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SUMMARY

Christy-Faith chats with Rachel Tidd, an expert in outdoor learning and homeschooling. They discuss the significance of integrating nature into education and the importance of addressing sensory needs in children. The conversation emphasizes the balance between phonics and language comprehension in reading, practical tips for outdoor learning, and the value of nonfiction literature. Rachel shares insights on scaffolding, multi-sensory learning, and offers advice for new homeschooling parents, highlighting the benefits of outdoor experiences in enhancing children’s learning.

TAKE-AWAYS

• Find out where to start with outdoor learning.
• Understand how to adapt curriculum to fit individual children’s needs.
• Learn what non-fiction literature unlocks in young learners.

ABOUT TODAY’S GUEST

Rachel Tidd is passionate about leveraging the natural and human communities to support literacy and math skills. She is the author of the book Wild Learning: Practical Ideas for Bringing Teaching Outdoors and the Wild Math® and Wild Reading® Curricula series. She is a homeschooling parent, former elementary special education teacher, and a doctoral student in Educational Sustainability at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.

Find Rachel here: 

• Website (Book, Wild Math, and Wild Reading curricula): https://www.discoverwildlearning.com  
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/discoverwildlearning/
• Rachel’s Book: https://discoverwildlearning.com/wild-learning-practical-ideas-for-bringing-teaching-outdoors/ 

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TRANSCRIPT

Rachel Tidd: Start small and just going outside more often. And having the kids get used to going outside because a lot of people are like, well, if I go outside, they're not gonna wanna do anything. Well, if going outside is rare and special, no. They're not gonna wanna do anything.

Christy-Faith: Welcome to the Christy Faith Show where we share game changing ideas with intentional parents like you. I'm your host, Christy Faith, experienced educational adviser and homeschool enthusiast. Together, we'll explore ways to enrich and transform both your life and the lives of your children.

As a homeschool mom who values a family together approach and leans towards the classical and Charlotte Mason styles, I often struggle to bring my educational vision to life with my kids' diverse ages and learning needs. With all our interests and super packed schedule, bridging that gap between the dreamy homeschool I want and reality, I gotta be honest.

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Welcome everybody to today's episode. Boy, do I have a treat in store for all of you. We have an amazing guest today named Rachel Tidd. She is passionate about leveraging the natural and human communities to support literacy and math skills. She's the author of the book by the same publisher, we realized, actually, called Wild Learning, Practical Ideas for Bringing Teaching Outdoors and the Wild Math and Wild Reading Curricula Series. She is a homeschooling parent, former elementary special education teacher, and a doctoral student in educational sustainability at the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point. I cannot wait to hear all of your wisdom for us today.

We have so many homeschooling parents who listen and or watch. Rachel, I wanna start out with hearing about your own personal homeschooling journey, and your heart is definitely towards this wild learning approach, which we'll dive into later. But I also wanna ask you right off the bat, what got you interested in taking learning outside? So 2 big questions there. Sorry.

Rachel Tidd: Well, let me start with how I mean, I was homeschooling my oldest. So I have 2 boys. They're now 14 and 11. And but both of my kids, I really valued nature. I'm a big advocate for play in the younger years for sure.

And both of my kids went to Forest Preschool. Even though we homeschooled, we did Forest Preschool. And if you don't know what that is, that's like an all outdoor preschool. They don't really go inside except for extreme weather, and there's a lot of free play and lots of nature play. So my youngest was going to Forest Preschool, School, and he had a lot of sensory needs.

So we sought out some services. He was evaluated, and we determined that the outdoor environment was really meeting all of his sensory needs. His teachers didn't see any issues outside like we were seeing at home. And so I knew if I was going to homeschool or even just that if I was going to send him home to school, I wasn't, but that he was going to need to integrate some sort of outdoor learning to enable him to learn. So if that was meeting his sensory needs so that he could learn, that we needed to figure that out.

And so I started with math, and I was just in the beginning just experimenting. I do have that background in education, so I had a little bit more to play with maybe than your average mom. And then people saw what I was doing in my community, and they asked me to write it down. And I said, no. Who has time for that with 2 young kids in homeschooling?

But eventually, I did, and it turns out lots of people are looking for the same thing, to get their kids outside more, to align it, and get some of their math and reading and writing lessons kind of done and connected to nature.

