Erin Napier Shares a Rare Look Into Her Homeschooling Setup, Admits She Once Thought It Was 'Weird'

The HGTV star previously opened up to PEOPLE about her and husband Ben’s decision to homeschool their daughters, including why they chose to be their teachers

NEED TO KNOW

• Erin Napier is sharing how she and her husband Ben homeschool their daughters while balancing their HGTV filming schedule
• The couple divides teaching duties, covering subjects like history, art, and science with a structured daily routine
• Their daughters participate in extracurriculars like gymnastics, piano, and track to ensure social interaction and diverse activities

Erin Napier is offering a rare look at how she transforms her home into a classroom to homeschool her two daughters.

The Home Town star, 40, shared a “day in the life” of a homeschool family with all her “curious” followers in an Instagram post on Sunday, April 19. Over a compilation of photos and videos showing off her at-home classroom setup, she admitted to having her own hesitations when it came to homeschooling. 

“Some people think homeschooling is weird. I did too when I was young,” she says. “Around the time Helen was born, we met some homeschoolers who were so remarkable, so mature, so communicative, and interested in learning, it made us realize we wanted whatever that was."

In the video, Napier is referring to herself and her husband, Ben Napier, with whom she shares daughters Helen, 8, and Mae, 4. 

A series of photos then appear in the clip, including an image of her two daughters working at their desks, followed by a glimpse of some of the projects they do during school. 

Another photo shows Erin holding up what appears to be a paintbrush and smiling at the camera, followed by a shot of her and her daughters working outside at their Laurel, Miss., home. 

“The day starts with chores: dishes, laundry, feeding dogs, watering the garden," she adds in white text over a clip of the two girls doing their chores in the kitchen. She adds that her 4-year-old's daily task is “watering the garden every morning.”

“Our team generously carves out 2 or more hours from our filming day to teach the girls 3 of those days, sometimes 4," she continues. "If there's a day that construction needs us the whole day, our friend who is a retired teacher subs those 2 hours for us."

Ben and Erin are hosts of their home renovation show, HGTV's Home Town, as well as its spinoff shows Home Town Takeover and Home Town: Inn This Together.

The mom of two then explains how she and her husband split their teaching responsibilities to ensure their daughters have a structured agenda each day. 

“Ben has a degree in history, minor in English and is a former youth pastor, so he does a daily deep dive on teaching history, Bible and math,” Erin writes. “While he does his subjects, I work with Mae on phonics and simple arithmetic.”

She continues, “Then we switch, and I teach Helen language arts (grammar, spelling, poetry, cursive), etiquette (I'm learning some things alongside her best of all!), art and science. We do classic literature read alouds (we only have time for 1 chapter a day), with narration afterward where Helen tells us everything that happened first, then next, then last. We ask her a lot of questions that require logic to answer.”

She notes that her daughters' “off day” is filled with a variety of activities, from “french lessons, piano lessons, job shadow, horseback riding” and more. 

As for friends and social activities, she adds, “Every day they have group extracurriculars or sports: gymnastics, tennis, ballet, art class, track team. They see 12-20 of their friends for about an hour every day. There are even homeschool reading fairs and science fairs and field trips to be part of.”

Erin concludes her caption by emphasizing that she and Ben will do this routine “for as long as it serves the girls, and someday send them to high school.”

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Last year, the couple opened up to PEOPLE about pushing themselves to do “hard things,” which included homeschooling their daughters.

“We started homeschooling,” Ben said. “The kids. And we're doing it. [Every time] when we say it, people are like, ‘Oh, did you hire a tutor?' And we're like, ‘No, we're the tutors.'” 

When the two were asked about any non-negotiables they have as a family to help ensure a slower lifestyle, Erin said homeschooling definitely helps. 

“Homeschooling. It's not a non-negotiable, it's what we're trying this year," Erin responded. "But they've never had devices, they've never held phones or tablets or iPads. We're trying to live like it's our childhood again."

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