Claire
Hi — I'm Claire, the voice behind the grovio Guide.
If you've read any of the articles, you already know the gist of me: a homeschool mom a couple of years in, doing this alongside a lot of other moms who are figuring it out too. But people sometimes ask how I ended up writing about all this, so here's the longer answer.
For years, my whole world was small children. I owned and ran a little Montessori preschool program in Charleston back when my own son was a baby and then a preschooler himself, which meant I was studying how kids learn and watching it unfold in my own house at the same time. I was doing graduate-level work in developmental psychology in those same years — so yes, I've done the reading and sat with the theory — but honestly, most of what stuck came from being surrounded by little ones all day, mine and everyone else's, and seeing which ideas actually held up once a real three-year-old was involved.
These days it's that same son, now elementary-aged, that I'm homeschooling — usually with another little one on my hip and a cup of coffee I've reheated three times. I'm part of a local co-op, too, which keeps me in the middle of the real conversations: the mom panicking about her state's paperwork, the one whose carefully planned schedule fell apart by Tuesday, the one quietly wondering if any of this is enough. I've been each of those moms at one point or another, and the Guide is really just me passing along what I've learned, what I've gotten wrong, and what the women around me have taught me.
So when something in the Guide feels specific, it's because it's lived. The voice here isn't a made-up character handing out generic advice — it's me, with a few more years and a lot more moms behind it than fit neatly under a byline.
A note on the name
Claire is a pen name. I'm Sondra — grovio's founder.
I write as Claire because it lets me show up as the warm, grounded voice you meet in every article, without making it feel like a resume. But everything here is mine. The preschool years, the research, the homeschool days, the co-op conversations. The specificity is because I've lived it.
grovio is a product of Skipper Investments LLC. It's built by one person — me — and that's part of why it's quiet, simple, and built to last rather than scale.
Why grovio exists
I built grovio because I needed it. I had attendance in three different notebooks and none of them were complete. Our best work was scattered across my camera roll with no way to organize it. The apps I tried felt like they were built for schools, not families.
So I made the thing I wished existed: a calm, simple place to track learning, capture moments, and stay compliant — without turning the day into admin work.
If grovio helps you the way I needed it to help me, that's the whole point.
— Sondra, writing as Claire