Stuff We Like :: 2.1.19
The not-so-true Instagram reality, new words for cold days, find your Dewey Decimal personality, let’s stop hustling for a minute, and more.
Happy February! We had an un-snow day this week — snow was predicted and the city shut down, but it ended up being kind of a lovely day.
what’s happening at home/school/life
in the magazine: Be sure to get your copy of the winter issue!
on the podcast: Suzanne and I are recording the new episode this morning, so look for it on Patreon sometime this weekend
on patreon: What to eat when you wish you had a little more weekend ahead of you
on instagram: Un-snow day adventures!
on the blog: Sometimes you need to take yourself out of the homeschool equation for a minute and the value of repeating science experiments — and of not repeating them, too
from the archives: 28 great readalouds for Black History Month and Suzanne’s official Hamilton reading list
links i liked
I do love getting glimpses of other homeschool lives on Instagram, but I hate the way we all feel pressured to present the best shiniest version of our lives all the time. This piece is about the pressure to make new motherhood look perfect, but I feel the same pressure around homeschooling sometimes, too.
What Dewey Decimal number are you? (I’m apparently 031.)
Don’t read this if swearing offends you! But if you enjoy inventing your own swear words, you might find this piece as funny as I did.
I’d love it if we could stop validating the whole nonstop work culture.
A good question: Does Duolingo even work?
things i didn’t know but now i do
This was a good week to learn some new cold weather words. (Aquabob!)
Frostquakes are a thing.
books added to my tbr list this week
An Unkindness of Ghosts (Sarah recommended it, but I’m saving it for a more emotionally stable reading time)
The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee (I would like to read about the past century of Native American history very much)
In an Absent Dream (I loved the first book in this series — the second and third, not so much, but I am hoping this one brings back the magic)
my daughter’s new Warrior Cats fan fiction novel (obviously that one’s going straight to the top!)
what’s making me happy
unexpected days off (even if there’s no snow involved)
my sister-in-law and her lovely family are moving back to town
my new breadbox (because now I feel like I can play 20 Questions and mean it)
(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.)
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.
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.
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.
Break out the board games to beat the mid-winter blahs in your homeschool.
Edgar Allan Poe’s Raven turns 176 years old this January, but there are still things to discover about this most mysterious of birds.
Here’s some of the stuff making my homeschool life a little happier lately.
Evil-fighting babysitters, middle school testing, Japanese storytelling, magical houses, and more in this week’s roundup of Stuff We Like.
The surprising fun of just asking why, the challenges of choosing a reading list, reading poetry, and more stuff we liked this week.
Being patient in pursuit of a routine, un-magic people at magic schools, teaching poetry to kids, and more stuff we liked this week.
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.
Memes as the new formalism, how predictive text works, reading trends of the 2010s, and more stuff we liked this week.
The myth of morning routines, the downside of immortality, the problem with online reviews, and more stuff we liked this week.
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.
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.
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.
Games for storytelling, the problem with history curricula, eating alone, and more stuff we liked this week.
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.
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.
The cultural relevance of fairy tales, Hamilton bathroom breaks, new words as old as you are, and more stuff we liked this week.
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.
What were people searching for on HSL in September?
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.
Rediscovered Langston Hughes, the Algonquin Round Table turns 100, feminist utopias, and more stuff we like.
Preschool politics, battles on the YA shelves, Stone Age engineering projects, the subtleties of translation, and more stuff we like.
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.
Highs and lows of Facebook groups, Teddy Roosevelt and the Iron Throne, my new favorite interview with a vampire, and more stuff we like.
Our weekly roundup of links, books, and other homeschool inspiration.
Our weekly roundup of great links, books, and other stuff that’s inspiring our homeschool life.
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.
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.
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.
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.