Christy-Faith: This is gonna resonate with a lot of parents who have pulled their children out of school because of the classroom environment that just isn't a fit. Could you speak a little bit to that classroom environment? And I find it fascinating that you said when your son's sensory needs were met, the learning was a lot easier. Could you unpack that for a mom that maybe doesn't have a special ed background?

Rachel Tidd: Sure. So we all have sensory systems, and we take in different stimuli, whether it's temperature or wind or touch was a big one for him. He sought out sensory stim stimulation because it helped regulate him. It helped him calm down. It helped him focus.

We do things all the time to regulate our own sensory systems. We take deep breaths. Some people chew gum. Some people tap their pencil and bounce in their chairs. We do a lot of things we don't even know to regulate those sensory systems, and that can really help your brain be ready to learn and take in information.

So in the school setting, you're kind of limited in what you can do. We hear a lot about multisensory learning, and often that just means, like, you know, moving things or just, like, pasting things on paper. You're limited by your physical space. You're limited by the rules of your school. I know as a teacher, noise was always an issue.

You can have too noisy of a class. And, you know, when you go outside, those rules are relaxed. And as soon as you walk outside, your sensory system is feeling the breeze and the sun and the uneven texture of the ground, and the rules are relaxed so I can move more. I can be louder. Right?

The it's a little bit more accepting. We know and there's lots of research behind outdoor learning and going outside and how it can really benefit kids with their attention, their motivation to learn. Their curiosity is often stimulated, so they wanna learn more. So they seek out information through reading or writing or some other avenue. We also know the movement.

Right? These days, there's not a lot of kids are often on screens, and we're always trying to get them to move more and that can strengthen your cardiovascular system. And there even a lot of data on outdoor learning increasing your eyesight for young children. So looking out in the distance as well as all of the full spectrum of light into your eyes. So has so many benefits, and it's free.

Christy-Faith: Yeah. You know what's interesting is when you mentioned the eyesight piece, I had an occupational therapist on a couple of weeks ago and she talked about this. We were talking the topic was risky play, how important it is to let our kids take risks and what that looks like and how to find the balance for your family. But she was talking about the 2 dimensional screens, And I had a personal experience. I had perfect eyesight, 2020 or whatever what I don't know.

But whatever perfect is. I had great eyesight where I didn't need any glasses until I went to graduate school. And then 2 years into graduate school, all of a sudden I couldn't see far anymore. And the doctor explained to me that it was I was had my eyes in the book and I did not know to look far to take breaks, give my eyes breaks and to look away. And what's interesting is I thought well, maybe it was just my age and that was gonna happen anyway.

However, I'm starting to believe that it was this, what you're explaining, this not looking at distances and having our eyes exercised in that way because my eyesight prescription has not changed since then. Isn't that weird? Yeah. And so it was like the damage was done and then the damage stopped being done, I guess. I don't know.

Maybe there's a, eye doctor listening to this. It's gonna be like make a comment saying, No, Christy. This is why. But the point is, is that I it really was very fast and acute, the change in my eyesight. And it had to do the doctor did say at the time that it had to do with my books and not exercising my eyes.

Now, I want to hear about what is what is this wild learning, this wild math and wild reading? Can you explain what it is? What this passion project is? And I it's changed your life, really.

Rachel Tidd: Yeah. Sure. So Wild Math and Wild Reading are 2 curricula series that I wrote. Starting with Wild Math, they wrote k grades k through 5, and each is aligned with whatever that grade level would normally teach in a in a regular math curriculum, but it's translated to do in the outdoors. And so instead of doing lots of, addition facts on a worksheet, for example, or multiplication facts, you might be practicing your addition facts by doing a scavenger hunt.

Or you might be looking for things that come in groups that grow outside or or rays that are outside in your neighborhood for multiplication, for example. While reading really stemmed out of that same same child, my youngest child also has dyslexia. And so reading was really is really difficult for him. He's doing really well now. He reads above grade level.

But so I knew I also had to teach reading, and I had to teach reading in a way that was going to help him learn to read. And we know most kids benefit from some phonics instruction and kids with dyslexia need the entire code taught, but it can be dry. And it can't just be phonics. Right? We do need to build language comprehension.

And so I pulled all of my favorite things. Remember, this is my second child that I felt worked really well along with the outdoor environment and the nature based piece and put it together.

Christy-Faith: So for a lot of the parents listening that maybe consider their themselves more in the traditional pedagogy where they like to follow state standards, does your program follow state standards or national standards?

