Epidemic!: A Science of Infection Reading List
It's flu season, and we've got a reading list of historical fiction and nonfiction to help you explore epidemics past in your secular homeschool.
It’s flu season, and we've got a reading list of historical fiction and nonfiction to help you explore epidemics past in your secular homeschool.
It’s been more than a century since Mary Mallon (infamously known as Typhoid Mary) was arrested and imprisoned for the second and final time for spreading typhoid through her work as a cook, but 2014’s Ebola crisis and 2020’s COVID outbreak remind us that infectious diseases are anything but history — though their history can make a pretty fascinating course of study. (Not to mention entertaining reading if you do find yourselves spending a lot of time in doctors’ waiting rooms this winter.) My high school biology curriculum spends the second semester focused on epidemiology, and while we’ve picked Pale Rider and the Spanish influenza outbreak of 1918 as our area of focus, any of these books would make for fascinating homeschool science literature.
The Black Death :: 1348
Record-keeping wasn’t centralized in the 14th century, but historian estimate that the bubonic-turned-pneumonic plague killed somewhere between 75 and 200 million people in Europe and Asia between 1347 and 1351. (That’s 25 to 50 percent of the population at that time — yikes.) The situation was so bad that the word quarantine was coined then, referring to the 40-day offshore waiting period the city imposed on incoming ships.
In The Doomsday Book, 22nd century historian Kivrin travels back to the Middle Ages on a research project, but instead of ending up at the turn of the century, she finds herself in 14th century England right at the beginning of the plague outbreak. She’s got all the relevant shots and training, but nothing could have prepared her for the devastation of life in plague-time.
The Great Plague :: 1665
The last of the great plague epidemics in England ended a wave of outbreaks that had been going on since 1499 and may have killed as much a quarter of 17th century London’s population. (Historians estimate that between 75,000 and 100,000 people out of London’s 450,000 population perished during the outbreak.)
At the Sign of the Sugared Plum tells the story of the plague’s last outbreak in 1665 London. Country girl Hannah is thrilled to come to work in her sister’s candy shop in bustling London, but the looming menace of the plague slowly seeps into everyday life. (I especially liked that the chapters began with bits from Pepys’s Diary.)
When a bolt of infected fabric from London was delivered to the village of Eyam north of the city, the townsfolk there voluntarily sealed themselves off from the rest of the world to prevent the spread of the plague. (Their decision probably saved thousands of lives, though it was a death sentence for many of the people who lived there.) The Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague is set in Eyam during this time and told from the perspective of a young housemaid who sees both the incredibly generosity and kindness and the cruelty and horror of people faced with almost certain death.
If you’re not plague-d out yet, Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year records his family’s memories of the plague year. (Defoe was only five years old during the outbreak.) The recentness of the events comes through in the details.
Yellow Fever :: 1793
Almost a tenth of the population of Philadelphia died during the yellow fever epidemic before a cold front helped take out the infected mosquitoes that carried it. The first cases of yellow fever were reported in the summer of 1793; by mid-October, the “American plague” was killing 100 people a day.
Laurie Halse Anderson makes the history personal in Fever: 1793. Fourteen-year-old Mattie is working hard to make her family’s small coffee shop a success, but when her family servant and friend dies of the fever and her mother becomes ill, Mattie and her grandfather join the scores of people fleeing the city. Things don’t go as planned, and when Mattie finally finds her way home, nothing is the same.
Cholera :: 1854
What’s great about London’s 1854 outbreak of cholera — no, really, bear with me! — is that it’s one of the first times an epidemic got shut down by science. John Snow, an anesthesiologist, theorized that cholera was spread by infected water not bad air, as current science suggested. As the outbreak raged, Snow tested his theory on the ground, successfully proving that a contaminated pump was the root of the problem.
The Great Trouble: A Mystery of London, the Blue Death, and a Boy Called Eel is historical fiction for the science geek, as a mudlarking orphan helps physician John Snow work to determine the true cause of the cholera epidemic attacking the city. My students also dig The Ghost Map, a nonfiction account which treats the outbreak like a scientific mystery.
The Plague :: 1900
Did you know that the plague struck the United States in the early 20th century? A ship from Hong Kong brought the plague to San Francisco’s Chinatown in 1899, and though official channels denied it for public relations reasons, 119 people died before a change in policy effected medical treatment for those affected.
In Chasing Secrets, a 13-year-old girl, who’d rather go on calls with her doctor father than learn how to be a proper young lady at her fancy private school, gets to put her scientific knowledge to work trying to figure out what’s causing the quarantine in Chinatown so that she can help her new friend save his father.
Typhoid :: 1906
A New York cook named Mary Mallon became one of the first people caught at the intersection of emergency health measures and the right to privacy when she was discovered to be the cause of an outbreak of typhoid in a Long Island enclave. A carrier of the disease who also happened to be immune to it, Mallon refused to comply with health officials’ orders designed to stop the disease from spreading — she seems to have found it impossible to believe that a perfectly healthy person could infect other people — and ended up spending 25 years in medical isolation.
Deadly imagines what it was like to track the New York typhoid epidemic as a young scientific researcher. Prudence is thrilled to find a job in an actual laboratory — no easy task for a graduate of Mrs. Browning’s esteemed School for Girls — and even more thrilled when she gets to participate in real, important research tracking down the source of a typhoid epidemic. But when the source in question turns out to be an ordinary human being, deciding what to do next gets complicated.
