most incredible wisdom.

Today I’m speaking with — writer, adult literacy advocate, farmer, and veteran homeschooling mom. After leaving the city for rural farm life, her family embraced an idyllic unschooling life: raising animals, building projects, and riding horses under the moonlight.

But over time, Larissa realized something difficult.

What worked beautifully for one child was quietly failing another — specifically her quirky, gifted son who struggled both inside and outside traditional school.

In this deeply honest conversation, we explore the strengths and limitations of unschooling, why some children need more structure than others, the hidden social challenges of homeschooling, and how to recognize when it’s time to pivot.

This episode isn’t our usual super upbeat fair, but it’s deeply important. Larissa brings rare humility and wisdom to one of the hardest questions in education.

How do we balance freedom and formation for the unique child in front of us?

Larissa is one of the bravest moms I know, and I hope you’ll enjoy learning from her as much as I did.

If you’d like to connect more with Larissa, you can find her on her substack .

I want to take a quick moment to thank all my paid subscribers.

Your support means the world to me – and without which this podcast would not exist. Your help allows me to pay for equipment, editing software, and my time creating new content every week.

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Finally, a quick note.

Tried and True shares real parents stories without commentary or endorsement. I don’t necessarily agree with every method or approach presented in these discussions—my goal is to present real families and their experiences so you can decide what’s best for your children. For my personal advice and approach, head to ClarifiEd.life.

~Dr. Claire♥️

There’s such a rush to get kids reading. I remember it well. The ever-present fear: Why aren’t they reading? They need to be reading. Reading feels like the most important milestone in a child’s early educational life. And in many ways, it is. It is essential — critical to, well… everything.

But once kids can read, we often shift too quickly to a different set of priorities: math, history, philosophy, science, logic, computer programming, music… and on and on. All beautiful. All important. But shifting too soon is a mistake.

Learning to read is just the beginning of our children’s life with the written word — or at least it should be.

Our goal in the years after our children learn to read is to help them see past the words of a story and into the message that lies beneath. To help them wrestle with courage, sacrifice, grief, justice, beauty, and mercy through stories — not as abstract lessons, but as living truths they encounter alongside beloved characters.

If that seems a bit lofty for 3rd grade — you’re not wrong. But if we gently, joyfully pull our children into richer, more complex texts, if we ask them to rise to challenging ideas, enter fantastical worlds, and notice the deeper truths an author is trying to reveal — well, then they begin to think far beyond their age.

This won’t happen right away. Please don’t stress that your 8-year-old isn’t here yet (mine weren’t). Getting there takes time, patience, and story after story after story.

But not just stories. Conversation. Comparison. Reflection.

We must read alongside them, and let the great stories do their slow, transformative work.

If you feel overwhelmed, I felt the same way once.

I read so many lofty, aspirational posts from incredible writers and thought, Yeah but HOW? How do you do this on a practical level. What does this look like day-to-day. What am I supposed to actually do?

But after doing it imperfectly, we found our way.

My elementary aged children read C.S. Lewis, Dickens, Orwell, Tolkien, Jules Verne, Louisa May Alcott — and, as many of you know, have a bit of a love affair with Shakespeare.

Below, I share everything I learned.

🌺May it help your children enter the literary tradition with joy.

Ready? Let’s go.

In the prior post, we focused on falling in love with reading. We wanted children to see themselves as readers and build the habit of reading.

Now we set our sights higher.

In ages 8–10, we help our children build:

• Literary Taste: An appetite for great books

• Literary Language: A Love of Words (e.g. vocabulary)

• Literary Analysis: Seeing Beyond the Words

Let’s find the joyfully, rigorous path to the literary tradition.

✨Literary Taste: An Appetite for Great Books

Keep What’s Working

Before we even start to think about changing anything. Look at your home. What’s working? It might be read alouds or that dragon book series your kids can’t put down. Whatever it is — don’t change it!

In our attempts to get children to read “better” books, we can undermine what we worked so hard to build.

So, keep what is working.

And don’t scoff at below-grade-level books. They build fluency, confidence, and practice. Everything I describe below should be layered on top of a strong reading habit, not replace it.

(If your child doesn’t have a strong reading habit, see Q&A at end or the prior post).

Every Book You Want Them to Read — Read to Them

To read more advanced books, children need a large vocabulary (more in a minute) and the skills necessary to decipher complex sentences and story.

The best way to do that? Together.

Think of bringing your children into the literary tradition as an apprenticeship. Through read-alouds, we expose our children to richer vocabulary, unfamiliar genres, different historical periods, and more complex language than they could comfortably read alone.

Pick books 2-3 grades above their reading level (yes. really). Kids can understand language far above what they can read themselves.

This is how we gently stretch children.

PS. Make sure to include The Four Stories Your Children Must Know to Read Everything Else.

Introduce Stretch Books

From ages 8-10, it’s important that children learn to take books that challenge them.

Here again, we start together.

Both my children read to me through 4th grade (9-10). Because we were reading together, I could encourage books of increasingly complex language, and I could check to ensure it wasn’t too much. I wasn’t just “checking” their reading. We were learning to work through complicated plots, puzzle out unfamiliar words, and above all, learn to love books together.

From this foundation, children can begin to pick books on their own — but you still need to….

Curate Their Choices

Not all books are created equal. Talk openly with your children that some books nourish them while others are just for fun. There’s nothing wrong with “candy” books, but they shouldn’t be the main diet of our children.

When my children were younger, we relied heavily on the library, but as they grew older the library no longer suited. Sadly, libraries aren’t the bastions of culture they once were.

So we began building a home library.

I populated our home with rich, wonderful options. I also let my girls chose from curated lists of award winners or book selections from trusted sources (My favorites in the Q&A section).

We want children to have a real choice — but from a collection of books we would be delighted for them to choose.

✨Literary Language: A Love of Words

The Best Vocabulary Curriculum Is a Bookshelf

The importance of growing your children’s vocabulary during these years can’t be overstated. This is the final stretch of heightened memory and language acquisition. (For more read High School is Too Late for Shakespeare). But that doesn’t mean vocabulary quizzes. The best way (in these ages) for new words to be learned is through exposure and usage.

In the early elementary years (ages 5-7), children are learning “high frequency” words — words that come up naturally in language. Hearing words in context often gives children a ton of practice, so they pick them up easily. But this changes as kids enter the ages of 8-10.

Now, new words become scarce in everyday conversation and more complex often requiring explanation: concede, erratic, impulsive, malleable, gnarled, pensive, shrewd, succinct, tedious.

What are we to do?

Read them richer and richer books — but not just that. You need…

A Family Culture of Figuring It Out

When you come to a word that’s new to your children, ask…

• “What do you think that word means?”

• “Would you use a different word?”

These two simple questions encourage children to instinctively think about words and discover their nuance.

Better yet, do it with them!

Pick stories that challenge you — and work through hard words together. Last fall, we read The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (see below). If you haven’t read it in a while it’s got great gnarled, archaic words. We had to stop often and look vocabulary up together.

By doing this, you aren’t just teaching your children words but something far more powerful — how to find out words on their own. That lesson will serve them far more than any vocabulary list.

Encourage Active Use

A child doesn’t truly know a word until they begin using it. Celebrate sophisticated language when it appears. Big words from sweet, little mouths is one of the most precious things you’ll ever see. Appreciate their language — tell them “what a big, beautiful word.” If they get it wrong, don’t laugh — start with praise and then gently suggest a better word or sentence. But it should feel like a gift not a criticism.

Criticize too much and they’ll stop trying. Their language becomes smaller, and we want children who use sophisticated words as their natural expression.

✨Literary Analysis: Seeing Beyond the Words

Choose Books Worth Discussing

Not every book lends itself to deep conversation. One of my biggest mistakes was starting with books that were simply too much.

When I gave my girls Little Women, they had many, many opinions. When I gave them The Old Man And the Sea, they appreciated the language and the imagery (a beautiful book to read to your children btw) — but didn’t have much to say about the meaning. Afterall, it’s about age and time. They are still quite young.

Children are best able to discuss books whose themes connect directly to their own experiences and age.

Start Small: Short Stories, Poems, & Great Sentences

Our best discussions often come from short stories & poems — not lengthy novels. Short stories let children hold the whole story in their minds at once.

We once spent 30 minutes discussing a single sentence from The Wind in the Willows. It’s still one of my favorite conversations.

