How to Hang Out with Your Homeschool Friends in a Socially Distanced World

With Covid spiking and the usual back-to-school sniffles, this fall might start to feel like a tough season for homeschool get-togethers. If you want to keep your homeschool groups healthy, you don’t have to go no-contact, but you do have to be smart about how you socialize.

“In some ways, it’s harder for people to navigate socializing now than it was when the pandemic first started,” says Andrea Chronis-Tuscano, a clinical psychology professor at the University of Maryland who specializes in parenting and parent mental health. “The rules were clear.” But now that hanging out is back on the table, it’s hard to navigate: How can you stay safe? What does it mean to be a good host now? What does it mean to be a good guest? How do you say no when you’re uncomfortable with the way a social situation is going?

The good news is that we’re all figuring this out together, says Chronis-Tuscano. “No one has a rule book with all the answers, and everybody’s answers look a little different.”

We all know the basic rules: Wear masks, maintain six feet of distance, don’t share food and drinks, stick to small groups, stay outside, and wash your hands frequently. But how does that play out on a homeschool play date or at an in-person co-op class? Here are some things to keep in mind.

Respect the strictest rules.

People may not always want to disclose why they’re being extra-cautious, but the why doesn’t really matter — if you’re hanging out with friends, you want your friends to be comfortable. This is why it’s important to spell out the safety guidelines you have in mind for a get-together when you’re issuing invites. You don’t have to change your plans to accommodate someone else (you’d love to hang outside, but your allergies are killing you this fall), but you may find that there’s an easy fix (sure, you can bring your own food instead of ordering something with the rest of us).

Follow your own rules.

If you issue an invitation for an outdoor gathering, resist the urge to move the action inside. If you’ve promised social distancing, don’t send the kids on the trampoline together. No one wants to be the killjoy who has to keep reminding everyone else to follow the rules, so don’t put your guests in that unpleasant position. If you’re the unfortunate person in the killjoy position, you may find it easier to make an excuse and leave than to try to persuade people to follow the rules. (Even though they made them. And you’re not being a killjoy!)

Set up in advance.

Make your hangout area social distance friendly by setting chairs six feet apart and removing extra seating. If you’re a throwing an art party, have everyone’s station set up before they arrive — if you’re having a snack together, set up the tables and chairs in advance with space between them.

Stick with your comfort zone.

It’s fine if you’re more relaxed than your pals, or if you’re sticking to a stricter quarantine plan than they are. Everybody has to make these decisions for her family individually. It’s OK to say no to get-togethers that make you uncomfortable. We’re all looking forward to the day when we can hug our friends and share a bag of pretzels at the park, but until that day comes, we’re all doing the best we can.

How do you help middle and high school homeschoolers build academic focus?

Now that my son is in sixth grade, he’s doing work that requires him to really dig in and focus. He’s doing good work, but he’s so easily distracted, and he has trouble concentrating. Is there anything I can do to help improve his focus?

Learning to focus can be hard even for adults, but most of the time, all you need to boost your concentration is a change in your routine and regular practice, says Michael Coates, M.D., chair of the Department of Family and Community Medicine at Wake Forest School of Medicine. Try these easy-to-implement actions to help your son improve his focus.

Set a timer.

Something about an established time limit — “Work on this math for 15 minutes” — inspires focus, so don’t hesitate to break out the kitchen timer when you get to a subject you know taxes your son’s concentration skills. Start with small increments of time, and gradually increase time spent until you reach the amount of focused time you’re shooting for. This works best if you don’t rush — you don’t have to increase the time every day. Instead, give your son a chance to really adjust to each increase before adding more time.

Check your sleep habits.

Around sixth grade, some kids start making the shift to adolescent sleep habits, which means their bodies naturally want to stay up later and sleep longer in the mornings. Kids really need at least seven hours of sleep a night to concentrate during the day, so if your child’s sleep patterns are changing but your schedule isn’t, it may be time to try something different. Even just starting an hour later in the morning may be enough to improve your son’s concentration.

Practice mindfulness.

If your son starts to drift off during reading assignments or conversations, it may be that he’s spoiled by the everything-now nature of video games, Wikipedia, and Twitter. To help him shake that I-could-be-doing-10-other-things-now feeling, encourage him to pause and wiggle his toes or snap his fingers. That moment of focused concentration will help his focus settle back down.

Have a glass of water.

A 2012 study in the Journal of Nutrition found that being as little as two percent dehydrated — such mild dehydration that your body doesn’t even feel thirsty — can negatively impact concentration. Pour your son a big glass of water before his next intensive focus session.

Jump around.

Exercise is one of the best ways to improve focus, so take plenty of action breaks to walk around the block, kick a soccer ball in the backyard, do jumping jacks in the living room, or play a quick round of Wii Sports between subjects.

Bottom line: Don’t expect your son’s concentration abilities to develop on their own. Help him sharpen them over time by test-driving different focus-boosting techniques.

What’s the best way to organize your homeschool library?

I have a problem: Our library is out of control. I don’t mind the bookcases taking over our house, but I hate when I discover a book that I bought for a particular subject but forgot about until months after we wrapped up studying that subject—or worse, when I buy a book only to find that I already own a copy of it. Is there any way to organize our homeschool library so that it’s a resource and not a headache?

The key to useful and accessible homeschool library: Good organization. If you want to wrangle your book collection into a well-organized library, you’re going to have to get hands-on. Here’s how:

Start by making an inventory.

I know! It’s a huge project. It’s dusty and messy — and it’s probably not something you can accomplish in a single afternoon. But it is the only place to start if you really want to organize your library. Start a list of all the books in your collection — I use index cards, but you could set up an Excel spreadsheet or use a tool like LibraryThing instead. (If you have a lot of newer books, LibraryThing has an app that scans book barcodes to instantly upload their information, which is pretty convenient.)

As you sort, you may find books that you can discard or give away — I hear this happens sometimes, though I’ve not personally experienced it. If you uncover books you can part with, trade them in a used bookstore for more books, drop them off at your homeschool group’s free pile, or donate them to your favorite thrift shop. (You can try to sell high-quality or expensive books you’re ready to let go of.)

Catalog your books.

A list of books is great, but you really want to make it easy to find books about, say, Egyptian history and mythology or the California gold rush when you want them, right? Tag your books with labels to help you sort them.

With my index cards, I create subject cards where I list books I own in a particular subject — medieval history, coming-of-age novels, dinosaurs, etc. (Some subjects require more than one card, some books go onto multiple cards, and I jot new titles as we acquire them.) In Excel, designate a field for tags. The idea is to create a simple system that will remind you what books you have on any subject when you want to find them, so it’s better to err on the side of extra tags — that way, when you hit search, you’re more likely to actually find what you are looking for.

Shelve your books.

Lots of homeschoolers have more books than shelf space. To deal, “shelve” subject-specific groups of books in plastic bins, and label your bin with the subject (Japan, biology, astronomy, etc.) and a list of the books inside. (I think this is easiest with a bin per subject, but of course you can lump subjects together if you prefer.) Then note which books are binned — I fold a sticky flag over the right corner of my index cards, or you can change the color of binned books in your spreadsheet or just leave yourself a note.) Then, when you’re ready to tackle a particular subject, all your books are ready in one place.

For the books that go on your shelves, sort them by author, subject, or size, and note where to find them. (My daughter’s Warrior Cat books are shelved as O-1, cluing me in that they’re on the first bookshelf in her room, while our Story of the World collection is in the foyer bookcase: F.)

Keep it organized.

For this system to work long-term, you have to be vigilant about updating it every time you add a new book to your collection. At our house, new books go into a holding box, and they’re considered unavailable until they’ve been cataloged and shelved — otherwise, they’d drift off with a happy reader and vanish from our records. I don’t love having to move things around in the garage to add a single volume to our U.S. History bin, but I do love the fact that when we need our U.S. History collection, it’s easy to find and enjoy.

Working Full-Time and Homeschooling: How I Do It

I’m totally lucky to get to balance a job I love with hands-on homeschooling, which I also love, but hitting that balance isn’t always easy, and I’m learning to be okay with that.

I work full-time. (And then some.) I also homeschool my kids in a pretty hands-on way. And you might think that this all gets easier as kids get older and more independent, but I’ve found the opposite to be true. High school homeschooling, when you’re doing most of it in the homeschooling-at-home kind of way, takes a lot of time and energy. People are often interested in how I balance these two big jobs, so I thought I’d write a post about my work/homeschool balancing act.

First off, I’m pretty sure a lot of the time that I do it pretty badly. It’s not easy. Things slip through the cracks. I have a vague, nagging sense of guilt all the time, like whatever I’m doing at any given time, I should be doing something else. (I’m not saying this to complain — I know I’m lucky to get to do things this way. But I think it would be totally fake to pretend that working full time and homeschooling is easy or that I do it well all the time!)

And second, I love what I do. I think I have the best job in the entire world, and I find homeschooling really fun and satisfying. I think if either one of those things weren’t true, my situation would feel much harder. I also know that I’m able to make my balancing act work because when my kids were younger, I worked 95% of the time from my home office. That changed when my oldest started high school and I started a hybrid homeschool in Atlanta; first I worked one day a week teaching AP English, then two days a week running the high school humanities program, and now I’m at the school five days a week for middle and high school. My youngest, who is in 11th grade, is a student at the school, though we also do a lot of homeschool stuff together at home.

Here’s what works for me:

I completely let go of the idea of a normal workday.

I have a big workload, and in a more traditional environment, I’d be logging plenty of overtime. Last year, I made the decision not to keep up with my hours of work time at home or try to set up a consistent schedule. I work when I need to work. My kids are late sleepers, so I’m usually able to get in three or four hours of work before they wake up in the morning. I usually work while I eat lunch and then in the afternoon and evening when the kids are doing their own things. I work through the weekend. Most days, we’re actively homeschooling for about four hours, and we try to spend at least an hour or two every day just doing something fun together — watching a show, playing a game, taking a walk, tackling a new craft project, whatever. I have accepted the fact that I’ll be working a lot every day, including weekends and holidays, and I try to make my non-work hours really count.

I do not try to do everything.

I usually make dinner and we all eat together, but unless I’m at home and feeling particularly into it, I don’t do breakfast and lunch — everyone’s on their own for that. (I stock up on easy-to-make things like instant oatmeal, sandwich fixings, or yogurt, and do occasional mega-cooking sessions where I freeze individual portions of meals like macaroni and cheese or enchiladas that the kids can heat up. Sometimes I buy frozen meals from the supermarket. I try to buy the healthiest ones, but I buy them, and I don’t feel guilty about it.) Our house is usually messy because cleaning is low on my priority list, and I’m okay about that. (Well, at least mostly!) 

I push myself to be all-in with whatever I’m doing.