For a nonfiction breakdown of the cholera outbreak, Fatal Fever: Tracking Down Typhoid Mary focuses most of its attention on Mallon but also includes information about cholera’s pre-20th century significance and modern-day cholera science.
Spanish Influenza :: 1918
More people died in the flu outbreak of 1918-19 than in World War I — an estimated 50 million people died of the flu, and more than one-fifth of the world’s population was affected by the outbreak. In one year, life expectancy in the United States dropped by 12 years.
American Experience: Influenza 1918 offers a fascinating look at the mysterious and deadly 20th century influenza epidemic, starting with the first case reported in a Kansas army hospital and continuing until the epidemic’s unexplained end.
Gina Kolata paints the history of the influenza outbreak as a scientific detective story in Flu: The Story Of The Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus that Caused It.
Like the Willow Tree: The Diary of Lydia Amelia Pierce, Portland, Maine, 1918, part of the Dear America series, demonstrates how completely the influenza epidemic changed people’s lives. Lydia and her brother move from their comfortable Portland neighborhood to a Shaker community with their uncle after their parents die from the flu.
Polio :: 20th century
Polio’s highly infectious nature allowed it to sweep through towns and cities almost unchecked, making it one of the most feared epidemics of the 20th century. In 1952 alone, almost 60,000 children had polio; of those, more than 3,000 died and many were left with permanent disabilities.
In Risking Exposure, it’s Sophie’s experience with polio that leads her to recognize the evil of the Nazi regime in Germany. Though she survives and is given a job as a state photographer, she’s horrified to see pictures of her fellow polio survivors used to mock people with disabilities.
To Stand On My Own: The Polio Epidemic Diary of Noreen Robertson, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, 1937 is set during Canada’s Great Depression, when things are hard enough without polio. When Noreen contracts the disease, her family sends her away to recover, first to the local hospital, then to a farther-away treatment center. The stories of medical wards and patients struggling to walk again reflect the very real experiences of childhood polio survivors.
For a personal account of surviving polio, pick up Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio.
6 Curriculum Shopping Tips that Will Help You Make the Most of Your Homeschool Budget
If you want to save money on secular homeschool curriculum, the best way to shop for curriculum is to know what you need and shop for the homeschool you actually have.
However much — or little — you have to spend on homeschool materials, you’re always going to want to feel like you made a good investment.
However much — or little — you have to spend on secular homeschool materials, you’re always going to want to feel like you made a good investment. That feeling comes from a combination of things: finding a curriculum that you actually use more than once or twice with you kids, feeling like the curriculum did work you couldn’t easily have done on your own, and being satisfied with the cost-to-curriculum satisfaction ratio of your purchases. Before you click “checkout” on a new curriculum, mentally run through this checklist to make sure you’re on the path to homeschool spending satisfaction.
Limit your shelf space.
If you know you’re prone to overbuy, set a physical limit: “These two shelves are all I get for curriculum.” Limiting space will encourage you to be thoughtful about what you add and vigilant about letting go of what doesn’t work. (Not sure if you’re prone to buy more stuff than you need? Count the number of history curricula on your shelves — if you’ve picked up more than two or three this year, there’s a good chance you might benefit from a self-imposed space limit.)
Shop for the homeschool you have.
A new curriculum is probably not going to make your craft-hating kids magically love crafts or your fidgety 1st grader want to settle in for long stretches of quiet work time. It’s easy to buy into the fantasy that the right curriculum can steer your homeschool in a whole new direction, but you’ll get the most bang for your buck if you acknowledge the reality of your homeschool before you click buy. That doesn’t mean the right curriculum can’t make a big difference — it definitely can. It just means you shouldn’t expect any curriculum to change your student in a fundamental way.
Do not buy curriculum for the future.
I know! It’s such a good deal! Why not go ahead and stock up? You just don’t know what’s going to happen: your perfect-right-now program might not be a good fit in three years, or you may realize that your child learns better a different way. Shopping for the future isn’t a waste of budget, exactly, but it’s rarely the best use of your dollars. Focus on what you need now.
Keep a master list.
You will forget the cool book series you bought for earth science or the nifty novel unit study you snagged on sale unless you write them down. Use a notebook or a spreadsheet (I keep a low-tech index card file) to keep track of purchases — group by broad category (science) and then specific categories within that broad category (physics, chemistry, etc.)
Stick with what works.
Suzanne’s homeschool mantra is “If it works, don’t change it.” She’s used the same basic curriculum for all four of her kids, and it’s worked fine for all of them. A curriculum doesn’t have to be life-alteringly joyful and exciting to be a good fit for your homeschool, so if you find something that’s working fine, stop shopping around for something that might be better. (Obviously if it’s not working for a particular kid, that’s a different story.)
Don’t automatically default to curriculum.
Not every subject needs a structured curriculum. Hit the library, load up your Netflix queue with documentaries, and look for resources online before you spend money on a full curriculum. Curricula can be great resources, but make sure you really want to use one before you buy.
Black Women’s Biographies for Black History Month
In honor of Women’s History Month and Black History Month, we’ve rounded up some history-making Black women who should be better known than they are. Add them to your secular homeschool curriculum in Black History Month and every month.
Get these women in a history book! In honor of Women’s History Month and Black History Month, we’ve rounded up some history-making Black women who should be better known than they are.
