THE SENSORY MADE SIMPLE PODCAST

Transcript

Hey, Malia, I am so excited to have you here with us today, especially because I've been loving everything you are sharing already this summer.

All things sprinkles and ice cream, which is totally up my alley.

But before we begin, can you tell us a little bit about you and who you are?

Yeah, so I am Malia Phelps Waller.

I am a homeschool mom of two.

I have a four-year-old and an eight-year-old.

And before I dove into this experience and journey of homeschooling, I was a public school special education teacher for 11 years.

I taught in the preschool autism classroom in our local public school system.

And then I moved into assistive technology support.

And I did that for my last five years of teaching before coming home.

And I'm also a board-certified behavior analyst.

So I have multi-passions about helping people in their educational process.

And so, yeah, I really love to dive in and chat all things education.

Yeah, that's one of the things I really find so cool about you is that you have so much experience in, I mean, really different areas, but they all work together really well.

So can you tell us a little bit more about those and how it landed you here?

Sure.

So, gosh, I don't even know where to start.

I'm going to go like way, way back.

I have a sibling who has cerebral palsy and is physically disabled.

He is about to turn 30.

He's the best ever and lives in Florida with my parents.

But I think that growing up with a sibling who needed adaptations and modifications for everything in life really fueled my interest in the field in general.

And then I ended up going to graduate school, getting my master's degree in special education, and loving what I was doing in the public school system in terms of helping in the early childhood education sector.

And I really found a deep passion for learning through play in that setting.

And then I kind of just took that and segued it through my assistive technology work, and then also into my own homeschool where we spent a lot of time learning things in playful ways and whole body movement kind of ways.

Your homeschooling ideas, they just look so much fun.

And you actually posted a reel recently where you were in Target, and you were using that as part of your homeschool learning, which I was like, I mean, come on, we all love Target.

I was like, if you can combine the two.

Yes, I love that so much.

So how do you use these daily experiences to actually teach your child something new?

Can you explain what your trip to Target kind of look like?

Yeah, so in that reveal, we were prepping for a Cub Scout camping trip.

My son is involved in the Cub Scouts, and I have the privilege, honor, of being the Cub Scout camping trip food menu planner and prepper.

So I had to take both my kids on quite a few adventures for lots and lots of food.

We hit Target, we hit Aldi, we hit Costco.

And we were planning meals for three days for 60 campers.

So a lot of what we did was, for my youngest, we were diving in to just camping, sorry, counting out the number of like hamburger buns we would need.

And then for my oldest, I could, you know, take that and say we have 60 people and there's 12 buns in every package of hamburger buns.

How many packages do we need little sister to count out for us to put in our cart to make sure everybody can have a hamburger?

So just thinking about math skills while we were on that path, navigating the grocery store.

So we did a lot of that.

We did a lot of reading through reading our labels and making sure that they were allergy friendly.

We did a lot of body awareness and spatial awareness by allowing my oldest to push the cart.

He actually, I was very impressed, got complimented at Costco by a gentleman who said he was pushing the giant cart better than most adults were in the store.

So I was like, that's awesome that you have that awareness and you weren't just, you know, using it as a skateboard up and down the aisles.

That's pretty amazing, especially at Costco.

Yeah, so I really think one of the fun things about homeschooling is that we can take any real life situation and apply the things that we're learning in our curriculum.

And so that is what I strive to share and teach through Instagram and my other things that I do.

First, I, as a feeding specialist, love how you are exploring new foods in the grocery store in Target.

That's such an easy way to do it.

That's no pressure.

And second, how relatable is it to or how much more is it relatable to do this in Target versus two trains are coming at each other from A and B?

And it's just so much more applicable to their life.

And I just wonder how much more they learn that way.

Yes.

And I also think it's a fun way to kind of disguise that we are learning because it's not sit down and read this math problem on your workbook.

Instead, it's our friends are coming camping with us and we need to know how many hamburgers to make to make sure everybody gets a hamburger.

And I think that that is so much more, I don't know, like a slick way to sneak those skills in and practice those skills rather than just doing it all ourselves as the adult.

And so I really love to involve my kids in that kind of thing.

It's fun.

It makes learning just actually more fun and want to do it.

So some of our listeners may actually be a little bit more new to the idea of using play for learning.

So can you explain it just a little bit more about what that actually means?

Yeah, so I think one thing that we often forget as adults is that play is happening still for us, even when we're grown up.

It just kind of looks different.

So for some people, play might be sitting down and reading a book, right?

An activity that you enjoy that's leisurely.

For others, it might be getting out to play golf or going to play tennis.

But I think that's the first disclaimer I need to share because I think people are like, play is for preschoolers.

We don't play anymore.

And so I think that taking what we've learned and diving into it from a playful perspective can be so fun.

And there's so many easy ways to get started with that.