When your to-do list never ends, it’s easy to feel perpetually fragmented — you’re doing one thing, but your mind is on something else. I work hard to stay in the moment: If we’re homeschooling, I turn off my phone. (I’ve actually got my phone set up so that it doesn’t even receive work email — I have to check it on my desktop.) If I’m writing a lecture, I don’t check Facebook until the lecture is done. Some multitasking is inevitable and some days I do better at staying in the moment than others, but I really try to stay focused on one thing at a time.

I compartmentalize.

Along the same lines, I keep a separate bullet journal for life (including homeschooling) and for work. This makes sense practically because my work timelines and my life schedule are pretty different, but it’s also symbolic: When I open my work bullet journal, I’m working. When I close it, I turn off work—as much as I can, anyway, when my office is just steps away from my bedroom. This is a small thing, but it’s made a big difference for me: Now, I have a life calendar that doesn’t just get swallowed up by work to-do lists.

I say no to extra stuff.

I wish I had time to go to every homeschool day and park day and play date, but that’s just not realistic with everything else I have to do. So the kids and I try to choose one out-of-the-house adventure each week, and that’s it. I don’t take on volunteer projects, even when they’re awesome projects that I really believe in, or extra responsibilities, even when they come in the form of super-fun classes I could teach. I have to know my limits and be honest with myself about them.

I take time for myself.

Our house would certainly be much tidier if I went straight to housecleaning every time I logged off from work — but that’s never going to happen. Carving out little corners of free time for myself is really important to me. So yes, I could be cleaning when I’m watching Poldark with Jason or having lunch with my best friend or knitting on the back deck, but I would feel overwhelmed very, very quickly. I don’t always get a lot of me-time, but when I do, I never feel guilty about using it for what I want to do (not what I might think I need to do).

I try not to talk about how busy I am.

I know people whose conversations always seem to circle back around to how busy they are, and I don’t want “busy” to become the way people think of me — or, more importantly, the way I think of myself. So yeah, I’m busy, but unless you catch me right on the cusp of a magazine deadline, I’m not going to tell you all about it. I’m going to enjoy the break that I get chatting with you for all its worth and go back to my projects a little rejuvenated when the conversation is over. Dwelling on how busy I am just makes me feel busier, if that makes sense.

I take busy work weeks off from homeschool — and vice versa.

When we’re ramping up for a new term at the Academy or I’m on a big deadline for a project, I don’t even try to do any kind of structured homeschool — our homeschool has a year-round calendar, so a week off several times a year isn’t a big deal. Similarly, if we have a big homeschool project going — like the trip we took to Savannah this year or our big New England road trip over last spring break —I organize as much as I can in advance so that I can do the bare minimum work stuff during that time. I’ve learned that when something needs my full attention, trying to split my attention is a recipe for stress and grouchiness.

I feel like this balancing act is always a work in progress — for every day that I finish triumphantly, feeling like I’m that one person in a million who’s figured out how to have it all, there’s a day where I feel like the worst mom/wife/editor/teacher/friend in the history of the world. Mostly, though, I’m thankful that I get to have a job that I love, homeschool my kids, and make it — mostly — work.

How do we grow our secular homeschool community as our kids become teens?

Sometimes, the way to get the homeschool community you really want is to build it from the ground up. If growing community is on your to-do list, try some of these strategies to make it happen.

Whether you’re a new homeschooler looking to find your people, a long-time homeschooler whose community is undergoing a disorienting shift, or just someone who never really found the homeschool community you were looking for, 2023 can be the year you find your people.

There are two keys to getting the community you really want, says Niofer Merchant, author of The Power of Onlyness. The first is to make building community a priority — it’s probably not going to magically happen on its own if it hasn’t already. The second key? Take it one small step at a time. You don’t need to get from A to Z with one big leap, says Merchant. Getting to B is great progress and much more achievable. These small steps can get you moving in the right direction.

Find a different seat.

We tend to stick to the same patterns in familiar places, but if you always end up in the same corner of your co-op sitting room or beside the same moms on park day, you might be missing an opportunity. The more you’re willing to venture outside your comfort zone, the more resources you find, says Merchant. Little changes, like sitting on the opposite side of the room, checking out a different park day, or hitting the homeschool day at your favorite museum in the afternoon instead of in the morning can broaden your community.

Extend your age range.

Senior centers are always excited to get new blood, even if you only have a few hours to give, says Kimberly Trusty-Doughty, general manager for volunteer services at the Hillsborough County Department of Aging Services in Florida. Seniors may not be your first thought for your homeschool community, but one of the great benefits of homeschooling is that we get to do real socialization, the kind that’s not limited by age or grade level. Volunteer a few hours at a senior center, and you may be amazed at the results: You can find surrogate grandparents, sure, but you may also find local resources and connections you didn’t know anything about through your new friends.

Host a Jeffersonian dinner.

The typical Jeffersonian dinner — modeled after the historic gatherings Thomas Jefferson used to host at his home Monticello, not after his shady approach to dealing with issues of slavery in the early United States — brings together eight to 15 people to discuss a specific topic — for homeschoolers, that might be how to tackle language arts or thoughts about online classrooms. Keeping the conversation focused on a specific topic means that the people who show up are genuinely interested in the topic of discussion, which may lure people who don’t regularly join into your regular homeschool activities. (Bonus: This kind of structured socialization is introvert-friendly.)

Refocus your routine.

Your regular routine can be a great opportunity to build community. Not only does developing a routine help get you get into the habit of getting out of the house regularly — a habit that can make your community feel bigger all by itself — it also puts you into the path of other people who have similar routines. If you always hit the same park on Friday mornings, visit the library every Tuesday, stop by the coffee shop on Monday, and go shopping at the farmers market on Thursday, you create a rhythm where it’s easy to feel connected to the people at your regular haunts.

Show up if you say yes.

Homeschoolers can be notoriously flaky, and we’ve all had moments where we appreciate the amazing flexibility homeschool life offers. If we want to take off on a field trip to the mountains or watch movies in our pajamas all day, we can! But with freedom comes responsibility, and if you want park days or field trips or social activities for homeschoolers in your community, showing up when you commit is essential. You don’t have to commit to everything, of course, but when there’s an activity that you’re really excited about or that you’d like to see continue in your community, a firm “yes” and actually showing up for it can be the best way to ensure that activity doesn’t vanish. “A ton of work goes into planning classes or activities, and if the turnout is low or people don’t show up, there’s no motivation to keep an activity going,” says Loren, who runs a small homeschool group in southern California. “If someone no-shows twice, I take them off our group’s mailing list.” Just showing up is a big part of building a homeschool community, so be wary of saying “yes” or even “maybe” if you’re not pretty sure you’re willing to follow through.

Manage your expectations.

You may not find the homeschool BFF your child has been dreaming of — but maybe you can find a pal for karate lessons or a buddy for robotics class or a friend for park day. The higher your expectations for a new friend are, the less likely you are to find someone who meets them, so instead of looking for a perfect fit, look for someone who fills a specific community or social need. It’s great to have a math nerd friend to text tricky problems, even if that friend doesn’t also like skateboarding and Minecraft. Expand your notion of friendship to include a wider community instead of pinning your hopes on finding one perfect pal.

Think local first.

I love a one-day Amazon delivery as much as the next homeschool mom, but if you want to build community, shop local, recommends David Downey, CEO of the International Downtown Association in Washington D.C. The surest way to grow your local business community is by shopping and spending time in it, says Downey — so do your weekly debriefing at the coffee shop on the corner instead of the chain store with the big drive-through, or bring your booklist to the independent bookstore on the square. Bonus: These businesses are community businesses, and as you become a familiar face, you’ll start to feel like you really are part of your town’s community.

Offer to lend a hand.

Whether it’s a new family who looks a little lost at homeschool day or a stranger juggling a stack of books and a baby at the library, offering a little assistance is an easy way to connect that makes you feel good even if it doesn’t end up leading to a long-term relationship. If you’re shy about starting conversations with strangers, offering to help can be a great conversation starter. 

5 Ways to Get Excited about Teaching Math Beyond 5th Grade

Don’t dread higher math! Get inspired with these resources that will give you confidence and ideas for middle and high school math in your homeschool.

If math is pushing your buttons, reconsider your perspective. Math beyond the elementary years can be creative, inspiring, and even fun.

Read This : Rethink the Classroom

Finally, an answer to that inevitable question: “But how will you teach your child calculus?” Wherever you are in your math timeline, you’ll appreciate the existence of MOOCulus, a massive open online course created by Ohio State University mathematics professor Jim Fowler that’s totally reimagining the way people learn higher math.

Watch This : A New Math Philosophy

Getting the right answer is not always the point of math, says math teacher Dan Meyer in the TED Talk “Math Class Needs a Makeover.” If we make fill-in-the-blanks teaching the cornerstone of a kid’s education, of course that kid is going to hate math. Meyer suggests we shift focus to math reasoning, emphasizing figuring out how to solve a problem over filling in the right bubble.

Expert Advice : Throw Away the Textbook

Can’t find the right curriculum? Why not skip that textbook altogether? Sarah Hagan, an Ohio math teacher, has students DIY their own math text- books each year from scratch, using a wild mix of materials (including origami and lots of doodles). Hagan says it makes math more personal and helps kids remember what they’ve learned.

Read This : Shift Your Emphasis

“I don’t see how it’s doing society any good to have its members walking around with vague memories of algebraic formulas and geometric diagrams, and clear memories of hating them.” writes mathematician Paul Lockhart in “A Mathematician’s Lament.” This essay is an impassioned criticism of classroom math and its negative lifetime effects on so many students.

Be Confident : Embrace Your Inner Genius

NPR’s Math Guy Keith Devlin thinks math is everywhere — and we learn it best not in a classroom but out in the real world, doing real-life math and observing real-life math-ing in nature. If you’re feeling math-insecure, boost your confidence with Devlin’s The Math Instinct: Why You're a Mathematical Genius (Along with Lobsters, Birds, Cats, and Dogs).

The Modern Homeschoolers’ Guide to Dealing — Politely — When People Are Rude about Homeschooling

Why do people feel like it’s OK to make rude or intrusive comments about homeschoolers? We don’t know, but being prepared with a polite response when they (almost inevitably!) do can help keep their rudeness from getting under your skin.

When Holly Rauser announced to her family that she would be homeschooling her first child, her mother was horrified. 

“I only know one girl who was homeschooled, and she was weird,” Rauser’s mom protested.

“I know hundreds of people who went to public school or private school, and some of them are beyond weird,” Rauser retorted.

Looking back, Rauser — an etiquette coach who is working on developing a homeschool etiquette curriculum for teens — acknowledges that she might have been less confrontational. But like many homeschoolers, she found herself in a weird social situation where people felt comfortable making very personal comments about her choices. Homeschooling isn’t the weird, crunchy-granola or hyper-religious activity it once was (not that there’s anything wrong with that), but it’s still not mainstream enough to be unremarkable. And just as strangers feel entitled to touch a pregnant woman’s burgeoning belly, they can feel entitled to weigh in on your homeschool choices and success. And sadly, even fellow homeschoolers aren’t immune from rude behavior. 