Don’t feel you need to start literary analysis by going big. Go small instead (my favorites to start on later).

Teach Them to See Beyond the Words

Ever wonder why we spend so much time teaching children to read fiction?

If stories were merely entertainment, we wouldn’t bother stretching them with Dickens or Shakespeare. We could stop with books that are easy and enjoyable.

The point of literature is not simply to make children better readers. It is to help them become wiser, deeper, more compassionate human beings.

But how? How do we do this?

This was the hardest part of entering the literary tradition for me personally. I was a STEM kid.

But then, I found the progymnastmata (ancient Greek pre-exercise) that makes working through complex texts simple and dare-I-say pleasing.

Three Questions That Unlock Great Stories

Question 1: Enter the Story — What do you recognize?

With this question we ask children to be a part of the story — to relate to it. It starts with young children saying “I’ve seen a bunny rabbit before" while reading Beatrix Potter. But older children will say “I know what it’s like to want to be free” while reading My Side of the Mountain.

Then one day, your children will start recognize stories allusions to other stories. This week my children said “You know Anne of Green Gables reminds me a bit of Jo in Little Women.” Montgomery was heavily influenced by Alcott — and my girls picked up (and with time your children will too).

Question 2: Understand the Human Struggle — What suffering is there?

It is through suffering that our characters learn lessons. Every memorable story asks something of its characters. They must lose something, sacrifice something, endure something. And because they suffer, they change.

Characters die on the page so that we might live better lives ~ Abraham Verghese.

Children know what it feels like to be lonely, frightened, embarrassed, or left out. When they learn to notice suffering in stories, they begin to understand not just books, but the human experience.

Characters can suffer physically through climbing a mountain or facing a serious foe, but they can also suffer emotionally from guilt, fear, or despair.

It is from this suffering that characters are propelled to make changes or learn that their choices were poor ones. By asking about suffering, we ask children to become a part of the story and get in touch with the characters.

Question 3: Watch Transformation — What is the reversal?

If a reversal doesn’t happen, the story will feel empty. Often the best stories, the reversal is the largest most distinctive part of the story.

The mighty king falls, the orphan finds a home, Scrooge changes his life. But of the three questions, this can sometimes be the hardest to see because sometimes the change is internal — and that brings us to the final note.

Seek Wisdom in the Author’s Message

Once these three questions are answered, comes the most rewarding part, but also the trickiest. It doesn’t always have a “right” answer.

What is the message? What is the author trying to teach us? The point here isn’t to focus on perfection, but rather how did the story speak to your child? What do they see?

It’s OK for the first answers to be simple. After reading Black Beauty my daughter said “We should be nicer to animals.” That was really the point of that book. Are there deeper mysteries? Probably. But for an eight-year-old, that was enough.

✨Take a Deep Breath

This work is slow. Be patient, and you will be rewarded.

You are not simply raising children who can read — you are raising children who know how to sit with beauty, wrestle with truth, and let stories shape their souls.

Most parents will see their children learn to read.

🌺May you have the extraordinary privilege of entering the literary tradition with your children.

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Hello everybody! I’m Dr. Claire Honeycutt of ClarifiEd and this is Tried & True Homeschooling where we talk with real parents who have actually graduated their kids. They are filled with the most incredible wisdom.

Today I’m talking with the wonderful, incredible Camilla — an unschooling graduate, homeschool mom, former public school teacher, and one of the most thoughtful people I’ve ever talked to about education.

Camilla grew up in the 90s on a small family farm. She was raised by a deeply independent mother who influenced by the ideas of John Holt let her spend her childhood roaming outdoors and doing whatever she pleased.

But Camilla wanted more.

She taught herself to read and then did the unthinkable … she put herself in public school.

If you’ve ever wondered whether unschooling actually works — or if children need more structure — you are going to love this conversation.

Camilla shares what it was really like transitioning from unschooling into middle school, becoming the first of her siblings to attend college, finding herself a a public school teacher, and finally navigating homeschooling her own children.

But that’s just where we start.

We talk about:

• Which kinds of children naturally thrive with freedom — and which may need more support

• How unschooling affects motivation, confidence, and independence

• Why modern technology has fundamentally changed the unschooling

• How to raise teenagers who truly take ownership of their lives

🌺Thoughtful, honest, funny, and full of nuance — this one is for every parent trying to balance freedom and formation.

I want to take a quick moment to thank all my paid subscribers.

Your support means the world to me – and without which this podcast would not exist. Your help allows me to pay for equipment, editing software, and my time creating new content every week.

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Finally, a quick note.

Tried and True shares real parents stories without commentary or endorsement. I don’t necessarily agree with every method or approach presented in these discussions — my goal is to present real families and their experiences so you can decide what’s best for your children. For my personal advice and approach, head to ClarifiEd.life.

~Dr. Claire

Children must have books, living books. The best is not too good for them; anything less than the best is not good enough. — Charlotte Mason

Most parents think teaching reading begins with the alphabet.

It doesn’t.

Learning to read begins the first time you pull a child onto your lap, snuggle into the couch, and open your favorite book from childhood.

From this place of comfort, your child learns that books are sacred. That being read to is being loved and cared for.

We don’t start teaching children to read by teaching them the skills.

We start by helping them fall in love with stories.

There are few things I loved more than teaching my youngest to read.

It started with A says ah, B says buh and ended last fall with her reading me The Pilgrim’s Progress at 9 years old (excerpts). She no longer needs me to spot-check her reading. She reads every day, increasingly longer and more complex books. Recently Watership Down (see photo).

Of all the things I’ve done as a mother and educator, this is one I know I got right.

Sadly, I didn’t get to teach my oldest to read. School taught her to read, but they didn’t teach her to love it. That was my gift to her. Now she reads 100s of books a year. Just this week, she reread The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 2 days simply because she loves it.

It’s cliché but true: when a child falls in love with reading, it doesn’t just change their childhood — it reshapes the entire trajectory of their life.

Because reading is never just reading. A child curled up with a book is discovering other ideas, other minds, other worlds beyond them.

What follows isn’t another “how-to”, it’s a framework that helps our children fall madly in love with reading while also equipping them to read some of the richest literature ever written.

Here, we merge joy and rigor into one.

May your home become a place where children fall in love with reading♥️

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✨Before Children Read, They Learn to Love Books

Start by Reading the Best Books Ever Written

The ages of 5–7 are a precious window. But one that does not last. The linguistic centers of the brain are in the final stretch of their most active period. This is the most important time to fill your children’s brains with rich, complex literature — ideally the classics.

Nourish them with The Four Stories Your Kids Need to Read Everything Else - namely Fairy Tales, Global Folktales, Shakespeare, and The Bible. Almost every book in the Western tradition is a reimagining or echo of what came before, and those origins can often be traced back to this core set of foundational stories (resources on how to introduce these gently below).

Reading your children these stories now allows them to begin drawing parallels and recognizing allusions years earlier than most children. By ages 8–10, many will naturally begin noticing connections that are often not taught until high school.

But the most important reason to read these? They intuitively teach our children what a good story sounds and feels like influencing the books our children choose and the ideas they are drawn to the rest of their lives.

You are developing the literary taste of your children. It is worth taking seriously.

Let Them Inhabit Beautiful Worlds

Beatrix Potter fills her stories not just with sophisticated vocabulary and gorgeous syntax, but with beautiful illustrations and virtues. I read her books over and over to my children, but my fondest memory was my 7 year old reading them to me. The books of her childhood that I had read to her over and over… were now hers. It felt like magic, truly.

These types of books quietly teach our children that the world, while sometimes harsh, is also beautiful. Fairy tales serve the same purpose. Characters are always saved by fairy godmothers or enchanted animals.

So take your children to the Hundred Acre Wood with Winnie-the-Pooh and wander riverbanks with Frog and Toad. Fill your home with stories that will stay with your children — and their children — for the rest of their lives.

Don’t Just Read them Fairy Tales

Fairy tales are wonderful. You really must read them (see above). But please don’t neglect living history and science books.

Read them real stories about real people who were brave, courageous, and kind.

My children were introduced to ancient pyramids, Greek ideals, Roman mastery, the rise of the Byzantine empire, Zang dynasties, and much much more. We read beautiful books about flowers, rivers, oceans, and hummingbirds and whales.

In addition to filling children with wonder about the world, these books also strengthen reading comprehension, vocabulary, and background knowledge—all of which make future reading easier (yes really - here’s the study).