First of all, you can incorporate board games.

Every basic board game has a ton of literacy and math skills, especially involved in it.

And if you think about Candyland, you're not necessarily reading, but you are picking a card and you're identifying colors and you're counting out spaces.

And so there's so many skills that I think that we forget are teaching opportunities when we're doing fun things.

And the same could be said for getting outside with chalk, for example.

Drawing a line on the sidewalk with a piece of chalk for a toddler is a prewriting skill.

Taking your spelling words outside with chalk and writing them on the sidewalk can be so much more engaging for an elementary age kid than spitting out the words to them and having them sit and write it on a piece of paper and then turn it back into you.

So it's just kind of like a mindset shift, I would say, of how you can incorporate play and learning.

Yeah, and then you're incorporating that sensory motor aspect too, which when you do that, I mean, magic happens in the brain.

Yes, especially for our uniquely wired friends who are seeking constantly seeking sensory input or avoiding sensory input.

Right.

And so I love that we can play into each of our child's unique needs in the homeschool space without it being some huge hurdle to jump over and convince everybody on the team that they have to participate in that, for example.

And we have the luxury and the privilege to meet our kids' needs at home.

And it's so easy to lean into that.

Yes.

So you mentioned that it's easy for somebody who's maybe considering becoming a homeschool mama.

It does seem I mean, even for me, like thinking about thinking about it, it seems like a lot.

It seems overwhelming.

How do you how do you manage that?

Do you mean manage it for me personally or help other people?

I think let's start with how do you manage their their education?

Where does somebody start?

Yeah, I mean, there are a ton of resources available to kind of coach you through getting started homeschooling and choosing curriculum.

But I think the number one most important thing to do is to go to your state's requirements for homeschooling so you can understand what the expectations are legally in the state that you live in.

And then I think the second most important thing to do is to talk with your partner and brainstorm and journal out all of the things that your ideal homeschool day would look like.

Maybe that is you also working while you're homeschooling.

Maybe it's one parent is 100% devoted to homeschooling.

Maybe it's a shared job and each parent is going to have different subjects.

So I think leading into that can help guide you before you dive into choosing curriculum.

And then the third thing I would say is to lean into your kids and what their interests and needs are and go from there when you're choosing curriculums to guide you.

Yeah.

And how about let's talk about you now.

So as a mom coming with ideas, working, you have a business, balancing having kids at home while you do this and taking care of all the house tasks.

What are some tips that help you manage this?

I think lowering my own expectations of myself as a recovering type A person has been something that I've really leaned into lately, showing myself grace when I feel like I haven't done everything I wanted to do or felt like I was capable of doing.

I will say I lean into having certain hours of my day set aside for working on business tasks, and I typically have my kids involved in a co-op or some kind of activity where they're engaged with other people during that time, or I work while they're sleeping.

So that's been helpful for me.

And then for the household tasks, I kind of like time block things and we lay them out on different days of the week.

And then I show myself huge amounts of grace if I don't have time to get to them, circling back to that first one.

My favorite right now is time blocking, cleaning tasks, and doing just a little bit every day.

I used to roll my eyes when people said that like, oh, just do a little bit every day.

But when I actually came up with a certain task to do every day, it seems to go a lot smoother.

Yes, I love me some Toilet Tuesdays.

That one I try to push off to JR.

Right?

There are some times when those hints don't get picked up.

Never.

So you and I did an IG live way, way back, and you kind of even dove into this a little already.

But we talked about play for older children because a lot of the times we do forget like older children play.

I want to bring that up again.

And I think kind of like we mentioned, we just struggle with the word play when we're talking about these older kids and you have an eight year old.

So what kind of activities do you do with him that are maybe a little bit more playful at this age?

Sure.

So, I mean, he's huge into board games.

We love a good board game and game schooling is so fun.

We do what we call like fun Fridays on Game Stack Fridays, and we stack up games with different skills.

So he picks one and then I pick one that targets something that maybe we need to work on.

There are so many educational games that that makes that super easy.

He's also a huge fan of Minecraft.

So something that I've loved to incorporate lately is diving into the things that we've been learning in our history and sciences and challenging him to build them in his Minecraft space.

So he did a report this year on Jackie Robinson that he shared with his co-op friends.

And so I was like, well, could you build the stadium that they played their their first game in together that Jackie played his first?

Oh, my goodness, his first major league baseball game in there it is.

And so he did that.

And that was super fun.

He also loves Legos and building things, engineering, creating.

So we do a lot of learning through that, those activities as well.

And he's a huge athlete, loves sports.

So sometimes we just take math skills and place them into a sport game that we're doing.

Like if he wants to practice pitching for baseball, then every time I throw, I ask him a math fact.

And if he answers correctly, I throw it.

If he doesn't answer correctly, then he has to answer another one or figure it out.