There are etiquette books on everything from minding your manners on Twitter to throwing an engagement party, but homeschool etiquette is a brave new field. So we’ve turned to the experts to help sort out the best way to respond to everything from nosy questions to rude comments.

Your child tells a curious stranger she’s homeschooled, then gets hit with an impromptu quiz on multiplication tables or geography facts.

• What you’d like to say: “Let’s see how you like pop quizzes. What’s the capital of Madagascar?”

• What you should probably say: “You must have loved math when you were in school. Was that your favorite subject?”

Quizzing anyone who hasn’t signed up for your class is just plain rude, says etiquette expert Sue Fox, author Etiquette for Dummies. But the first rule of good manners is not to respond to rudeness with rudeness, so instead of getting snippy, deflect the question by turning it into a conversation, suggests Maralee McKee, an Orlando homeschool mom and author of the book Manners That Matter for Moms.

“Ask them about the subject they bring up — people like to talk about what they know, so someone asking your child about the dates of the Korean War may be a history buff,” she says. “Instead of rebuffing that person, engage him.”

If you’re quick-witted, humor can also defuse the situation. Saying something like “We usually do a little cardio before our quizzes” lets the question asker know that you’re not comfortable with the quizzing without making a big thing out of it.

Just as important as how you handle these stranger interrogations is how your child handles them. Very young kids can get away with saying “I’m not allowed to talk to strangers,” but as children get older, they should be able to deal with an unexpected pop quiz using the same bounce-back method you’d use. A smile and a laughing response like “I usually do better on written tests,” will not only refocus the conversation; it will also help dispel the notion that homeschoolers are socially awkward or academic automatons.

If your child does end up blindsided by a self-appointed quizmaster and can’t answer the questions, support him. If you catch the tail end of the conversation, shift the focus to one of your child’s strong points: “Next time, ask him about dinosaurs. He knows more about the Mesozoic Era than I do.” Otherwise, let your child know when you’re alone again that the quizzer was out of line and that his academic work is up to snuff as far as you’re concerned: “It’s really rude to put people on the spot like that. I would have felt really confused and frustrated if someone came up to me and started quizzing me. I’m not sure I would have been able to come up with answers off the top of my head either.”

Homeschooling is going great, but you’re tired of having to defend your educational choices. Every time you get together with your family, someone questions your decision to homeschool.

• What you’d like to say: “What we do with our kids’ education is none of your business, so shut about it already!”

• What you should probably say: “I’ve listened to you, and I really hear what you’re saying. I am glad you love our children so much that you worry about their wellbeing. But now, I need you to understand that I love them, too, and they are our children. You have to know that I would not do something that I did not believe with all my heart was best for them. And right now, what’s best for them is homeschooling. We have made our decision.”

You can’t really fault a grandmother — or an aunt, or a brother-in-law — for caring enough about your children to express an opinion. After all, you want your family to care about your kids. “But ultimately, they’re your children, and you’re the one who is responsible for deciding what is best for them,” says McKee. Unlike rude strangers, who are best rebuffed by distraction, dealing with family etiquette blunders is something you should tackle directly. 

Start by doing one of the hardest things you’ll ever have to do: Just listen. Let your mother-in-law obsess about the perils of non-school socialization, let your dad worry that your weak math skills will make it impossible for you to teach your children math, let your sister obsess about how hard it will be for your kids to get into college. Resist the urge to counter with facts or opinions of your own — just listen. When your mother-in-law is done expressing her concerns — and only then — calmly and simply explain your own perspective: “You know, I was worried about socialization, too, but I find that my kids have even more opportunities to socialize with other kids now that we’re homeschooling and they aren’t stuck behind a desk all day,” or “I definitely hope my kids will be better at math than I am. That’s why I’m using this really great program that walks us through everything step by step. If we ever reach a point where I feel like I can’t teach them, there are some great homeschool math classes I can sign them up for.” Don’t get into too many details; you want to address the concern without falling into the trap of justifying your choices, explains McKee.

It’s unlikely that whatever you say — however intelligently reasoned or expressed — will change your mother-in-law’s mind about homeschooling. Like politics or religion, homeschooling can bring out strong opinions that aren’t easily shaken. You don’t have to change your dad’s mind — and good manners dictates that you shouldn’t even try, says McKee. Instead, you should focus on making him feel like his concerns matter to you, even if you don’t agree with him. Let him know you’ve heard what he has to say and care about it, but you’ve made your own decision. Then, resist the urge to get pulled back in. If the topic comes up again, say “I know you feel that way, Dad, but we’ve made our decision.” 

If your family member just won’t let it drop, you’ll need to take a firmer position. (It’s best for the person who’s directly related to the worrier to handle this since these conversations can be tricky, says McKee.) Say, “I understand that you don’t understand our decision. But I ask that you respect it.” Repeat this whenever the topic comes up, and eventually you’ll quell the commentary.

And take heart: While your words may never convince your mother-in-law you’re doing the right thing, your results may win her over in time. Rauser spent years asking her family not to second-guess her decision to homeschool. “Now my mom is proud to announce that her grandchildren were homeschooled because they turned out so well,” Rauser says.

You’re having a perfectly nice conversation with another mom on the playground when you mention that you homeschool. “Oh, wow, I could never be around my kids all day,” she says.

• What you’d like to say: “I could never be around your kids all day either.”

• What you should probably say: “I love the new landscaping they’ve done by the pavilion. Are those tulips?”

When another mom makes a comment like this, your immediate response is to feel embarrassed and flustered. Are you weird because you don’t mind hanging out with your kids all day? Is she weird because she can’t imagine hanging out with her own kids all day? Before you start stammering an apologetic explanation about how homeschoolers have hard days, too, take a deep breath. When someone makes a comment like this, she’s not usually looking for a response at all, says Rauser. If you smile and change the subject, you’ll defuse the moment before it even has a chance to become awkward.

If ignoring her comment feels too rude, McKee recommends acknowledging the other mom’s perspective without going into lots of details about your own. Say, “Well, there are some days where I would agree with you, but for the most part, it’s a pleasure.” Then switch the subject. While you may feel like this mom is putting you on some kind of Super Mommy pedestal, if you try to respond to her comment with a lengthy explanation of how great your kids are or an uneasy treatise on your failings as a mom, you’ll make both of you uncomfortable. Treat comments like this as off-hand remarks that require minimal response on your part, and you’ll be able to continue your conversation comfortably.

You mention to someone that your kids are homeschooled, and she immediately asks, “Why do you homeschool?”

• What you’d like to say: “None of your business!”

• What you should probably say: “Why do you ask?”

Some homeschoolers want to shout their educational choices from the rooftops, but for other families, the decision to homeschool may be more personal. Knowing why someone is asking you about homeschooling is the key to answering this question politely, says McKee. “People who are just being nosy deserve a minimalist answer — ‘It just feels like the right thing for our kids for right now,’ is true and nonspecific — but you may be surprised by people’s reasons for asking and want to give a different answer.”

McKee speaks from experience: More than once, a stranger has asked her reasons for homeschooling only to admit that she’s considering homeschooling herself.

“This is one of those situations where you can really be an ambassador for homeschooling,” says McKee. “Someone might have a good reason for asking, and you might be able to help point them in the right direction.” And if someone’s just prying? Well, you can smile and give a brief answer before changing the subject.

Sometimes Homeschooling Is Right for One Kid in Your Family and School Is Right for Another One — And Good Homeschooling Is Supporting That

When I first started homeschooling, I’m pretty sure I believed that homeschooling was all-or-nothing: either you homeschooled your kids throughout their childhoods, or you sent them off to school. But many families I know aren’t like that. Maybe their kids homeschool for most of their childhoods, then head to junior high or high school. Maybe their kids avail themselves of select activities at schools but remain homeschoolers. Maybe some of a family’s kids attend school, while others homeschool. 

We’re that kind of family — a part homeschooling, part schooling family. Our 13-year-old son learns at home and has no interest in going to school — ever. Our 10-year-old daughter attends a private, part-time “school for homeschoolers” and says she never wants to go back to full-time homeschooling. It’s a combination that works surprisingly well for our family. You’d never know just how much hand-wringing and agonizing it took to get us to this point. 

Our part-time schooling arrangement came about during a particularly long, brutal winter up here in Minnesota in 2013-2014. Cooped up by heavy snow and wind chills that were regularly hitting 20 or 30 below zero, the only learning we seemed to be doing was about working through interpersonal conflict, and boy, was there a lot of that kind of learning. I was stressed. They were stressed. My energy for homeschooling was at an all-time low. 

One bitter-cold February day, I sat both kids down in the living room and said I thought we needed to really look at whether homeschooling the way we were was the happiest choice for our family. My daughter, then eight, burst into tears.

“But I don’t want to go to school!” she wailed.

I told her there might be another, less drastic option. A few old homeschooling friends of ours had ended up attending a three-day-a-week Christian Montessori school intended to give homeschoolers some of the benefits of school while allowing time for family learning, too. The school had unusually long breaks — six weeks off in December and January, two weeks in March — and finished for the year in mid-May. There were no grades, no tests, and minimal homework. It felt like School Lite — a gentle way to try out school without completely giving up on homeschooling.

My son was emphatically not interested. My daughter agreed to check it out. 

The day we toured the school, I was impressed by the school’s peaceful, friendly atmosphere. But there were also things that gave me pause. The school was run by evangelical Christians, but our family isn’t Christian. Would my daughter be accepted here? Could we as a family feel comfortable here even though we don’t go to church and aren’t believers?

My daughter was quietly observant throughout the school tour, her body language stiff. By the end of the tour, I was sure she was going to say she wasn’t interested. Honestly, I kind of wanted her to say she wasn’t interested. As miserable I’d been with homeschooling that winter, I didn’t feel ready to give it up, either. 

As we left the school and walked to our car, I asked my daughter, “So, what did you think?”

“I liked it!” she declared. She was perfectly clear on the matter; she was going to that school that fall.

I wept many tears that spring and summer, agonizing that sending her to school was a big mistake (always out of sight of my daughter, of course). 

My daughter did occasionally feel out-of-place attending a school where almost all the other kids were regular churchgoers. She was startled when one teacher mentioned that they didn’t teach about evolution at her school, but that they prayed for people who believed in it. My daughter had taken a class about evolution at our local zoo the year before and had read extensively about it at home. The idea that her school would completely dismiss discussing it floored her.