A child fascinated by the world is naturally motivated to read more about it.

✨Teach Reading Without Losing the Magic

Reading is Best Learned by Actually Reading

Phonics is by far the best way to teach reading. But phonics becomes much more meaningful when children immediately use those sounds to read real books. Find early readers introduce a few sounds and then immediately place them into stories (my favorites beginner ones in the prior post).

But many parents stop phonics too early.

There may only be 26 letters, but children still need to master dozens of phonemes, spelling patterns, and decoding rules. Y - makes 4 different sounds for example.

I continued phonics instruction through third grade. But it looked a bit different. If we are still drilling letter sounds, this will get quite dull. Instead find books that integrate phonics naturally into stories (see above picture).

Finally, flip the script and let your kids read to YOU. They feel so grown up doing this, and honestly it’s one of my favorite memories with both of my children. My favorite book series (above) is a collaborative read. You both read some parts.

PS. Letter sounds should be taught holistically with writing — but more on that in Falling in Love with Writing.

Let Them Choose Books They Love

When I first got my library card, they told me I could only check out 25 books. “Twenty-five books? Who would ever check out that many?” I thought.

Well, the answer was me.

Eventually I got my children cards so we could check out more than the limit.

Go to the library’s early readers section and let your kids pick whatever floats their boat (unless it’s age or morally inappropriate). Early readers exist in almost every interest imaginable: animals, trucks, princesses, science, jokes, adventure, movies, history. Literally everything. Let your kids pick.

Our goal in these early years is to establish the habit of reading. The daily desire to pick up a book. Don’t fret the quality of the books they chose for themselves. They’ll be plenty of time to gently nudge them in the right direction. We’ll go deeper into that in Deepening a Love for Reading ages 8-10.

What matters most during these years is joy and delight.

Don’t Scoff at Below-Level Books

One of the best things young readers can do is read books below their reading level.

You read that right.

Children need large amounts of successful, enjoyable reading practice. It builds confidence, fluency, stamina, and makes books into friends.

Use the books you read together to push their skills and the quality of books they read. Let them pick their own books for pleasure.

Read Together Longer Than You Think

Both of my girls read aloud to me through fourth grade (9-10 years old).

Besides just being the highlight of my day, it allowed me to gently spot-check their reading, reinforce missed phonics patterns, and help them learn to decode unfamiliar words. Here, I chose the books so they were classics and of increasingly complex language … but I still let them chose between 2-3.

These books need to be hard enough to occasionally stumble, but not so difficult that reading becomes a chore.

Having my then 7 year old read me Because of Winne-Dixie, a book I’d never read before, remains one of the top moments of my whole life. And I don’t exaggerate.

As I write this, I see no reason why my older kids can’t help read aloud the family books we are reading together. I’m going to start that right away!

Speaking of reading books as a family.

✨Raise Children in a Culture of Reading

Homes Teach Children What Matters

Your physical home environment is teaching your children. It speaks your values — sometimes louder than you do.

If your home is filled with bookshelves and cozy reading nooks, it says to your children → we are readers. If it’s centered around the TV and iPads, it says something quite different.

If we want children to fall deeply in love with reading, books must remain one of the most enchanting things in their world.

Create spaces that beckon you to read. For more read Your Home is Already Teaching Your Children.

Make Books Part of Your Family Identity

If there is only ONE thing you do on this list, make it this.

If you read and love books and show that to your kids, they will be interested. This gets easier with younger kids because they want that special time with mom and dad reading just like their big sister/brother.

And make sure you are reading physical books.

When my kids were little, if I was reading a book on my phone — my kids were nowhere to be seen. But if I was reading a physical book, I’d have two kids sitting next to me reading their physical books.

Books became what we did and who we were.

Start a home library, even if it’s tiny. Display books prominently. Rotate them occasionally so they can be rediscovered — works for older kids too!

You might like: How to Build a Home Library

Let Them Share Stories

It’s not just important that our children can read, they must understand what they are reading. Schools measure comprehension by asking children questions.

Who did what?
What happened next?
Why did the character feel sad?

But there is a far more delightful way to ensure children are understanding and relating to what they are reading.

Narration. (Thanks Charlotte Mason)

Ask your child to run tell Dad or Grandma or their best friend what happened in the story. Invite them to draw a scene or invent a different ending.

Children love this! Narration transforms reading comprehension tests into a joyful, loving way to connect with others. It’s also been evaluated by modern scientists and shows it improves retention. Another bonus is it’s a great building block for writing, but we’ll talk more about that later.

Narration is one of the most important educational tools I know — and for most children it is utterly delightful (great for history too).

✨Final Thoughts

In these early years, children are forming a relationship with books.

The goal is not simply a child who can read, but a child who loves to.

🌺May your home be filled with beautiful books and children who cannot wait to turn the next page.

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Hello everybody! I’m Dr. Claire Honeycutt of ClarifiEd and this is Tried & True Homeschooling where we talk with real parents who have actually graduated their kids. They are filled with the most incredible wisdom.

Today, I’m talking with one of my favorite people – , who also writes a wonderful substack The School Founder’s Classroom. He’s a former teacher and principal turned homeschool dad and micro school advocate.

If you have a teen struggling in high school, you’re gonna want to listen to this!

Jon has five kids, all educated differently, all thriving in their own way. His oldest daughter spent years struggling in the traditional system — the homework battles, the social pressure, the slow erosion of confidence — until they finally took and chance and pulled her home to homeschool. What followed was a gradual, beautiful transition back to joyful learning and taking charge of her life.

But that’s just where we start.

Jon and I get into his homeschool philosophy — a mix of classical education and unschooling (which if you know me, I LOVE!). We also talk

• How to manage teenagers?

• How do homeschooled kids find their people?

• And if you’ve ever thought about starting a microschool or a learning co-op, Jon has some hard-won advice that I really wish I’d had before I started mine!

This one is for every parent who’s terrified to make the leap.

I want to take a quick moment to thank all my paid subscribers.

Your support means the world to me – and without which this podcast would not exist. Your help allows me to pay for equipment, editing software, and my time creating new content every week.

Subscribe now

Finally, a quick note. Tried and True shares real parents stories without commentary or endorsement. I don’t necessarily agree with every method or approach presented in these discussions—my goal is to present real families and their experiences so you can decide what’ best for your children. For my personal advice and approach, head to ClarifiEd.life.

~Dr. Claire

If you’re new, welcome! Get started here.

If you’re a regular, come on in — what a summer we have planned!

Over the next 3 months, I’ll be publishing a series on helping children fall deeply in love with reading, writing, and math without sacrificing rigor. But before we begin ages 5-7, I’m resharing the foundation — the preschool years. Long before children decode words, solve equations, or write paragraphs, they are forming something more important: a relationship with learning itself.

From here, we’ll journey through all of elementary school — becoming the teachers our children deserve.

Because these posts are so extensive, they’ll come every 2 weeks. But as mentioned last week, the podcast is coming back in full force so don’t worry, you’ll still hear from me every week!

Ready? Let’s get started!♥️

I get messages every week from parents of three- and four-year-olds who are already worried.

Should my child know letters yet?
Are we behind in math?
Do I need a curriculum—now?

Not so long ago, I felt exactly the same way. Early childhood feels high-stakes. We’re told these years matter most, but we’re rarely told how to use them wisely.

Here’s the truth I wish someone had told me sooner:

Preschool isn’t about covering content.

It’s about shaping a relationship with learning.

I’ll never forget the first time I walked into a real Montessori classroom. The room was calm—but alive. Children were deeply absorbed in their work. Serious. And yet unmistakably…. happy.

I knew instantly, this is what I wanted for my children. It also clarified something for me. We’ve been handed a false choice: either a childhood full of joy or a serious education.

But why not both?

Joy and rigor aren’t opposites. They belong together.

Long before children encounter assignments, grades, or expectations, they are already answering a much deeper question:

Is learning a place I belong?

The early years shape whether learning feels meaningful or burdensome, whether effort feels satisfying or threatening.

The best preschool education teaches children that learning as alive, serious, and joyful work.

What follows isn’t a checklist. It’s a way of living that helps children fall in love with learning itself.

May it bring joyful learning into your home.

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✨Language: Falling in Love with Words & Books

A baby’s first love is their mother’s voice.

