Homeschooling How-To with Hannah Burlbaw

When Hannah Burlbaw's husband first suggested homeschooling, she couldn't have imagined the journey ahead of them. Yet, here we are, sitting down with her as she shares her transition from a public school teacher's daughter to a homeschooling educator. Prepare to be swept up in her heartfelt story of navigating an at-home educational path and learn how this once-skeptical mom turned her home into a vibrant classroom with tailored learning experiences for her four little students.

Our conversation with Hannah gives you a peek into the day-to-day of juggling multiple children at different stages of learning. You'll hear how she manages to weave her own self-care and work commitments into her homeschooling schedule and ensures each child thrives individually. If you've ever wondered how homeschooling families fill their afternoons, the ability to offer unstructured play and family adventures will inspire you with the possibility that lies beyond the traditional school system.

This episode isn't just about the 'how' of homeschooling; it's about the heart. It's about creating more time to  truly be present with our children—make eye contact and share stories, big and small —in a world where screens win the battle for attention. From navigating state-specific homeschooling laws to debunking socialization myths, Hannah offers a fresh perspective on shaping confident and connected kids. Buckle up and be prepared; you might just change your perspective on education and parenting.

Hannah Burlbaw on Instagram.
My Father's World Homeschool Curriculum.
Homeschooling Resource HSLDA.
Contact her to support her business here.  

Chapters

• 0:07 Navigating Homeschooling and Homesteading
• 9:30 Homeschooling
• 15:51 Homeschooling and Child Development
• 28:59 Importance of Being Present in Homeschooling

Transcript

Cicily: 0:07

Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of the Creative Mountain Mama podcast Today. I'm excited because I am joined by Hannah Burlba. She talks about homeschooling, homesteading and starting your home business. Thank you for joining me, hannah. Well, thanks for having me. This is fun. Yeah, I'm excited to get into it. Do you have any fun or funny homeschooling stories?

Hannah: 0:33

I do. It's funny that I actually have a whole social media platform around being a homeschool mom, because I never imagined that I was going to be a homeschool mom. It was not on my radar at all. In fact, I am a daughter of a public school teacher and my sister is a teacher, so I grew up mostly in public schools, like I was the kid that was in schools during the summer helping my mom get her classroom ready for school, and so I never imagined being a homeschool mom. And it's funny because my husband was.

Hannah: 1:05

Actually, when my first son was born, my husband was the one that said I think we should homeschool our kids and I was like you're absolutely crazy, I'm never doing that, like I'm never homeschooling my kids.

Hannah: 1:16

I had all the things that most people say they're going to be weird, they're not going to have friends, there's no, I don't want to teach my own kids, I want to have my own time, I can't wait till they're like going to go to school and I'll get my own space back and all the things. And now I have an entire social media platform about talking to homeschool moms and how much we actually love it. So I guess it's probably a funny story that he was the one to bring it up. And now I fully embrace that part of my life and I'm so glad that he did, because I probably was really, really closed off to being a homeschool mom until I started looking into you know just the world and how it is now, and also now I wouldn't treat it, I wouldn't treat it at all. So but yeah, funny story to that start of our homeschool journey for sure.

Cicily: 2:08

So you were supported and encouraged by your husband and you actually spend a lot of time breaking those preconceived notions down, which is just amazing. I love you know how you kind of take it topic by topic. Can you talk a little bit about how you started and what the journey has been like?

Hannah: 2:28

Well, so I started. It was it was more or so to kind of find the community of homeschool people, and I guess that's because, like I said, I grew up not being homeschooled and not really knowing anything about the homeschool community and world, and so it kind of I was kind of that first person in my family, the first person kind of in my friend group. I had a couple of friends that were homeschooling and they definitely were super supportive and encouraging, but not a lot, and so I think that's that's something that's actually really beautiful about social media is that you can really find your tribe, you can find your community there. So where I was kind of getting a little bit of pushback and people asking questions of like why we chose homeschool and what we were doing and why you would even think about doing that on social media, people were like we've been homeschooling for 25 years and we're veteran homeschools, we were doing it back before. It was cool, and other people, of course.