At home, we talked about approaching these sorts of differences as a chance to learn about the range of perspectives that make up our country and our world and the different ways people approach controversy and disagreement. We brainstormed how she could stay true to herself even if she didn’t feel comfortable speaking up loudly at school. I was grateful that our family’s work together as homeschoolers had laid down a foundation for us to talk this way, and that my daughter’s years as a life learner have given her a strong sense of self she can fall back on when she feels confused or out-of-step with the people around her. 

As that first year went on, my daughter found that she really liked the way Montessori learning combines structure with freedom of movement and choice. She’s also fairly introverted, and she found that her school — a school where “nobody knows how to be mean,” as she put it recently — helped her come out of her shell. Seeing the same kids regularly in a routine, predictable environment was more comfortable for her than going to unstructured homeschool play groups, where she’d mostly clung to my side and not talked to the other kids. Once-a-week, short-term classes for homeschoolers also hadn’t really given her enough time to warm up to other kids. 

I still don’t believe that school is necessary for kids to get “socialized” — it’s simply that for my individual kid at the developmental stage she was at, this particular school was a better social fit. 

Meanwhile, back at home, my son was enjoying having three days a week of one-on-one time with me, combining a few classes at a local homeschooling co-op, a bit of math, lots of reading, and plenty of time pursuing his passionate interest in all things gaming-related. Some days, it felt like we had our own little writer’s colony of two, as my son worked in one room on video game-inspired fan fiction or creating the rules, characters, and storyline for a role-playing game he was designing, and I worked in another room on my own writing. We’d check in with each other over lunch, a board game, or during a hike by the Mississippi, two creative colleagues egging each other on. 

My daughter is now preparing for her third year at her school. It will probably be her last one there; she’s feeling ready for a secular learning environment, where she doesn’t worry that she might scandalize a schoolmate if she mentions a pop singer she likes or alienate a teacher if she mentions evolution in a school project. 

Luckily for us, there’s another part-time option for schooling here in our town, a public charter school where students attend classes in person three days a week and then work at home two days a week. She is hoping to transfer there for sixth grade. She wants school, yes, but she still wants a bit of freedom about how she spends her days, too.

I tell her that if she’d ever like to return to homeschooling, it’s always an option. She just smiles. “You really want me to come back to homeschooling, don’t you?” she teases me.

Well, yes, I’d love for her to come back to homeschooling. But what I want even more is for her to know she has choices. I’ve learned I can trust her to make the best of whatever situation she’s in and to know what’s right for her, even if it’s not what I would have chosen for her. She’s learned that she can handle new experiences with grace, take the good with the bad, and then walk away when something is no longer working for her. Those are lessons that I think will serve us both well as she moves forward in her life’s adventures, wherever they take her.

Great Books for Your Secular High School Detective Fiction Unit Study

From Sherlock to chemistry prodigies and everything in between, classic detective fiction is sometimes just the comfort read you need. These are some of our favorites.

It all started with Nancy Drew, of course. Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, the Bobbsey Twins, Encyclopedia Brown, the westing game, Trixie Belden, and Alfred Hitchcock’s Three Investigators. So it was natural that sometime around junior high, having exhausted my local library’s children’s section, I gravitated toward the mystery section over on the adult side and discovered Agatha Christie. (It wasn’t a very big section, as I recall, and after a year or two I’d finished off everything that looked promising and moved over to the neighboring science fiction/fantasy shelf. Once I discovered sf I took a several-decades-long break from the mystery genre — with the exception of Isaac Asimov’s mashup robot mystery series that begins with The Caves of Steel — but that’s a different column.)

When people ask me about young readers moving to “grown-up” books, I think of Agatha Christie first. Not only is she Queen of Mystery Writers, she was wildly prolific, and there’s nothing I loved more at that age than finding an author and realizing I had dozens and dozens of books to look forward to. That’s still true today, of course, and it’s one reason I’ve recently found my way back to the mystery section. When everyday life makes me a bit crazy, and I don’t have emotional energy to tackle the big thick novels on my to-read list, it’s comforting to pick up a favorite mystery writer — or find a new favorite — and know I’ve got shelves and shelves of books waiting, where I get to hang out with the sleuths I’ve come to love.

So what do you do after you’ve read your way through Poirot, Miss Marple, and Tommy and Tuppence? First, you reward yourself by watching the Agatha Christie episode of Doctor Who (“The Unicorn and the Wasp”), and then you go back to the beginning with Sherlock. We started the Sherlock Holmes stories as readalouds with my two oldest children (then upper elementary and middle school) shortly after the entire family became obsessed with the BBC series starring Benedict Cumberbatch. It was great timing: having met the characters on television, my kids had a lot more patience with the Victorian literary stylings (and sometimes ridiculous plots), plus we were able to pick up all the references to the original works sprinkled throughout the show. And, of course, one of the great things about Sherlock is that he’s been adapted and adopted so many times that you can keep reading him forever. My first experience with professional fanfic (long before the term “fanfic” was invented) was Nicholas Meyer’s The Seven-Percent Solution (Holmes meets Sigmund Freud) and The West End Horror (Holmes meets everyone else, including G.B. Shaw, Bram Stoker, and Oliver Wilde). I’ve read several of the Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes mysteries by Laurie King (beginning with The Beekeeper’s Apprentice) and enjoyed Michael Chabon’s Sherlock novella, The Final Solution. My very favorite borrowing of the great detective may be Lyndsay Faye’s Dust and Shadow: An Account of the Ripper Killings by Dr. John H. Watson, though she has tough competition from Eve Titus’s children’s series Basil of Baker Street (hurray! the inspiration for Disney’s The Great Mouse Detective is finally back in print!). But the books keep coming: I’ve got The House of Silk, a Sherlock story by Anthony Horowitz (author of the wonderful Magpie Murders, a murder mystery about the publication of an Agatha Christie-type murder mystery) in my bedside to-read stack right now.

As a younger reader I somehow managed to miss out on Dorothy Sayers’s mysteries, but once I finally discovered Lord Peter Wimsey, gentleman detective, I couldn’t get enough of him and his complicated romance with Harriet Vane. Sayers’s books are not necessarily easy or simple, but she’s been on my ‘comfort read’ shelf (next to Agatha Christie and Georgette Heyer) for years.

Many readers encounter Josephine Tey’s detective, Inspector Alan Grant, in The Daughter of Time, a historical murder mystery (where Grant, laid up in the hospital, tries to solve the murder of the Princes in the Tower) that keeps showing up in ‘best mysteries of all time’ lists. Recently I read all of the Alan Grant books (which make good use of Tey’s real-life experience in the theater world) and found out what I had been missing. Tey writes good, solid mysteries that are a little bit quirky and often take a different and unexpected path from other Golden Age detective stories. But the strangest detective series I’ve read (and am still in the process of reading) has to be Peter Dickinson’s Inspector James Pibble books. So far, Pibble has encountered a lost tribe from New Guinea, man-eating lions, psychic children, and two different island monasteries inhabited by crazed monks. I have no idea what to expect in the sixth and final book in the series.

Pibble, whose books were published in the 60s and 70s, comes a bit after the British Golden Age of crime fiction, but as an English inspector he fits right in with that tradition. I could read and reread those authors forever, but I’m grateful that there are slightly more diverse options available. One of my favorite ongoing series (and a great one to hand middle and high school readers, though it’s marketed for grown-ups) is by Alan Bradley and stars Flavia de Luce, an 11-year-old science prodigy living in a broken-down country estate with her slightly bizarre family in 1950s England. We’re introduced to Flavia when she solves her first murder in The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. (These books are worth reading just for the titles.) Another book I’ve handed to middle school and YA readers is Alexander McCall Smith’s The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, the first in the long-running (and still going strong!) series set in Botswana and starring the independent and strong-minded Precious Ramotswe.

I’m running out of space and I haven’t even gotten to Dalziel and Pascoe (a hard-boiled crime series — beginning in 1970 with Reginald Hill’s A Clubbable Woman — that expands over the years to include both a Jane Austen homage and a trip to space), Amelia Peabody (amateur Victorian Egyptologist crime-solving!), or Phryne Fisher (a 1920s Australian sleuth who is very much NOT for young readers—but grown-ups need books too). I’ve also neglected to mention some of my favorite stand-alone mysteries, including Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (where the murder victim is a dog and our narrator-sleuth is a teenage autistic boy), John Dickson Carr’s The Murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey (a nonfiction account of the murder of a judge during the reign of Charles II that reads like a modern mystery), and Hazel Holt’s My Dear Charlotte (an epistolary mystery inspired by Jane Austen’s letters).

How do you deal with competitive homeschool parents?

One of the moms at our regular park day wants to turn every learning-related conversation into a competition where her kids are smarter and better than everyone else. How can I politely shut her down?  

If you started homeschooling to get away from competitive education, you may be out of luck. For every chill, laidback homeschooler who’s never looked at her child’s test scores, there’s a homeschooling mom who watches her — and your — child’s academic progress like a hawk. Your son loves Harry Potter? Her daughter just finished War and Peace. Your daughter is finishing up her math workbook? Her son found that particular curriculum way too easy. Your son loves his new art class? Her son is repainting the Sistine Chapel. Whatever you’re talking about, the conversation always seems to veer to how smart/talented/superior her child is.

Before you get grumpy, consider the fact that this mom may be facing criticism from her family or insecurity about her own abilities to be a successful homeschool parent. She may be aggressive because she feels like she has to convince other people that her child is doing well. While that knowledge won’t make her behavior any less irritating, it can help you deal with it politely, says Maralee McKee, an Orlando homeschool mom and author of the book Manners That Matter for Moms. For starters, resist getting drawn into specifics: The more details you give, the more ammunition she has for comparison. Be vague: “Oh, we’re always reading, but I don’t know what’s on the list off the top of my head,” or “We’re doing pretty well in math right now, but I’m afraid if I talk about it too much, I’ll jinx it.”

If she keeps pushing, it’s perfectly acceptable to let her know you’re not interested in the conversation: “All we’ve done is talk about school stuff! I’d love to know more about that farmers market you were talking to Susan about” or “Jordan’s reading list is under control, but I’m looking for something to read myself. Have you read any good books lately?” And if your polite diversions don’t have any effect, you’re well within your mannerly rights to excuse yourself and relocate your blanket to another part of the playground.

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Planning to Go Back to Work When You’re Done Homeschooling? Here's What You Should Know

If you’re planning to return to work when your homeschooling days are done, now—right now—is the time to start getting ready for career reentry

 It’s the thing we all dread: That moment in the future, in two years or ten years or twenty years, when we have to sit down in front of a computer and try to figure out how to fit a decade-plus of homeschooling into our resume.

Whatever your reasons for returning to the world of work, you couldn’t have picked a less hospitable time. Moms returning to the workforce have never had it easy — a Cornell University study found that just being a mom makes you half as likely to get called for an interview than your single peers. And now, with the economic downturn and high levels of unemployment, you’re going to be competing for jobs with other unemployed people who have more current experience than you do. How, then, can a mama with a hefty, homeschool-size gap in her resume, track down a gig in this competitive climate? The key is to start preparing for your job hunt right now, well before you’re actually in the market for a new job. Homeschooling has probably helped you hone and develop all kinds of new skills, but you will have to help companies understand your value — and to do that, you’ll need to speak a language that they understand. Here’s how to set the wheels in motion for your return to the working world.