Photo: Johnny Silvercloud via Wikimedia Commons
If women get short shrift in history textbooks, black women get doubly short-changed — and that’s a shame, because cool women like these deserve wider recognition. Fortunately, your homeschool can correct the omission, and now’s the perfect time to get to know some of these women a little better.
Ella Baker
“My theory is, strong people don’t need strong leaders,” said civil rights activist Baker, who worked mostly behind the scenes from the 1930s to the 1980s to develop the NAACP, eliminate Jim Crow laws, organize the Freedom Summer, and found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
READ THIS: Lift As You Climb
Elizabeth Keckley
Keckley — who bought her freedom from enslavement in the mid-1800s and started a successful dressmaking business — was Mary Todd Lincoln’s confidante and generated much controversy with her behind-the-scenes book about the Lincolns.
READ THIS: Behind the Scenes
Mary Fields
Six-foot-tall, cigar-smoking, shotgun-toting Mary Fields was born enslaved and became the first Black woman mail carrier in 1895 at age 60 by being the fastest applicant to hitch a team of six horses. She never missed a delivery — when snow was too deep for her horses, she strapped on snowshoes to deliver mail. “Stagecoach Mary” was so beloved that schools closed to celebrate her birthday and the mayor exempted her from Montana’s law against women entering saloons.
READ THIS: Fearless Mary
Ora Washington
Imagine if Serena Williams wrapped up her tennis career by becoming a pro basketball player — then she might considered a modern-day Ora Washington. Despite the racism of the early 20th century sports world — the top white woman player refused to meet Washington in a match — Washington won the American Tennis Association’s singles title eight times in nine years and went on to head up a women’s basketball team that dominated the sport for more than a decade.
READ THIS: Overlooked No More: Ora Washington, Star of Tennis and Basketball
Violette Anderson
Violette Anderson worked as a court reporter for 15 years before becoming the first woman to graduate from law school in Illinois. Her private practice was so successful that she was appointed assistant prosecutor for the city of Chicago. In 1926, she became the first black woman to practice law before the U.S. Supreme Court.
READ THIS: Her Story: A Timeline of Women Who Changed America
Biddy Mason
Bridget Mason, called “Biddy,” moved to California with the Mississippi Mormon family who had enslaved her. Technically, in 1851 California, this made Biddy — and all Smiths’ enslaved workers — free. Biddy took her owners to court to sue for her freedom, succeeding in freeing herself and all the other family slaves. Biddy went on to amass a fortune in Los Angeles real estate, which she used to fund charities, found schools, build churches, start parks, and more.
READ THIS: Biddy Mason Speaks Up
Nina Mae McKinney
It wasn’t easy being one of the first black actresses in a racist United States, but Nina Mae McKinney earned her reputation as “the black Garbo” with stellar performances in films like Hallelujah!
READ THIS: Nina Mae McKinney: The Black Garbo
Mary Bowser
Not many enslaved young women got sent to boarding school to be educated, but smart, resourceful Mary Bowser was lucky enough to be born on a Richmond plantation owned by a staunch abolitionist who not only appreciated Mary’s talents but wanted to help her develop them. When the Civil War started, Mary’s former owner risked her life to start a spy system to pass information to the Union Army. Mary was one of her recruits. The fact that she was both Black and a woman made it easy for Mary to fly under the radar when she was hired as a servant for Jefferson Davis. Assuming Mary was ignorant and illiterate, Davis had confidential conversations in front of her and left official papers where she could see them. Though Davis suspected a leak, it wasn’t until late in the war that any suspicion fell on Mary.
READ THIS: Mary Bowser and the Civil War Spy Ring
Celebrate Random Acts of Kindness Day in Your Homeschool
Want to raise kind kids? Celebrate kindness in your homeschool!
Even your youngest homeschool students can celebrate Random Acts of Kindness Day by making the world a kinder, happier place. Here are some ideas to get you started.
Write a thank-you note. A sincere thank-you — to your neighbor who always shares her extra zucchini or the ballet teacher who inspired your dancer son — is pretty much guaranteed to make its recipient’s day.
Make a donation. Collect outgrown clothing or canned goods, and make a donation to an organization that helps other people.
Put together care packs for unhoused people. Include essentials like toothbrushes and toothpaste, deodorant, soap, and shampoo. Add bottled water and shelf-stable snacks, like granola bars, and a lightweight blanket, hat, and gloves, and distribute the packs to people who need them.
Clean up your neighborhood. You can volunteer to pick up litter at your favorite park or just collect the rubbish on your street, but caring for your environment is a great way to show kindness.
Compliment a kid to his parents. If you can genuinely praise a kid’s work or behavior, he and his parents will bask in your appreciation.
Hold the door for someone. Kids may need help with heavy doors, but most people appreciate the friendly gesture.
Leave a happy note. Jot down a message — such as “Have a beautiful day” or “You look fabulous today” — on a sticky note and leave it on a public bathroom mirror for the next person to find.
Secular Homeschool Curriculum Review: Philosophy for Kids
It’s never too early to start studying philosophy in your secular homeschool. Rebecca has the scoop on a resource that helps you get the big conversations started.
Philosophy for Kids: 40 Fun Questions That Help You Wonder about Everything!
Recommended for: Middle School
Four hundred years ago, French Renaissance writer Michel de Montaigne asked society a thoughtful question: “Since philosophy is the art which teaches us how to live, and since children need to learn it as much as we do at other ages, why do we not instruct them in it?”
