But What About Socialization?

October 6, 2026 by Leave a Comment

It is the question every homeschool family gets, usually from someone who has not thought about it very hard. But there is a real version of it underneath, and that one deserves a real answer.

The weak version

The implied claim is that spending the day with thirty children born within twelve months of you is the natural way to learn to function socially. It is not. It is a recent administrative convenience.

Homeschooled children routinely talk with adults, younger children, and older children, which is closer to how the rest of life works. Most of them are noticeably comfortable in mixed-age company.

The version worth taking seriously

Social skills are learned by practice, and practice requires other people. It is entirely possible to homeschool in a way that leaves a child isolated. That is a genuine risk and it is on you to prevent it, because unlike school, the contact will not happen automatically.

So be deliberate. Co-ops, sports, church, scouts, theater, volunteering, music, a job for teens. Your child needs regular, ongoing contact with the same group of people over time, not just occasional outings. Friendship is built by repetition.

What to say at Thanksgiving

You do not owe anyone a defense over dinner. “They see friends several times a week and they are doing well, thanks” is a complete answer.

The people who ask most insistently are usually expressing their own uncertainty, not evaluating your child. You are allowed to change the subject.

Listen to this

It is our 13th birthday all month long.

The Ultimate Homeschool Podcast Network turns 13 this October, and we are giving away more than $1,500 in prizes across four drawings. One entry puts you in all of them, and everyone who enters gets Sweet Treats, a gathered-up collection of free resources from the hosts across the network.

Enter the Sweet 13 Giveaway

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Biblical Herbalism for Kids: Teaching God’s Design One Plant at a Time

October 6, 2026 by Leave a Comment

Biblical herbalism for kids: Felice Gerwitz and Camila Johnson of The Eden Institute on teaching God’s design one plant at a time — Vintage Homeschool Moms PodcastHave you heard of herbalism? What about Biblical Herbalism? If you’ve ever wondered whether herbs belong in a Christian home—or worried that “natural remedies” somehow tip into New Age territory—this conversation is for you. Felice Gerwitz sits down with Camila Johnson of The Eden Institute to talk about reclaiming plant knowledge for the glory of the Creator. Learn about the curriculum she built so moms can learn right alongside their children, one plant at a time.

Biblical Herbalism: Learning God’s Design with Your Kids

I raised five kids across a wide age span. I’ve reached for simple kitchen remedies when medicine made me feel worse. And I’ve watched too many science videos that never once named the Designer. Camila’s approach puts the glory back where it belongs. It is important to teach our children that they are important to and the world they belong to has so much to offer.

Biblical Herbalism ~ Episode 588

Camila is a former middle-school English teacher, a mom of four (two still at home), and the creator of a K–12 biblical herbalism curriculum. She grew up with Brazilian grandmothers who reached for peppermint tea and honey-lemon without calling it anything fancy. Later, she spent years studying plants on her own because the formal courses she found either ignored spiritual health entirely or leaned heavily into Far Eastern mysticism.

She decided to build something different: a curriculum that names the Holy Spirit, honors the Designer, and treats plants as provision rather than objects of worship.

Why This Matters for Homeschool Families

Most of us were never taught how our bodies actually work or how the plants growing nearby can support them. Schools aim at tests. Life requires stewardship. Camila’s curriculum starts with that gap.

Each week focuses on one plant. The history lesson shows who used it and how. Geography shows where it grows and why the climate shapes its “energetics.” Science is pure observation—smell it, draw it, label the parts. Bible opens the week (sometimes a short original story about the Eden family, sometimes straight Scripture). Character grows through waiting for longer preparations, such as glycerites and tinctures. Art, language arts, and even a little Latin show up naturally because everything circles the same plant.

Younger children (Sprouts, K–2) make same-day teas and cold infusions. Third through fifth (Seedlings) begin the slower medicines. Middle and high school levels go deeper into constitutions and matching plant patterns to people patterns. The whole thing is designed so mom learns too. You do not have to arrive as an expert.

