Stuff We Like :: 5.3.19
School’s out for summer! Well, our homeschool is kicking into summer mode since we go year round, but the hybrid school Suzanne and I run has officially wrapped for summer. Graduation is Saturday, and I am looking forward to a glorious month of no teaching before I hop back into my summer chemistry class in June.
WHAT’S HAPPENING AT HOME/SCHOOL/LIFE
in the store: Our Year One and Year Two curricula are on sale now, and you can get a nice deal if you preorder them! (I expect to keep the digital editions all year, but the print editions will have a limited run again.)
on the podcast: Suzanne and I are talking about why we decided to add “run a hybrid school” to our to-do lists.
on patreon: Weigh in on what you’d like us to cover in our series on academic homeschooling through high school.
on instagram: Project season!
at the academy: If you’re in Atlanta, you should come take chemistry with me this summer!
from the archives: Shelli reviewed IEW’s Student Writing Intensive; a peek back at Amy’s 3rd grade; homeschooling is messy, but maybe that’s okay.
LINKS I LIKED
This piece about neighborhood Facebook groups is funny because it’s true. (We literally have a guy in our neighborhood group who prefaces almost every post with “I don’t want to be that guy, but”— and it makes me laugh out loud every time.
Similarly: Private Facebook groups can be surprisingly wonderful spaces, in a totally non-ironic way.
Carmilla was one of my lit students’ favorite reads this year, so I found this kind of perfect. (Read it all the way to the end!)
This was just … wow: “I can endure about five minutes more of this. Nothing of any value has been said by either party on any subject.”
THINGS I DIDN’T KNOW BUT NOW I DO
I am surprisingly good at guessing what Teddy Roosevelt would say.
The world of Los Angeles parking tickets is not simple.
BOOKS ADDED TO MY TBR LIST THIS WEEK
Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee (because it's so wild to think of what Harper Lee's In Cold Blood would read like)
Stony the Road (because I can’t stop reading about Reconstruction)
No Walls and the Recurring Dream: A Memoir (because I grew up on Ani!)
WHAT’S MAKING ME HAPPY
Sandal weather! (I’m still tromping around in my super-comfy, super-clunky Alegria sandals — I think breaking my ankles has permanently altered my shoe wardrobe, and I am okay with that!)
(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.