Tuned-in parents and educators would agree that children are natural philosophers. As a group, young people are highly inquisitive, imaginative, wide-open thinkers. With enthusiasm, they constantly seek opportunities to develop a sense of self and an understanding of the world they inhabit. On many levels, children wrestle, just as philosophers do, with questions of morality, social justice, and human understanding. Oftentimes, they attempt this without a proper context in which to frame their questions.
Even an elementary understanding of philosophy provides the tools our kids need to question and evaluate ideas constructively. Philosophy teaches how to conduct organized and civilized debate. It cultivates appreciation and under- standing of diverse thoughts, and opinions and grows its students into responsible, empathetic, articulate world citizens. Philosophy, it seems, aims to achieve the very goals so many of us aspire to reach each day in our own homeschools.
Philosophy, and the thought-provoking discussions this subject inspires, can lead to deeply satisfying exchanges between you and your child. Fortunately for us, Prufrock Press has published an excellent resource to help families get started — David A. White’s Philosophy for Kids: 40 Fun Questions That Help You Wonder About Everything.
White has been teaching philosophy in colleges and universities since 1967, but clearly he understands the value of providing philosophical understanding to much younger students as well. Written for children ages 10 and older, Philosophy for Kids might also appeal to younger, highly motivated learners who enjoy engaging with thinking of this kind.
Philosophy for Kids is divided into four sections: values, knowledge, reality, and critical thinking. Each of these sections receives a brief overview from the author and is linked to a specific branch of philosophy — ethics, epistemology, metaphysics, and logic. Only one page in length, these introductions set the stage for a series of compelling problems for readers to ponder.
Each of the four sections is accompanied by a series of 10 units that open with questions such as “How do you know who your friends are?,” “Do you perceive things as they are or only as they seem to be?,” “If many people believe that something is true, is it true?,” and “Do you have free will?”. The first 29 questions in these units are connected to the work of a great philosopher. Kids will have fun deciding if they agree with such thinkers as Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates and will also love defending their own divergent beliefs.
To help learners consider all angles of each issue, White provides various exercises that include true or false and multiple choice questions as well as the chance to rank ideas according to the reader’s individual ideology. Although this traditional approach might sound dry to some homeschoolers, in this context the approach works well. The questions are entertaining, fun to wrestle with, and relevant.
Each short lesson closes with a section called “For Further Thought,” providing opportunities for students to delve deeper with more questions and activities. In one unit students are asked, “Can another person understand your feelings?” After completing several exercises addressing this question, students proceed to the “For Further Thought” section to consider “Is language the best way to express our emotions? Would the arts of music or painting represent emotions more vividly and truly? Select a work of music or art and analyze whether or not this work expresses emotions better than language.”
Additional ideas of great writers, mathematicians, orators, poets, and playwrights pepper the pages of this book and are wonderful aids for launching further thoughtful conversations.
The final 60 pages or so of Philosophy for Kids provide teaching tips, a glossary of terms, and helpful suggestions for further reading. Here White’s writing is as straightforward and pleasant to read as the rest of the book. With minimal effort, parents are able to glean excellent suggestions to enhance and facilitate meaningful discussion.
Whether your family chooses to work through this book chronologically or prefers instead to skip around to those questions of greatest interest, it makes no difference. A particularly fun aspect of a curriculum such as this is that it does not have to be a presented using a traditional format. If you like, simply use the material to foster deeper dinner time conversation or to pass time on a long car ride. However you choose to work with the book, your child will likely develop a new approach to critical thinking and have a terrific time in the process!
Philosophy for Kids could easily be adapted for use with one student or with many. I can imagine using this in a homeschool co-op with great results. Although a student could work through this book alone, I suspect an interactive approach would be preferable and loads more fun.
Very little preparation is required to use this book effectively in a homeschool. Parents may wish to read ahead to obtain a better command of the information. However, opening the book and reading it for the first time aloud with your child is absolutely fine. The book is a solid resource that is thorough enough to stand on its own. Especially enthusiastic students might enjoy supplementing with parts of the original texts cited throughout the book or with biographical information about featured philosophers. On average, expect a typical discussion to last 30 minutes or so.
In the introduction of his book, White writes of his desire to “foster a sense of wonder and to aim it in many directions.” It is my belief that the author achieves exactly what he set out to do. Taking subject matter that many might initially find intimidating, White presents philosophy as highly relevant, playful, challenging and fun.
Bottom line: Philosophy for Kids is a thought-provoking resource that will appeal to curious learners who enjoy puzzling over life’s mysteries. As a parent, you are likely to gain new insight into the wonderful ways that your child views the world as you delve into fascinating new subject matter together.
“Sure—Why Not?”: The Power of Trying Something New
One of the benefits of homeschooling is that when curiosity strikes, you can always give it a try, teaching your kids that they have the skills to try everything.
One of the benefits of homeschooling is that when curiosity strikes, you can always give it a try, teaching your kids that they have the skills to try everything.
The holiday break for our family included two trips to the build-it-yourself store (lumber yard), at least four (I lost count) trips to the hardware store, three trips to the recycling center/dump, and one big trip to Goodwill. In short, we built a wall for Christmas (and got a little spring cleaning in as a bonus). All hands were on deck for a remodeling job that turned our small, three-bedroom home into a still small, but four-bedroom home.
But why — some of our friends and family have questioned — when you have one kid with one foot out the door (perhaps) and two more closer to on-their-own than just-beginning would you bother to add a fourth bedroom now? I have no better answer than that it simply seemed to be the right time. All five members of the family were in agreement, so we spent our holiday building a wall.