You Do Not Have to Grow a Garden

Camila has turned her backyard into a food forest, but she is clear: you can source every herb in the curriculum from reputable suppliers. She partners with Mountain Rose Herbs. The lessons work whether the plant is growing in a pot on your windowsill or sitting in a mason jar on the pantry shelf.

Start with one plant. Smell it. Ask what the scent might tell you. Read the short history. Draw it. Make a simple tea together. By the end of the week the children (and you) know that plant well enough to recognize it again. That is how real knowledge sticks—not through five disconnected subjects, but through one living thing studied from every angle.

The Heart Behind the Work

Camila’s online foundations course and her book Back to Eden: A Biblical Foundation for Herbal Healing (available on Kindle) lay out the same framework: five basic tenets of healing that Scripture already names—rest, nutrition, hydration, and so on. A fever is not the enemy; it is the body doing what the Creator designed it to do. A headache can be the body asking for salt and water. The curriculum teaches children to notice those signals and respond with wisdom rather than automatically suppressing them.

Free two-week samples for both elementary bands and a simple body-pattern quiz are available at her site so families can try before they commit. Pre-orders for Sprouts (K–2) are open; Seedlings (3–5) follows closely. She is also an approved ClassWallet vendor for families who can use education dollars.

Visit edeninstitute.health and the homeschool page at edeninstitute.health/homeschool.

See Eden’s Table Up Close

Eden’s Table is Camila’s Bible-rooted herbalism unit study for elementary students (Sprouts, K–2, and Seedlings, 3–5). Every subject runs through one plant a week. Start with the nine-week Starter Unit as an instant download, or get the full year in three printed books.

Listener gift: use code EDEN13 for 10% off the $39 Starter Unit or the $249 printed set, either level, through October 31, 2026. Shop Eden’s Table at edeninstitute.health/homeschool.

Enter the Sweet 13 Birthday Giveaway

The Ultimate Homeschool Podcast Network turns 13 this October, and Eden’s Table is our presenting sponsor. We’re celebrating all month with more than $1,500 in prizes for homeschool families, including a CTCMath annual family membership and $250 to spend at Media Angels. Drawings happen on four Fridays, and your entries carry forward, so one sign-up keeps you in every drawing. Earn bonus entries by following a show, leaving a review, or sharing the birthday page with a friend.

Enter the Sweet 13 giveaway here

Resources from Media Angels

More at MediaAngels.com/store.

More Listening

  1. Should You Consider Homeschooling? Research, Real Fruit, and Clearing the Noise (Episode 582)
  2. Science Labs That Actually Work at Home
  3. Teaching Creation Science (Episode 362)
  4. Start Your Homeschool Day Right: Morning Routines That Set the Tone for Success (Episode 565)
  5. Homeschooling Uncovered: Research, Funding, and Surprising Facts! (Episode 559)

Have a happy homeschool week.

About the Guest
Camila Johnson is the Founder and Executive Director of The Eden Institute, where she develops Bible-rooted herbalism curriculum designed to help homeschooling mothers teach science alongside their children. With a passion for showing that the created world is evidence of a Designer, Camila creates resources that integrate history, character, and the natural sciences with rigor and reverence. She is a mother who believes that moms don’t need to be experts before they begin; they simply need to be willing to learn alongside their children.

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School at Home Doesn’t Work (And What To Do Instead)

October 5, 2026 by Leave a Comment

Thirteen years ago Felice Gerwitz said on tape that she had no idea if this network would work. It did. Episode one of thirteen: why building a school in your dining room falls apart in three weeks, and what to build instead.Thirteen years ago, on the very first episode of this show, Felice Gerwitz said something out loud that most people would have edited out: “When I had this idea to create this radio network, I had no idea if it would even work.”

Within three weeks, the shows launched anyway. HomeschoolingIRL on September 13th. The Homeschool Sanity Show on the 14th. Vintage Homeschool Moms on the 17th. Two more by the 25th. Every one of those episodes is still on this website.