Hannah: 3:22

The other part of that story, I guess, is that my oldest son started his kindergarten year in 2019. So we chose to homeschool before the pandemic, but when the pandemic came in it would have been halfway through his kindergarten year and I always think back to that moment of it would have completely uprooted our whole life, which it did for thousands and millions of people across the country, across the world that they were then forced to into homeschooling, right, whether they were doing a homeschool curriculum or they were following public school from home. Kids were now home. Parents were trying to figure this out of like working and staying home with kids, whereas for us, since we had already chose to homeschool, it was kind of just like a little speed bump. I won't say it wasn't a bigger speed bump, because it was crazy, it was the pandemic, right, but we were still just kind of rocking and rolling in homeschooling and it wasn't really that big of a life change for him and I feel like that is something that I'm really thankful for now. But that journey started gosh, it's been four years now of just diving full force into homeschooling and I really do try to break down a lot of those things. Just like you said that I thought when I first started homeschooling.

Hannah: 4:39

So I was of the group of people that thought you had to write your own lesson plans, like you had to come up with all of this stuff. You basically had to be a public school teacher at home. Right, you were recreating the classroom at home and what I found is it's so far from that. First of all, it changed my life when I figured out there was curriculum that you could buy. The first year I actually spent all summer trying to plan my entire year of homeschool lessons.

Hannah: 5:08

Halfway through to realize that, like he hated it, we were not doing well, I threw it all out the window. Excuse me, but my friend was like you know, there's some pretty great kind of like open and go curriculums that you can add to or take away from, but it gives you a pretty good, solid base and I was like this is life changing. Like this is easy, I can do this. I can open this book and follow these lessons and go through it. And so we found a really awesome creation based curriculum that we really love and we're still using it and I encourage people to look into it when they're starting homeschooling, because I feel like that was one of my biggest hurdles was figuring out how to actually do this part right, how to actually teach.

Hannah: 5:52

But yeah, I mean there's there's so many other things that I've learned along the way Like it doesn't have to look like public school. It doesn't have to be seven, eight hours a day. In fact we do school in probably two hours or less. And he's nine and I have three other kids, so it's kind of chaotic, but we still it's still a very small portion of our day and then my kids spend tons of time outside and exploring and adventuring and imagination, which I feel like they're learning so much more doing those things than what they can learn from a book anyway. So yeah, it's a it's been, it's been a full circle type type journey for us, that's for sure.

Cicily: 6:29

Absolutely, and it sounds like you are that person. You're following in the footsteps to a certain extent, but you are paving the way for others to follow. So when I found you, I was super just. I felt well directed. I felt you know, I can do this, and I hadn't quite felt that sure about it before. Could you name the curriculum that you go with and how to find it?

Hannah: 6:55

Yeah, so we use my father's world and there's two that I really recommend if people are looking for a Christian based curriculum, and it's my father's world and the good and the beautiful. Those are definitely my top two. I will say that just personally. I think my father's world's a bit easier to follow from the teacher parent side. It really is kind of an open and go. You don't need a whole lot of extras with it. It'll even give you kind of some tips on like what to have in your home if you need some extra little like art supplies or science things, right. It kind of gives you a heads up so that you know to plan for that for your week.

Hannah: 7:30

But it is kind of a full curriculum all in one, and that really just took a lot of pressure off of me and stress that I could just buy it all in one piece, right, like I didn't have to pick and choose.

Hannah: 7:41

I will say that there's a lot of people in the homeschool community that do that. They kind of go to different curriculums and that is totally amazing and I love that. There's that flexibility and you get to control that. So, like some people really like math from this one and language arts from that one, and I think as you get going in your journey that is a little easier to do. But when you first start it's kind of nice to just have it all in one With my father's world. You don't have to buy it all. You can definitely pick and choose things too if you just want to kind of start small and then add up from there. But I really liked that they had that option, that it was like all together, and it, like I said, made it way less stressful for me to just purchase all of it in one thing.

Cicily: 8:22

So yeah, so once you're able to find that kind of plug and play curriculum, you're able to now run. Was there anything that surprised you that you would do differently or make a recommendation to not have that happen?

