Stuff We Like :: 1.18.19

Inspiration

Jan 18

Written By Amy Sharony

Existential therapy, quitting email, fortune cookie literature, the best way to take notes, and more.

It’s our last lazy week before our routine picks back up, so we’ve been enjoying every minute of it.

WHAT’S HAPPENING AT HOME/SCHOOL/LIFE

in the magazine: The winter issue is out next week! I am particularly excited about our Gigantic Homeschool Book List, which was incredibly fun to put together.
on the blog: How to start a family book club
on instagram: The hat I keep knitting over and over again (When I wrote this post, Mary Oliver was alive; when it actually posted, she was not. I feel a little weird about that, especially since the reference I made is such a casual one.)
on patreon: A new episode of the Podcast with Suzanne and Amy! (It will be up everywhere next week)
from the archives: Suzanne’s original instructions for playing Library Chicken and why we’re always second-guessing ourselves when it comes to homeschooling

LINKS I LIKED

I, too, started my publishing life in the days when magazines were arbiters of taste, so this mini memoir by a former newspaper film critic (who hated The English Patient) really resonated with me.
I am now obsessed with finding an existential therapist.
Even though I will probably never actually quit email, I love the idea of quitting email so much.
Ha! Classic literature as fortune cookie fortunes.
Sometimes the best dinners are the ones you don’t see on Instagram.

THINGS I DIDN’T KNOW BUT NOW I DO

There is an official point where I will stop reading J.K. Rowling’s further notes on the wizarding world she created, and this is it.
City traffic was a little crazy even before there were cars.
Doodling is the best way to take notes.

BOOKS ADDED TO MY TBR LIST THIS WEEK

Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom (I’m so skeptical, but I have to)
A Tale for the Time Being (because Suzanne recommends it)

WHAT’S MAKING ME HAPPY

These hilarious Virgo pencils (My best friend jokes that my biography should be titled Meticulously Planned Spontaneity, which honestly seems fair.)
More David Bowie
Book vending machines!
My dog’s raincoat

(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.)

Featured

AMY SHARONY is the founder and editor-in-chief of home | school | life magazine. She's a pretty nice person until someone starts pluralizing things with apostrophes, but then all bets are off.

YOU MAY ALSO ENJOY . . .

37 Fun Ways to Celebrate the First Day of Homeschool

It's that time again! We've rounded up some great ways to celebrate your first day of the new homeschool year, whether you want to keep it simple at home or take a big adventure together.

Making Art a Family Project

If you want to make your homeschool a place that values creativity and creating, you can’t sit on the sidelines and wait for it to happen — you’ve got to get messy with them.

Stuff We Like: Weekend Roundup

It’s been a while since we’ve done a Stuff We Like post, but here are some things that are inspiring our homeschool life right now.

Games to Make You Forget Cabin Fever

Break out the board games to beat the mid-winter blahs in your homeschool.

Nevermore: Fun Facts about Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”

Edgar Allan Poe’s Raven turns 176 years old this January, but there are still things to discover about this most mysterious of birds.

Stuff We Like

Here’s some of the stuff making my homeschool life a little happier lately.

Stuff We Like :: 3.7.20

Evil-fighting babysitters, middle school testing, Japanese storytelling, magical houses, and more in this week’s roundup of Stuff We Like.

Stuff We Like :: 2.14.20

The surprising fun of just asking why, the challenges of choosing a reading list, reading poetry, and more stuff we liked this week.

Stuff We Like :: 1.25.20

Being patient in pursuit of a routine, un-magic people at magic schools, teaching poetry to kids, and more stuff we liked this week.

Stuff We Like :: 1.10.20

Knitting for chilly classrooms, remembering why poetry books are so fun to read, watching His Dark Materials, new highlighters, and more stuff we liked this week.

Stuff We Like :: 1.3.20

Memes as the new formalism, how predictive text works, reading trends of the 2010s, and more stuff we liked this week.

Stuff We Like :: 12.20.19

The myth of morning routines, the downside of immortality, the problem with online reviews, and more stuff we liked this week.

Stuff We Like :: 12.13.19

Apprenticeships are the new college, what we lose when we lose local news, how we lost our sense of time, Hanukkah churros, and more stuff we like.

Stuff We Like :: 12.6. 19

Decolonizing the canon, what to buy your favorite Nancy Drew fan, emphasizing the significance of the domestic arts in history, and more stuff we liked this week.

Stuff We Like :: 11.29.19

Leftover pie, the language of the apocalypse, the myth of limited rights, be as nice to yourself as you would be to a stranger, and more stuff we liked this week.

Stuff We Like :: 11.22.19

Games for storytelling, the problem with history curricula, eating alone, and more stuff we liked this week.

Stuff We Like :: 11.15.19

Why we love annotated bibliographies, Scooby Doo as Gothic lit, my new retirement ambition, why you should probably hang on to your notebooks in the computer age, and more stuff we liked this week.

Stuff We Like :: 11.8.19

Reading before bed makes you smarter, happier, and healthier (ahem), the emotional labor of feeding your family, Rebecca paper dolls, spooky witch houses, and more stuff we liked this week.

Stuff We Like : 11.1.19

The cultural relevance of fairy tales, Hamilton bathroom breaks, new words as old as you are, and more stuff we liked this week.

Stuff I Like :: 10.25.19

Rapping The Iliad, historical costumes and racism, the yellowing of school buses, the problem with constant production, and more in this week’s roundup of Stuff We Like.

It Came from the Search Terms: September

What were people searching for on HSL in September?

Stuff We Like :: 10.19.19

Lilith Fair flashbacks make me happy, British citizenship tests are stuck on the Tudors, the problem with “spiritual consumerism,” when books could kill you, and more stuff we liked this week.

Stuff We Like :: 8.2.19

Rediscovered Langston Hughes, the Algonquin Round Table turns 100, feminist utopias, and more stuff we like.

Stuff We Like :: 7.19.19

Preschool politics, battles on the YA shelves, Stone Age engineering projects, the subtleties of translation, and more stuff we like.

Stuff We Like :: 5.10.19

Burnout is not a professional goal, the myth of the frontier in U.S. history, what do we mean when we talk about “electability,” what we always suspected about cats is true, and more stuff we like.

Stuff We Like :: 5.3.19

Highs and lows of Facebook groups, Teddy Roosevelt and the Iron Throne, my new favorite interview with a vampire, and more stuff we like.

Stuff We Like :: 4.26.19

Our weekly roundup of links, books, and other homeschool inspiration.

Stuff We Like :: 3.29.19

Our weekly roundup of great links, books, and other stuff that’s inspiring our homeschool life.

Stuff We Like :: 3.22.19

The slow, important uncovering of history, snow plow parents, transcript-writing for people who aren’t transcript writers, cats in medieval manuscripts, and more stuff I like.

Stuff We Like :: 3.8.19

Problems with children’s literature, thirty years of “Closer to Fine,” saying goodbye to Dylan McKay, weird ancient Greek obsessions, and more stuff we like.

frontfun stuff

Amy Sharony

Amy Sharony is the founder and editor-in-chief of home | school | life magazine. She's a pretty nice person until someone starts pluralizing things with apostrophes, but then all bets are off.