YMB #140 How to Add Wonder to your Morning Time 

Are you ready for homeschooling to feel joyful again? Do you want to build closer relationships, remove some of the stress around planning, and enjoy learning with your children? Welcome to Your Morning Basket. I’m Pam Barnhill, a homeschool mom just like you, and I’m going to show you the magic and fulfillment that Morning Basket or Morning Time can bring to your homeschool. Grab your coffee or tea, and let’s get started.

Hey there. So I am joined today by Betsy Cypress, and Betsy is the newest member of the Your Morning Basket team over here at pambarnhill.com, and I’m just so excited to have you on today. Betsy, how are you doing?

I’m doing great, thanks.

Oh, that is awesome to hear. And you tell us just a little bit about yourself, because I know you’ve never been on the podcast before, so people need to know who you are.

Betsy Cypress [00:01:02]:

Well, my name is Betsy, like you said. My husband and I live in Missouri, and we have five kids. We’ve always homeschooled since the very, very beginning, and our oldest is almost 18 years old, and then we have an eleven year old. Oh, sorry, 13 year old and an eleven year old and a nine year old and a seven year old.

Pam Barnhill [00:01:29]:

Sometimes you just want to block that 13 year old out. Right? Yes. Right. I have a 13 year old. I totally get it. We kid. And if you listen to Ten Minutes to a Better Home School, the other podcast that I have, I cannot remember the episode number that Betsy was on, but we will link it in the show notes of this one for you. Betsy was the homeschooling mom that actually homeschooled for a friend for a year. So this year, it’s kind of like totally new territory for you again, because you had four extra kids in your homeschool, and now those four extra kids are gone, and it’s just back to your family. And so how are you guys adjusting?

Betsy Cypress

It has been weird. We were homeschooling nine kids for about 18 months, and then the four children went on to Christian private school with their dad and their stepmom and all that. And then our oldest has been working almost full time, finished up almost all of his credits last year, so now he’s just finishing a couple of little things up.

Pam Barnhill [00:02:30]:

So really, I’m only homeschooling four kids right now, and it’s been so weird. I keep asking my younger kids, like, during morning time, does this feel weird to you guys? They’re like, no, it feels okay. So I guess it just feels weird for me,

Pam Barnhill [00:03:10]:

but I think kids handle it better than moms do because I’m in a similar ish situation in that this is my first morning time with just my know. So Olivia actually got up and went to work. This working? Yeah, she’s working this fall semester before she starts school in January, and she was like, Bye. And I’m like, Wait. It’s morning time. You’re not allowed to leave.

Betsy Cypress

I know. It’s kind of sad. And yet it’s also because I miss him. I miss the things that we did together. And yet I’m also so excited and happy that there are people out there in the business world who want to hire our kids. And we did a good job. We did a good job.

Pam Barnhill [00:03:29]:

I think so, too. Well, Betsy is on today. I mentioned she was the newest member of the team here, and that is because she has come on to work on this new project, which is really near and dear to my heart. And Betsy is now the researcher and writer for the Wonder World Podcast, which is the third podcast, because I just have a problem only doing one or two podcasts. It is the third podcast in the stable here at so you came on to work on that one.

Betsy Cypress

Yes, and it has been so much fun because I am actually learning lots of things and wowing my family and friends with all of my newfound knowledge that I’m learning while researching or sometimes maybe annoying trivia. But it’s still fun for me, so hopefully they’re enjoying it, too. Oh, I love it.

Pam Barnhill [00:04:28]:

I love it so much. So the Wonder World Podcast came about. I can’t even remember what we were doing. Well, okay if I go back a little bit? So here at your Morning Basket in our your Morning Basket Plus program, I started doing this event every month based on our monthly theme of explorations. So each month we have a monthly theme. And coming up in September, it’s fairy tales. In August. It was Pioneers

In July. It was seashore. Some of the other ones we have coming up this year are like, currency trains, Australia. So just fun topics. And so I started doing these monthly events where I was diving deep into the topics and finding trivia and jokes and just cool, unusual, fun facts. Like, I always wanted the kids to say, like, wow, I didn’t know that. And so when I started doing the research for those and diving deep into them, I realized that I really liked sharing that kind of information with kids that it was fun to do. And so then along about February of this past year, my daughter, who had been working in a food truck, had decided, I don’t want to work in a food truck anymore.