Rachel Tidd: Yes. So I looked at common core as well as my own state. I'm in New York. And I also consulted several other math curriculums that I thought were really good or that I had taught before to make sure that I covered everything that I thought was really that was covered in most grades, and there's some holes a little bit in the standards sometimes. So sometimes what I have is a little bit more than the standards or goes a little bit beyond.

So, yeah, it's it's juicy.

Christy-Faith: Yes. And, you know, I'm not and you I don't think you are either. I'm not a big follow the standards with everything. But I am a big stickler on reading and math, actually, foundational reading and math and to make sure that there aren't any gaps there and and that if there are any issues that that those are addressed. I think that's valuable because I will say that from a homeschooler myself who came from more a classical perspective of educating my children, that's how I entered this world.

I don't consider myself a classical purist by any stretch anymore. But my view and a little bit of the messaging in the classical culture is that those outdoorsy people aren't really doing anything, right? Education really seriously but, also, what I think is fascinating about your approach is you're also looking at the whole child. And there are going to be kiddos that desperately need to be outside in order to retain reading and this is a valuable resource for parents. Now, I would assume that it's a little bit harder, you know, that whole term open and go in our culture, in homeschooling culture, we we like homeschooling is hard anyway and so we want things that are easier for us.

But I often tell parents and if you have a kiddo right now and you're listening and your kiddo is struggling to read and you've tried a lot and you've even tried the good stuff that it is okay and well worth your time to invest in taking the time with your child to teach your child the code, as you say. And for some children, it does need to be explicitly taught and repetitively taught over and over again in all different ways. Why could taking your child outside make all the difference for them?

Rachel Tidd: When we talked a little bit about meeting sensory needs, which a lot of kids have these days, But and we also talked a little bit about attention and motivation. Kids really need authentic context and reasons to read and write. This is actually also in the literature if you look in the research. And so it's really important to provide an audience and a reason and curiosity and experiences. And so if we take kids outside, it's less rote.

Right? You could read a list of words from the page in a particular, phonics pattern or word family, and or you could learn that same family connected to an actual thing outside. So, for example, if I was talking about the vowel team e e, I might connect it to trees. And we learn about a specific tree today, but then we also talk about the double e sound and think about other words, etcetera. So it can give content and context and can kinda motivate for some kids that real life connection and real life context is really, really helpful and it helps things stick.

As is having that multisensory and ability to move can really just help kids' brains hold on to things better.

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Well, you know, that's interesting because we used to do a lot of reading remediation for comprehension. And one of the skills that we worked on is concept visualization. So teaching children who their brain didn't naturally click around 3rd grade, right? We know that there's that transition between learning to read to reading to learn.

And we would get kids in our center around 3rd grade when that transition happens in our traditional school system and all of a sudden their grades would tank and then their teacher would tell the mom or the dad they're not comprehending. And parents are like, They're a perfect reader, right? What do you mean they're not comprehending? And it's the difference is you can have great phonics and be able to sound out all of your words and be on grade level or even above and you can not comprehend anything that you've read. And we've all had this experience here or there where you've read the entire page and it was in your wait a minute.

What did I read? And then you have to reread it. Well, what you did the second time is you engaged your concept visualization. But when you were saying that about the trees, I'm thinking to myself, that's exactly what you're doing. You are providing that concept visualization, almost like a mnemonic device for the kiddos where there's a story attached to this phonics lessons rather than just being drilled with flashcards.

So you know what? Scaffolding is a word that a lot of people listening won't know. Would you please explain scaffolding?

Rachel Tidd: So scaffolding is kind of, supports we can give kids so that they can meet the learning goal that we want them to do. So in that instance, our scaffolding is we're showing them the real object in real life. This is a tree, and that end of those sound tree makes that e e, and we're connecting it to that real thing. So it kind of scaffolds. They have something to connect it to.

Other scaffolds might be like a graphic organizer where you fill out, you know, in a a paragraph outline where it's like the introduction sentence in the body. Right? We've all probably seen those kind of, organizers, but those can be another kind of scaffolding, Things like that. Yeah. And that's

Christy-Faith: a term that we often hear. Sometimes on office hours in Thrive, I'll use terms like scaffolding or scope and sequence or this and they're like, wait a minute. What? Today was memory work. My mom was asking me, what is memory work again?

