Tadpoles, robots, and sewing machines all part of this family's hybrid-homeschool experience

Seppie Furlano gets dirty at school. It happens. He’s 8, he’s a boy, and one day a week, his classroom is a mixture of trees, shrubs, dirt, and mud.

And there’s a creek.

Seppie and his classmates, who include his 10-year-old sister, Luciana, climb trees, discover tadpoles, and build small boats out of twigs and leaves to float down the creek.

Luciana’s mom reports that her daughter doesn’t get quite as dirty as her brother, but she has just as much fun. Together, they explore and learn about the great outdoors and all it has to offer at Curious and Kind, a nature-based, hybrid school located near their Sarasota home.

The school, started two years ago by Justine Wilson and her husband, Chris Trammel, is now part of the hybrid learning, homeschool experience that Kristina and Dominic Furlano designed for their children with the help of education choice scholarships managed by Step Up For Students.

“I absolutely love the scholarship,” Kristina said. “The scholarship has made our homeschooling journey what it is today. My kids are absolutely thriving.”

Actually, Kristina balks a little at the word homeschooling, because Luciana and Seppie learn both inside and outside the home.

“I feel like that is the complete opposite of homeschooling,” she said.

The scholarships are education savings accounts (ESA) that allow the Furlano’s flexibility to tailor the homeschool curriculum toward each child’s needs and interests. They have joined the growing number of parents in Florida who are taking the hybrid route, finding educational environments outside the home to give their children something they can’t experience inside the home.

Parents are supplementing in-home learning by sending their children to educational environments that specialize in such activities as music, fashion, cooking, robotics, athletics, and nature. Call it “à la carte learning.”

Curious and Kind offers four different programs for different age groups, from “walking ages” to teenagers. Depending on the program, families can enroll what the school calls their “explorers” one, two, or three days a week. (Read more about the school here.)

“We are part of a homeschool family's menu that they designed specifically for their child,” Justine Wilson said.

Luciana takes sewing and musical theater classes, while Seppie attends a local STEM program that offers classes in Lego robotics. On Tuesdays, the two can be found at a local skate park with other homeschooled children. Some parents use skateboarding as a physical education requirement. Afternoons are often blocked out for reading tutors.

This summer, the two will participate in several camps, more outdoor fun at Curious and Kind, and a baking camp. If all goes well, baking camp will turn into baking classes during the 2025-26 school year. Kristina has already expanded her children’s outdoor learning for next year by enrolling them at Curious and Kind for two days a week.

“I like my kids to be out of the house, but only for a couple of days a week. I don't want them gone five days a week,” Kristina said. “If they are gone two or three times out of the week, it gives them some structure, and they get to make friends, and I get to do what I need to do while they're gone.”

Luciana originally attended a local private school. She is dyslexic, though, and that hindered her learning. She had to repeat the first grade. She also suffered from anxiety at school. So, Kristina and Dominic decided homeschooling was the best option.

Because she is dyslexic, Luciana qualified for the Family Empowerment Scholarship for Students with Unique Abilities.

Because Seppie is homeschooled, he qualified for the Personalized Education Program (PEP) scholarship.

The flexibility of homeschooling allows Kristina to schedule online reading tutors for the afternoon, when she feels Luciana and Seppie are more receptive to video lessons. It works.

“My daughter read her very first book two weeks ago, so that was amazing,” Kristina said. “We were all so worried about this child, and then she read this book. She’s on her sixth book now. I mean, they're all the very beginner books, but she's got it, and she's putting it together, and it's just been really helpful to have the tutor.”

The ESAs pay for homeschool curriculum, reading tutors, a ton of art and sewing supplies, sewing and outdoor classes, musical theater, and summer camps.

Luciana has learned to sew by taking classes from a mother who also homeschools her children.

“Luciana is using a real sewing machine. She designs. She cuts the fabric out, picks her fabric, picks her string, and sews the entire thing,” Kristina said.

Luciana has made pajama pants, a skirt, a hat, bags, and sleeping masks.

“They do fashion shows,” Kristina said. “She has a little portfolio.”

Because of Luciana’s dyslexia, Kristina said a brick-and-mortar school will never be a good fit for her daughter. She has no intention of sending Seppie to one, either.

“The beauty of homeschooling is to not make your child have this cookie-cutter education that society wants your children to have,” Kristina said. “Now we have this generation of home-schooled children who are going to take over the world with their creativity. They're not going to work 9-to-5. They’re going to be entrepreneurs.”

Roger Mooney, manager, communications, can be reached at [email protected].