And I’m like, well, hey, why don’t you work on this new project with me? And so I brought her on, and we really just kind of started it as a fun thing for us. And we’re like, well, let’s stick it out there and see what happens. We started the Wonder World Podcast, which is basically that same kind of factual information, and Olivia comes on the podcast and does it with me. At first, we thought Thomas was going to do it, but Thomas is the 13 year old who’s a little flighty, and so he very quickly decided it was way more work than what he wanted to do. And so Olivia and I started recording this podcast together. And at first, Olivia was writing the episodes. This was something she was doing, but then, as they will, 18 year olds get really busy yes. With all kinds of other things.

And then I knew I didn’t have time to write the episodes, and I wanted to continue it. And so I said, let’s see if we could find somebody to write the episodes. And you knew you wanted to do that, right, Betsy?

Betsy Cypress

yes, I did, because I had been thinking and praying, like, okay, I’m going to go from homeschooling, nine kids down to, well, I thought I would have five the whole time. I didn’t know that my son was going to be working so many hours and I need something else to do. And I was praying about it. Five is not enough. Exactly. You need more anyway.

Yeah. So we talked around that time, and I told you, hey, if you need anybody to do anything, here’s some of the things I’ve done in the past, keep my name in mind, because I’ve been part of the community with you for years and years, and then you said, yeah, perfect timing. Here’s this project I was thinking about. And I was just so excited, and it’s a great fit. It’s really fun. My kids are really enjoying it. And in fact, my sweet 13 year old just the other day told me, I’m so glad you’re doing this, mom. This seems like a really fun job, and it is so much fun, and they get to learn alongside me.

Pam Barnhill [00:08:01]:

I love it. It’s great. I love it so much. Okay, so I want us both to kind of answer this next question, and let’s talk about what is the goal of the podcast. And I just think for a second so you can think about what your answer is, because I don’t want to influence your answer. So do you want to go first or do you want me to go first? Sure.

Betsy Cypress

Okay. I’ll go first, and then you can tell me if I’m wrong or not. So the goal for the podcast, I would say, is we always say it’s for curious kids and their families, if their families choose to listen to. I think it is education, but not more. In the real world, learning is part of life and loving learning about all kinds of different things that you didn’t know you wanted to know about, like roller coasters and watermelon being a vegetable, and school traditions around the world. Just all those kind of fun, interesting things that you happen upon in everyday life that you didn’t know that you were so excited to learn about. And then I think that because we do such a huge variety of things like from sports to science to cultural things, historical things, all kinds of things that actually spurs on new found interests or it has the ability to do that. And then the next thing is the kids are wanting to learn more about some other subject. And maybe it’s not even a subject we talked about, but it’s a subject that the podcast caused them to think. Yeah.

And then they’re off on their rabbit trail and doing a deep dive into for one of my kids, it’s Korea. All about Korea is what she wants. She’s just reading tons of books about Korea and just them getting to learn all those things and then share it with their family and their friends, it’s keeping us wondering and spurring on the curiosity.

Pam Barnhill [00:10:28]:

I love that. Yeah. It’s all the things you never knew you wanted to learn about. Yes. Because you don’t even think about, well, I’m going to wake up today and go study roller coasters or back to school customs around the world or the history of Hershey Chocolate.

Or you don’t wake up in the morning and it’s not in textbooks. Right. Most of the stuff we talk about, you would never find in a textbook. Some of know every once in a while we’ll do like biographies of people or we’ll do stories that kids are like, oh, I’ve heard that know, a lot of times that comes up with Olivia, we’re recording and she’s like, oh, I remember this know.

But hopefully you’re remembering something that you enjoyed and then making it a deeper kind of learning and knowledge so you own it even more and you understand it even more. And then maybe it’s something that’s jogging your memory, but now you can actually really have it cemented in there and be able to share it with other people, which is really cool.