From birth, infants prefer their mother’s voice—and their native language—over all others. That shouldn’t surprise us. For nine months, a single rhythm of speech was their whole world. In this way, a child’s first relationship with learning is forged through language. The preschool years should work with this instinct.

Here’s how to turn a love of language into a love of literacy.

Read Real Books from the Beginning

I read to my children before they could lift their heads. They turned board book pages before they could crawl (see video of my then 3 month old turning board book pages with Dad). Reading with you baby on your lap forges a special relationship with books. They will feel warm, special, and somehow also resemble love.

Reading to your children alone puts a child ahead—but if you want to build a deep and lasting relationship with language, read them classics.

Classics don’t talk down to children. They trust them with rich syntax and beautiful words. Children don’t have to understand everything to absorb the cadence of language.

This early exposure quietly builds the neural foundations for reading, vocabulary, and writing years down the road. It feels natural to learn this way because it’s aligned with typical brain development.

(My favorite read-aloud lists included below & yes Beatrix Potter will be on it!)

Let Them Memorize What They Love

Many children memorize favorite books. Some parents worry this isn’t really reading - and it’s not - but it’s doing something just as important.

Memorization trains attention, strengthens memory, and turns vocabulary into something active. When children repeat big, beautiful words aloud, those words become theirs (transforming passive vocabulary into active usage).

One of my favorite memories is waking up to my oldest “reading” to my youngest—reciting a beloved story from memory with total confidence and delight.

It’s these moments that life comes full circle. They love to read to their siblings because you read to them. Reading is such a gift.

Add Poetry Early

If you want to elevate reading and their future writing, bring poetry into your home.

Poetry trains the ear to the rhythm, cadence, and beauty of words. It teaches children that how something sounds matters. Years later, you’ll see this play out in their writing. They’ll know that how they say something matters.

It will also make Shakespeare feel like a familiar friend.

Think Beyond Fiction — Read the World

Preschoolers loves stories (who doesn’t?) — but they are also hungry for the world. Charlotte Mason style living books, especially in history and science, teach children that knowledge is connected and alive.

One of our favorites is Mossy, a sweeet story of a tortoise, that introduces children to the flora and fauna of the natural world, with gorgeous illustrations on every page (picture below).

Be sure to have a few of these vibrant books about your home - or go to your library and get a new set every few weeks! That was how we did it in our small home.

Let learning spill over into coloring pages, sketching, or observations of the world around them and you teach them that the everything is worth learning about.

Use Audiobooks as Apprenticeship

Car rides are not a preschooler’s best friend—but audiobooks can make them very sweet.

We listened to books constantly in the car, but not just any books. We listened to classic narrators with rich voices that modeled dramatic orations. Both of my kids picked up a wee bit of an English accent during their early years because we listened to so many great English classics.

Great orators teach children how language moves: pacing, inflection, emotion.

As an aside, audiobooks trained my children that cars and trips are places for reading. To this day, my children never go anywhere without a book—even short trips — reading becomes a natural part of your daily rhythm.

Invite Real Reading—Don’t Rush It

Every child shows interest in reading at a different moment. When that moment comes, be ready to JUMP!

Have gentle early readers that integrate phonics on hand (my favorite one pictured below & I’ll give you the resource at the end). Find some that introduce 3-4 letters at a time and then immediately put them into a story. Having a set of these around the house for that moment - and it will come - that your little says I wanna read it myself! They have to learn just 3-4 letters and boom! They are reading a REAL book!

From this early beginning, they’ll grow and blossom so fast.

Early reading should feel like an invitation — don’t be surprised when your 2-3 year old shows interest — especially if their older sibling is already reading too.

PS. Don’t forget to play the “word game”. Ask kids what word am I saying? Then say the sounds slowly for a word.. Ex: the sound for the letters “c” “a” and “t” slowly. Do NOT do this in the context of reading but as a GAME! Learning to put together phonemes into words is essential to early reading.

✨Curiosity: Protecting Wonder & Encouraging Questions

Children are born curious—and then, too often, trained out of it.

Study after study shows that children ask fewer questions as they age. Your job is to protect their curiosity and keep the flame burning bright.

Children rarely say, I’d like a science lesson now.

But they often say: Why does the moon change shape? What are clouds made of? Why do things fall down?

Questions are the curriculum! Two key ways to encourage and build a foundation of curiosity in your home are….

Wonder Out Loud Together

When your child asks a question—whether you know the answer or not—pause and wonder with them.

That’s a great question?
I don’t know—let’s find out.
Why do you think it happens?

Model the process. Let them see how knowledge is built. By doing this, you teach that questions are not interruptions; they are the beginning of every learning journey.

Teach Them Observation

Help children learn to see — really see things. Start with the sky. Then trees. Then insects. Music. Art. Texture. Color. Shape.

Ask what they notice. Give them sketchbooks. Let them trace leaves, press flowers, draw imperfect, abstract representations of what they observe.

The ability to truly see serves children for life—in science, art, and writing.

I believe so strongly in this I wrote a whole post about it The Path to Polymath: Teach Your Kids to Think Like Renaissance Geniuses.

✨Math: Making Patterns Feel Friendly

Math is often where children first learn to fear being wrong.

It doesn’t have to be.

Your goal in the early years is to help math feel useful, playful, and satisfying to explore.

Build the Brain with Hands

To the brain, math is visual (yes, you read that right). Technically, it’s visuospatial.

Children who have a strong visuospatial working memory perform better in every domain of math.

All those hours spent building, cutting and rearranging, folding paper, solving puzzles, or learning finger crafts are quietly training the brain systems math relies on later. This work matters more than we’re often led to believe—so don’t rush past it.

(You can read more deeply on this topic in Improve Your Child’s Math — Without Doing Math. I’ve included a full activity list below & in that article.)

Make Math Musical🎶

Songs teach pattern effortlessly.

I’ll never forget singing multiplication tables in the car with my girls. I was teaching my eight-year-old, but my five-year-old sang right along:

“4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24, 28, 32, 36, 40, 44, 48-leaf clovers…” I can’t even write that without singing the song in my head. Be sure to count all the things in your life along with these songs!

Sesame Street was onto something friends.

Music makes structure feel safe. Patterns feel playful. Memorization of math facts later becomes easier because the relationships are already familiar.

✨Practical Life: Real Work that Builds Confidence

Children so want to be helpful.

Nearly every veteran homeschooler I’ve interviewed on the podcast—and Maria Montessori herself—emphasized the importance of children participating in the work of a household.

Invite Them into Real Work

Children don’t want pretend chores. They want real ones.

These tasks quietly build confidence: I can bake muffins. I can sweep. I can contribute.

For a three-year-old, sweeping the floor is play. Lean into it!

And yes, it won’t actually be helpful at first - but it’s teaching them when work is real, it’s meaningful - and searching for meaningful work becomes the cadence of their future.

Protect Focused Work Time

One of the most striking features of Montessori classrooms is their alive, yet serious work periods.

I worked hard to cultivate that in my home—not perfectly, but deliberately.

Over time, it became the natural rhythm of our day. Even on vacation, I often find my children quietly doing morning “work”: reading, drawing, crafting. As I write this, it’s Saturday morning and they are listening to an audiobook while making historical paper dolls. I didn’t suggest it to them, it’s simply how they want their day to begin.

A three-year-old can tolerate a surprisingly long work block—two hours is not unreasonable when the work is varied and shared. Choose a consistent time of day (after breakfast works well). Build blocks, sing counting songs, read together. Include chores. Whatever you do, make it intentional.

Protected “work” time teaches children what it feels like to begin, sustain, and complete meaningful work.

✨Multiple Languages: Keeping Young Brains Flexible & Open

Young children hear the full range of human sound. But between roughly 18 months and 3 years of age, their perception begins to narrow — a natural part of learning one’s native language.

Exposure to multiple languages keeps the brain flexible. It makes future language learning easier—and richer.

If you have a native speaker at home, use it fully: talk, sing, read. If not, it’s never been easier to find songs, stories, and audiobooks online. Exposure alone shapes the brain.

To young children, this feels like play. And it is.

✨Unstructured Play: Where Learning Becomes Their Own

Finally, protect what cannot be scheduled.

So far, we’ve focused on building a relationship with the work of learning, but a relationship with play matters just as much.

Decades of research show that unstructured physical and imaginative play helps children regulate their bodies, emotions, and attention.

Play must not be scripted. It should belong entirely to the child.

Here, learning becomes theirs.