Revisit your options.

If you’ve been out of the workforce for a while, consider whether the work you left is the work you want to return to. The degree you earned two decades ago may no longer be the right fit, and making the switch to a career you’re genuinely excited about can be liberating. Not sure where your career passions lie? Think about what people always compliment you on, suggests Whitney Johnson, author of Dare, Dream, Do. That could point you toward your next career act.

Plug back in to your field.

Knowing the buzz on issues and current players in your field keeps you from seeming like an out-of-touch, out-of-the- game applicant. make a point to get back up to speed by subscribing to a major newspaper, such as The New York Times or the Wall Street Journal, and any go-to journals in your field. (Bonus: This kind of reading can inspire all kinds of fun homeschool connections.)

Reconnect to your professional network.

Ideally, you’d still be in touch with old bosses and coworkers, but realistically, you’ve probably been too swamped to even think about people you once worked with. That’s okay. You can start rebuilding your network now by reaching out to old work connections (Linkedin and other social media is great for this — you can reach out without feeling as awkward as you might about a phone call or email) and considering who your new connections might be: the photographer who shoots your co-op yearbook? The marketing director at the animal shelter where you volunteer? Establish your new network, and make a point of reaching out to the people in it every few months. When you’re ready to start job-hunting, your network will already be in place.

Make the most of volunteer time. 

Volunteer work works for your resume. so be strategic with volunteer efforts, and look for opportunities that will grow your resume in the direction you want it to go — whether you’re writing a monthly newsletter, soliciting community donations, or planning a donor party, community service can boost your resume with current skills. Most career counselors advise not putting “homeschool mom” on your resume, but that doesn’t mean you can’t include volunteer projects you tackled while being a homeschool mom. Running a co-op or teaching a weekly science class for three years running is absolutely resume-worthy.

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The Homeschooler’s Bill of Rights

There is no single right way to homeschool. What works for your family is right for your family—and if that right thing changes from year to year (or month to month), that’s okay. These homeschoolers are life learning on their own terms, and you can, too.

You have the right to outsource everything.

There are a lot of things I love about homeschooling. I love how relaxed our mornings are. I love how my daughter gets to focus on what she loves. (Right now it’s chemistry and soccer.) I love how much I’ve learned myself. But I don’t actually love teaching my teenage daughter—and now, I don’t. Hailey takes classes online and at a nearby college, through dual enrollment. Sometimes we talk about what she’s learning, but I’m not her teacher or even her co-learner. I’m just her mom.

I was actually excited about homeschooling when we decided to pull Hailey out of school during her first year of 6th grade. (Cue the usual stories of mean girls, bullying, and unhelpful school administration.) That first year was really terrible, though. Our kitchen table felt like a battleground. I wasn’t confident in my own knowledge — so many countries had rearranged themselves since I learned geography, and apparently you really don’t use pre-algebra that often in real life because I was always getting confused trying to explain problems.

A friend recommended our state’s cyber academy, which we joined in 7th grade. They sent us big boxes with all the books and supplies Hailey would need for her classes. Technically, Hailey was enrolled in the public school system, but for all intents and purposes, she was a homeschooler, logging into her online classes from home. Even though the workload was a little heavy and we opted not to continue with that program, 7th grade was a huge improvement over 6th grade. We really found our stride in 8th grade, signing up for some classes online and taking some classes through a local homeschool group. Obviously I’m around if Hailey needs help or has a question, but I’m not her primary teacher for anything, and for us, it’s much better that way.

Someone at a homeschool group asked me if we considered ourselves homeschoolers even though Hailey doesn’t do any subjects with just me, but I think we’re definitely homeschoolers. In my opinion, homeschooling is about figuring out what your kid needs and finding a way to make it happen for them. That’s exactly what I’ve done for Hailey—and there’s no way I would have been able to discover that without homeschooling. —Jamie C.*

You have the right to change your mind.

Once upon a time, I was the most gung-ho homeschooler you could hope to meet. I knew from the day my oldest son was born that I wanted to homeschool. I help found a secular homeschool co-op in our town and served on the board in various roles for almost a decade. And then, last year, I sent my kids back to school. My oldest was in 8th grade, and his brothers were in 5th and 3rd grade.

There were so many things I liked about homeschooling. I loved getting to spend the day with my kids. I loved learning with them. I liked the slowed-down pace of our everyday life, especially compared to the hectic schedules our school friends were dealing with. But I missed having a “real job” and spending time with other grown-ups. I found it hard to find space to mentally and emotionally recharge. I found it harder and harder to walk that line between being my kids’ teacher and their parent. And so, I changed my mind.

I miss homeschooling, but sending the boys back to school has been the right decision for us. They love their teachers, their classes, their friends. I love my job. I feel like homeschooling laid a great foundation for our family—we still learn together, we still make family a priority, it just comes together in a different way now. I like to think that our life now is just another phase of homeschooling since we’re making the learning choices that work best for us as a family. —Alison H.*

 You have the right to use those workbooks.

I have a confession to make: We use workbooks. And I really like them.

When we first started homeschooling and went to our first park day, there was a group of moms making fun of workbook-users. They weren’t doing it to be mean — they definitely didn’t know that I had a little stash of Scott Foresman workbooks in my tote bag. Later, I would get to know these moms. I would understand that when they made fun of workbooks, they were making fun of the school system that had let their kids down. Their experiences with the school system had been bad, and workbooks had been a tangible piece of that experience. Once they got their kids away from fill-in-the-blanks or circle-true-or-false, those kids had bloomed.

But that first day, when I was a brand-new homeschool mom with no idea what I was doing, those comments about workbooks were like a slap in the face. Was I going to give my kids a terrible learning experience? Were they going to be stuck in a little intellectual box because they answered some multiple choice questions every couple of days? Why had I even thought workbooks could ever possibly be a good idea?

So I hid those workbooks in my file cabinet, and I decided that we would do something else. We tried unschooling. We tried narrations, the Charlotte Mason way. We tried Waldorf. But nothing felt like the perfect fit — until I pulled out those workbooks again one rainy day, and they just clicked for us. My daughter liked filling in the blanks and circling the letters. I liked being able to see her progress on the page. We liked workbooks. And so we kept on using them. We’re still using them — not exclusively and not every day, but workbooks are a significant piece of how we learn.

Sometimes other moms still make snide comments about workbook users. Often, I just keep quiet. Every once in a while, though, I’ll say, “We use workbooks.” Not because I want to put those moms in their place but because there are always new homeschoolers at park day, and I think it’s important to recognize that homeschooling can happen lots of different ways. Including with workbooks. —Amanda P.*

You have the right to not use a curriculum.

Every summer, all the homeschool groups and forums I belong to start buzzing about curriculum. What are you going to use, what’s the best program for language arts or math or music? Where are you going to buy it? It’s a conversation that I always feel a little left out of because our family doesn’t use curriculum.

We’re unschoolers — even though I know some unschoolers who use curriculum (usually in a relaxed, child-led way but not always), we don’t use it at all. I think most homeschoolers understand how unschooling works. I feel like I’m always explaining to non-homeschoolers that yes, my kids choose what they want to do all day, and no, we don’t do any sit-down lessons unless they want to learn something specific and ask for them, but yes, my kids can read and write and do math. Homeschoolers — even more traditional ones—understand what unschooling is about, so no one ever seems to look askance at us because we’re living curriculum-free. But the times when everyone else starts obsessing over curriculum are the times when I realize that our choice to unschool is still pretty unusual. 

I don’t worry that my kids won’t learn — every time they have been motivated to know something, they’ve been able to do it with no problem. My daughter mastered basic math skills saving up money for a new laptop, and now she can figure out sales tax in her head faster than I can. My son wanted to learn Spanish because one of his Minecraft server friends is bilingual. We used a free program through the library, and he’s learned enough to pepper his online conversation with Spanish words and phrases. They both learned to read because they played a lot of video games and I wasn’t always available to read the screens to them, and now they both read for fun, too.

I know some unschoolers are pretty vocally anti-curriculum, but I’m not. What works for people works for them. No curriculum works for us. And while it does sometimes make me feel like the odd mom out at our homeschool group, I look at how my kids are learning, and I know I’ve made the right decision for our family. —Lora V.*

You have the right to not push college.

My daughter is a homeschool graduate. She’s about to turn 26, and she didn’t go to college. If you’re a homeschooler, you know that people love to ask “But how will she get into college?” I actually had a lot of answers for that. When Josie was in elementary school, I’d tell people about that homeschool family whose kids had all ended up in Ivy League schools. When she was in middle school, I’d talk about the homeschool advantage — how homeschoolers actually tend to do better on standardized tests and in college classes that kids in traditional schools. By the time Josie was in high school, I could talk about transcripts and SATs and college visits with the authority of any parent of a college-bound kid. Only, as it turned out, Josie wasn’t that interested in going to college. She had gotten interested in photography and slowly built up a photography business during high school, taking senior pictures for the school kids in our neighborhood, at homeschool proms, even at a couple of weddings.

“I’m going to take a gap year and do an apprenticeship with a good wedding photographer,” she told me her senior year.

And, as it turned out, her business kept growing, and she decided she wasn’t that interested in college after all.

At first I felt apologetic. I felt like I had to make excuses about why my bright, homeschooled daughter wasn’t off to some great college like her friends. Then I realized that Josie was doing exactly what our homeschool life had taught her to do: going after what she wanted without getting stuck thinking that there was one right way to get there. I’m so proud of her. There are still times where part of me wishes that she had chosen college, but then I have to remind myself that this wish is about me, it’s about showing the rest of the world that homeschooling was the right decision for us. That I did right by my daughter educationally speaking. Josie doesn’t need that. She’s not wasting any time wondering whether she had a well-rounded education. She’s doing what she loves, and I love that. —Corey H.*

You have the right to give your child a bad grade.

My son has a C in 11th grade English on his transcript.

As homeschoolers, we talk a lot about how grades don’t matter, but when your child starts high school and you have to start thinking about transcripts, you kind of have to think about grades. And they do matter, at least a little, because your transcript is a record of your homeschooler’s academic experiences. If you’re a homeschooler, it’s easy to see that transcript as a measure of your own personal success — or failure.

I assumed that my son’s transcript would be full of good grades. Isn’t that the point of homeschooling? We wouldn’t have to speed up or slow down to accommodate anyone but ourselves. We could play to my son’s strengths. He could pick the classes he wanted to take. There was no way his transcript would have anything but As on it, right?