Pam Barnhill [00:11:20]:

Well, and I’m going to be honest, it happens with Olivia way more than me. Like, we’ll be sitting around the table talking or we’ll see something on TV or something and she’ll say, oh, remember we learned about this on the podcast and there was like blah, blah, blah, blah.

And she’ll spout off a number or something like that. And I’m like, yeah, I vaguely remember us talking. Yeah, right. But it’s always been that way. Her mind is like a steel trap and I’m like, what did I walk into this room for? Yeah, they have the advantage of youth and young minds and we have the too many tabs open kind of home school mom brain.

Pam Barnhill [00:11:47]:

I love that. I love that so much. Yes. Well, and then the other goal of the podcast when we started it is I really wanted something. I wanted to create a podcast that I would have wanted to listen to with my kids. We keep going back and forth like Olivia and I love recording the podcast. So I do think parents are going to enjoy this, though at times. Olivia jokes that we should have, like, a mom’s only version because she’ll come up with something. It’s not inappropriate, it’s just not something that we would necessarily talk about with kids. Right. Like, she wanted to do the Beatles, right? Yes.

Pam Barnhill [00:12:23]:

And I’m like, well, I’m just not sure that your average nine to 13 year old is going to get that right. We joke about that sometimes, but we really do. It was so important to us to create something that families could listen to where it was agenda free. They didn’t have to worry about what the agenda was going to be in there. And I even think you and I are both Christians. We don’t make the podcast. We didn’t create it to be overtly Christian. Every once in a while, a mention comes in.

I think, like, it comes in our regular conversation as we would talk naturally. Yeah. So I think if you’re a secular family, you could still enjoy the podcast without it being something that would make you uncomfortable. But we really wanted to make sure that it was just mainstream, middle of the road. You don’t have to worry if you walk out of the room that your kids are going to hear something you don’t agree with. And so sometimes, yeah, no, we can’t talk about that. I’m really trying to remember what it was because it wasn’t something like horribly inappropriate, but it’s like, yeah, no, we’re not going to talk about that with a nine year yeah. So she’s always like, oh, there was one time she was wanting to quote Hamilton lyrics or something, and I’m like, okay, I just don’t know that the average nine year old is going to get that.

Betsy Cypress

Right. She’s on the adult side of things now, of life. And so her interests are changing.

Pam Barnhill

Yeah, her interests are changing. They really are. But I do think it is a podcast that you can feel safe letting your kids listen to, and that was my goal, to make it agenda free. Yes.

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Betsy Cypress

I would say it’s very wholesome and it’s really fun and really interesting and intriguing. And when we were at youth camp this summer, I took my younger kids with me because I was one of the adults helping out. And my girls love my younger girls loved listening to it at bedtime because the big girls, the teenagers were still out playing the night game, showering, whatever.

They needed something to help them calm down and they loved just listening to it. And yeah, like you said, it is wholesome, it’s fun, it’s interesting, it’s a calm activity that the kids can do so that mom and dad can also have a little bit of calm.

Pam Barnhill [00:15:12]:

Yeah, I think it would be great for the car too.

Betsy Cypress

Yes, definitely. In fact, I remember one like a review that one of the families wrote. They actually commented that they binge listened on it on our long road trip and that dad really enjoyed it as well. And I think that is a big feather in your cap for what you’ve created because for a dad to enjoy that’s true. That’s the same thing that the kids are enjoying. I think that’s a pretty big deal.

Pam Barnhill [00:16:01]:

Okay, so this is our goal, to keep a show that even dads can enjoy listening to along with the kids. Well, let’s talk about the topics on the podcast because we’ve kind of danced around a little bit this idea of we’ve talked about jokes and trivia, a little bit of day in history. So who picks the topics and how do we decide what to include in the episode.

Betsy Cypress

So who picks the topics? That’d be you? Yeah, whatever super fun, exciting things that I find on the internet. I mean, I kind of feel like the internet is picking the topics but in a healthy, appropriate manner. So I’m going and looking at what things happened this day in history or this week in history and famous people who were born and then sometimes those famous people spur us on to say they were interested in a certain topic or they’re famous for a certain thing. We might explore that topic or we might do a little deep dive into who they were and where did they come from and what makes them so important that they would need to have their birthday remembered by people.