✨Final Thoughts

Read the real books, welcome the questions, wonder together, sing math songs, share the real work, guard the play.

Do this, and you give your child something no curriculum can buy: a heart in love with learning.

🌺And that love will carry them—steadily, delightfully—farther than you can imagine.

I want the resources!

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One of my favorite ways to end the year is to show my kids what they were doing last August. They are stunned to see how much their writing has improved & how the math seems so easy.

One rarely remembers what happened a year ago-show your kids how much they've grown.

Honestly, I’d needed the reminder — and you probably do too.

So before you rush into summer, pause, and reflect on all your wins!

As I mentioned last week, I have something special planned for us this summer.

We’re going to spend the next few months exploring how to help our children fall in love with reading, writing, and math — giving our children a joyfully, rigorous education. If you missed it, you can read more details in my post Why I Refuse to Choose Between Joy and Rigor.

But I didn’t want you to hear only from me.

I want you to learn from parents who have walked different educational paths, some much further down the road than I am, and who have deeply wrestled with balancing joy and rigor in their homes.

I’ve lined up four powerful conversations with veteran homeschool parents whose stories could not be more different. Two began with highly rigorous environments. Two began with almost complete freedom. None of them ended where they started.

Some stories are full of redemption — children rediscovering themselves and coming back to life. Others include adults looking back with honesty, wishing parts of their childhood had been different.

All of them wrestle with the same deep question so many of us carry: How do we give our children both freedom and formation? Both joy and rigor?

I hope these conversations inform you, challenge you, and above all help you see education, and your own children, a little differently.

And at the end of the summer, I’ll come back and share my own reflections and what I learned from these incredible parents along the way.

Welcome to summer my friends — I’m truly grateful to share it with you♥️

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~Dr. Claire♥️

Wouldn’t pick up a book, cried if we asked her to write anything… don’t even get me started on math.

So much of my early research into education was about reigniting a lost love of learning. I read John Holt and Peter Gray. I listened to School Sucks (had far more episodes) and Exploring Unschooling podcasts. They all promoted different versions of child-led, freedom-based, unschooling. It was a beautiful vision — one that transformed my daughter into a lover of books, art, and architecture. I’ll always be grateful for what these minds taught me and for the reawakening of curiosity in my daughter.

But ultimately, it wasn’t enough.

You see, love of learning is just the beginning. It’s what you do next that matters.

It’s my job to leave as many doors open to my children as possible. I want to raise formidable thinkers. I want my children trained in logic, reason, and critical thinking.

There is perhaps no better discipline to train these than classical education. I devoured The Well-Trained Mind and listened to Memoria Press’ Classical Et Cetera podcast. I brought classical literature into our home. We listened to classical music, took art history courses, did deep dives into history, and they are learning to write using the progymnasmata.

Their education was more rigorous than ever.

But here too, something was missing.

The materials were often too tedious, too obtuse. Their writing was improving and they were reading harder books, but I watched that spark of delight slowly dim. I couldn’t let that happen.

So I set out to merge these two seemingly opposite disciplines to create an education that was joyfully rigorous.

An education where my children were both highly prepared (some might argue over-prepared) for their future, while also loving the process.

Let’s take a moment to define these terms, because I’ve noticed people picture them quite differently.

✨What exactly IS a rigorous education?

If you look up the definition of rigor, you will read this: strictness or severity. A harsh or trying circumstance; a hardship or difficulty.

Teachers from Oliver Twist come to mind.

But if you look up the definition of a rigorous education, you will read: an approach to teaching and learning that emphasizes high academic standards, intellectual challenge, and deep engagement with material, while providing the necessary support for students to succeed at those elevated levels.

Charlotte Mason and Maria Montessori come to mind.

Rigor to me does not mean harsh, but it does mean intense. An intensity that builds and grows with children, preparing them for the rest of their lives.

My mother once told me she thought of my education as sharpening a knife. One can’t sharpen a knife with a soft cloth; it requires something harder than steel.

A rigorous education prepares our children. It is necessary and it is right. But is it enough? I don’t think so.

If our children know reading, writing, and math but hate them, we’ve failed.

✨What exactly IS a joyful education?

You may think this term needs no explanation. But I disagree.

There are many influencers showcasing children frolicking around in nature learning joyfully — OK I’m one of them. We’ve had a LOT of these moments. We have them everyday. My children love reading, history, science. They memorize Shakespeare, are learning how to play duets on the piano, and are writing a novel with their best friend — with zero prompting from me.

But not every moment looks like this.

A joyful education does not mean that every moment is filled with joy. Sometimes the most rewarding, the most joyous work of our lives is just that… work. We must push, strive, toil even. Sometimes joy is found at the top of a mountain after the climb.

Motherhood and educating my children is the most wonderful thing I’ve ever done. Every day it brings me joy beyond measure. But it’s hardly perfect. Every day there are challenges, hard moments, tears even. Does that mean it’s not joyful work? Absolutely not.

Our children’s education will require them to do hard things. It will not always look joyful. But if we remove the challenges, we also remove our children’s opportunity to conquer.

There are few things more joyful than hard-won success.

Don’t take that from your children.

✨Our job is to find Joyful Rigor

To raise children who can think deeply, work hard, and still remain full of wonder.

This is why I refuse to choose between joy and rigor.

My children deserve both. And so do yours.

Over the years, I’ve worked to find this balance not only with my own children, but with many students beyond them.

When I worked as a university professor, I saw the same pattern repeat: bright students whose love of learning had been extinguished. I used all the modern techniques (flipped classroom, student-led, mastery-based), but I turned to the ancients for my own children (Socratic dialogues, Progymnasmata, etc.).

Memory fades, so this summer I’m going to lay out everything I’ve learned about giving children a joyfully rigorous education from preschool to the start of middle school.

We’ll start with a post you may recognize: Falling in Love with Learning: A Joyfully Rigorous Guide to the Preschool Years

We’ll build from there.

Because there’s simply too much to cover in the core subjects to fit into one guide, I’ll be separating them out. K–2 is also quite different from grades 3–5, so those will be separated as well.

These will come about every 2 weeks, and I reserve the right to add to this mix.

Here’s what you can expect over the summer:

• ✨Falling in Love with Reading: A Joyfully Rigorous Guide to Ages 5-7

• Deepening a Love for Reading: A Joyfully Rigorous Guide to Ages 8-10

• ✨Falling in Love with Math: A Joyfully Rigorous Guide to Ages 5-7

• Deepening a Love for Math : A Joyfully Rigorous Guide to Ages 8-10

• ✨Falling in Love with Writing: A Joyfully Rigorous Guide to Ages 5-7

• Deepening a Love for Writing: A Joyfully Rigorous Guide to Ages 8-10

This Falling in Love with Learning series will showcase the core of the ClarifiEd philosophy that I developed over decades. It draws on my experience as a university professor, microschool and club leader, homeschool mom, and my background in neuroscience and how the brain learns best.

It will compliment, update, and expand my You Can Homeschool course — which is already available if you’d like to get started.

I’ve been wanting to write this for a very long time.

✨This is the summer. Now is the time.

I’m so excited — and I hope this approach will transform how your children experience learning too.

I hope you’ll join me♥️

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Remember → Children are our most important work.

~Dr. Claire Honeycutt

Every Sunday, she disappears. Her family keeps Sabbath and takes it very seriously. They attend church, spend the day as a family. No swimming in their pool. No video games. It’s a day for God and for each other.

Two years ago, I thought, That’s a good idea. We should do something similar.

So I cleared our Sundays. No activities (except church). Just family time.

But you know what I did? Laundry. Cleaned the house. Went to the grocery store.

Needless to say, Sabbath didn’t last. It didn’t feel special. Just a whole day dedicated to errands and the ones liked least at that.

A few months ago, I decided to try again. But this time I did something different. I didn’t just clear out calendar.

I removed the work. No errands. No phones or computers.

It was … well … transformative.

Last Sunday, my children pulled out books I used to read to them as toddlers. We read them together for hours. They pointed out memories, things they used to say on each page, things that once confused them and new things they noticed. It was so special.

Later, my youngest shared something that had been weighing on her for a long time. She bared her soul in a way she hadn’t before. I finally understood why she gave up dancing — something she used to cherish. We worked through it. I understood her better, and we’ll walk a new path soon.

Would that have happened if our day had been filled with noise? No.

It was possible because we had spent the whole day together dedicated to one another. Unhurried. Undistracted. Open.