English has never been my son’s favorite subject, but he’s always done the work. That changed during his junior year — he had four novels on his reading list, and he always had a reason he hadn’t kept up with his reading. Our “book discussions” were basically just him promising that he’d catch up next week. By the time February rolled around, he’d only made it halfway through one of his assigned books. He ended up writing a decent paper on that one book, which he did finally finish, but the comparing and contrasting authors I’d planned never happened.

People talk about mom-made transcripts, and this was the first time I really understood how tempting it is to give your child a good grade no matter what his actual performance was. I have to be honest: There was a big part of me that wanted to just give him a B and move on, trusting that he’d learned to work harder next time. But I knew that wasn’t fair to all those other moms out there making homemade transcripts. We all live under the shadow of colleges and universities thinking that we’ve inflated our children’s grades — if I gave my son a better grade than he earned, I’d be making it that much harder for every transcript-making mom. But more importantly, my son hadn’t earned a better grade. He’d had the time and ability to complete his work. He’d had the freedom to decide what that work would be. And he’d chosen not to do it, he’d chosen time with his friends and playing video games and soccer practice over English. That was his choice to make, but it meant he’d earned a C.

I worried that he would be upset, but my son didn’t seem surprised at all. He knew he hadn’t done his best work or even good work. And in his senior English class, he earned an A. He might not have learned everything I thought he should have learned from 11th grade English, but maybe he learned something even more important. —Allyson E.*

* last names omitted for online publication

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Moving to the Passenger Seat — Literally and Metaphorically — as Our Homeschooled Kids Grow Up

Homeschooling may not look exactly the same as our kids get older, but we’re all still homeschoolers at heart.

 We circled the parking lot several times before settling for a parking spot a block away from the library. So many station wagons and minivans signaled that today was preschool story time. It had been years since I loaded my preschool aged children into our Volvo wagon to make our weekly trek to the library, where we’d sit on carpet mats on the floor of the community room to hear our favorite librarians read out loud. 

“It seems like just yesterday that we were going to story time, and now you’re driving me to the library,” I said to my daughter as she parked my Subaru.

Times change, cars change, roles change. And just like people tell you when your kids are young, it happens so fast. My little girl is now taller than I am. She has her driver’s permit and has claimed her own set of keys to my car. In a few weeks, she will be done with high school, two years ahead of schedule. In a few months, she will get her driver’s license and begin taking classes at the local community college. If all goes according to her plans, she will also get a job. These are the events she’s been preparing for the last ten years of homeschooling, but it’s hard to believe they’re scheduled on this year’s calendar.

Even though I have one child on her way to college, and another child who has opted to attend a traditional middle school after homeschooling throughout the elementary grades, I am a homeschooler at heart. Some things don’t change. As my kids have grown and chosen their educational paths, our classroom has expanded beyond math at the dining room table, science at the kitchen island, PE at the park, literature via audiobooks in the car, and field trips to historical monuments. Learning together has become our family culture, and I imagine our shared education will extend far beyond their graduation. I look forward to the lessons they have in store for me. There’s so much to see from the passenger seat.

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How to NOT Teach Your Kids Shakespeare (But Do Something Else Really Important Instead)

This spring a fellow homeschooling mom I know mentioned a book she was planning to use with her family, Ken Ludwig’s How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare. Ludwig, an award-winning playwright and Shakespeare aficionado, believes that the best way to truly appreciate Shakespeare is to memorize passages from his plays and poetry, so he’s selected a wide range of kid-friendly Shakespeare passages and laid out a step-by-step method for breaking the passages into manageable bits. 

As a literature geek, I was immediately salivating at the thought of sharing Shakespeare this way with my son, who’s 13, and my daughter, 10. I knew it might be a stretch for us: my kids tend to be stubborn autodidacts who resist any activity that casts me in a “teacherish” role. But they’ve also enjoyed seeing outdoor Shakespeare performances in our local parks since they were little. I figured they might surprise me and agree that memorizing some Shakespeare together was just the thing our summer needed.

I broached the subject with the kids, pitching it as a way to get in the mood for the Shakespeare performances we’re planning to see this summer. They said “Uh, sure, I guess” in the lukewarm, shifty-eyed way they say yes when they don’t want to rain on my parade but are clearly hoping I’ll forget the whole thing.

Still convinced that they’d get sold on the project once we started rocking our mad Shakespeare skills, I set aside some Shakespeare time on our calendar. Week after week, something always got in the way of us taking a crack at Shakespeare. It was time to face facts: My kids really didn’t want to memorize Shakespeare with me.

I like to make the most efficient use of my mama-energy, and what I’ve found is that I just don’t get a very good return on my effort when I push a project that neither kid is enthusiastic about. On the other hand, I’ve seen many times how powerful the results can be when I back off on my agenda and follow the kids’ interests instead. The learning is deeper and longer-lasting. There’s a flow and an energy that just isn’t there when I force things.

So I put aside my Shakespeare dreams, at least for now, and asked myself the million-dollar question: what had my kids actually been saying they wanted to do this summer? That’s when it struck me: the big thing that my daughter had been saying for months is that she wanted to redecorate her room.

This is a girl who loves design, who constructs dream houses for make-believe clients on Minecraft and revels in mid-century modern consignment stores, a girl who adores thinking about colors and patterns and how they interact. The thought of tackling a room redecorating project intimidated me, but I knew that following through on helping my girl create a new space for herself would mean a lot to her. 

Exit, stage right: Shakespeare memorizing scheme. Enter, stage left: room redo. 

Together, my daughter and I set a budget for our project. We slapped paint samples on her wall and changed our minds about a half-dozen times (we finally decided on Turquoise Twist, a gorgeous shade reminiscent of a robin’s egg). We checked out online painting tutorials and conferred with the friendly folks at our neighborhood hardware store. We applied painter’s tape to baseboards and wooden trim, sanded rough spots, scraped off remnants of stickers and Scotch tape. We calculated how much paint she’d need to get the job done. And finally — deep breath — we started painting. 

Neither of us had ever painted a room before. After swiping a paint roller across her wall for the first time, my daughter frowned and said, “Maybe we should hire someone to do the painting for us. I’m afraid it won’t look good if we do it ourselves.”

I couldn’t help wondering if she might be right, but I assured her that if we followed the painting pointers we’d studied and took our time, we could do a fine job. Maybe not as good as a professional, but good enough. I didn’t want her to miss out on the delicious feeling of competence that comes from trying something you want to do but fear you might not be able to do. (I also wanted to keep her project under-budget.) On this point, unlike memorizing Shakespeare, I was willing to push a little. 

We finished the painting a few days ago. It’s not perfect, but the overall effect makes my daughter really, really happy. I think the room means more to her because she was so involved in making it look the way it does. It’s her ideas and work, made tangible.

We’ve spent the last couple of days assembling a storage unit and a desk. There have been many times when we’ve realized we have a part oriented the wrong way and have to remove all our screws and start a step of the process over. We had to problem-solve with her dad when her desk drawers didn’t line up right. 

Thinking about all the times that she saw me messing up and starting over during this project, it struck me today that one of the very coolest things about doing this kind of a project with my daughter is that she got to see me being a rank beginner. She watched me looking up answers when I needed them and asking for help when I hit dead ends. She saw how I paced myself to get the job done, taking breaks when I needed them, getting my hands dirty and doing the work alongside her to help turn her daydreams into reality. 

In other words, I got to model being a learner right there in front of her eyes. For me, that opportunity to model lifelong learning is one of the most wonderful things about homeschooling. Instead of trying to be an authority who has all the answers, I get to learn with my kids and be surprised alongside them. In the process, I get to show my kids what learning looks like, in all its messy glory. That’s definitely a part of homeschooling I treasure—even if it means I often end up putting aside projects that sound really cool to me in favor of what most interests my kids.

Which brings me back to Shakespeare. If you and your family think Ken Ludwig’s Shakespeare book sounds fun and you decide to memorize some Shakespeare, could you please let me know? I’d love to hear how it goes and find out what you discover along the way!

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7 Signs It’s Time to Outsource Homeschooling

Whether it’s looking into school options, hiring a tutor, or just finding an outside class for a specific subject, sometimes smart secular homeschooling means NOT doing it yourself.

Some homeschoolers happily DIY from kindergarten through graduation, but most of us will face a time when outsourcing — whether it’s one class or the whole shebang — is the best way to preserve our sanity and ensure our child’s education. It’s not because you’re a bad parent or a bad teacher — it’s just because sometimes we all need a little help. Here are some signs that it might be time to explore outside class options for your homeschool:

1. You dread getting started in the morning.

If you’re miserable when it’s time to break out the math books or work on an essay, something needs to change. Everyone hits bumpy patches, but if your bumpy patch feels like it’s dragging on and on, a different teacher might be what you both need.

2. You’re starting to dislike your kid.

No parent-child relationship is going to be non-stop rainbows and sunshine, but you may need to shift gears if butting heads over worksheets is having a persistent, negative effect on your relationship. If you’ve starting asking yourself things like “why is my child so stubborn?” or “why does he always complain?,” it’s a sign you need a break.

3. You aren’t doing a good job.

If you’re operating on autopilot, doing the bare minimum, or just plain never doing your best work, it might make sense to put your energy into what you do well and let someone else take over where you’re falling short.

4. You’re bored.

You can’t fake enthusiasm, but you can hire it. There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging that a particular subject doesn’t get you excited. 

5. Your student is super-critical.

If you’re getting lots of negative feedback on subject matter, assignments, or your teaching style, there’s nothing wrong with testing whether another teacher might be a better fit.

6. It’s crazy-expensive.

If curriculum or supplies for a particular subject cost more than an outside class would, weigh the benefits of doing it yourself before writing that check.

7. Your instincts tell you it’s time.

You’ve spent years learning to hear what your gut is telling you about what’s right for your child. Don’t stop trusting it now.

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We All Know Self Care Is Important—But Where Do You Find the Time?

Self-care is an essential part of the secular homeschool equation, but you’re going to have to be deliberate about fitting it into your days.

A decade ago, I began homeschooling my children for selfish reasons. Sure, I thought homeschooling would be good for them too, and I read a stack of books about childhood development, learning styles, and homeschooling methods to back up that belief, but ultimately my reasons to homeschool were selfish. I wanted my children to learn free of negative social influences, gold star grading systems, and hours of pointless homework, but mostly I didn’t want to wake up early every day to rouse my sleeping children, pack brown bag lunches, and hurry them out the door. Waking up naturally and snuggling on the couch to read books before we began our day of curiosity driven learning was my romanticized fantasy of homeschool life.

There were many days that we lived out my fantasy, but many more days that I lost myself in the service of parenting and homeschooling. When mothers with more experience than I had counseled me to take some “me time,” I didn’t even know what they meant. All the hours not devoted to the enrichment of my children were spent cleaning up from said enrichment, planning for the next day’s enrichment, and recovering from all the enrichment, plus the usual business of running a household. When exactly was this “me time” supposed to happen, and what was I supposed to be doing for myself?