In fact, our family has talked about creating more space in this old house for years. We’ve spent a considerable amount of time talking about moving to a bigger — or at least a different — house altogether. So many options have been considered. The back porch could have been converted into a small bedroom, or perhaps we could have closed in the side “deck” (which isn’t really a deck at all, but does have a small roof overhang). We’d even talked of a tiny bedroom in the spirit of the tiny house movement, parked in the yard and within easy commute.
But in mid-December, when I mused — “You know, we could move the kitchen table into the (imagine this) kitchen and move the living room furniture into the room where the kitchen table now resides and then put a wall right down the center of the living room with a door and, voila, we’ve got a fourth bedroom!” — that’s when the plan came together.
Anything is possible when the whole crew is on board.
Perhaps I should back up a bit and admit that we aren’t typically a family for whom construction, in the literal sense, is a standard pastime. We read books, we love movies, we take walks, and we sometimes hike. We’ve been known to go camping, though travel most often requires a motel room and a hot shower at the end of the day. It would not be unusual to drop in on us at some random point in time and find someone knitting or weaving or sewing or playing a video game or writing a story... Our kitchen is often in use as we are bakers and love cooking from scratch so much that we often chose eating in over going out when we want to treat ourselves to a special meal.
But actually changing the configuration of our house? Not so much. Our tool selection is limited and our skill set, admittedly, on the shy side. In these situations, I close my eyes and do my best to channel my father (the house I grew up in was in a continual state of remodeling) and perhaps consult a how-to book or a wiki-how site.
“Can we build a wall?” the members of my family asked. “Would it remain standing? Could we put an actual door in it?”
“Sure. Why not?” I said. Those are three very powerful words, I have learned.
When the wall was complete, middle kid, recipient of the bedroom that was the product of the construction, said, “Wow. Do you know how empowered I feel? If I can build a wall; I can do anything.”
When I look back on my years as a parent, these are the words that have triggered some of the most worthwhile, most memorable, and yes, most educational events of our lives. Can we stay up all night? Can I dig a big hole in the yard? Can we sleep outside? Can I cut my brother’s hair? Can I make up my own recipe? Can we make our own video game?
Sure. Why not?
How to Host a Homeschool Art Activity
Group art projects can be a lot of fun with a little advance planning and the right supplies on hand. Amy Hood helps you think big for a one-time art party or an ongoing homeschool activity.
Group art projects can be a lot of homeschool fun with a little advance planning and the right supplies on hand. Amy helps you think big for a one-time art party or an ongoing homeschool activity.
At some point in your homeschooling journey, you may want to lead an art activity for a group, whether as a one-off event or as part of an ongoing secular homeschool co-op or class. Facilitating art-making for a group of kids is one of the most rewarding ways I can spend a couple of hours. Depending on the activity, it can definitely be tiring as well, but as always, some planning ahead makes everything easier.
What does your space look like?
My first concern is always whether I have a water source. Obviously it’s wonderful to have a sink right in the room, but it’s not a necessity. When I facilitated an art class at our homeschool co-op, I filled gallon jugs with water and used a dishpan to catch the wastewater (from rinsing paint- brushes, for example). It’s an effective system. A spray bottle and paper towels are great for cleaning surfaces.
Other room issues to consider include tables, desks, and chairs. Will your participants be able to sit so that materials such as paint sets can be shared? If tables aren’t easily cleanable or need protection, clear vinyl shower curtains are inexpensive and do the job well; I use duct tape to hold them down. I’ve also used individual drawing boards cut from masonite.
Unless you’re allowed to store materials where you’re teaching, you’re going to need to transport items back and forth. I use a big plastic tote with a cover and make a list of everything the activity requires so I can check it off as I pack it. Items I use every class (table covers, water pitchers, etc) stay in the bin between classes, while activity-specific items get cleaned and put away once I return home. It’s always a good idea to bring a full box of wet wipes, too.
What age group are you working with?
The general rule that applies across all groups also applies here: the younger the children, the smaller the group should be. With preschoolers, four to six kids is a good maximum group size, and that’s with another adult in the room. A benefit of mixed-age homeschool groups, however, is that older kids can assist younger ones. Think about the ages and abilities of the kids you’re working with and set a maximum size that seems reasonable for you.
What do you plan to do?
My best advice here is to not think small. Printmaking is one of my favorite art techniques to share with all ages, because it’s magical. I’ve taught kids how to use and care for brayers, transported large Plexiglas sheets and gelatin printmaking plates, and supervised (with lots of parent help) as kids worked at carving their own stamps. Think about your group size and how you can simplify a process yet still allow exploration of new techniques. One way I’ve done this is by limiting paint or ink colors and having kids visit the ink stations. Keeping ink and brayers in a central place made it easier to supervise. It also made clean-up easier.
Don’t think small when it comes to ages and abilities, either. I’ve run great printmaking activities with preschoolers, too. Kids are capable (although I suspect you already know that!).
Consider, too, whether you can work on projects during more than one meeting. If you’re allowed to store works-in-progress on site, you can take advantage of this to spend more time on a particular process or technique.
Whatever you plan to do, provide the best quality materials that your budget allows. Art-making with inadequate supplies leads to frustration. If you’re painting, for example, use heavy enough paper so that it doesn’t curl.
Set some ground rules.