There is always more to do. Always. You must make connection sacred.

You can’t lead your children without it.

And connection doesn’t happen accidentally.

Every week should have time dedicated for the explicit purpose of being together. Even better if that time is spent contemplating the divine.

I wonder what you’ll find in the stillness.

Laughter that comes more easily.
Conversations that go deeper.
A version of your children — and yourself — you haven’t seen in too long.

It will look different for every family.

But one thing I know for sure.

The laundry can wait.
Your family shouldn’t.

Start with one Sunday.

How about this one?♥️

If this resonated with you, you might also enjoy The Hidden Curriculum of Greatness, Stop Managing Time – How to Start Living by Your Values, Tools That Build a Curious Home.

Subscribe for more posts like these every week.

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Remember → Children are our most important work.

~Dr. Claire

My children ask their richest questions at bedtime. The noise of the day has quieted. Thoughts they didn’t have time for suddenly appear.

Today, at 8:30pm my daughter asked, “What does courageous mean?” Why do questions like this wait until the world is still?

Children’s minds are particularly receptive to hearing you at bedtime. It’s a beautiful time for songs and stories (and I’ll share my favorites in a minute), but it can be more than that. Over the years, we’ve nourished their hearts in different ways in different seasons.

When they were toddlers, bedtime was about comfort and calm. As they’ve grown, it has become a time to build confidence through connection, affirmations, and steady reminders of who they are — and what we see in them.

You see — Sleep is not empty time.

Your brain is working on what was lived and learned that day. We wake stronger in skills we practiced the day before and clearer on problems we wrestled with. Research supports this. Children who practice the piano wake to play more quickly and accurately — true of many things.

Why not use bedtime to prime their dreams to ponder things of importance?

I’m not talking about math facts (though sleep helps them). I’m talking about deeper things: self-worth, security, courage, belonging, gratitude, the memory of being deeply loved.

I know what it feels like to be tired at the end of the day. I know the temptation to rush through bedtime just to be done.

But I want to encourage you to see those moments differently. Not as one more task to finish, but as a rare window when your child’s heart is open, and your words can mean the most.

What would you say if you knew it really mattered?

Here is what I say.

This one is pretty personal friends. I share the special songs and stories I read to my children, the affirmations I use with my middle schooler, and a few other family practices that have mattered deeply to us. It’s for my beloved supporters. Thank you for helping me support my family♥️

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It’s shaping their habits, their values, what they like, and how they see the world — often in ways you don’t notice.

Two years ago, I noticed something unsettling.

We rarely, if ever, had family meals together.

We homeschool. My family spends a lot of time together… but meals? For some reason, we were always eating separately, perched around the kitchen peninsula. Even when we were eating at the same time, we didn’t eat together.

I talked about it. We tried to fix it. Nothing really changed.

Then I redid our dining room.

Our original dining room had slowly been taken over as a homeschool club space. We have a small home, and the table now housed pencils, paper, erasers. It was a great space — but not for eating.

One day, I cleared it off. I put down placemats. And at the very next meal, everyone sat down together without a single word from me.

No reminders. No systems. Just a space that invited us to eat together.

That small change raised a bigger question:

✨What does our house invite?✨What does it discourage?

There are plenty of blogs that will help you choose paint colors, find your style, or declutter your space.

This isn’t about that.

This post is about something far more foundational:

Designing a home that trains your children in the values you care about—automatically, quietly, every day.

Below, I share the steps we took to intentionally align our home with the habits, ideas, and values that we espouse as a family.

May it help you live a more intentional life too.

The Art on Your Walls Is Not Neutral

Toddlers are more helpful when surrounded by images of others being helpful.

Stop. Read that again.

We are primed by what we see. The images around us shape what feels normal, expected, even possible. Our environment changes our attention, what we focus on, and ultimately our behaviors.

And yet most of us have a completely accidental collection of things on the walls of our home — things we inherited, picked up on sale, or chose because they “looked nice.”

But your walls are speaking.

They are telling your children:

• what is beautiful

• what is worth noticing

• what kind of life is being lived

When we enclosed our patio to create a homeschool room, I chose the artwork carefully.

Every piece shows a path — a journey into something unknown but beautiful. A figure moving forward. A landscape that invites exploration.

Because that’s what I want my children to feel: that they are on a journey worth taking.

In other rooms, I’ve made different choices. Spaces that invite play. Walls that display my children’s own artwork—because I want them to see that their contributions matter.

None of this is accidental.

Your environment shapes behavior. What are your walls shaping?

Spaces That Invite Connection

If you want your family to spend time together, your home has to make that easy. Our dining room change made that obvious. So we applied what we learned to other rooms.

We turned the center room of our home into a game room. It draws us in. It beckons, “Play Together.”

It silently answers the question: What do we do here?

The layout of your home is constantly answering that question for your children. What does your home invite your children to do?

A Place to Learn

Not everyone believes in a dedicated homeschool space. But children benefit from signals and clear transitions that tell their brain: now we focus. In our home, we have a simple ritual. We play classical music. We light incense. We sing. We pray. Then we sit together to learn.

It’s not elaborate. It’s not expensive. But it is consistent.

My husband has his own version before he begins work. Same principle.

Focus is something children must learn to enter and maintain.

Your environment can either fragment attention—or gently gather it. Which does your home do?

What Does Your Living Room Say?

When my children were little, we removed the TV from our living room. Not because TVs are inherently bad — but because we didn’t want it to define who we were.

A TV in your main living space answers the question: What do we do together?

For many families, the answer becomes: we watch television.

We wanted the answer to be → we read books, we play together, we learn.

The point isn’t whether you should have a TV.

The point is this: Your home is always teaching your children. What do you want it to teach yours?

A Home Built Around Reading

If you want your children to be readers, they need to be surrounded by books.

Not tucked away on a single shelf. Not reserved for school time. Visible. Accessible. Within arm’s reach. Books you read. Books they’re drawn to. Books that stretch them.

Because proximity matters.

A child is far more likely to pick up a book that is already part of the environment than one that requires effort to find or go get at the library.

When my children were younger, we used the library heavily. Now, I’m more selective. There are far too many books and too little time.

I want what surrounds them to be worthy of their attention.

What your child encounters daily becomes what they naturally reach for. Are books in your child’s reach?

Designing a Life, Not Just a Home

It’s easy to think of our homes as neutral backdrops.

They’re not.

Every object, layout, and visible choice is quietly shaping your child’s expectations of life.

• What do we do when we’re bored?

• What do we do together?

• What do we reach for?

• What do we value?

Your home is answering those questions. You don’t need a perfect house (I don’t have one!). You don’t need more space, more money, or better furniture.

But you do need to ask: What is my home training my children to become?

And then, gently, intentionally, begin to align it. Clear the dining table. Hang paintings that make you feel something. Bring books into sight.

With time, these small changes become something much bigger.

They become part of your child’s inner voice.

✨Because children don’t just live in a home. They become what that home invites them to be.

If you are looking for more on how to Stop Managing Time – How to Start Living by Your Values, How to Build a HOME Library, or Tools That Build a Curious Home, you might like these posts.

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Until next week, remember: Children Are Our Most Important Work.

~Dr. Claire

PS. I got the classic painting reproductions at…

icanvas LINK to the classic fine artists. There are other options out there. We liked this one. They even let you split up large canvases into smaller pieces which is a cheaper option - thus our pool table with 3 panels.

If my child knows math but hates it. Have I Failed?

You might be thinking: Why does it matter? Who cares if my kids hate one measly subject?

But if a child decides, “I’m not a math person,” they close doors they haven’t even tried to open.

I want my children to see the world as open in every direction. Not all paths will call them, but it’s my job to give them 360 degrees of possibility.

My husband is a data scientist. As a child, he would have told you he didn’t like math. If his parents said, You don’t have to learn this, the career he has come to love — that supports our family — would have been cut off from him.

So yes—it matters if kids hate math.

But sometimes this feels like an uphill battle. Math is both the easiest subject to make fun with games and the hardest to turn into something deep and rigorous without tears.

So how do we change children’s relationship with math?

We reframe it.

Math isn’t testing us. We are testing math.

I know. I know — easier said than done.

It won’t be good enough to tell kids these ideas, we must demonstrate them through story and action.

Today, let’s consider five reframes that will change how your child (and probably you, too) see math.

Your child doesn’t have to hate math.

Ready? Let’s go.