I recently listened to an interview with a 107-year-woman, and when asked for the secret of her longevity her answer was to eat well, exercise, sleep, and avoid stress — four of my favorite things to do now, but not my priorities during those early years of homeschooling. Hearing it from a woman with a tremendous amount of life experience affirmed that taking care of myself is my definition of “me time,” and hopefully it will buy me even more time.

As the new school year approaches, and you thoughtfully select and prepare curriculum for your children, consider the enrichment of yourself as well. Schedule “me time” in your daily planner, and keep the lesson plan simple: eat well, exercise, sleep, and avoid stress.

Here are a few sample assignments:

• Eat vegetables with your breakfast, because at the end of a long day when the idea of making a salad seems as monumental a task as teaching Latin to a preschooler, and you wonder if the marinara sauce on your pasta counts as a vegetable, at least it won’t be your only vegetable that day.

• Station your kids on the front porch with a timer and have them record how long it takes you to walk (or run!) around the block multiple times. Find the mean, median, and mode of your times and call it a math lesson. Extra credit if they cheer you on.

• Schedule a 20-minute power nap for that particularly stressful time of day when you begin to consider packing a lunch for your children and dropping them off at the nearest public school.

• Replace a “should” with a “want”: I should (insert an activity that stresses you out), but I want to (insert an activity that feeds your sense of self). You can’t avoid all shoulds in life, but if you’re not careful you may successfully avoid all of your wants.

• One of the greatest lessons I learned and passed on to my children is the importance of taking care of oneself. If you don’t make yourself a priority, who will? A bonus to this lesson is that others often benefit from your acts of selfishness. My selfish desire to homeschool was a selfless act of service to my children, and an inspiration for friends to choose alternative educational paths.

Families make great sacrifices of time, energy and resources in order to homeschool, but caring for yourself does not have to be part of that sacrifice. This school year, make “me time” a mandatory subject. What is good for you is also good for your children.

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How do I homeschool a subject I don’t know much about?

My daughter wants to study Latin — which is great, except that there aren’t any homeschool Latin classes in our area, and Latin is — well, Greek to me. Is it possible to succeed in teaching a subject when I know almost nothing about it?

As you move into middle and high school, you may find yourself with a kid who wants to take classes outside your knowledge base. It’s totally, absolutely, 100-percent okay to outsource those classes, either by using a plug-and-play curriculum that gives you step-by-step guidance, signing up for online or in-person classes, or joining a co-op where another parent can take over. The older your student gets, the more important outsourcing will become in your homeschool life. But don’t think outsourcing is your only option: You can teach a class you know nothing about — and teach it well.

The key is to drop the mantle of teacher and put on the mantle of fellow student so that you and your child become learning partners. For this to work, you’ve got to tackle the topic together. How do you do this? It breaks down into three simple steps:

Be upfront with your student: “I don’t know much more about Latin than you do, but I’m excited to learn about it with you.” It’s important to talk about this with your student and to really listen to what she has to say — maybe she’ll be thrilled to continue your learning-together tradition, or maybe she’ll be concerned about whether your Latin adventure will adequately prepare her for the college classics classes she wants to take. Don’t let your ego or your desire to teach everything get in the way of what’s right for your student — if she’s looking for an academically rigorous course and you aren’t confident your plan will deliver it, consider other options. Making the choice that works for your particular kid always counts as successful homeschooling.

Be prepared for a big commitment. Self-directed learning can be invigorating and exciting, but it isn’t easy — expect to spend a lot of time and energy resources in pursuing an unfamiliar subject. For this kind of learning to work, you can’t expect your student to do anything that you’re not doing yourself, from memorizing vocabulary cards to working through translations. You want to keep pace with your student, but you also want to set the pace for the class so that you’re progressing. Expect to spend at least a couple of hours a week working on your own for this class, in addition to the time you spend working with your child.

Choose a simple, straightforward program with a workbook or lots of exercises to give you plenty of practice with concepts. (We use Ecce Romani for Latin, which I really like.) It’s scary to think about taking on an unfamiliar subject in your homeschool, but if it’s something you’re interesting in learning about, too, this kind of learning together can be a homeschooling win-win.

This Q&A is reprinted from the summer 2016 issue of HSL. (We’re Amazon affiliates, so if you purchase something through an Amazon link, we may receive a small percentage of the sale. Obviously this doesn’t influence what we recommend, and we link to places other than Amazon.)

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3 Summer Planning Tips for a Happy Homeschool Year

Nothing makes a secular homeschool year run more smoothly than spending some summer hours creating a specific plan for the following academic year.

Who else looks forward to summer days spent lugging coolers and towels to the beach and spending hours refusing to move off your beach lounger for all but the most desperate of cries? Summer is meant to be enjoyed and during a good summer break, a house should be full of sand, dirt, and sunburned kids.

On my beach lounger, though, I begin to dream about our homeschool. I maintain that nothing makes a homeschool year run more smoothly than spending some summer hours creating a specific plan for the following academic year. 

If you school year round, this post is for you, too. Use use whatever break you take for an annual review and planning what comes next.

STEP 1: The Theme

Decide what overall education values are important to your family. Essentially you are creating a mission statement for your family’s homeschool.

A good starting question to ask yourself is: If I teach my child nothing, ever, what is it important that my child has absorbed living in our home? For our family our theme is, generally: learning is a privilege and a delight; don’t screw it up.

Many people’s answers will be education related, but others are not. Some families want to emphasize familial closeness or cooperation. This is your family; there is no wrong answer.

Remember, though, not to be too specific. Be general. Often I find with my friends that their mission statement could apply to everything they do as a family, not just the homeschool part.

Why this step matters: 

When you are in the nitty-gritty of the school year and a problem pops up, sometimes it’s difficult to see what specifically isn’t working. Re-examining the difficulty from a more generalized vantage point often allows a better diagnosis of the problem, and gives us permission to change things.

STEP 2: Get Creative

Set aside a chunk of quiet time by yourself with no distractions (put that phone away!) This might be the most important step of all, and I encourage you to pencil a good block of time into your family’s schedule. If you have little kids, line up childcare so that you can close the door to your office or, better yet, leave the house. 

Have a notebook handy to jot down ideas. If you’re the visual type, buy yourself a pretty notebook and nice pens (a new Moleskine and a medium tip Sharpie pen are pretty much heaven on earth). Spend time thinking about each child’s strengths, weaknesses, and goals, both longterm and short term. Jot every thought down; you never quite know how some seemingly benign thought will open up new opportunities.

Think about the past homeschool year. What worked? What didn’t? Write your answers down. Think about them. Chew on them. What would have made things run more smoothly? If you are preparing for your first year as a homeschool parent, think about your goals. Think about why you decided to homeschool, and what you’d like to accomplish, both broadly (I’d like my child to get into Harvard) and specifically (I’d like to teach my six-year-old to read). 

By the end of this time, you probably will have a skeleton outline of what you would like your school year to look like (or, if you don’t, you could put one together by reviewing your notes).

Why this step matters: 

I have learned countless things from this time with myself. Often little things that have been nagging at me reach that “a ha!” moment and forming a solution becomes simple. Often this time alone allows me to see patterns, and plan and change academics accordingly. 

 STEP 3: The Specifics

Now you’ve got a guidepost and a framework, and it’s time to get down to the specifics. Make this part work for you. Do you hate depending on the library? Then buy the books you need to reach your academic goals. Do you like specific, grid-like schedules that take you through the academic year? Make one. Do to-do lists motivate you? Then create your child’s courses and materials in the form of lists that you can check off regularly.

The purpose of the nitty-gritty to to create specific academics for your school year that stay true to your family’s theme, consider your child’s goals (or your goals for your child, as the case may be,) and that are tailored to work for you.

And it should be noted that, for some families, what works for them is a boxed curriculum that lays everything out for you every week. (If that’s the case, you’re done! Go back to the beach!)

Step three can take awhile. I sometimes spend hours agonizing how to divvy up specific books so that they will match up, timeline-wise, with some piece of historical fiction I have chosen for a particular child. Let me repeat what I said above: You’re making a plan that works for you. If you want to assign your child The Witch of Blackbird Pond while you’re studying ancient Greece, then do it! It’s your life and your family.

Step three can also involve a lot of research. If you have decided your daughter needs to focus on diagramming sentences and you’ve never done that before, you may need to spend some time researching what texts are out there and how you are going to plug that work into your school day.

Why this step matters: 

By the time you are done, you will have all the materials you need for the school year ordered (or know where you can locate them), and a plan for how you are going to execute the day to day of your homeschool for your entire academic year, and that feels pretty great.

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Our Favorite Homeschool School Supplies

Did we become homeschoolers just so we have an excuse to buy all the school supplies? Shhh.

Never underestimate the allure of shiny new school supplies. I don’t care if you’re an unschooler, a high school homeschooler, or just a mom standing in front of a back-to-school notebook display, there is something about school supplies that just speaks to the heart of the human experience. Too much? OK, maybe so, but school supplies are pretty magical, and these are the ones making our homeschool especially happy this back-to-school season.

Document Holders with Snap Covers

If you use my super-painless homeschool organization system, you already know that envelope organizers are a secular homeschool mom’s best friend. These have the added bonus of being pretty!

Buy on Amazon

File Folders

I use file folders to organize weekly readings, keep track of writing drafts, trade work back-and-forth with my kids, and keep my fancy cardstock from getting crumpled at the corners. When the kids were little, I color-coded everything, including file folders, but now that they’re older, I opt for the prettiest folders I can find.

Buy on Amazon

Binder Clips

Binder clips play an important role in my homeschool organization system, but they’re honestly just so handy. You can use them to clip together research or writing drafts, to keep folders from spilling their contents all over the place, to keep up with what you’ve done in your curriculum so far — if you always have a container of them on your shelf, you will be surprised by how often you reach for them.

Buy on Amazon

Ellepi Klizia 97 Stapler

Truthfully, my Swingline is our homeschool old reliable stapler (I’ve had this one since our second year of homeschooling — I bought it when she was in 3rd grade, and it’s still going strong as she heads into her junior year of college), but I could not resist this one, which other people call “sleek” and “aesthetic,” but which I think looks like a paper-chomping dinosaur.

Buy on Amazon

Braun BNE001BK

OK, confession time: I cannot use my kids’ graphing calculators without consulting an online tutorial these days. And while I know I can math anything up on my phone app, I really like having a calculator on my desk. So I bought this elegant little version (it’s in MoMA’s architecture and design collection), and it makes me very happy.

Buy on Amazon

Basic Clipboards

This is my only homeschool design hack: Instead of hanging up posters, quotes, etc. on the walls of our homeschool space, I hang up a bunch of cheap clipboards with command strips. This makes it super-easy to show off awesome work; add new quotes, charts, and pictures; and make our homeschool space feel fresh and exciting without having to do a lot of work.