When I sit down to write a podcast, most of the time I don’t actually know what we’re going to be covering that week until I start researching and finding out all the interesting and exciting things. Now, sometimes there’ll be a theme, like at the beginning of the Northern hemisphere summer, I thought, oh, you know what would be fun is let’s see what animals in the southern hemisphere are doing right now because it’s of course the opposite of us. And so sometimes there’s an idea like that or it’s going to be 4 July, so of course we’re going to celebrate and discuss and learn a little bit more. Maybe something interesting that’s a little bit different fact that we didn’t know before about Independence Day. And perhaps we’re going to learn how many hot dogs were eaten over 4 July weekend or something like that alongside the history. So I love that we keep a balance of the history and the science and the fun trivia and I don’t know, just all the opportunities to explore and go on rabbit trails.

Pam Barnhill [00:18:34]:

Yeah, I love the holidays that you never knew. I mean, they’re observances. Not really holidays, but these observances that we find. I mean, Lazy Mom’s Day, where does yes, this is apparently someone who has never met a mother, right?

Yes, exactly. It’s hilarious. I love Lazy Mom’s Day, and I love so writing here’s some ways you could help your mom to be a lazy mom for the day. That was super fun because I thought that might give the kids some fun, cute ideas or the dads some fun ideas on ways to kind of treat mom when it’s not Mother’s Day, not her birthday, not so, yeah, that was really fun.

I spent a period so Olivia started off writing episodes, and then we brought Betsy on later to research and write for us. And there was a period in the middle there where I was scrambling and trying to write episodes. I think we could go back and find three or four that I wrote.

And what struck me is I never knew when I started the journey of an episode. I never knew what direction it was going to go or where I was going to end up before it was all over. And it’s like the ultimate rabbit. Yeah. We would start in one place, and the episode would kind of flow, and we would get down. So Olivia would sit down to record to me, and we would get down to the third page or something. She’d be like, why are we reading this poem? Where did this poem come from? And we would look back, and one thing had sparked another thing, and it sparked another thing, and it sparked another thing. And that’s one of the fun things about it to me.

Betsy Cypress [00:20:15]:

Yes, I love it because really, I am learning so much, and it’s so much fun information and fun things. And I love the rabbit trail because for a couple of reasons. I have a friend who’s an unschooler, and she’s so good at doing rabbit trails with her kids, and so for a family like that, this is even more to feed that fire for them. But then for a family like me, who I’m not as good at that because that doesn’t occur on my list or in my plans. And I’m more that kind of a mom where I want us to make sure we get our list done. And I do try and incorporate fun things, but I’m really more the checkbox mom, right. In a good way, not in a bad way. But so having this is like, oh, we’re naturally bringing in all the rabbit trails, and I don’t have to worry that I didn’t make room for that in our home school day.

Pam Barnhill [00:21:16]:

I love it. Yeah, I love it. And I have, like, a mini course called Order and Wonder for moms, just like you and me. Yeah. So it’s like us moms who we want to bring joy and delight to our home school, and we realize that we’re the checklist moms, and so we actually have to put it on our checklist to bring joy and delight to our home. That’s right. And I think that’s Wonder World is aptly named because it does bring the Wonder. But it’s an order to that Wonder yes.

Pam Barnhill [00:21:52]:

By sticking it all in an episode and pressing play. So I love it. So what are some different ways other than just how can a mom use this in a home school or a dad?

Yeah, sure. So one thing, I think if you went to listen to it in the car together, and we are known to pause and discuss things because the kids will be like, oh, I read about this, or, I saw a YouTube video about this, or, oh, can we go to the we have a nature reserve close by. Could we go and learn more about that animal they were talking about over there? Or, Mom, I want to get library books from that about this, the wombat or whatever it is. So that’s one way is just very casual. Let’s listen. Let’s chat about it.

Betsy Cypress [00:22:41]:

You could totally play it on a Monday morning or Tuesday morning or afternoon or whatever and start your week off with that. And then maybe choose one of the days to celebrate because there’s all kinds of fun celebrations, like eat an extra Dessert Day or National Hot Dog Day, or there’s tons of food holidays, and then just other fun things, too. And you could pick one of those things to do as a family, and maybe you do it in the evening so that the whole family could or whatever time the whole family is present so you could enjoy it together. But then are you sharing about the oh, we totally are. Like, spilling the tea on that one.