Hannah: 8:40

Yeah, so it's funny that you asked that question because my daughter now my second oldest is doing school. She's in her first grade year. So we've done two years now of two different kids in two different age categories and I think that that also makes people nervous, like how are you going to teach different kids in different levels? And I do like that, my father's world. They actually kind of know that that's going to happen, right, because you have a family and typically most people have two kids or more and so their curriculums kind of mirror each other as far as they'll kind of talk about the same topics. But then in some of the books you'll actually see, you know, grade four and above would do this. So it kind of gives you an extra thing, maybe for the older kids, but it simplifies it down for the little kids.

Hannah: 9:30

If there's a piece of advice or something that I felt like was kind of a bit of a hurdle was being nervous about trying to teach two different age groups and eventually I'm going to be teaching four because I have four kids, so it'll be a lot. But I do think that there's ways to do it where I've started to realize that you can really teach kids, even at all different ages, kind of the same things. You just simplify it for the little kids and then go more in depth as they get older. Even, I feel like into like middle school and high school. They really could kind of be learning the same stuff. It's just that you're giving them extra challenges and more things along the way.

Hannah: 10:07

So that's definitely something that I didn't expect. I mean, I guess I thought about it in the back of my mind when she was coming up to kindergarten. I was like how am I going to do this? And then realize that it was going to kind of like you could really kind of seamlessly put them together and teach at the same times, and there's also times that, you know, I sit down one on one with each of them, while the other one does kind of some independent work that they can do on their own. So we typically do it that way.

Cicily: 10:33

Amazing. Take me through a day in the life. You said a couple hours are devoted to education. What is like morning to evening? How do you plan it out?

Hannah: 10:43

Yeah, so another really cool thing about homeschooling is that you get to create your own schedule right and there's. I actually have a lot of friends that are really incredible and work outside of the home and they pick their homeschool times in the evenings, when they get home, or on the weekends. You can be really flexible and make it fit to your life, which is really really amazing. Like, it doesn't need to be done at eight o'clock in the morning, it doesn't need to go till 3 pm. You could really homeschool anywhere anytime, which we've done before. Also, we've kind of packed up some of our stuff and gone hunting for a couple weeks and done homeschool in the woods from our camper. So, but a typical day for us, I get up pretty early and work out before everybody else wakes up. It's kind of my me time as a homeschool mom. It's something that I really am passionate about teaching other homeschool moms is make sure that you're taking care of yourself and you have time for yourself every day, because it is hard to kind of be the one that's pouring into everyone else. Right, you're still doing wife and mom duties. Now you have a whole new job of being teacher and educator and coach, and then I also work from home. So then I work with a whole team of other women and stuff. So typically I get up pretty early and it's kind of nice to get my workout in when it's quiet and nobody else is around. I go for a quick run, then I come back, get ready for the day. I like to get ready for the day not any judgment on times that I stay in pajamas all day, because I joke about that as a homeschool mom. We do that sometimes too. But I like to get up and kind of get dressed. It kind of sets the stage for my day and just makes me feel better. And then I'm kind of ready for anything, right, like ready for a meeting, ready to go into town. Whatever we do breakfast. But what I love about homeschooling is that you can kind of have slow mornings. So there you'll catch us making pancakes on a Tuesday morning till 10 o'clock sometimes, and I love that part of our life slow coffees and just snuggling and reading books. We actually don't typically start homeschool until like mid-morning, sometimes even closer to lunchtime. I also work from home, like I said, so I usually get on a meeting mid-morning. It's about an hour that I spend time working with my team and from my phone, and then we usually do about an hour's worth of school. Right after that we break for lunch, because I kind of like to break it up, and then if we have more that we need to do after lunch, we'll come back after lunch and kind of finish it out. But, like I said, typically we're done with homeschool within an hour or two a day, and that's two kids at ages seven and nine. So that's kind of the ages that they're in. But even as they get bigger, I still don't foresee us doing much more than two or three hours a day. And as they get bigger they're a little bit more independently led also.