I like to begin by letting kids know that I believe all artists, no matter the age, deserve high-quality art materials, and that I trust them to treat the materials with respect and take care of them as demonstrated. This almost always results in art materials being treated well. I let them know that first and foremost, art-making should be fun. And I ask that we not comment on another person’s artwork unless invited to do so, and then to be careful that our words are not critical. I also build clean-up time into the class time, more so during an ongoing class than for a one-time activity. If kids are enrolled in a class, part of what I hope they learn is how to care for the materials, and that includes making sure they’re properly cleaned.
The big payoff
The alchemy that occurs when making art in a group is pretty special. It becomes a very social activity; we see one another’s work in progress, we chat, we make observations and inspire one another. If the group leader makes it clear that the group is a safe place in which to make art (that is, no criticism is allowed), ideas start to zing around freely, infecting everyone, enriching the process, and leading to exciting and at times unexpected outcomes. I make sure artists under my scope know they are in charge of their own work, and ultimately there is no “right” or “wrong.” This freedom can lead to amazing discoveries, and creating an environment in which to nurture this is well worth all the time spent planning ahead.
New Books on Our Homeschool Reading List in February 2023
These are the books we’re excited to add to our homeschool reading list in February 2023.
So many books, so little time! But these are the titles on our library holds list.
The Pearl Hunter by Miya T. Beck
Honestly, this one had me at middle grades novel about pre-shogunate Japan. Pearl diver Kai makes a deal with the gods to bring back her twin sister’s soul: She’ll steal a legendary pearl from the Fox Queen, and the gods will give her sister back to her. The buzz on this one is a little iffy, but I’m always going to check out historical middle grades fiction from the Asian world, so this one’s still on my list.
It’s Boba Time for Pearl Li by Nicole Chen
How charming is this? To save her beloved neighborhood boba shop, Pearl Li decides to start selling her handmade amigurumi dolls — but of course it’s a much more complicated project than Pearl Li anticipated! I love boba, yarn crafting, and family stories so this one is right up my alley. I really love books about people who make things with their hands, and I happen to have a school full of crafty homeschoolers looking for book recommendations, so I have high hopes for this one.
The House Swap by Yvette Clark
If a middle grades book is being billed as a mash-up of The Parent Trap and The Holiday, I think we can all feel confident it will find a spot on my reading list. I did have a chance to read an advance copy of this one, and I am happy to report it is as warm and cozy and delightful as that description implies — with an emotional depth that feels all its own. Los Angeles native Sage and English village-dwelling Ally swap stories while their families swap houses for summer vacation.
The Universe in You by Jason Chin
Chin’s dazzling picture book illuminates the microscopic building blocks of life. Definitely read this as a picture book, with your middle grade science classes, and even with your high school biology curriculum. Just read it!
The Bright Side by Chad Otis
Something I am always trying to do with my kids is to normalize life experiences that don’t look like ours. I wish this picture book had been around when they were younger because Otis does a brilliant job showing what life is like for a kid who lives in an old school bus instead of a house. We don’t know why his family lives on the bus — it might be a lifestyle choice or an unhoused situation — but that’s a great reminder that we don’t, in fact, know other people’s backstories and shouldn’t make assumptions about them.
Winston Chu vs. the Whimsies by Stacey Lee
I read an advance copy of this, and I definitely recommend it for middle grades readers. Like all the books in Rick Riordan’s imprint, Winston Chu vs. the Whimsies plays with traditional mythology showing up in the modern world. This time, it’s Chinese folklore — and a magical shop where mysterious things happen. When this imprint is at its best, the modern world stories are as important and complex as the mythologies they spotlight, and that is definitely the case here: Winston’s family is still recovering from his military father’s death in action, and he is a little envious of his wealthy friend who has all the cool stuff and never has to worry about money. There is a lot happening in this book, including a big cast of characters, so it feels a little chaotic at times, but the payoff was definitely worth it for me.
The Davenports by Krystal Marquis
In 1910 Chicago, the four Davenport daughters are among the wealthiest Black families in the United States. If you know me at all, you know that my passion for history comes from Sunfire’s YA historical romance novels, so I was pretty much first in line for this one! It’s definitely lighter on the history than the romance (even though it’s based on the real-life Patterson family, who are totally rabbit trail-worthy, if you are so inclined), but it’s still really cool what it was like to be part of the Black one-percent during the early 20th century. And yay for historical fiction about Black joy and Black success, which I always personally love to see.
No Accident by Laura Bates
Don’t tell my students, but I’m apparently very into stories about teenagers in peril these days. Here’s a dark and twisty YA take on the genre: A chartered plane goes down with a high school basketball team and its cheerleaders on board. Seven teens survive and make it to an island, where they have to figure out how to find water, rig a shelter, and generally survive in the wild. But that’s not all: Something happened at a party the night before the plane went down, and someone wants revenge. I think this is a book that raises a lot of compelling questions. It doesn’t answer them all, but maybe that’s part of the point?
The Swifts: A Dictionary of Scoundrels by Beth Lincoln
In this rambunctiously funny middle grades mystery, Shenanigan Swift puts her detective skills to work solving the murder of her Aunt Schadenfreude at a family reunion. I’m always on the search for a mystery that captures the spirit of my beloved The Westing Game, and while this one didn’t quite get there for me, it was still a madcap mystery adventure that I thoroughly enjoyed. Sometimes reviews comparing new books to much-loved books do the new books no favors, so I will resist the urge to compare this to other middle grades books I have known and love and recommend you go into it with no preconceptions.
