Stuff We Like: Weekend Roundup

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

at HSL

• on instagram: It’s my dog’s birthday!

• on the blog: I’m always hearing from people who wonder if they should quit working to homeschool, and there’s no simple answer — but these three questions can help you figure out if it’s feasible and worth considering.

• at the academy: We’re on spring break, but you can join us for our open house on the 26th. 

on the library list

• I LOVE LOVE LOVED this short story collection.

• My son is deep into quantum physics right now, so I’ve queued this up to the top of our reading list.

• I’m finding decent dinnertime inspiration in this book — and on the raggedy edge of a pandemic, I think that’s pretty good. 

in our homeschool

• I am pretty passionate about making quantum physics a big chunk of high school physics, but I appreciate how challenging it can be to wrap your mind around a concept that you can’t really see out in your everyday experiences so I am always looking for ways to make it more accessible. One resource I love is the Quantum Shorts Festival, in which filmmakers make short films about the ideas in quantum physics.

• We’re reading Purple Hibiscus as part of our African lit course this semester, and I keep going back to Chimamanda Adichie’s amazing TED Talk “The Danger of a Single Story.” I think we’ve watched it three times and found something different every time.

ask me anything

(If you have a question, you can ask it here.)

• Who do you ask for college recommendation letters for homeschoolers? This one is easy: Anyone who has taught your teen and appreciated their work. Outside classes are the easiest for this, which is why even in you’re at-home homeschoolers for the most part, it’s worth looking for an outside class every year while you are in high school. But you can also think about activity leaders (like the ones who head up your Girl Scout troop, youth group, YMCA, etc.), internship or apprenticeship mentors, employers (even from long-term baby-sitting or dog-sitting work), etc. Tip: Don’t wait until the last minute to ask for recommendations! If you take a class with a teacher your kid loves, ask about the recommendation at the end of the class, even if you know you won’t be needing it for a couple of years. Then your student can check in with that teacher a few times over the course of high school, sharing relevant achievements or connections to current studies.

• What was the hardest age to homeschool? Oh, that’s an interesting question. With elementary, I was figuring out what to do, so I think it might have been the most confusing, and high school was certainly the most intimidating (though way easier than I thought at the time now that I have the luxury of looking back), but I think middle school was probably the hardest. We had to experiment a lot to find the best ways to study things like math and history, and my kids needed a lot of support and direction right at the time when they didn’t want any support or direction from me. Now I know that all of this is really developmentally normal — the tween years are hard on parents, and so it’s not crazy that they would be doubly hard on homeschool parents — but at the time, I took it all so personally and was so worried that I was messing everything up. 

• What do you make for breakfast? I don’t! Unless it’s a special occasion, I let everybody be in charge of their own breakfast. I burned out fast on cooking three-plus meals a day, so I only deal with dinner now.

at home

• I’m so happy to have gotten my first vaccine shot this week!

• I have loaded my entire wardrobe into the Stylebook App (which was a pain even though my wardrobe is not particularly giant, if you don’t include all my t-shirts), and I am obsessed. 

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