So just kind of adding in that playful piece where he gets to do something he loves, but we're also targeting the skills we need to target to kind of continue to grow and build educationally.

Yeah, really leaning into what they show you they like.

So tell us what are some of his favorite board games?

What are some of your favorite board games?

Oh, this is a good one.

I'm really into cooperative board games right now because we have multi-age kids in our house for coding practice.

There's one called Robot Turtles that's super fun.

So we like that one.

Outfoxed is another fun cooperative game that everybody can do.

It's kind of like a clue.

You have to beat the fox in solving who did the crime.

So that one is super fun.

Yeah, there's a lot of fun games like taco versus burrito that are kind of just like silly games where you're like doing math and trying to build the burrito with the most points.

But it's got like silly cards that are like gross foods that you wouldn't necessarily want to have in taco.

So it's kind of a fun game for math skills and chatting about your ideal food preferences.

I know I'm thinking I need taco versus burrito.

Yeah, I was just thinking that I wasn't even planning that when I mentioned it, but I think you would like it.

So yeah, there's there's so many different options.

But for for sure, my favorites for the multi aged group family are those cooperative ones.

My favorite part of working with somebody in OT is when we can play board games.

My current favorites.

Well, longtime favorites.

I shouldn't even say current favorites.

There is a cupcake game from Target where you build princess cupcakes.

And anytime one of the kids chooses that, I am through the roof excited to play this game.

I feel like my four year old would love that.

Oh, it's so cute.

And then there's also a pancake one.

Of course, everything food theme because I just love food.

But you have to copy pancake pictures and it works on flipping skills.

It works on counting.

It works on copying things.

So I love how much emphasis you put on board games are easy ways to incorporate learning.

Yes.

Yes, they are.

We have a huge shelf of board games.

And I feel like every time I feel like I want to declutter and find space, I just I'm so attached to them.

Another really fun one I just thought of was engineering ants.

It's a stem game.

It's also cooperative.

And you work as a team to overcome obstacles.

So you have to build contraptions for ants to like get over the giant rock and make your way to the end picnic or whatever.

So that one's really fun too.

That's cute.

I haven't heard of any of these games you're mentioning today.

I need to go look them all up.

So you did mention a couple of times about a co-op.

Could you tell us a little bit about what they do at the co-op?

What goes on there?

How it supplements your homeschool learning?

Sure.

So the one that my son attends is kind of an enrichment type of co-op.

It's four hours.

It's a drop off program.

So I get four hours of business time while he gets four hours of fun with friends and learning.

And in that particular co-op, they dive into a literature study, science, music and art.

So he gets to do all of those things on top of what we already are doing at home with his peers and play games.

And then they also have add on enrichment activities that you can do.

That's like an hour after that program.

So they've done things like cake decorating, creepy crawlies, like a deep dive into bugs.

That one was really interesting for our family when my son did it, because he would just come and like share all these disgusting facts about things like skin mites and dust mites.

And I was like, I really just enjoyed my life more before I knew the details of all of those things in my house.

And then this year, I'm actually teaching a class at the co-op.

So I'm excited about that.

It's ironically all about board games.

It's going to be a deep dive into different styles of board games.

And then at the end of the semester, we're going to create our own games and then play them.

So I'm really excited about that.

That's so cool.

So is that something that you have to be in person for or could people do that online too?

This particular one is an in-person one in our local area.

But I know that there are tons of classes and activities just like these throughout school.

So that might be a place to look for virtual options.

That is really cool.

It's gonna be a lot of fun.

Yeah, I'm excited.

So if somebody is feeling really inspired today, loves the idea of playing to learn, where can they find you?

Where can they learn more?

How do they get started on that journey?

Yeah.

So I have a website at Malia Phelps waller.com.

Easy to find me there.

And I'm also on Instagram at Malia Phelps Waller Homeschool.

And if you go to Malia Phelps Waller Homeschool in my link in bio, I have what I call the Homeschool Toolbox.

And inside there, there's a checklist of kind of the top things I would do if you were leading into getting started with homeschooling.

And then there's also a Playful Learning Ebook that dives more into how to create the perfect sensory play bin for your child and learning objectives, as well as kind of an intro into gameschooling and some of our favorite four games that we love to play all the time.

And I'm just so excited about your summer pack in your homeschool hub.

So can you tell them a little bit about that too?

Yes.

So the theme this month in June is ice cream.

So I also run a community for homeschool families of high energy, hands-on, neurodivergent learners where we kind of dive into a curated topic every month and also have a curated print and play pack that comes with 20 activities, five for each age group.

The first one being toddlers, then preschoolers, then elementary, and then whole family and adult, teen, like anything you can do as a whole group that big people are going to love to.

And so you can dive into all sorts of fun, playful activities.