Hannah: 13:32

So afternoons are kind of when I really try to put my phone away and just spend time with my kids. Whether we're playing or we're planting gardens or we're just being outside and doing our things or cleaning up the house. I really try to leave our afternoons free. My son likes to shoot archery, so sometimes we go to the bow shop and we shoot bows together and we really kind of leave that open and I really. It's really something that I feel like. A lot of people talk about freedom of your schedule and I really try to do that because I think that's so important for them to have like that board time or that downtime that they're not always full. And then, of course, afternoons, evenings, we're picking up and getting ready for dinner and bedtime. So, yeah, that's probably like a tip. It's kind of like very simple and not a lot going on there, it seems, but it's definitely still busy. I don't know how. I guess it's because it's four kids and a lot, it gets busy fast. But yeah, that's probably kind of a typical day for us.

Cicily: 14:33

Awesome, and you talked about. You have your business, you have your schedule planned out for what you're going to teach or the lesson that you're going to do. Is there any one thing that you'd recommend starting for moms that are young in their motherhood?

Hannah: 14:50

Yeah, well, we kind of cycle through things and it's probably seasonal for us, but there are some really fun things that I think that you could kind of create, because kids really like routine and structure and I find that mine do better. If they kind of know that school is coming at a certain time of the day, they know that they're going to have that free time in the afternoon. But we've cycled through some things and sometimes they're really into something and I highly encourage homeschool moms to dive into what your kids are into. So if you have a little boy that just loves dinosaurs and he gets his dinosaurs out and plays with them, go into that with homeschool, with him. Like, go to the library, check out all the dinosaur books, let him explore that. And that's really where I feel like the unschooling community is so great and I really admire the unschooling community because it is very child led and everything that they're into can turn into schooling and education.

Hannah: 15:51

But we've done devotionals in the morning. They really like to read. They have, like a kid, just little Bible stories once a day. They're really short, little five minute stories. We'll do that sometimes at breakfast. Seasonal things like we'll go into hunting season and our family really loves to go hunting, so you'll find us in the backyard shooting bows, a lot getting ready and practicing setting up our blinds and practicing being in those and things like that. Springtime right now we're really into like planting our seeds and we've got our little seed sprouts going on the porch and all of these little things.

Hannah: 16:25

So I really just encourage homeschool families to kind of bend and flex and move and see what your kids love, because I think that's the beauty of homeschool is that instead of it just being so cookie cutter that you do this and this and this and this and this, it kind of allows you that freedom to really go into what your kids love, because if they're passionate about what they're learning, they're going to learn it at a much faster and more intense rate.

Hannah: 16:54

They're going to retain that knowledge, versus you giving them something that they're not super interested in. I see that a lot like the glazed overlooks. Sometimes when I'm reading something, I'm like, okay, maybe this is the right time to teach this. We kind of flex and move. So I think flexibility and being able to, I guess it's a lot of learning your children as they grow. I think that's a really cool thing, because then you're really in tune with them too. You start knowing who they are individually and they're all different and what they love and what they're into, because all of it can be turned into we joke, but everything can be turned into a homeschool lesson. So, yeah, that's definitely an advice I would give.

Cicily: 17:36

Every homeschool lesson can be turned into a degree and then profession. How many college students show up and say I have no idea what I want to study, because I don't know what I'm interested in. I've just been schooled.

Hannah: 17:48

Yeah, exactly 100 percent agree.

Cicily: 17:52

So you're very much so about encouraging others. Is there any common question that you receive repeatedly?

Hannah: 18:00

Most of the questions that I get, I definitely are asking about the curriculum, what curriculum that we use. Most of them are come in asking how do I do this? How do I pull my kids from public school? How do I start? What does the state need? Do I have to turn in paperwork? Do I have to let the school know? I mean, it's very much. Typically, people just don't know where to start.

Hannah: 18:23

My always my suggestion is there's a really amazing website called HSLDAorg. I have it linked in my bio because I do get that question quite a bit, but it's a really amazing website. You can go on, you can click your state and it gives you all of the requirements for your state. So how to pull your kids from public school. It'll help you do that. It'll help you send in whatever paperwork your state requires.

Hannah: 18:49

Some are more strict than others. Some are super lenient. I'm in New Mexico and it's actually pretty easy for us. We just send the first letter of intent saying that you're going to homeschool and then every year, you log in and say you're going to be continuing homeschooling and that's pretty much it. Now there are some requirements that they say to keep track of you know how many days that you're homeschooling immunization records, things like that. You want to know that about your state, just so that you have it. I'll say in the past four years they've never asked me for anything, but I have everything just in case the state ever needs it. So it's important. It's definitely an important step and that's something that I get asked probably the most is like how do I even start and what do I need to know for my state?