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✨5 Reframes to Change How Your Child Experiences Math

These aren’t quick fixes. They are gentle, repeated invitations to see math differently — through stories, play, and real-life moments.

1. You’re Entering a Different World — And It’s OK to Make Mistakes

Math exists in a perfect, precise world — and it’s totally imaginary.

Because math in the real world is anything but perfect.

Every right angle in your home is slightly off. Every tile in your bathroom, a smidge crooked. Anyone that has ever done a home remodel or DIY fix knows this.

Here’s a fun activity. Have your kids run around your house measuring the right angles of your walls. They won’t find them. Not really.

It’s almost enough to make you nervous. But you know what? The house is still standing.

Kids need to know that real world math is imperfect. Because that allows them to be imperfect too.

It takes some of the burn off mistakes — and that my friends will make all the difference.

2. Math is a Mystery — Not a Test

Some mathematicians spend their whole lives on a single problem. Many of them will leave this world having never solved it.

That puts long division in perspective — amiright?

We need to help our children see each math problem as a small mystery to be solved. Come to math with a playful spirit.

How do we accomplish this?

Games and puzzles are a fantastic bridge. My kids love the dice game PIG (instructions below). The game requires quick mental addition, subtraction, and even develops an intuitive feel for probability and risk. Bonus, I’ve never played a game without the kids laughing. Even neighbor kids love this one.

How to play PIG (ages 6+):

• Players take turns rolling a single die.

• Add up the numbers you roll on your turn. You can roll as many times as you like. BUT….

• If you roll a 1, you lose all the points from that turn and your turn ends.

• At any point, you can choose to “hold” and bank your points for the round.

• First to 50 (or 100) points wins. (You can also play the reverse for subtraction getting to zero from 100. Another version adds a second dice — the game changes suddenly as probability changes everything)

I’ll give you more games in a minute.

But don’t stop at games!

Let them follow in Euclid’s footsteps. Let them puzzle over why no matter what a triangle looks like, you cut off the angles and it makes a straight line. Why? Wonder aloud together. The joy is in the path towards discovery.

And you know what? Puzzles are rarely solved the first time. We must try, try again.

Teach children to meet the unknown with curiosity and play.

3. Math is an Art — And Repetition Makes Perfect

Monet painted the same water lilies over and over. The same bridge. The same garden. Each time seeing something new. Each time getting closer. You keep on until one day, the garden is perfect and people hundreds of years still hang it on their wall.

Math is the same.

You must revisit the same problem over and over. Whether multiplication facts, fractions, or long division, every time it gets more clear. It gets easier. Until one day, it flows without effort. And on that day, you become ready for the next puzzle.

Next time your child pushes back about practicing another math problem, show them Monet’s water lilies. Ask them which version is the best, and what would have happened if he’d stopped at one?

4. Make Messes — Be Brave, You Are the Explorer

Ancient maps marked unknown waters with the words Hic Sunt Dracones — “Here Be Dragons.”

No one ever said that exploration was safe and comfortable. It’s scary and hard. One must be courageous to tackle new worlds.

Our children need permission to take chances with problems they don’t yet know how to solve. Some problems will have neat solutions that they’ve memorized. Many will not. Let them try, tweak, and make a mess. Don’t overcorrect. If they get it wrong, help them figure out why. Don’t jump in to tell them right away.

The key message they need to hear is → There are many paths to the right answer. What matters most is the courage to begin.

Model this for your children. My oldest is already doing math I don’t remember. I work the problem myself with her. I tell her I’m not sure how to do it. I show her that I’m struggling, thinking, and figuring it out too. I also will often arrive at the answer differently than the textbook says we are supposed to. It gently shows her there is more than one way to solve a problem — and it’s OK to make a mess to get there.

5. You Don’t Start Good at Math — You Become Good at Math

Most kids think being “good at math” is something you either are or aren’t.

But no one starts out good at math.

You become good by struggling through problems, making mistakes, and trying again. By staying with something longer than is comfortable. Often what separates “math naturals” from everyone else is that they approach the work with a playful heart.

We must help our children see that struggle is a gift — and math is the type of struggle that is surmountable.

Final Note for Parents

Mind shifts take time. You won’t tell these to your child tomorrow and watch all the math drama melt away.

It’ll be more like building a new habit. Like trying to exercise or eat better. It takes time, and there will be missteps, and backward steps. But as long as we keep getting up, progress always follows.

Pick one of the reframes above, work on it through games, stories, and even just gently saying it in times of struggle (I’ve got a list of suggestions below).

Then, pick another.

It may feel slow. Real change always is. But if you pick one mindset shift a quarter (3 months) and you’ve done four in a year!

Your child is worth it.

This week’s bonus for paid supporters is humble, but it includes math puzzle books, curriculum, books about growth mindsets and making mistakes, living books about math concepts, and a free documentary on a mathematician or two. These can be combined to bring the reframes above to life. Scroll down for it.

PS. Would you be interested in a 5-Day Fall in Love with Math Camp? I’m running this camp in my house this summer. I can record a version for subscribers. It’ll include.

• At least five recorded lessons that bring each reframe to life with stories about ancient mathematicians and how they influence modern math for your kids to listen to

• Fun, low-prep activities, games, and puzzles you can do with your kids at home tied to the lesson to forge a new relationship with math

If 50 or more of you say you’re interested, I’ll put it together and make it available. It will be a paid subscriber bonus.

✨Onto this week’s bonus!

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How many of you have heard that question while helping your child with math homework? Most of you, I’d bet. If you’re like me, you’ve probably given some version of: “Because you have to be able to keep track of your money, invest, pay taxes.”

But is that really why kids should learn math?

Do we learn to read so we can decipher instruction manuals or furniture assembly guides? Reading is the foundation for everything good, true, and beautiful. It’s nearly impossible to succeed in the modern world without it.

But that’s not why we ask kids to read. We show them it’s because they’ll get to dive into stories about dragons, knights, far-off lands, and heroes.

That’s far more compelling.

With math, though, it’s → you need it to do taxes.

Ick. No thanks.

So why should kids bother learning math?

Because it connects them to an ancient tradition of solving some of the world’s most compelling and complicated mysteries.

Hear me out.

Every math problem your child does is the result of thousands of years of study. Yes—thousands of years.

We like to think of math as lifeless and abstract. But it’s as much a part of the great conversation as the stories we read to our children.

And I think reconnecting children to that history may be the most compelling reason to study math.

It quietly teaches that it’s okay for it to take hours—or even days—to understand math because once it took centuries.

Centuries of contemplating the universe. Of making the chaotic, ordered.

The Pirahã people of the Amazon are an anumeric (numberless) society. They have only three words to count: hói (~one), hoí (~two), and baágiso (many).

Once upon a time, we were all the Pirahã people. Numberless.

What an incredible journey we’re on.

Our children are a part of that journey—but someone needs to tell them that.

It’s easy to feel part of history when reading Little Women, Pride & Prejudice, The Prince & the Pauper, or Henry V. You connect with past humans as you become fully immersed tales decades or even centuries old.

Wrestling with long division is also part of that same grand story — it’s just much harder to see.

We need to tell our children Euclid and Pythagoras’ stories. How hard it was. Their struggles. Their triumphs. We should let children walk in their shoes, exploring the same ideas through imaginatively playing with triangles and circles.

Let our kids ponder: What would the world be like if there were no numbers?

Very different indeed.

In this way, we help children enter a new realm of humanity’s story—and show them that math is a grand adventure, not something to fear.

Next week, I’ll share simple ways to do this — including stories and activities to share with your kids.

If you resonated with this post, consider subscribing so you don’t miss it. Joining our community also gives you access to posts like Improve Your Kid’s Math Without Doing Math, Activities Most Kids Will Never Experience – But Should, and Alpha School’s Most Inspiring Ideas—And How to Bring Them Home.

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Remember → Children are our most important work♥️

~Dr. Claire

✨Once upon a time, studying science meant stepping outside and looking up.

But it was so much more than that.

It was about becoming a certain kind of person. One who notices what others miss.

On an ordinary night about 2,120 years ago in ancient Greece, Hipparchus stepped outside and noticed something incredible — a brand new star shining where none had been before.

This marvelous event would change not just his life, but ours thousands of years later. Hipparchus would painstakingly catalog all the visible stars in the sky (can you imagine!). He marked their brightness, their coordinates, and cross-referenced his observations with earlier records of the Greeks and Babylonians.