Or we added starting in September now we have the Wonder Kids Club, which families can join. And this is a low cost membership. You can get in for $7 a month.

Pam Barnhill [00:23:35]:

And what are we doing with that one, Betsy? Because you probably remember better than I do.

Betsy Cypress

Yes. Okay. So I love that. And this could be something that families could do together. Or you could have your children do this more independently. Of course, you know your kids best, depending on their skill or their age. You could have them listen to the podcast, and then there’s bonus audio that they get access to.

And so you have one day of podcast and then four bonus audio pieces that are pretty short. Well, the first 1 may have been a little bit longer because I was a little bit overzealous, and then I was like, hey, I have kids to home school. Yeah, exactly. So they can listen to those bonus audio pieces. Like I said, you could do it one a day or however it best fits your family. And then you get a packet. Like you can print it off or you could just leave it on your device or something, but it’s fun. Sometimes there will be a maze, sometimes there will be a word search or a crossword puzzle.

Sometimes there will be a nature study prompt, I guess, like multipart prompt for you to do. And what we like to say in there is that you can either have your children going and doing this nature study thing outside. You could let it be your guide to do that with the kids, or you could just get a field guide or have them look it up on the computer or YouTube videos. You could do nature journaling. There’s all kinds of ideas in there to make it fit for you and your family. Let’s see coloring pages. People love the coloring pages. And the dot to dot.

Pam Barnhill [00:25:18]:

So if you’re thinking, well, I’ve got these younger kids and they’re not going to be able to do a word search or a crossword puzzle, we made sure to include some dot to dots. Yes, there’s something for the whole family in there. Some notebooking pages as well. Yes. And we’ve done multiple like two different levels so that there’s some kind of notebooking pages for the younger kids that are appropriate for them and then something for the older kids too. Yeah. And I think like the first packet we had out the notebooking page was a page that you could color and decorate and it was for Grandparents Day. So you could write a letter or a note or some kind of nice sentiment and decorate the page and give it to your grandparents for Grandparents Day.

Betsy Cypress [00:26:02]:

And if you have children who don’t like to write, which I have a couple of those, I have some who love to write and some who really think it’s a crime to have to write. So you can write it for them and they can draw the picture or trace what you wrote or whatever. They could just dictate it to you and you could jot it down for.

So I have a couple of those. Just one of our listeners, Sunny Dallas, she had mentioned she just had a baby earlier this year and so it has been so good for her because she called basically Wonderworld. She called it a ready made morning time, right? Yeah. And so she was able to just sit the kids down at lunch and press play and have them listen while they ate lunch. And now with the Wonder kids packet and the bonus audio, you could extend this even longer over the course of a week, whereas you had the single 15 to 20 minutes episode.

Now you could play audio every single day and print out the pages and have your kids work on. And I would say that probably 50% to 60% of the pages they’ll be able to do by themselves, age appropriately and then some of them would be pages. You would want to work with them. And you don’t have to do every page.

No, you really can just pick and choose what meets your goals or your desires for your family, for your home school, or what is most interesting to your kids. Or you could do the whole thing and it could be a nice chunk of your home school. And if you’re wanting to try out the more relaxed homeschooling, this would be such a great thing. And for $7 a month, you can’t beat it.

Oh, and you know what else we forgot to mention is Picture Study. We’ve had some Picture Study in there too, where you can either look on your tablet or on your computer at the picture or print it out and have the kids look at it. And then we have some little questions in there. So that in case you wanted to do that, but you don’t want to spend like, $30 on a packet that you’re not sure you’re actually going to use, then this. Is a nice way to kind of try out picture study and have good discussions with your kids about beautiful art and art that you may not have seen before. Because one time, I don’t know if this packet will have been out or not by the time the podcast releases, but we did Marco Polo was part of the packet that week or the podcast that week. And so then we had a painting that was actually in Marco Polo’s book that he wrote from like the 1200s or one three hundreds or something. So it’s just a really cool opportunity to get something that you would maybe never think of.

