Episode
The Habits Every Homeschool Family Needs with Leigh Bortins
- Podcast
- Everyday Educator
- Published
- Mar 17, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 2583
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://classicalconversations.libsyn.com/the-habits-every-homeschool-family-needs-with-leigh-bortins
Actions
POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/everyday-educator-733952/episodes/the-habits-every-homeschool-family-needs-with-leigh-bortins/transcription-requests
Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/everyday-educator-733952/the-habits-every-homeschool-family-needs-with-leigh-bortins.md
Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.
Summary
What if the most important thing you teach your child has nothing to do with curriculum? In this episode of the Everyday Educator podcast, host Emma Bortins sits down with her mother-in-law and Classical Conversations founder Leigh Bortins to discuss the ideas behind her new book, The Habits: Practicing the Art of Grammar . Together they explore how naming, attending, memorizing, expressing, and storytelling build the foundational habits that help children — and homeschool families — truly flourish. If you're a homeschool mom looking for a classical Christian approach to raising lifelong learners, this conversation is for you. Leigh opens by sharing how it took her twelve years of homeschooling to truly understand what her husband had been telling her all along — that what children need most is consistency. It wasn't until she had a second set of young boys while her older sons were teenagers that the power of habits became undeniable. The routines she had built into Robert and John made it possible to keep the family functioning; without them, the whole thing would have fallen apart. From that personal foundation, the conversation moves into the heart of the book: a framework of five habits — naming, attending, memorizing, expressing, and storytelling — that Leigh calls the building blocks of a grammar education. These aren't abstract academic concepts. They're what every good mother already does instinctively: naming the dog, teaching a toddler not to touch the stove, helping a child memorize where mom will be in Walmart. The point is to recognize these habits, name them, and practice them with intention. The episode takes a fascinating turn when Emma asks about AI and technology. Leigh's position is clear: children under 12 don't need screens at all. Not because tec…