So it worked. And to mark thirteen years, we’re doing thirteen short episodes — thirteen things we’d tell a brand-new homeschool mom.

This is the first one, and it’s the mistake nearly all of us made.

We tried to build a school in the dining room. Desks. A bell schedule. A wall calendar with somebody else’s year printed on it. And it lasts about three weeks — then one Tuesday nobody comes to the table, and you sit down certain you’ve failed.

You haven’t failed at homeschooling. You’ve failed at being a school, which was never the assignment.

In this episode:

  • Why a school is an answer to a problem you don’t actually have — one adult, thirty children, a building, a bus schedule, a fire code
  • How much of what looks like “school” is really crowd management
  • Why copying that form into your house makes everything feel so heavy
  • The difference between structure (good, necessary) and institutional machinery (not yours to carry)

The one question to answer in writing today:

  • what problem are we actually solving?
  • Why you give yourself a one-year trial with a date on the calendar — and why week three is when everybody wants to quit

Timestamps

  • 00:54 — Felice Gerwitz, August 2013, on the first episode of this show
  • 01:50 — The three weeks in September 2013 when the network actually launched
  • 02:14 — Why thirteen short episodes instead of a retrospective
  • 02:47 — The mistake: building a school in the dining room
  • 03:26 — A word from Eden’s Table
  • 04:21 — A school is an answer to a problem you don’t have
  • 05:30 — Structure is good. It just comes from your family.
  • 06:06 — Write down the problem you’re actually solving
  • 06:49 — Give yourself one year, then judge it
  • 07:11 — Why week three is the worst of it
  • 07:59 — Next time: the day is shorter than you think

Go deeper on the network

Before you commit to a year, listen to Should You Consider Homeschooling? — it walks through the decision honestly, including the reasons not to.

It’s our 13th birthday

More than $1,500 in prizes across four October drawings, and a free Sweet Treats resource bundle for everyone who enters. One entry puts you in all four.

👉 Enter the Sweet 13 Giveaway

Our Sweet 13 sponsors

This series is sponsored by Eden’s Table, CTCMath, True North Academy, and the podcasters of the Ultimate Homeschool Podcast Network.

This episode’s sponsor is Eden’s Table — Biblical herbalism for the elementary grades. One plant a week, with science, history, art, reading and handwriting running through it as a single unit study. Open and go, no prep the night before. The first nine weeks are $39 at edeninstitute.health/homeschool.

This episode is sponsored. We only take sponsors we’d point our own families to.

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How Do I Teach Several Ages at Once Without Losing My Mind?

October 5, 2026 by Leave a Comment

By teaching together wherever you can and separately only where you must. Most families try to run parallel grade levels, and that is what breaks them.

Combine the content subjects

History, science, art, music, geography, read-alouds, and Bible can be done with everyone in the room at the same time. The content is the same. Only the output changes.

The nine-year-old narrates back what she heard. The thirteen-year-old writes a page. The five-year-old draws a picture and listens more than you think. One preparation, one lesson, several levels of response.

Families who do this often call it morning time, and it tends to become the part of the day everyone remembers.

Separate the skill subjects

Math and reading instruction have to be at each child’s level. There is no way around this, and it is where your one-on-one minutes belong.

The good news is that these are short. Fifteen to twenty focused minutes each, staggered while the others work independently, covers it.

Put the older ones to work

An eleven-year-old who listens to a six-year-old read is not losing instructional time. They are consolidating what they know, and the younger child gets attention you did not have to generate yourself.

Accept the noise

A house with several children learning in it is not quiet, and it does not look like a classroom. The measure is whether real work is happening over a week, not whether any given hour looked orderly.

Listen to this

It is our 13th birthday all month long.

The Ultimate Homeschool Podcast Network turns 13 this October, and we are giving away more than $1,500 in prizes across four drawings. One entry puts you in all of them, and everyone who enters gets Sweet Treats, a gathered-up collection of free resources from the hosts across the network.