And so but I think it is important because as homeschooling parents, a lot of us are entering this world not having gone to teacher school. But we do want to do a good job and we want to know what's out there and know how the science behind how things are done and done well because it's it's not necessarily that everything is done poorly in the system. A lot is. But there is also a lot of research and science behind reading. I wanna ask you a little bit about the science of reading.

There's been so much, back and forth over the years. There was a famous podcast series that I binged called Sold A Story, and I was absolutely fascinated. And then I even played it for my kids, and they were riveted by it. But in Sold A Story, it talks about the research behind reading what has kind of gone wrong and what we have learned to set kids up for success. I'm not gonna ask you for the history, but I do wanna talk about a little bit about the science of reading and what you know is important for kiddos who maybe are struggling and what they need.

Would you talk a little bit about the science of reading and what we know today works?

Rachel Tidd: So we know there's some really good research out there. We've had amazing research for the last 30 years on how kids learn to read. The problem is it never really filtrated into the classroom, and we kind of had some misguidance. Right? So there's a really good model of reading, and it shows that we had there's 2 components of reading, and they're multiplied.

And you need both to get to a fluent reader who can comprehend, which is our ultimate goal. You need to read to learn. Right? You need to read and be able to gain information. There's no way we can teach our kid everything.

And when they're older, they have to be able to read something and figure out how to put it together, etcetera. So those two components, one is decoding, you know, phonics, but the other is also language comprehension, and you touched on this. So language comprehension is primarily your background knowledge about a topic and your vocabulary, and you really need both because they're multiplied. So if you don't have one, you don't get a fluent reader. If you don't have the other, you don't get a fluent reader.

And so we've seen what people often call it causes call as a pendulum swing. But what's happened if they've swung to 1 or the other, and that's not how we get a fluent reader. And this model, by the way, is from 1986. And all of the previous models you might see, like a reading rope, etcetera, are based on that same model. So we know those two components are essential.

So if you think about that in your homeschool and you touched upon some statistics, We know that most kids are going to need some of the code most. Probably 85% are gonna need some of the code. 60% are gonna need all of the code, and about 10 to 15% of those kids are probably going to need are are your kids with dyslexia, language based learning disabilities, and they're gonna need intensive instruction. What I think homeschoolers can get hung up on is that we often hear and talk about when we're hanging out with each other about, oh, well, my kid and I actually have one of these kids as well. I have one on each end.

My kid just learned how to read. I didn't do anything special. And that's wonderful for that kid, but that's only about 10% of kids who won the brain lottery. Their brains were already the wiring was either already kind of there or those connections were made. But the problem is phonics, when we give phonics instructions, we've actually seen in in MRIs that it helps the parts of our brain that we have to kind of borrow from different parts of our brain, the visual parts of our

Christy-Faith: brain, the language parts of

Rachel Tidd: our brain, parts of our brain, the visual parts of our brain, the language parts of our brain to kind of make reading happen because our brains are wired for language. And so when we teach phonics, it helps build those parts of the brain and make that connection between the written word, the grapheme, and the sound. So we can actually see those areas grow, and become more efficient, which is what we want. We also need to build language comprehension at the same time. And for younger kids who are not fluently reading, which is often until about 3rd grade, if they're on a regular projection, that's through reading read alouds.

And so we need to be engaging in read alouds and discussions as well as experience. And I feel like outdoor learning can provide a lot of those experiences and background knowledge about our natural world, our community, our neighborhood, field trips, etcetera. So we wanna make sure that we're building both. Otherwise, you get kids that go to 3rd grade, and you're right. They can decode beautifully, but they can't understand because they're missing that whole piece right there.

You wanna make sure that you're hitting both. And in in a lot of schools, the excitement over phonics, especially with Solta's story, right, has they've kind of dropped the language, and and we don't want another pendulum slang. We want both part.

Christy-Faith: No. Yes. And it's interesting because they talked about that pendulum swing going straight to phonics and they're like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. It's we shouldn't be solely phonics either. Right?

And so we're seeing that too. I wanna talk a little bit about the unpredictability of taking our lessons outside. For those of us, especially in our first 5 years of homeschooling, we're already feeling really insecure. We don't wanna be behind. And if I was to look back in my first 3 to 5 years of homeschooling, if I tried to take lessons outside, I would be a nervous wreck.

I'd be thinking about everything that we're missing. And it it it could be a stressor where I'd feel like I'm getting behind in other areas or things like that. What are some encouraging words? And I think what you're gonna do here is de school us a little bit in terms of stressing out about what might be lost if we take our lessons outside.