The Human Kaboom by Adam Rubin
This middle grades book is just straight-up fun: Six stories with the same title (and all illustrated by different artists) take readers on a riotous romp. There’s a school field trip prank (in space!), a swanky hotel mystery, an ancient curse in a sleepy fishing village, and more. I love this idea of spitballing an entire collection of stories from a single title and definitely recommend stealing it for your next homeschool creative writing session.
The Minuscule Mansion of Myra Malone by Audrey Burges
I’ve always loved dollhouse stories, so I’m excited for this one: Myra Malone’s dollhouse blog has thousands of followers, but it also has mysteries that its 30-something owner can’t begin to understand: Rooms appear and disappear, and sometimes, she can swear she hears haunting music. Then one day a stranger contacts Myra to tell her that her mansion is his childhood home, where his grandmother disappeared when he was just a little boy. From here, their stories intersect with the mystery of the dollhouse, and it sounds like the kind of quietly lovely book I would have loved as a teen.
How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix
My friend Stephanie turned me on to Grady Hendrix — he is great if you love the idea of horror but need it served up with enough humor and hope to keep you from plunging into the abyss. I hope this one delivers more of the same: After their parents’ unexpected deaths, two siblings from a dysfunctional family have to get their Charleston childhood home ready to sell, but there’s something off about the house. Spooky puppets kind of off. If you’ve got a teen horror fan, Hendrix is a solid pick.
What are you excited to read in your February homeschool?
Homeschool Field Trip: Birdwatching in New Mexico
Winter is prime birdwatching season at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico, when geese, cranes, and other winged wonders fill the sky at the beginning and end of each day.
Winter is prime birdwatching season at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico, when geese, cranes, and other winged wonders fill the sky at the beginning and end of each day.
Photo by Alex Briseño via Creative Commons
There’s not really a bad time for birdwatching at the Bosque del Apache, but you will find the greatest concentration of avian inhabitants at the refuge between November and mid- February. The sandhill cranes— exotic birds with gangly legs and dramatic six-foot wingspans—are home for the winter, and watching them take off together in flight as the sun rises and settle back down to the water in an angular ballet at sunset, gleefully squawking their staccato songs, makes for some of the most mag- ical birdwatching you’ll ever do.
The Bosque del Apache in Socorro, New Mexico (about an hour and a half drive south of Albuquerque and just eight miles from San Antonio) is an ecology story with a happy ending. When the refuge was established seventy years ago, only seventeen long-limbed sandhill cranes wintered here. Today, thanks to carefully established habitats and water management, more than 15,000 cranes — not to mention snow geese, Canada geese, hawks, eagles, blackbirds, crows, roadrunners, herons, spar- rows, grebes, and coots — call the preserve home, along with occasional reptiles, amphibians and mammals, such as mule deer, coyotes, and jackrabbits. (Check at the visitor center for a list of what wildlife rangers and visitors have recently spotted in the park.)
Arrive before sunrise for the best view of cranes taking flight. (Bundle up — those early mornings get chilly.) You’ll see lots of people at the Flight Deck, but if you keep driving 30-ish yards down the road, you’ll get a private show. Don’t race off after the first dramatic flight; if you stick around, you’ll see the late risers splashing in the water before spreading their wings to launch into the sky.
Afternoon is the perfect time to explore the refuge on foot. The three-mile Canyon National Recreation Trail has great habitat views, and you can settle in for some serious birdwatching at the Phil Norton Blind on the Farm Loop, where birds hunt in the surrounding fields. If you don’t feel like hiking, drive the 12-mile Wildlife Drive loop that circles the refuge; pull over to check out sights that strike you.
Life Skills Every Homeschooler Needs
Add these essential life skills to your secular homeschool curriculum.
Add these essential life skills to your homeschool curriculum.
Homeschoolers get a bad rap sometimes for shielding our kids from the real world, but we’re actually in a prime position to rear kids who are well-prepared for their adult lives. The key is to step back and let kids take the reins well before their eighteenth birthday, says Julie Lythcott-Haims, former dean of freshmen at Stanford University and author of How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success. Here’s what kids should know how to do before they start on the college applications:
FEED THEMSELVES
When: By high school
You don’t get to turn in your oven mitts just yet, but by high school, your kids should be preparing meals for themselves on a regular basis — making oatmeal for breakfast, slapping together a sandwich for lunch, and yes, whipping up a quick stir-fry or pot of soup for dinner.
How to help: Put cooking on the curriculum with a cookbook like Alton Brown’s (which is great for teaching kitchen science, too) or Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything (which includes straightforward, doable recipes for anything you might want to cook).
ADVOCATE FOR THEMSELVES
When: By high school
You don’t want to be one of those parents who calls her kid’s college professor to complain about her grade, right? The best way to avoid this is to gradually move the job of advocating for your kid into your child’s hands. (Obviously, when a situation calls for a parent advocate, you should jump in.)
How to help: When your child is upset about a grade or confused about an outside class assignment, help her figure out how to solve the problem herself. Practice with her, but assure her that you’re confident she can get her point across. It’s also important to prepare her for the possibility that she won’t get what she wants — “Many times they won't get the outcome they desire, and it's ‘Well, I tried.’ And they come home and they learn to cope with it, because not everything in life will go your way,” Lythcott-Haims says.