Enter the Sweet 13 Giveaway

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Already Behind in Your Homeschool? What to Do When the Plan Falls Apart

October 5, 2026 by Leave a Comment

Already behind in your homeschool by week three? Felice Gerwitz on routine over rigid schedules, counting what got done, and dropping the busy work — Vintage Homeschool Moms PodcastDo you already feel behind? It doesn’t matter if this is week one, week three or even week twenty-three. Sometimes we feel like we’ve accomplished nothing when, in reality, homeschooling is so much more. Tune in for this episode of Vintage Homeschool Moms.

Already Behind in Your Homeschool by Week Three? ~ Episode 587

I hear this every fall. A mom writes me, or it happened to me more often than I care to admit… It is week three and the school year does not look like the plan I made in the summer!

Life happens. Sometimes unexpected company (I live in Florida) or someone was sick. Math books were lost more times than not or took forever. A well-meaning person at church asked how school was going, and I looked at my husband and thought, help! When he asked me what was wrong, I told him, we are already behind!

Hey friends. Thanks so much for joining me. I homeschooled five children for more than thirty-two years. Some weeks were peaceful, and some not so much. There might be the threat of putting them on the next shiny yellow bus that stopped at the end of our street, and I am not proud to admit that. But, even that day was a good day. I’m looking at this from a long lens now, but building character is not just for our kids but for ourselves as well.

Thanks so much to our sponsor for helping keep this show on the air.

One-page printable: http://vintagehomeschoolmoms.com

So – why are you behind?

That is what I had to ask myself, after enough years of doing this. Behind the week I wrote when I planned my six week unit study, when I felt hopeful. Behind a close family friend with older kids and no toddler. Behind an imaginary goal I had for myself that didn’t account for my father, who moved in the year my daughter got married?

I used to treat the planner like it was the boss. If I wrote math at a certain time and we missed it, I felt like I had failed. That is a hard way to live. And it is not how a home school works.

Routine Rather Than Rigid Schedule.

I am more routine rather than a rigid schedule. I have said that for years. After breakfast, we start school, and sometimes school in the form of a Bible story or a continuation of a read-aloud takes place. Then we do chores, the ones that take little time, and then school starts. If breakfast is late, we still start. If math happens after lunch because the morning fell apart, math still happened.

Our goal was to get the kids’ check-off sheets completed in a week’s time, but if it took longer, the subject and page went to the following week.

Did You Have School This Week?

If you prayed, or you opened the Bible. If somebody read. If math got done even once. If you had a conversation with a child that was not about a missing pencil. Then you had school. It may not look like the week you planned. Yet it was still a week of school.

I used to try to make up every page we skipped. All that did was make everyone miserable. If a skill matters, come back to it. Don’t invent extra work just to feel better. The shortcuts that worked for me were a selection of math problems. If the child had mastery, they could move on. Sure, practice makes perfect, and sometimes they need more practice, but we used math books that had a spiral approach; skills were retaught lesson to lesson, so if it was something they knew, we skipped those problems or added more if it was something that didn’t make sense to them or they found difficult.

If you use a Morning Crate (I did a podcast about what to pack in it for multi-aged students), then pack it for the week you are in – if it is going to be a very busy week, make it short. Take things out or leave them in for another day. Ten minutes is still a start. Do not skip the activity just because you cannot do the long version. Consistency is important.

I think that is the key. Skipping things makes us feel guilty, and truthfully, skipping is okay as long as it isn’t chronic. Tackling the hard subjects first is always a good thing, and my older teens did this before breakfast on their own! My second oldest and co-author on the Truth Seekers Mystery Series would rather write than do math. So, she did Math first thing in the morning before she came down for breakfast so that later in the afternoon she could devote herself to writing. Finding your child’s passion is another key.