Pam Barnhill [00:28:59]:

Yeah, I love it. And if it hasn’t come out, it’ll be out really soon because just thinking about the schedule of how we’re working on the two different podcasts, though, if it’s not out already, it’ll be out really soon. I love this because everything ties back to the podcast for that week. Everything in the packet and the bonus audio and everything else ties back to and expands on the podcast. But it’s not a unit study in that everything spelled out for the kids. There’s still so many opportunities for them to make connections between things and them to go off on those rabbit trails and want to study new things. So I think it’s a fabulous resource for just kids. Just like you can get some quiet time, too.

Pam Barnhill [00:29:49]:

Yes. Just thinking about like, oh, when my kids were like five, seven and nine in those ages, this would have been perfect for 04:00 in the afternoon when I was getting ready to make dinner and everything and just putting on that podcast. It’s kind of quiet time. Putting on the podcast, letting them sit there at the kitchen table close to where I was and coloring the coloring pages and listening and stuff like that, and just buying myself a good. 15 minutes of peace and quiet and they’re not squabbling and then you’re not having the guilt over too much screen time or whatever.

Betsy Cypress

The other thing I was thinking, too, is that we’re doing what we call wacky words, which is a story with fill in the blanks and it will tell you similar to you’ve probably heard of Mad lives similar to that, where the kids get to practice putting in an adjective or an adverb or a pronoun or whatever part of speech is missing. And that’s really fun because it’s one of those natural ways for them to practice grammar and it ties into something that has been in the podcast or the bonus audio. And it’s just a fun, happy, natural way for them to practice grammar.

And who doesn’t want grammar to be a little bit more fun or happy? Yeah, I love that. And we have our vocabulary words with our Word of the Week, which that’s always something fun and interesting. So there’s just so many good things like well rounded opportunities for kids and families.

Yeah, I love it. And I’m just sitting here thinking, man, this would have been fabulous to have a few years ago when my kids were younger. Which brings me to what is kind of the age range for the podcast. So I think we’re kind of shooting for that middle to upper elementary age as of the core. Right.

But then I have a child who was in first grade and was loving it. And I think even younger could really enjoy it, because we do talk know, we talked about sports like professional athletes. We’ve talked about inventors know, Robert Fulton, who invented the steamboat and explorers and geography and cultures. And there’s just so many things for such a wide variety of interests. And if we have moms and dads who are loving it, I think it’s great for the whole family.

Yeah. And we have some poems that are longer, a lot of them. I think our longest was Casey at the Bat.

Pam Barnhill [00:32:28]:

But we’ve done some much shorter poems just a couple of weeks ago we did who has seen the and so that’s a much shorter poem. And then I think little kids especially would love the jokes. Yes, those are always fun. And the stories, we throw in an Aesops fable or something like that. And I think little kids will love that. So I think it’s a good range if you have probably a 12, 13, 14 year old who’s not too cool for school, they would probably at least tolerate listening to it.

Yeah, I think it’s enjoyable and especially if it gives them a few minutes of the little brother not poking them or something too. They’ll enjoy it for that reason.

Pam Barnhill [00:33:19]:

They would enjoy having something where they can write a thank you note to their grandparents or just we love you because kind of thing. That’s a nice opportunity for them.

So too, I think so, too. Well, Betsy, thank you so much for coming on and talking to us about the Wonder World podcast today. And just thank you so much for doing such a fabulous job. I always love getting the new episodes and reading them and getting prepared to record because I find it interesting and fun and exciting.

Well, I am so glad. And thank you for I mean, I love the opportunity.

Pam Barnhill [00:33:58]:

And just it’s great to be on here with you, too. It’s always a lot of fun. So much fun. All right, guys. Well, check that out wonderworldpodcast.com. You can find all the information over there, and we’ll include information in the show notes of thanks so much for listening to your Morning Basket, where to find and more time engaged in learning with your children. Join Your Morning Basket plus this year and membership with the Wonder World podcast because it’s the perfect to join. Head on over to Pambarnhill.com

So thanks so much. Bye.