And in the ice cream one, there's some really fun stuff like ice cream trivia and how to make your own ice cream and a few recipes for sensory play that lend themselves to creating a pretend ice cream shop, which we love to do here in our house.

Yeah, so you get that.

You get the monthly master class of curated topics, a monthly guest speaker and a monthly coffee chat Q&A.

All of those are live events.

And then there's a podcast feed for those of us who, you know, enjoy the podcast life more than being live and present life.

So that's the super fun way to learn and grow as well as a homeschooling parent.

Oh, it's so fun.

I didn't realize 25.

That's a lot.

That's a lot of different ways to use like one theme.

Yes.

So and I feel like I could probably come up with more activities and ideas too, but I wanted it to be something that the whole family could dive into.

So the idea being that the toddler activities may still appeal, you know, to your elementary age kids.

But the learning, specific learning targets that I've added are more for that age group, if that makes sense.

That does.

I love that you have the different ages and you're kind of incorporating everybody.

Thanks.

Yeah, I love the whole family approach to learning.

And I think it's so fun when you can be playful together as a family and be silly and just enjoy your time together.

And perfect for summer.

Yeah.

So we do have a couple rapid fire questions before we go that I like to ask all of my guests.

Okay, bring them on.

As you know, I talk all about sensory processing and how we all have our own little sensory quirks.

I usually talk about my quirk with Saran Wrap on here.

But another one that I haven't shared because it's a little embarrassing is I growing up, I hated circles.

So like things with buttons, like when we were picking out our wedding tables, I didn't want wedding tables that were circles.

They had to be squares.

So that is a little embarrassing.

But that's one of my sensory quirks.

Is there a sensory quirk that you have?

I, yes, I am very sensitive to competing noises, I guess I'll say.

But my brain really loves to hear when people are chewing.

But I don't really love that sound.

You know, like my brain can highly focus that people are chewing around me, but it's like very averse to me.

So I really struggle with that during mealtimes, hearing loud chewers around me.

It really distracts me from having a conversation.

You are not alone in that.

That's actually a very common one.

But you did find something for your ears recently that I think has been really helpful for you, haven't you?

Yes, I did.

And you know, well, first I'll tell you what they are.

They're the Loop headphones and they are amazing.

Sorry, not headphones, earplugs.

They kind of just mute some things, but you can still have a conversation and hear what's happening.

So I love that about them because I can wear them to kind of lower the volume of what's happening around me.

I have two high energy kids and a puppy and there's always competing noises happening in my house.

So sometimes by the end of the day, I just need a little bit lower volume.

And if they're not doing that on their own, then I can help myself with those loop earplugs.

So that's been super helpful.

You and about three or four other moms mentioned these to me recently.

And I'm like, oh, my God, I have to I have to get a fair and try this out.

I feel like the parenting world is like all of us about these things because they're amazing.

And because you can still hear your child at the same time versus the AirPods, you can't hear anything once you put them in.

Yes, absolutely.

OK, so next one.

What was eating like for you as a child and does it influence how you interact with food today?

Oh, this is a good one.

I really love all foods.

I feel like eating hasn't been a struggle for me until adulthood when I developed adult allergies to things.

So I don't know if there's a correlation in my childhood habits and the things I'm allergic to.

But for example, I was a huge sesame chicken, everything seasoning, I'm a girl, hummus, all the things.

And in my early 30s, I developed an allergy to sesame.

How unfair is that?

That's wild.

So I think that's the only thing that's been a struggle for me in the eating world.

So all your favorite things out the door.

I know.

No more everything bagels.

I've like settled on like alternating between the onion or the salt, but it really doesn't give you everything.

Yeah, I do love an everything but the bagel seasoning.

Yes, that's so good.

And it's so trendy right now, too.

It's like everywhere.

It is.

Yes.

So our last one, we kind of already talked about one, but what's another technique you like to use to either calm down or wake up your nervous system when you're noticing it's a little dysregulated?

I am a huge fan of shape breathing to calm myself down when I'm feeling overwhelmed.

So what I mean by that is I will envision a shape like a square and I will breathe in on one side and then breathe out across the top and then breathe in down again and out across the bottom.

And something about envisioning the shape as I'm breathing like really helps me come back down.

Oh, I love that because breathing out is actually what stimulates us to go into rest and digest.

Everybody thinks it's the breathing in, but it's the breathing out.

I love that tip.

And I think probably envisioning a shape helps your mind stay a little focused, like more focused than if you were just thinking breathe.

Yes, because I'm thinking about the shape, not about the act of breathing.

Yeah, for sure.

That helps.

Oh, I love that one.

So Malia, thank you so much for being here today and teaching everybody everything they need to know.

Well, not everything.

There's a lot more to learn from Malia about play and homeschooling.

It's such a pleasure to have you here.

Thanks so much for having me.

I always have so much fun chatting with you, Sam.

Oh, me too.

Thanks again.