If You Feel Stuck

Take a minute, with a nice cup of strong coffee if I have it, and reanalyze your curriculum. Look at what you are doing and ask, what is worth keeping? What can wait two weeks, and what may get tabled until the new year? What did I buy in August that is making it hard to complete my school day? One year I purchased a composer’s curriculum. I love Classical music, but I am not musical. I had grand ideas for teaching my children the classics: letting them listen to the music, pick out the instruments of the orchestra, and identify composers from their most notable pieces.

A great idea, but the wrong time to implement. I decided this would be a great unit for Christmas break. Let’s just say it wasn’t. I ended up keeping this for an end-of-year activity when things were winding down, and it was the perfect lesson for when the math books were completed for the year and projects were finished.

At different times, we had a four-day week. This shorter week was wonderful! It was a goal we could keep with one day to “make up school” or have an outing if we were caught up. Four days instead of five is a stretch; it made things go so much better, and yes, some days it was just three.

The thing is, school still got done, and my kids learned differently than most. I had the high achievers and the high achievers who struggled to read, to spell, or to do math. Yet all my now-adult children are successful. Three graduated from college with top honors and my math-before-breakfast daughter graduated college in three years. The other two own their own business.

I wish someone had told me that it was more important to spend time with my kids than to chase an elusive curriculum that isn’t going to get them to heaven!

If Someone Asks About Standards

Thankfully homeschooling is here to stay (please, Lord) and no one is as shocked about it like they were when I got started. You don’t owe anyone any details about how things are going, not at church or in the grocery line. I would say something like: we are covering what my child needs this year. We keep records. Thank you for caring.

I was with my daughter, who had four little ones, and someone rudely asked if they were all hers. I closed my eyes, waiting for her to say something snarky like, “No, there is a sale on aisle five.” Instead, she smiled sweetly and said, “Yes, all mine, and we homeschool, too!”

Friends, you homeschool for your kids, and it is a decision you and your spouse made together; it is no one else’s business. If you must, write down what your kids learned at the beginning of the year and what they know now at different times of the year. This is not for anyone but you.

Every year I thought we accomplished nothing was a year we did the most ever. We compiled a sampling of the children’s work one time a year – and when we did I couldn’t believe all we’d done – the next year we saved special papers or pictures from events during the year so I didn’t feel that way again!

Your life, your homeschool is your own. If that goal is weighing you down, move it back, you have my permission. Get rid of the busy work. Sometimes it is wonderful to have copy work, but other times it gets in the way. Focus on the most important things, family, relationship and God the rest will come into place.

Scripture

“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is thy faithfulness.”
— Lamentations 3:22–23, RSVCE

God’s love never ceases, and our love for our children is why we, as homeschool parents, make sacrifices. The blessings way outweigh anything we put into it. Just watch: week four will be amazing, and the next day and the next? Why? Because you have a new attitude. Attitude sets the tone. It starts with you and with me.

Join the Sweet 13 Birthday Giveaway
The Ultimate Homeschool Podcast Network turns 13 this October! We’re celebrating all month with more than $1,500 in prizes for homeschool families, drawn on four Fridays. One sign-up keeps you in every drawing. Enter the Sweet 13 giveaway here.

Resources from Media Angels

More at https://mediaangels.com.

More Listening

  1. Morning Time for Mixed Ages
  2. Time Boosters for the Busy Homeschool Mom
  3. Fine-Tune Your Homeschool Day
  4. The Best Homeschool Scheduling Advice
  5. Avoiding Homeschool Pitfalls

If this helps, share it with a friend. Until next time, be blessed. Have a blessed homeschool week!

 

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What If My Child Hates Reading?

October 4, 2026 by Leave a Comment

A child who hates reading is almost always telling you one of three things: it is still physically hard, the books are wrong, or reading has become a battleground.

First, rule out difficulty

Fluent readers rarely hate reading. If decoding still takes real effort, every book feels like work, and no amount of enthusiasm from you will change that.

Listen to your child read aloud from something slightly easy. If it is halting, or they lose the sense of the sentence by the end of it, the problem is fluency, not attitude. That is a teaching problem with known solutions, and it is worth getting help with rather than waiting out.