Hannah: 19:34

So that website is going to be your best friend. You can also sign up there. It's a really incredible community and group that you can actually sign up there and they would be. They would basically be there to help you fight for your family's right to homeschool If anything ever was to happen legally right, like you ever got somebody let's just say like worst case scenario, somebody called CPS and they're like I never see these kids in school, right, and CPS shows that you're up at your doorstep. Well, hsldaorg actually has lawyers and everything ready. If you sign up for like the membership, they would basically be there to help you fight for your right to homeschooling and navigate any of those like sticky situations that you ever found yourself in.

Hannah: 20:18

But I will say I mean I don't want to scare anybody away from homeschooling with that, I'm just saying that that's there. For that reason because every single state you have a right to homeschool in the US and just knowing, I think just being really informed about what your state requires and having all that paperwork and just being like a little bit organized on the back end of it will save you just in case that ever happens. But I've never actually heard of anything from my personal friends. I've read some articles and stuff before that definitely made me like, ok, I got to make sure I like check all my boxes right, but just know that it's there and you do have a community that will support you for that.

Cicily: 20:58

Super practical, very helpful. Thank you for saying that. Yeah, you're welcome. Those are the check marks that you don't think about until you're in the thick of it, and then say oh no. Is there any common misconceptions that you have to address over and over again?

Hannah: 21:17

Yeah, there's definitely always the home school kids will be weird, they're not socialized, and those are always typically the comments that I get. When a real or opposed goes viral and it's people outside of the home school community, obviously the home school community people are not saying that. But when something kind of pops off and I get people that are just I don't want to say it in a mean way, but just very uneducated about homeschooling, which I was, the same, I thought the exact same things, like they're never going to have friends, they're going to be weird, they're not going to be socialized and really, first of all, we're all weird in our own way. Like I really truly believe that everybody is weird in their own way. And I think that that's a silly argument now that I think about it, because I went to public school and I knew lots of weird public school kids, right. So there's weirdness everywhere and I think we all have our own little quirks and things. I just I try to just embrace my weirdness now. But as far as the socialization thing, I think that that is such an old argument at this point and the reason that I say that is because I really don't believe that going to school for seven, eight hours a day in a classroom of kids that are only your same age is not necessarily the perfect way to socialize your child right. And in fact I'll go even a step further and kind of maybe open the minds of some people that haven't thought about this but where else in your life would you actually be in a room with only people your same age, like the exact same age? It never happens. So, in reality, I would actually push back and say that public school is a very closed off version of socialization. I don't think that it is a good representation of what real life that's what people like to say real. What are they going to do in the real life? Well, real life is rooms full of people that are multiple, different ages, from different ethnicities and races and religions and backgrounds and cultures, and that's really where I feel like the homeschool community actually embraces that more so, and in that they're trying to get their kids to have worldly experience. So, just really, simply, I think that there's so many other places to socialize. So, and most homeschoolers are in multiple extracurricular activities. Right, they go to church, they have church groups, they do 4-H, they do sports, which a lot of people are like, wait, they do sports. Yeah, homeschool kids can actually even participate in some states in public school sports. So you're going to find homeschoolers everywhere and I really truly believe that the socialization that they get in all of these different areas is really what makes a more well-rounded adult, in my opinion.

Hannah: 24:03

We were just talking about this the other day, too, because my husband and I were like wow, to think about the fact that our two older kids right now would be going off to school all day. They wouldn't really have the same relationship that they have with their younger siblings right now. Right, like my 4 and 1-year-old, they'd be home with me and the two older kids would be separated, right. And then I also thought, wow, and the other thing was, we have two boys and two girls and they all just play.

Hannah: 24:29

And I thought, wow, public school actually really creates boys and girls that kind of against each other very early on. And I thought, wow, I see my kids. When my kids go into groups of kids to play, they're not necessarily looking for girls or looking for boys, they're just playing with whatever kids are there. And I noticed that my kids will play with teenagers and babies and who they're really not afraid, because they're just so used to not having that be a deal, right, like not having that be a thing. So those are definitely two of probably the most common misconceptions I get, which is socialization you need to pause.

