Camp Hain

001 Camp Hain Introduction

• Tia Hain • Season 1 • Episode 1

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Welcome to Camp Hain: Our Homeschooling Journey Begins

In this introductory episode, Tia Hain shares insights into her family's diverse educational experience which includes homeschooling, public schooling, and online schooling. Tia, a Classical Conversations Challenge A director, introduces her new podcast and YouTube channel focused on homeschooling. She discusses her background, passion for math and Shakespeare, and her previous ventures in podcasting and YouTube. The episode also outlines upcoming content, including summaries and writing lessons from 'The Secret Garden,' and an in-depth review of the Classical Conversations curriculum.

00:00 Welcome to Camp Hain: An Introduction
01:04 Meet Tia Hain: My Background and Journey
02:50 Homeschooling Adventures: Our Family's Experience
03:17 Classical Conversations: A Deep Dive
04:22 Podcast and YouTube: What to Expect
09:33 Upcoming Episodes: Secret Garden and More
12:20 Final Thoughts and Subscribe!

Camp Hain Introduction

[00:00:00] 

[00:00:00] Are you a homeschooler or thinking about homeschooling? Join us on this journey. This is the introduction episode for Camp Hain. Welcome to the adventures of a Catholic family that homeschools, public schools, online schools, and has one super obsessed with baseball kid. Currently, I, Tia Hain, am a Classical Conversations Challenge A director, so a lot of this podcast channel is related to that for now.

[00:00:28] I also post videos, when on YouTube, about math, mostly algebra, because I also tutor. And then also post videos and do podcasts about our life. We are Catholic, so some of my content will include our faith, just to let you know. We love our adventures, so come along for the ride and click the subscribe button if you are a homeschooler or are thinking about homeschooling or even if this content just interests you.

[00:00:55] And if you are on YouTube, give this video a like to help with the algorithm [00:01:00] please there. I've said the obligatory things. Now let's move on to the content.

[00:01:04] Okay, so this episode is about us. It's about our background, why we decided to homeschool, and why I am starting this podcast slash YouTube channel. Now about me. Since this is an introduction episode, let me tell you a little about me. I personally went to public school.

[00:01:22] I did really well in math. I absolutely loved math. That's why I tutor math now. I'm going to try to do math Mondays on YouTube. So if you have any math problems, issues, especially dealing with algebra, geometry, trigonometry, that type of stuff, go ahead and leave a comment and I will do my best to address it.

[00:01:43] I've had a few careers and by a few, I mean, I couldn't actually tell you how many jobs I've had. My kids asked me one time and I was like, I don't know, actually, that would take me a long time to try and figure out, but a few jobs I had, I actually had for a while. One of them, [00:02:00] I actually worked for, Alaska airlines.

[00:02:03] I worked for their puddle jumper one. It was way back when it was called Horizon Airlines and I did that for quite a few years and working at the airport was really fun. It was different. I have also been a technology risk consultant. That was my official career when I got out of college. 

[00:02:17] I've been a teacher, but mainly for the last 20 or so years, my careers have been in technology. I volunteer a lot. I've been volunteering for a long time, basically since my first child started into preschool. 

[00:02:34] I've done PTA. I volunteered at the school. Lots of reading with kids. I've volunteered for, well, our local baseball association. I've been doing that for quite a while. That's taken up a lot of my time, but I've enjoyed all of it. 

[00:02:50] We've been homeschooling my oldest for the last five years.

[00:02:55] , my younger son for the last four years, but my older [00:03:00] son now goes to the public high school, but only part time. We live in Idaho, so it's actually really convenient. You can go for just a few classes and you can take some classes online and then you can still homeschool for the other ones.

[00:03:13] So we're still homeschooling our younger son though. And through classical conversations, they have directors. So if you know, classical conversations at all, I've got a whole review coming up for one of my upcoming episodes on classical conversations, because we actually really love the curriculum and we love how it's done and the community.

[00:03:32] But they have directors for the older. Kids. And so right now I'm a challenge a director, which is kind of the equivalent to seventh grade in public schools, but before not last year, but the year before I was a challenge one director, which is the equivalent of a freshman in public schools. So I would basically go in and.

[00:03:55] Have conversations and help teach the kids all the subjects for that grade level. [00:04:00] But anyway, right now I'm doing challenge A. So that's what a lot of the homeschooling content will be related to that challenge A curriculum. And one of my absolute favorite, favorite things, one of my passions is Shakespeare.

[00:04:11] I absolutely love Shakespeare. It may seem odd for a math person to be totally in love with Shakespeare, but I am, maybe it's the whole iambic pentameter thing. I don't know.

[00:04:22] I have actually done podcasts and YouTube channels before. So just to let you know the format real quick, this is mainly a podcast. It's mainly going to be audio. And so it's going to be up on all podcast platforms, including YouTube podcasts, but I will have some video content. Then obviously that will go up on YouTube, not in the podcast apps, 

[00:04:42] but anyway, just to let you know, that's what's going on. But this is actually my third podcast that I've done. I had a Kids Craft Tutorials that I did as a video podcast. Oh my gosh, it was before my youngest [00:05:00] was born and he is almost 13 years old. So it was at the very beginning. So nobody watched it. People had no idea video podcasts even existed back then, but I also had it as a YouTube channel and it actually did pretty well.

[00:05:13] For some reason I just took the whole thing down when my second child was born. I got very overwhelmed with trying to do all the things and it was doing pretty good and getting good views, but since I couldn't keep it up, I just took the whole thing down. So anyway, that was the kids craft tutorials one.

