Homeschool Hints Podcast · Midwest Parent Educators - MPE

Things I Wish I Knew For Homeschooling, Beginning Through High School: Trisha Pull

·33 min·2 clips

Homeschooling makes messiness visible in the house, the schedule, and the people.

Shansi Amaniyi introduces Tricia Paul as the owner of Homeschooling with Confidence. Tricia has 12 years of experience teaching at home and is currently homeschooling six children, ages 11 to 18, in grades 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, and 12. She speaks from the day-to-day reality of middle school and high school homeschooling. The conversation feels like a live homeschool gathering, with practical help and encouragement side by side. Tricia mentions a free priority planner, which she says she has used for many years and had redesigned last year to feel beautiful and inviting for moms. Her main turning point comes from a book that landed in her lap by God's grace: Honey for a Child's Heart. That book opened her eyes to the joy and wonder of reading aloud. She describes starting with A.A. Milne's Pooh stories when her children were very young. The habit never really stopped. Tricia says reading aloud is one of the best things a parent can do on a sick day, a quieter day, or any day when the household needs to slow down. She ties that practice to relationships, shared stories, and a literary foundation that grows over time. She also says it helps shape character and lets families connect ordinary home life to history and other subjects they are studying. One of the clearest benefits, she says, is that children who read at a lower grade level can still listen to much harder books. That means a child reading at a third-grade level can hear material at a fourth-, fifth-, sixth-, or seventh-grade level. She treats that gap as a gift rather than a limitation. Her husband also joins the picture by reading The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings to the children in the evenings. Tricia loves the way older children drift back through the kitchen and dining room, slow down, and sit down to listen again. For her, that repeated return shows how reading aloud can settle into family memory. The episode stays warm and practical rather than polished or abstract. It ends in prayer, asking for help on the messy, loud, and frustrating days and giving thanks for God's goodness and grace, then closes with an invitation to stay in touch through the website, email, and social media.

As heard by us

A plainspoken, practical listen for families trying to keep read-aloud time and homeschool life connected.

Homeschool Hints is a plainspoken conversation about homeschooling in the middle and high school years, with Tricia talking through life with six children in grades 6 through 12 and the long habit of reading aloud at home.

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Why you'd press play

You want one calm homeschool voice from someone living the middle-school-to-high-school stretch.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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