Hannah: 25:13

No, you're good, I got it. Sorry, but yeah. Those are definitely two of the common misconceptions that I get the most.

Cicily: 25:22

So there are good times. There are definitely good things that come from what you're doing. What is there? Any Bible verse or something that you lean on in your faith that gets you through the challenging days?

Hannah: 25:35

Oh my gosh, there's so many and I actually I'm so glad that you mentioned this because I made a post it's been a while and I probably should revive it but I found some Bible verses and I'll probably have to get them to you after because I don't have them all at the top of my head but some Bible verses that I really felt like spoke to like a homeschool family, and I mean there's so many verses in the Bible that talk about how you are your child's teacher and that God gave them to you and I really think that that is something that homeschool family is. Just on the bad days because I'm not going to sugarcoat, it's not always rainbows and unicorns and we're not always having these wonderful art activities that we're all so happy and everything's going great I mean there's days that are. There's days, honestly, that I close the books and I'm like we're done, we're going to, we're going to just take a break. Maybe everybody just needs a pause and that's okay too. I also think that's important to to find that boundary and know that they're kids. We don't all have good days, you know just just their same days with adults. We wake up and it's just not the right day for us to try to do things that are just our headspace is not there, so, but I really think that the verses that I really go back to are you know, train up your child in the way that you want them to go, and that one's definitely the one that pops out in my mind the most. But I have more and I'll get them to you.

Hannah: 27:01

But I really truly and honestly do believe that homeschooling is, in a sense, biblical, and it is for us and our family, because you are their teacher and God says that you know you are their teacher. You should train them, and I think that we should walk into homeschooling knowing that we have that trust from him, which is the most important. So, even when you don't have a super supportive community, or maybe even family members that don't support decisions to homeschool, know that the one that really matters supports you and the one that really matters sees you as their teacher and as their trainer, and I think that that's that's really what we got to keep a focus on right. So, but I will definitely look up all the rest of those and I will give them to you, and I should make a new post because it's been a while, and I really do like those verses, so I will do that soon.

Cicily: 27:51

Yeah, absolutely Versus to lean on and community members to reach out to. As far as being a mama of four, you've been through the newborn stage four times and now, kind of looking back, is there any advice that you'd give to a mama in that newborn phase right now?

Hannah: 28:12

Oh gosh, so we've been, yeah, we've been raising babies for almost 10 years now, and my littlest one is 19 months and I look back at videos of him as a newborn and it's it's like bittersweet, right, because those nights are long and you're really tired, but it's also such a beautiful moment and I think that my best advice is probably what a lot of people say but just be in that moment. They don't stay that little for very long and you'll miss it, which is why I probably had four, because I loved having babies like the little newborn stage. And you know, all the things can wait the laundry can wait, the dishes can wait and I know that's really hard to hear, because it was hard for me. I'm a doer, I get up and I like to get things done and I don't like to let things sit. But those small moments that you get with them when they're little, like you've got all the time in the world to do everything else.

Hannah: 29:11

And I still remind this to myself daily because there's times I get stuck, you know, neck trapped, and I'm cuddling and I'm like, oh, the dishes need to be done and I got to go do the laundry, but in that moment, like just cuddling my baby is the most important, and so we do a lot of homeschooling, with me on the couch and a baby on my lap asleep and I'm reading to the bigger kids or they're doing something, and just you know, my best advice is just to be present and be there, because I really feel like that's where a lot of disconnect is happening in the world these days is we're stuck behind screens and phones and we're not really looking at our children and we're not looking at their faces and looking them in the eye.

Hannah: 29:51

When we're talking to them or they're trying to talk to me, and I'm on my phone and I really try and it's never perfect, of course, but I just think trying to be as present as possible and that's something that you can really at least you have more opportunities to do as a homeschool family. I think is when you're together as a full time family and you're doing these things with schooling and you're doing life together, you get more opportunities to be present and I'm really really thankful for that and I'm so, so grateful for my husband bringing up the idea to homeschool. Like I said, was not my intention, but I can't imagine our life any other way at this point.

Cicily: 30:28

Thank you so much and I appreciate your time. Yes, of course, so happy to be here.

Hannah: 30:34

This was fun.