Also worth knowing: the age at which children become fluent varies far more than most curricula admit. A late reader is often just a late reader.

Then, question the books

A great many children who “hate reading” have only been offered books somebody else decided were good for them. Let them read comics. Let them read the same book eleven times. Let them read about sharks, or engines, or horses, for a whole year.

Nonfiction counts. Audiobooks count for building vocabulary and appetite, even though they are not decoding practice.

Stop making it a fight

If reading has become the thing you argue about daily, the association is now the obstacle. Read aloud to them well past the age you think you should stop. Being read to is how most children learn that stories are worth the trouble.

Then leave good books where they will be found, and be patient. Appetite comes back more often than you would expect once the pressure comes off.

Listen to this

It is our 13th birthday all month long.

The Ultimate Homeschool Podcast Network turns 13 this October, and we are giving away more than $1,500 in prizes across four drawings. One entry puts you in all of them, and everyone who enters gets Sweet Treats, a gathered-up collection of free resources from the hosts across the network.

Enter the Sweet 13 Giveaway

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Do I Need a Curriculum for Every Single Subject?

October 3, 2026 by Leave a Comment

Where a boxed curriculum is worth the money and where it is money you didn't need to spend. Three questions to ask before you buy anything.

 

No. And buying one for everything is one of the most common first-year money mistakes.

Where curriculum is genuinely worth it

Buy a real curriculum for the subjects that build in a strict sequence, where a gap causes trouble later. That is mathematics, and it is reading instruction in the early years. These are cumulative. Missing a step matters.

For high school, buy for anything that will appear on a transcript and be read by someone outside your family, and for the subjects you do not know well yourself.

Where you can be much looser

History, geography, science in the elementary years, art, and music do not require a boxed program. Good books, documentaries, museums, and conversation cover these beautifully, and children usually remember them better that way.

Nobody has ever been held back because they studied ancient Egypt in a different order than the catalog suggested.

Three questions before you buy

Does this fit how my child actually learns, or how I wish they learned? How much preparation does it need from me on a bad week, not a good one? And can I see enough of it before purchasing to know?

That last one matters. Request samples. Most publishers offer them, and a sample will tell you more in ten minutes than a hundred reviews.

Permission to stop using something

Curriculum is a tool, not a commitment. If you are eight weeks in and dreading it every morning, the money is already spent either way. Continuing to use something that is not working does not recover the cost. It just adds your child’s frustration to the bill.

Listen to this

It is our 13th birthday all month long.

The Ultimate Homeschool Podcast Network turns 13 this October, and we are giving away more than $1,500 in prizes across four drawings. One entry puts you in all of them, and everyone who enters gets Sweet Treats, a gathered-up collection of free resources from the hosts across the network.

Enter the Sweet 13 Giveaway

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How Many Hours a Day Should We Actually Homeschool?

October 2, 2026 by Leave a Comment

Homeschooling takes far less time than school does, and that surprises almost every new family. Realistic hours by age, and why finishing early is not a problem.

Less time than you think. This is the single most common surprise for new homeschool families, and it causes a lot of unnecessary guilt.

A school day is not six hours of teaching

A public school day includes attendance, transitions between rooms, lining up, handing out materials, managing thirty children, announcements, and waiting. The actual instruction inside those hours is a fraction of the total.

At home you skip nearly all of it. One-on-one instruction is dense. When your child does not understand something you see it immediately and fix it on the spot, instead of discovering it on a test two weeks later.

Rough guidance by age

Early elementary often needs one to two hours of formal work. Upper elementary, two to three. Middle school, three to four. High school moves toward four to six, mostly because the content genuinely takes longer and teens work more independently.

If your six-year-old is done in ninety minutes, nothing is wrong. That is what one-on-one looks like.

Watch the clock in the other direction

The real risk is not doing too little. It is stretching a subject well past the point of usefulness because the clock says you should still be working. A math lesson that took twenty minutes and went well is a finished math lesson.