It was an extraordinary act of disciplined wonder.

This is what science once formed in people.

Today, I struggle to find a science curriculum I like. All fall short because…

I’m not teaching science—I’m raising disciplined thinkers who pursue knowledge and truth.

I want my children to stand in awe at the beauty of this marvelous world — and then know how to pursue deeper knowledge through careful, direct exploration of that world.

What does disciplined wonder look like in practice?

It looks like inspiring awe in geology through a rock cycle demonstration, or grasping the vastness of the universe by walking the planets scaled out with sidewalk chalk. It looks like explaining that the earth beneath our feet is actually moving, changing, and remaking itself every day through exploring plate tectonics — and then casually mentioning that the Moon is made entirely of igneous rock (the kind that on Earth usually comes from volcanoes). All things we did in our science club this year.

Then on a walk, I listen as my 9-year-old takes that spark of wonder and turns it into questions:

“If the Moon is made of igneous rocks, why is it white? Igneous rocks are usually black. Are there white igneous rocks? Oh — pumice is kind of white. What is it made of? Is pumice the closest rock we have on earth to the moon? How is it different from the black ones? Can we look at all our igneous rocks and figure it out?”

✨Inspire awe ✨Form questions ✨Pursue knowledge

Disciplined Wonder.

Today, I’ll outline the steps I’m using to teach my own children (and our science club) natural philosophy. This is the heart of how I teach science — disciplined wonder in action.

Some of these ideas may surprise you and delight you. For example, I recommend doing fewer experiments and explain why doing less will take you further.

Ready? Let’s go!

Joining our community of thousands of parents also gives you access to posts like The Four Stories Your Kids Need to Read Everything Else, Curate a Love for Classical Music in Your Children, and my You Can Homeschool course.

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We read classic literature, study history deeply, use the progymnasmata to teach writing, and ground it all in strong grammar and Socratic dialogue.

I’m a fan — a big fan.

But classical education, as it’s practiced today, is incomplete.

We’re missing something. Something that shaped our great thinkers just as much (if not more) than literature and historical study.

Natural Philosophy.

Natural philosophy, as understood by the ancients, was the pursuit of wisdom through encountering the natural world with curiosity, attention, and awe.

Today, we call it science.

I recently toured two classical schools (one private, one public). When pressed, they admit their science students aren’t well served. They are focused on training the mind and soul through literature discussion (again - I’m a fan!)

But literature, while incredible, does something wholly different than natural philosophy.

Literature takes you outside of yourself through story. It forms you through the exploration of others’ lives: their experiences, their struggles, their quests. It shapes virtue and character through narrative.

Natural philosophy asks something different of you.

It asks you to encounter God’s creation — the natural world around you. It asks you to sit in quiet contemplation of this impossibly complex world, to observe, to question, to seek, to think.

To Wonder.

There is a growing movement to reclaim modern education — to return to the roots of our past.

Why aren’t we reclaiming Natural Philosophy too?

Perhaps, it’s because no one knows how truly beautiful old science was.

When I was a graduate student, we read Sherrington (1857–1952), considered the father of neuroscience. What strikes you immediately is how differently he saw and related to the world.

His scientific study reads like a novel.

He wonders about something, sets out to study it, is surprised. That surprise leads to more questions, and those questions lead him deeper still. He ends not with tidy conclusions, but with reflections about how his work reshapes our understanding of the world and our place within it.

It’s beautiful.

This is how he describes the brain as it wakes.

[The sleeping brain] where hardly a light had twinkled or moved, becomes now a sparkling field of rhythmic flashing points with trains of traveling sparks hurrying hither and thither.

The brain is waking and with it the mind is returning.

It is as if the Milky Way entered upon some cosmic dance. Swiftly the head … becomes an enchanted loom where millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern … a shifting harmony ... the body is up and rises to meet its waking day.

~Charles Sherrington in Man on his Nature

Where did this tradition go?

As a professor, I tried to cultivate something similar in my students. But modern academia wants to rush to the next class, read the newest papers, apply to another grant or scholarship.

There was little space for sitting with a question or thinking deeply about what we were actually doing.

You could see this in the student’s work.

Students would run an experiment and immediately push the results through a computer. They would come to my office and say, “I did it.” I would ask, “What did you discover?” They wouldn’t even know where to start answering.

They had completed the steps, but they hadn’t thought about what they were doing or why.

They hadn’t considered what their results meant, or how their work connected to anything beyond the task itself. Nor had they even considered how what they were doing was important or how it added to society as a whole.

You can argue that that is my job as their instructor — and you’d be right of course. But what bothered me so much is that I had to supply even the interest. So many of them weren’t there because they loved it or were seeking some universal truth. They were doing it because someone told them they’d make good money as an engineer.

How depressing.

The “science” education in my home looks very different.

It is far closer to natural philosophy than to modern science instruction.

I want them to think, to observe, to seek, to WONDER.

We don’t begin with instructions. We begin with the world. With questions. With things we notice but don’t yet understand. From there, we look for ways to observe more carefully, to test ideas, to explore what might be true. Sometimes that leads to experiments.

But the experiment is never the point, understanding the universe is.

✨We study the stars not to pass a test, but to wonder how many there are, what they are, and how far they reach into the darkness.

✨We study plate tectonics not to pass a class, but to realize the land beneath our feet is alive—slowly moving, changing, and remaking itself.

Let’s aspire to more.

If you are a classical educator — or really any kind of educator — I encourage you to reconsider how you think about teaching science. It is not the rote execution of experiments or the accumulation of facts.

It is the exploration of an intricate, ordered, and divine world beneath your feet, in the sky, and even inside your literal heart.

It is the practice of disciplined wonder. It is Natural Philosophy.

And I suspect that returning to natural philosophy is one of the clearest ways to draw our children back into reality… away from the abstractions and distractions of a screen saturated life, and into a deeper relationship with the world itself.

Let us raise our children to not merely study the universe — but fall in love with it.

If you resonate with this post, you might enjoy my other work. Joining our community also gives you access to posts like The Four Stories Your Kids Need to Read Everything Else, Curate a Love for Classical Music in Your Children, and my You Can Homeschool course.

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Remember → Children are our most important work.

~Dr. Claire

Tracey’s advice is practical, heart-centered, and deeply reassuring: she reminds us that it’s okay to ask for help, that relationships come before rules, and that learning should be playful and flexible, especially for kids with special needs. She emphasizes the unique roles both parents play as children grow, and the importance of downtime, family connection, and truly being present.

You’ll come away with actionable strategies, inspiration, and a sense of confidence that no matter how full your days are, you can guide your children with wisdom, patience, and love.

I’m especially excited today because I have something special for my paid subscribers, the show notes include my top takeaways from this conversation—perfect for busy parents who can’t always listen to every episode.

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Which is it?

Is technology improving our children’s capacity to learn or is it destroying it?

The frustrating answer is… both.

I’ll never forget how my 6 month old baby was entranced by the television. Nothing could draw her attention away — not toys, not music, and most disturbingly …. not our smiling faces.

It left my husband and I deeply uncomfortable.

The TV went off — and stayed off. To this day, we watch one family movie a week. One.

But we couldn’t live in the dark ages forever.

A textbook can show you a picture of Versailles. A virtual tour can let your kids experience the sparkle of the mirror room and frescoes on the ceiling. A math textbook moves at one, slow pace, but an adaptive program creates a curriculum uniquely suited to my child.

Screens are powerful when used correctly.

So, how do we take advantage of the opportunities technology provides, while ensuring our children don’t become slaves to TikTok?

The answer is simple to state, but difficult to live:

✨Love Life and Use Screens✨

Children must learn to love life first — then let screens enrich that life.

(The opposite → children who love screens and tolerate life spells disaster)

As parents, we must create clear, non-negotiable boundaries while the brain is developing. We also must nurture a deep, aching love of the authentic, sand between your toes, looking at the ocean, real world.

If your children are not grounded into real life, the algorithm will change how and what they think.

Today, let’s talk about raising kids who type novels, learn math with Math Academy, and use simulation software to study plate tectonics — but spend their free time riding bikes, reading books, and knitting hats (hey, that’s my kids!)

Ready? Let’s go.

Joining our community of thousands of parents also gives you access to posts like The Four Stories Your Kids Need to Read Everything Else, Curate a Love for Classical Music in Your Children, and my You Can Homeschool course.

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