Buy on Amazon

Full Adhesive Sticky Notes

These sticky notes are my new favorite thing — instead of one sticky strip across the top, the whole page is sticky, so they never curl up and fall off. If you, like me, tend to map out big projects on the wall with sticky notes or to use sticky notes to have silent conversations with your students, these are a game-changer in the best way.

Buy on Amazon

To-Do List Sticky Notes

Now that my youngest is in high school, our productive times don’t overlap as neatly as they used to — I am up and going early in the morning, but they aren’t usually ready to dig into anything until after lunch. These sticky to-do lists help us navigate our different schedules — I’ll leave one on my kid’s notebook in the morning, and I’ll often wake up to one they’ve left on my computer. Obviously we could just use scratch paper, but these sticky pads are so cute.

Buy on Amazon

Sticky Tabs

Are you even homeschooling if you don’t have sticky tabs poking out the sides of half your library?

Buy on Amazon

Zebra Midliners

I love highlighters, but I find their fluorescent brightness a little off-putting — so discovering these midliners a few years ago was amazing. I use them for annotations, for note-taking, for lecture prep — really, I use them all the time, including times where I don’t even need them, because I like how they look so much.

Buy on Amazon

Time Timer MOD 60-Minute Visual Timer

A basic timer is such an underappreciated homeschool tool. After all, one of the great things about homeschooling is that we never have to be on the clock unless we want to. But timers can really be a great tool for homeschooling middle and high school — when kids are overwhelmed by a task, set a timer, and see what you can get done in 10 minutes or 15 minutes. The time limit takes some of the open-ended stress out. Set a timer for subjects where practice is important but annoying — 20 minutes of focused, concentrated math can feel manageable in a way that a less structured math class doesn’t. Timers can also make clean-up more collaborative — set your timer, and everyone pitches in to clean up the chemistry experiment or board game for however long.

Buy on Amazon

HoveBeaty Hand-Blown Hourglass

It’s basically a 15-minute timer, but so much fancier.

Buy on Amazon

Sharper Image Light Up Electronic Word Clock

Speaking of time management, Suzanne was skeptical when I bought this clock with words instead of numerals, but every single person who walks inside the Academy falls in love with it. It’s true, if you’re going for to-the-second precision, there are better options, but I’m going to keep insisting that you cannot beat this for a cool homeschool clock.

Buy on Amazon

Anchor Pro under-desk headphone hanger

This is one of those gadgets that you didn’t know you needed and now can’t live without for us. My kid is very big into Outschool (our favorite teacher is Michael Schwartz if you have improv nerds, too!), so these next couple of school supplies are really gadgets that make our online workspace more comfortable. This little hook attaches underneath your table to hold your headphones when you’re not using them — so they’re never in the way, and you never have to spend the 10 minutes before class hunting for them.

Buy on Amazon

Soundance Laptop Stand

Similar to the headphone holder above, this laptop stand makes online classes so much more comfortable. Who knew? I’m always reluctant to buy something that takes up desk space, but this has been totally worth it.

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Bentgo Classic - All-in-One Stackable Bento Lunch Box Container

We seem to spend a lot of time NOT at home these days, and that means I have to think about lunch more than I would like. I’m a fan of this laidback little lunchbox — it’s big enough to satisfy a teenager’s appetite but still compact enough to travel easily. (And I really like that it comes with built-in utensils.)

Buy on Amazon

Fjallraven Kanken Laptop Backpack

I’m including this because it’s the one thing my very un-acquisitive homeschooled teenager requested for not-back-to-school this year, and it turns out to be kind of an awesome bag for carrying around your laptop and a bunch of books.

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Palomino Golden Bear #2 Pencil

I used to be Team Ticonderoga all the way, but they’ve slipped in recent years, I think. My favorite pencil these days is the Palomino Blackwing 602, but they’re a little spendy when you’re buying in bulk. So these are now my homeschool pencil of choice: the Palomino Golden Bear #2 Pencil. The erasers work well, the pencil lead is clear and dark, and they feel good in your hand.

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Secular Homeschoolers Unite T-Shirt

Don’t test-drive a new park day without one! (But really, haven’t you always wished there was an easy way to identify your fellow secular homeschoolers in the wild?)

Prismacolor Premier Colored Pencils (72-Pack)

You probably don’t NEED a whole new box of colored pencils, but I always buy one this time of year anyway. (I bring the old ones to our art supply box at our homeschool group so they don’t get wasted and I can enjoy my new pencils guilt-free.) Don’t forget the Prismacolor Premier Pencil Sharpener!

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Uni Jetstream Slim Multi-Color Pen

I love annotating — here’s how we do it — but sometimes hauling around a stack of colored pens is just inconvenient. Still, colored annotations can be really useful. This pen saves the day — it will remind you of those amazing four-color pens we used to own in middle school (you can still buy those!), but this version is slimmer and easier to write with. If you’re introducing annotating this year and want to make a little annotation supply kit for your teenager, definitely add this pen to it!

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Le Pen 12-Color Set (Micro Fine Point)

These were my absolute favorite pens in middle and high school, and I still need a new pack every year. I use them for the increasingly complicated family calendar, but mostly I use them for writing letters to my best friend, who appreciates their multi-color magic. (I used to use them for my bullet journal, but I went digital this year! See below for details.)

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Lamy Safari Fountain Pen

I really thought my kids would be fountain pen people, and it turns out neither of them are — but I am, so I definitely recommend at least giving your kids a chance to see if they, too, are nerdy fountain pen lovers. This is a lovely but not-too-expensive one to try out.

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Pentel Fude Touch Sign Pen

You know how sometimes, with the right pen, everything you write just looks amazing? This is the right pen. (You can pick up some of this correction tape in case your gorgeous handwriting is so mesmerizing that you skip some letters. It’s a known risk.)

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Yoobi Fuzzy Llama Pencil Pouch

You don’t need a pencil case, but don’t you kind of want this one? I do.

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Midori MD Notebook

My teens both love these dot-gridded notebooks, which give enough writing guidance so that you can feel confident writing long paragraphs but not so much structure that you feel like there’s no room for doodles and charts. My kids are also averse to the writing texture of that super-smooth, shiny paper, and these notebooks have a nice “scratch” without feeling thin or cheap. We are apparently very picky about paper products over here!

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Dotted notebook pack

I buy these in bulk and keep them everywhere — in my bag, in the car, at our homeschool group, in the kitchen, in the family room — really, everywhere. We use them all the time, for everything from keeping score in Munchkin to writing poetry to figuring out how to move the furniture around in the music room. We can never have too many.

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iPad Mini

I recently (in January) made the switch from the paper bullet journal I have used for 12 years to an iPad bullet journal — and it took some adjustment, but I am loving it. I’ll do a big review when I’ve made it through a year, but if you’re on the fence, I recommend giving it a try. (I got this case because I still wanted it to feel like a notebook, and I opted for the mini size so I can just toss it in my bag like a notebook.) If you want to write in it (which is what I do — there was no way I was going to actually use a planner if I had to switch to typing everything), definitely get the paper screen protector.

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Verilux HappyLight Touch Plus therapy lamp

It might be cheating to include this one since I haven’t used it yet, but it is the secular homeschool school supply I am most excited about this year. Winter always gives our homeschool a lingering case of the blues, and some of my friends have raved about this light therapy lamp.

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PLAYABLE ART Ball

Because we always need more fidget options for our homeschool!

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4 Easy Ways to Homeschool Lunch

One of the biggest practical challenges of homeschool life is feeding everybody all the time. And lunch — right smack in the middle of your day — can be the biggest challenge of all. These four strategies won’t make lunchtime hassle-free, but they will free up your brain enough to worry about what you're going to do for dinner instead.

Solution 1: Lunchboxes

• Pros: lunch is ready to go whenever you are

• Cons: requires nigh􏰁t-time prep; not always the most budget-friendly option

Take a cue from the school set, and simplify lunchtime by packing it up the night before. Stick with the classics — we like hummus, quinoa, cucumber, and grated carrots on a spinach tortilla or peanut butter, honey, and banana on oatmeal bread for easy sandwiches, with little containers of yogurt, fruit, veggie chips, and a cookie for dessert. If you’re feeling ambitious, you can steal some cute bento box ideas, but kids who don’t pack a lunch every day are likely to be just as excited about a plain sandwich and apple combo. (I get all my best sandwich ideas from the Saltie cookbook.) Make a lunchbox or brown bag for each kid, stash it in the fridge, and lunch is ready to go even before you start your morning coffee. 

Solution 2: Freezer Meals

• Pros: easy on the budget

• Cons: gets boring; does require some advance planning

Once-a-month freezer stocking ensures that you’ll always have a hot lunch at the ready. Our freezer faves include macaroni-and-cheese bowls; black bean and butternut squash burritos; soups and chili; and chicken potpies. There are lots of freezer meal cookbooks out there, but I’ve splattered and dog-eared Not Your Mother’s Make Ahead and Freeze Cookbook enough to recommend it. Freeze meals in individual portions (so you don’t have to listen to a 10-minute argument about whether you should heat up spinach lasagna or kale, sweet potato, and lentil hand pies), pop them in the fridge at bedtime, and they should be ready to heat up for the lunchtime rush.

Solution 3: Snack Plates

• Pros: great for picky eaters, no cooking needed

• Cons: assembly required; can be expensive

The beauty of this cheese plates-inspired lunch is that you can assemble it with all the random bits and pieces in your fridge and cupboards. Presentation is what makes a snack plate like this feel like lunch, so take the time to arrange small wedges of cheese, little stacks of chopped vegetables or fruits, cured or smoked meats, leftover tuna salad, and other hearty nibbles. Add crackers or vegetable chips — homemade or store-bought — and spoonfuls of mustard, jam, chutney, and purees to the plate. Set it out, and the kids can assemble their own lunches from the ingredients. It’s nice to give each kid her own plate, but you can also set up a fancy spread on a serving plate or cutting board for everyone to share.

Solution 4: Emergency Pizza

• Pros: versatile; easy to customize for picky eaters

• Cons: requires last-minute stove time

Until a genius friend introduced me to tortilla pizzas, I always thought pizza was too much hassle for lunchtime. But using a tortilla for a base makes a quick pizza as easy as a grilled cheese sandwich. The usual tomato-mozzarella-mushroom combo is great, but you can get adventurous with pesto topped with leftover grilled chicken, veggies, and fontina cheese; butternut squash puree topped with goat cheese and bacon; or even hummus with crispy chickpeas, avocados, and roasted garlic. Lay your tortilla flat in a cast-iron skillet, layer on toppings and cheese, and let it bake in a 375-degree oven for about 13 to 14 minutes, until the edges are lightly browned and crispy.

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