Rachel Tidd: Yes. So I would start first by just taking a deep breath. I'm not advocating necessarily for you to go out for every single lesson. I'm great if you can. Great if you want to.

But if you are just starting out as a homeschooler or you're just starting out with trying to get your kids outdoors more, I would suggest rather to start small and have just by even just going outside more often and getting used to kids having the kids get used to going outside because a lot of people are like, well, if I go outside, they're not gonna wanna do anything. Well, if going outside is rare and special, no. They're not gonna wanna do anything. But if it's a part of your kind of normal routine, it becomes a little less special and, you know, talking about those expectations too when you do start. I'd also start really small and pick just one thing that maybe you wanna reinforce outside.

Maybe it's the multiplication. Maybe it's a certain phonics skill that you've already taught. And a lot of people use wild math or wild reading like that. They kinda match it up with whatever they're already doing. You just flip through, find the phonics skill, flip through, find multiplication, find addition facts, and that can be a great way to do it too.

I like to tell people to, like, read a unit in math, for example, and then kind of just spend some time outside, go for a nature walk, etcetera, and see what comes up. You're gonna see examples of, like, walks outside looking for different things, like round every number that you see. Or maybe you have a ton of acorns or pine cones that fell from a storm or because it's fall. Right? And the kids are already playing with those.

Maybe you bring out a scale or you start collecting them and putting them in groups of 10, right, up to a 100. Very simple things can have a really big impact.

Christy-Faith: Yes. Well, this would apply this morning because we were doing place value, and it was okay. There are 3,562 cookies. We need to put them in boxes of a 100 and then the remaining ones in bags of 10. And I was as you were saying that, I was thinking, why didn't I just go outside?

We could have done this with pebbles. It would have been

Rachel Tidd: 3,000 is a lot though. But yes.

Christy-Faith: Well, I mean, you know what I mean though. Yeah, I mean, I would have adapted it. But that type of thing where I wonder if this could be maybe something where if you're stuck on something in school, see how you can take it outside and see if that makes a difference. I want to ask you a little bit about all of us. So I am from an urban area.

I now live in a suburban area. So I have a little bit more access to green space. How could someone who lives in a city apply this to their homeschooling?

Rachel Tidd: Yeah. So I get this question fairly often, and I do have some guidance in the especially wild math. But it's actually really easy. I like to leverage whatever resources are outside for learning. And so what I do and what you do might look different because we have different resources.

We also live in different parts of the country. So what I have in the northeast, and I might have tons of acorns and maple ceilings, but you might not. You might have pine cones. Right? And that's okay.

In wildlife, we do a lot of games and scavenger hunts and things with chalk work really well for people that have more paved areas. For me, I mean, we just moved to a village, but before we lived out, and we didn't have any paved areas. So you might see a lot of pictures in my curriculum that's my kids drawing on the side of the house, on the deck, because we did not have any paved areas. But if you do, you capitalize on that, right? And you draw, we do like sound boxes or number bonds, right?

Like 5 plus 2 and then line plus 7. And we can bring in natural materials as well. But there's so much to learn too in a a village or a city. There's tons of environmental print, tons of environmental numbers in shapes and multiplication. And so you really can leverage whatever you have.

Christy-Faith: I love that. Now, I wanna ask you if you could give any advice to a homeschooling mom who is maybe in her first couple of years of homeschooling, what would

Rachel Tidd: it be? Oh, I always say kind of like what you said earlier, where I say to focus on math and reading if your child is still learning to read. If they already know how to read, then I'm working on language comprehension and writing. But I always say to work on those. All of those other subjects to me happened really organically and easy, not only through my children's own curiosity, but also through co op classes and tons of books and things they were getting out of the of the library or documentaries or experiments that they wanted to do.

And so I really felt to have that strong if, you know, a lot of homeschoolers wanna buy, like, ironically, right, as I sell curriculum, but wanna buy so many different curriculums. But when you have, like, 7 different subjects and curriculums, it's just too much. And what we really want is that solid foundation in those basic skills so that kids can start to learn information on their own so they can be curious and motivated to learn on their own. I mean, we really just want that solid foundation. Math, you should probably keep going with.

That doesn't that's sequential, so I do recommend hitting that. And being consistent is my other one. You don't have to do a lot every day, and you'll see that wild math and wild reading, I don't suggest very long. What I suggest is several times a week at least, several touch points, repetitiveness. I did and I do school year round.