When something routinely takes far longer than it should, that is information. Either the material is a poor fit, the child is missing a piece further back, or you have hit the wall for the day. All three are solvable, and none are solved by pushing through for another hour.

Listen to this

It is our 13th birthday all month long.

The Ultimate Homeschool Podcast Network turns 13 this October, and we are giving away more than $1,500 in prizes across four drawings. One entry puts you in all of them, and everyone who enters gets Sweet Treats, a gathered-up collection of free resources from the hosts across the network.

Enter the Sweet 13 Giveaway

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Should We Even Homeschool? How to Decide Without Guessing

October 1, 2026 by Leave a Comment

Not sure if you're qualified to homeschool? You're asking the wrong question. A clear way to decide, plus how to set up a one-year trial you can actually evaluate.

Almost nobody feels ready. The families who do this well are not the ones who felt qualified on day one. They are the ones who decided it was worth trying and gave themselves a year to learn.

Ask a better question

“Am I qualified?” is the wrong question, and it will keep you stuck. You are not replacing a building full of specialists. You are teaching one, two, or four children you already know better than anyone else does.

The better question is this: what problem are we trying to solve? A child who is anxious every morning. A schedule that leaves no family time. A kid who is bored, or lost, or being handed things you do not agree with. Name the actual problem. Then ask whether homeschooling solves that one.

Give it a defined trial

Commit to one year, not to forever. A year is long enough to get past the awkward first months and short enough that it does not feel like a life sentence. Put a date on the calendar to sit down and honestly evaluate.

Most families find the first eight weeks are the hardest, and that things settle somewhere around Thanksgiving. If you quit in week three, you quit during the worst of it.

Check the two practical things

First, your state’s requirements. They vary enormously, and most are far less demanding than people assume. Second, your household economics: what actually has to change for this to work.

Everything else is adjustable. Curriculum can be changed. Schedules can be rebuilt. The decision itself is the only part that needs to be made carefully.

Listen to this

It is our 13th birthday all month long.

The Ultimate Homeschool Podcast Network turns 13 this October, and we are giving away more than $1,500 in prizes across four drawings. One entry puts you in all of them, and everyone who enters gets Sweet Treats, a gathered-up collection of free resources from the hosts across the network.

Enter the Sweet 13 Giveaway

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Sweet 13 Bonus: The Network Turns Thirteen

October 1, 2026 by Leave a Comment

It’s Not About Money is part of the Ultimate Homeschool Podcast Network — and the network has a birthday this month. This month the Ultimate Homeschool Podcast Network turns thirteen, and this is the birthday episode.

It’s Not About Money is part of the Ultimate Homeschool Podcast Network — and the network has a birthday this month.

This month the Ultimate Homeschool Podcast Network turns thirteen, and this is the birthday episode.

The format is simple. Hosts from across the network each took one real question from a homeschool parent — the kind that actually lands in an inbox — and answered it. Thirteen questions, about half an hour, running on every feed in the network this week.

Who you will hear: Felice Gerwitz on whether to homeschool at all · Hal and Melanie Young on boys who will not sit still · Dr. Melanie Wilson on why you are already behind · Sabrina and Vicki from 7Sisters on the high school transcript · Sue Myers on a fever and a two-year-old · Meryl van der Merwe on teenagers and AI · Meredith Curtis on getting the joy back · Lisa Nehring on life skills before they launch.

Felice closes it herself, with the part she does not usually say out loud: what it cost to keep this network on the air for thirteen years, and why the people who podcast here are unsung heroes.

If you have only ever listened to this one show, consider this your introduction to the rest of them.

🎂 The Sweet 13 Giveaway is open. More than $1,500 in prizes, four drawings across October, and a free party favor for everyone who enters. Enter at ultimateradioshow.com/sweet-13 — October 1 through 29. No purchase necessary, US residents 18+, official rules here.

Presented by Eden’s Table. Use code EDEN13.

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