[00:05:30] I also did a podcast a few years ago now that was all about technology and things to help your business grow. And if you wanted to do your own business, like email lists and website building and all that stuff. And I picked the stuff that could be audio only and had a podcast of that. It did okay, but once again, I couldn't keep it up.

[00:05:51] Funnily enough with that one, it was during COVID when everybody else was starting a podcast because they were bored because they [00:06:00] couldn't do their job. But my job I could do from home and so I actually felt more overwhelmed and I ended up having to drop the podcast during the COVID time because I was doing website stuff for university and I was just kind of too busy.

[00:06:14] I actually had a YouTube channel where I was just doing demonstrations of technology stuff and that one just like didn't go anywhere. There's way too many people on YouTube doing that, but I also started a gardening channel. I actually started a TikTok channel for gardening during the YouTube time because since I was still stuck at home I really wanted to get into gardening and the TikTok channel did pretty well and I made a lot of those into shorts and that did well.

[00:06:44] on YouTube, but I didn't keep that up because once COVID went on its way and my super obsessed with baseball kid got older, we ended up traveling a lot. He's on a travel ball team, so I was just never home to do my gardening, which makes me sad because I really do [00:07:00] want to start it up again.

[00:07:01] But this particular podcast slash YouTube channel is about homeschooling because homeschooling isn't easy. I would have loved more podcasts and channels about homeschooling that could help me through different parts of it, whether I'm using a particular curriculum, so a lot of information and support about that particular curriculum would be great.

[00:07:26] But also, if I'm not using a particular curriculum, just something to help me give, get ideas and something that just lets me know that I'm not alone in doing this thing. So together, I think we can make homeschooling work.

[00:07:43] Like I said, we've been homeschooling for the last five years. We have tried a lot of different programs, but we have been with Classical Conversations for the last four years now. We started when my oldest was 11, and he was starting sixth grade, [00:08:00] and now he's 16 and a sophomore. He does a hybrid of public school and online school and homeschool.

[00:08:06] I also mentioned that before.

[00:08:09] We pretty much take each year as it comes. We reassess and we just want to do what works best for our kids. Now about this channel, show, podcast, whatever you want to call it. It's mainly our homeschool journey. I'm hoping to help with different areas of classical conversation. So there's foundations and essentials, but I'm mainly going to focus on the challenge levels.

[00:08:32] Like I said before, I'm directing challenge A right now. So that's going to be the big focus for right now. I directed Challenge 1 in the past, so I'm hoping to do a lot of episodes about the different aspects of Challenge 1, because there is a lot to do with it. The kids get introduced to Shakespeare, which I absolutely loved, and they get introduced to debate, which I had to learn a lot about, and now I've become a person who knows about debate, not somebody who's really fond of it, but I [00:09:00] know about it, and I understand how it works, at least the team policy debate that we did in Challenge 1.

[00:09:04] There's going to be a lot about the different writing styles and the writing curriculums that they use in classical conversations, and like I said, I will be doing math. It's mostly going to be on YouTube since it is going to be visual, and right now the main focus is algebra because that's what my younger son is going into, and that's also what I'm tutoring more.

[00:09:26] And I think that's basically it for my introduction episode to this podcast. What do I have coming up? Well, probably the next ones you're going to hear upcoming are episodes that summarize the secret garden, the novel, the secret garden. That is the book we are currently reading in challenge a 

[00:09:47] I absolutely love the book. Not all 12 year olds will love Secret Garden and sometimes it's helpful to have these books summarized a little bit better when you're going to actually be writing about them. [00:10:00] So what I'm going to do is each episode is going to summarize five chapters. And then I'm also going to go over what we call issues.

[00:10:11] So we do a writing curriculum called lost tools of writing, and it's a wonderful curriculum for teaching kids and adults to how to write persuasive essays. It gives you a lot of different techniques. And this is the book that we have read so the kids can write a persuasive essay about it. Now, if you know about lost tools of writing, what you start off with are things called issues.

[00:10:37] So you have to figure out some different issues in the book to decide what you're going to write about and what you're going to persuade your reader to choose one side or the other. And then there's a lot of different techniques on how to do that. And then we write what's called an Annie chart, which is affirmative, negative, and interesting.

[00:10:54] So they take one of these issues and they decide which [00:11:00] side they want to take. And then they figure out a bunch of different things that are affirming for that issue that are negative about that issue. And just some things that are interesting in the book. And they're going to use those things as their support.

[00:11:12] So anyway, all that's to say is the upcoming episodes. I'm going to be summarizing the secret garden and then I will be having an episode going over the different issues that you could choose for the secret garden and different things that you could add to your Annie chart for those issues. So if you are in the classical conversations curriculum, especially if you're in challenge a or if you're going to be going up to the challenges, this is probably a pretty good episode for you to listen to just because it gives you an idea of what you will be doing with the writing.

[00:11:46] And then I will also have an episode for sure, I've got a script written out for it that's a complete in depth review of Classical Conversations and our view of it and how we [00:12:00] like it, but also just how it works, so if it's something that you're possibly interested in. Cause a lot of people might be figuring out if they want to start a different, different homeschool curriculum this coming up year.

[00:12:14] And so hopefully that will be very helpful in helping you decide if you want to give classical conversations a try. So that is it for now. If you like this episode, give it a thumbs up, help with the algorithm, all that jazz. And if you think this is interesting to you, please subscribe to the channel. And I guess that's it until next time.

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