And so it looks a little bit different in the summer, it looks a little bit different in the winter. But that way, I didn't have to worry about time and hitting everything because I had more time.

Christy-Faith: Yeah. Exactly. And I'm a big proponent as well with those foundational skills because then they'll be able to tackle anything. And so I start to get concerned when there's a child who's 16 who isn't reading and because doors will start to close. But as long as we are making sure those foundational skills are there, they're set up to tackle anything and particularly those things that interest them, and they'll have the skill base to excel in those things.

Now I asked you what advice you would give a brand new homeschooler. I also wanna ask you, what is a message that you would like the world to hear right now? And you're currently a doctoral student and you were a special ed teacher. You have written a reading curriculum, written a math curriculum. What is a nugget that you just wish people knew?

Rachel Tidd: I mean, we've touched on a lot of them. One of them definitely was that we needed to do both phonics and, reading language comprehension. Also, nonfiction. So we are also guilty of this just as much as teachers are, but we are not reading usually, unless you have a nonfiction lover, enough nonfiction. And that feeds into our content, our background knowledge and our vocabulary.

And so non fiction builds knowledge. And so we should be aiming for more non fiction and that can be kind of hard for us Story and literature loving moms or dads, but you can be mindful about that and choose I like to do it around a theme or a guiding a question maybe that my kids have and choose a series of maybe picture books if I have younger kids that starts building knowledge and then build upon that knowledge and vocabulary through a series of 6 books, say, about trees or about birds or whatever they're interested in. It doesn't have to be nature related, but that's called the text set. And that can be really helpful in rebuilding knowledge and language comprehension. And so that's one thing.

And then, of course, we need more people to go outside, especially in our homeschools and our homeschoolers because it's free. It's a resource we have. It's free. You're having a hard time getting your kids to focus. Go outside.

There is some a really great research study that said all you can do if all you can do is take your lesson outdoors. So they studied the kids. They did the same lesson outside, say it's a read aloud or a regular math lesson. You get all of the benefits of going outside, the increased engagement, the increased attention, all of those things. Is it as great as if you were doing something like multisensory and active?

No. But you're still getting the benefits. You go back inside and you still get those benefits for the next lesson. It's like buy one get one free, and when do we get that? Right?

For free. Both of them. So I would definitely, Those would be my top things.

Christy-Faith: Hi there, podcast family. If our episodes bring a smile to your face, challenge you, or spark your thoughts, tap that like and subscribe button to stay connected with us. Also, we'd truly love to hear your voice in the comments. Your insights and stories are what makes this community special. And not only does it allow us to hear you, but your engagement helps us reach more people and spread our message.

So go ahead and don't be shy. Like, subscribe, and comment. Well and Charlotte Mason said this. She's like, when you go on a nature study, when you go on a nature walk, let them run amok. Just let them go before you try to sit them down to do anything.

Rachel Tidd: That's true with anything. You bring out a lovely math manipulative. I mean, you can't just start teaching with that. Like, you gotta let them explore that, like pattern locks or something. If they've never seen it, right, they go crazy.

Christy-Faith: Yes. And you made a differentiation that I think is really important for the mamas to hear because those of us who grew up or, you know, grew up because I feel like I grew up in my twenties. But it when we first started out in the classroom, a lot of us homeschooling moms started out in the classroom and what they teach you is multimodality. You have to have it set, you know, in an auditory and this and that and the other and a good, you know, when your principal came and observed you, that's what the principal was looking for. Did you hit all of those targets?

Did you teach this lesson with all of those modalities? What you're saying and your message is very different than that. It's it is and I want you to explain how because I don't want a mama to think that, oh, I followed that lesson and it said to incorporate hands on learning, so I did that today. Check the box. What your message is a lot different, and would you please differentiate that?

Rachel Tidd: Sure. So, yeah, that definition of multisensory or multimodal can really vary and it's kind of been taken in different ways by different people for sure. I like to engage, you know, multiple muscle groups and some things absolutely are more small motor, which are your smaller skills instead of, like, jumping jacks, more like things with your hands. And I kind of think about the whole package as a multisensory experience by going outside. When I'm doing something with a movable alphabet, which are like those plastic or wood letters inside, it's just kind of isolated.

It's because I'm not getting all of those other benefits from being outside, feeling the ground and the grass under my legs, feeling the sun, getting the air, feeling the calming that nature, we know nature gives. And so it's just a different depth. The other thing I wanted to say about that while we're talking about multisensory learning is often people think that hitting all of the sense you know, all of the sensory and the the most you can do, the better hit the auditory, hit the visual, etcetera. What actually is a little bit more effective is to think about your child and how they learn best, and the activity. And so you wanna kinda choose things that are going to make the best impact for that activity and for your child.

And so it's not always cram as many as you can. It's more like what's appropriate for teaching this skill and what's appropriate for teaching this. And so finding some kind of hopefully, you find some kinda common you know, so for example, if I had a kid that really needed to move, maybe practicing syllables syllables in a word would be better on a trampoline. But for some kids, maybe it would be dividing syllables up by cutting the words that are written on leaves or paper. Right?

Very different. Both are technically multisensory. But some kids are gonna wanna jump on the trampoline and some kids won't. I would not wanna jump on the trampoline.

Christy-Faith: Yes. And also just letting go. This is more about getting these foundational skills in your child. It's not about speeding through because it's not gonna really help them if they hit 8th grade and they have a lot of gaps in particularly reading and math. What's gonna help them the most is if you slow down, take the time at their own pace, their own processing speed wherever they are in that particular moment and have them truly have a depth of understanding for it.

This is an honor that we have this opportunity in our home schools. In my book, I talk about how the school system is a train and it's just going and kids are left behind on it. And we have the opportunity to stop the train, slow it down, speed it up. All we have all of those options because we can be students of our own kiddos. And so I think that what you have created here is really needed in our space for sure.

And I don't even want this just for homeschooling families. I hope that classroom teachers have access to this. Do they already?

Rachel Tidd: Yeah. So there are more and more schools using wild math and wild reading, which is really exciting. And that's why I wrote the book from kind of, you know, the the curriculum is written in the voice to homeschoolers. The book is written in more of a accessible voice for people working with groups of students and teachers, kind of more neutral. Whereas in the curriculum, I might say your children, right, or your child.

But, yeah, I did wanna say that along the same lines that I always tell people that I write curriculum based on what I think is going to happen, what I think should happen. But I don't know your child or your children, and I don't know you, and I don't know your situation. And so you need to make curriculum work for you and change it to make it work for you. If it's not, and it's, it's a trial. We don't know what's going to work with a particular kid, even if it is your own kid.

And so you gotta try different things and be okay with saying, you know what? That was a flop. I'm gonna try something new.

Christy-Faith: Yes. Absolutely. And, actually, just yesterday, I called Scott. He was upstairs. I was downstairs.

And I said, I've taught this in 3 different ways. I don't know of another way to teach this. Can you come downstairs? He came downstairs. Just his fresh perspective coming in, that particular child understood it the way he explained it in under 5 minutes.

And I actually understood it better as well with the way he explained it. And so this is not a journey of perfection at all. And one of the reasons why I started Thrive Homeschool Community is to help coach parents on this that curriculum is our tool. But especially when you're a newer homeschooler, you you need that framework which you provide beautifully and then having that confidence to say, okay, this is gonna work for us. This isn't.

And I do so much coaching on a mom DMs me ready to scrap a whole curriculum and I say, okay, let's let's talk about what's not working because I we don't want to have the expensive habit of constantly trying to find the perfect curriculum. It's more about learning and having the skills of how to adapt to the curriculum. So I think what you are doing is so excited. I'm thrilled that you are gonna bless Thrive Homeschool community with a masterclass where we go way deeper with reading in particular. Where can my audience find you?

Rachel Tidd: Sure. So they can find me on my website, discover wild learning.com, and you'll see everything I'm up to and all of my curriculum and my book and anything else that's going on. And there's a way to sign up for my newsletter where I often send out freebies and announce new resources and sales, as well as on Instagram and Facebook at the at symbol Discover Wild Learning.

Christy-Faith: Discover Wild Learning. We will put all of those links in the show notes so everyone can click on that if they wanna find you. Thank you so much for being so generous with your research and knowledge for those mamas today. I know there are going to be a lot of parents where this is exactly what they needed. They just needed the permission and to know how to take learning outside so that things can finally start sticking for their kiddos.

And so I think that you are making a big difference in the homeschooling space, and I'm very thankful for that.

Rachel Tidd: Thank you so much for having me. I enjoyed talking to you and letting me talk about my favorite thing, which is outdoor learning and literacy.