GET UP ON TIME
When: By late middle school
“By the time your kid is entering high school, you ought to have confidence they can wake themselves up and get themselves washed and dressed in clothing that's clean," Lythcott-Haims says. That may mean you miss the occasional co-op class or park day — which is preferable to missing a final exam with no make-up date or being late to work when you have an important meeting.
How to help: Homeschoolers don’t have to be clock- watchers, but you can let kids know your timetable: “We’re going to leave for the library in an hour, so it’s time to start rounding up your books.” Buy your child an alarm clock, teach him how to set it, and let him be responsible for getting up and ready on a few low-pressure occasions before easing into bigger responsibility.
WORK INDEPENDENTLY
When: By middle school
Twentysomethings in the workplace can sometimes struggle because they’re used to being told what to do, step-by-step, and patted on the back for every accomplishment, says Lythcott-Haims. They don’t know how to identify work that needs doing or to recognize when someone else could use a hand. Successful adults know how to make their own projects — something homeschoolers should be able to get very comfortable doing by high school.
How to help: By 7th or 8th grade, start giving your child looser and looser assignments and letting them set their own goals and deadlines to complete the project. At first, you can make suggestions — “Don’t forget to leave yourself enough time to edit your final draft” — but your goal should be to let your child be in charge.
PLAN AN OUTING
When: By high school
It can be scary to turn your kids loose to hang out with their friends, but that’s exactly what they’re going to be doing when they hit adulthood — and they’re likely to make smarter and safer decisions on their adventures if they’ve had a safe space to practice them. By late middle school, kids are ready to spend an hour at the mall in a pack or to see a movie at the theater where you’re watching a different film.
How to help: When your child’s peer group is old enough and interested in planning an outing — whether it’s to get pizza at a restaurant or see a movie — help walk them through a plan and enlist adult support for pick-up and drop-off, but let them handle the logistics of figuring out tickets, snacks, tips, etc. “This is how kids spread their wings,”saysLythcott-Haims.
Great Movie Adaptations of Books for Your Homeschool Comparative Lit Classes
Great movie adaptations of books make an instant comparative literature literature class for your secular homeschool. Here are some of our favorite homeschool movies.
You don’t have to choose between the book and the movie in these terrific adaptations — enjoy them both. We’ve rounded up some book-and-a-movie combos perfect for cold weather marathon sessions.
Tales of the Night (2001) + Andrew Lang’s Fairy Books
Though not a literal adaptation of the classic fairy tales, this inventive film about the enchantments of imagination, set in an abandoned theater, channels the same storytelling spirit — and may inspire some living room reenactments.
The Iron Giant (2005) + The Iron Man by Ted Hughes
Really, this animated film — about a boy who teaches a warmongering robot how to love — should get more respect than it does — and Hughes’ lyrical storytelling in the source story is as memorable as his poetry.
The Great Mouse Detective (1986) + Basil of Baker Street by Eve Titus
Sherlock Homes sometimes used the alias Basil, so it’s no surprise that’s the name of the Sherlock Holmes of the mouse world, who — accompanied by his biographer/assistant Dawson — solves baffling crimes.
A Little Princess (1995) + A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
The action moves to New York and there are a few other changes in this lavish adaptation, but it slow-paced, dreamy film-making and a terrific Sara Carew make this movie a must-view.
My Fair Lady (1964) + Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
Shaw’s play may feel like heavy going to readers new to his style, so take advantage of the delightful musical adaptation to appreciate its nuances — and to kick off the never-ending argument of what a happy ending to this story would actually be.
The Secret of Moonacre (2010) + The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge
Maria’s quest to save her family from an unfortunate curse is the crux of this fantasy book and movie combo. (The book was J.K. Rowling’s favorite as a child.)
National Velvet (1944) + National Velvet by Enid Bagnold
The film version gets the full Hollywood treatment (star Elizabeth Taylor definitely doesn’t have book-Velvet’s cottony hair and buck teeth), but it manages to hang onto the story of one stubborn girl’s determination to win a horse race.
The Secret World of Arietty (2012) + The Borrowers by Mary Norton
Though it wanders from the book’s storyline, Studio Ghibli’s adaptation captures the sheer visual magic of the Borrowers’ tiny world with gorgeous animation.
Easy Homeschool Dinner Ideas
When everyone’s getting hangry and you seriously need a supermarket run, these speedy from-the-pantry dinners will get you through the dinner hour with your sanity intact.
When everyone’s getting hangry and you seriously need a supermarket run, these speedy mostly-from-the-pantry dinners will get you through the dinner hour with your sanity intact.
SHAKSHUKA
Chop a small onion and sauté ’til soft in a little olive oil. Add a couple of teaspoons of chopped garlic (about four cloves), salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes. Stir in a can of chopped tomatoes (28 oz.), turn up the heat, and crack four eggs into the mixture when it starts boiling, spooning the sauce over the eggs so they cook completely. Sprinkle generously with feta and parsley, if you have them, and serve with pita bread.
TOMATO-CHICKPEA SOUP
Heat a couple of cans of tomato-basil soup (20 oz.) in a pan over medium heat. Stir in a can of drained chickpeas (15 oz.) and a package of frozen spinach (10 oz.), and cook over medium heat until spinach is thoroughly cooked, about 10 minutes. Serve with a swirl of sour cream and a scant handful of croutons.
PASTA WITH BREADCRUMBS
Cook pasta. (Bucatini or fettuccine are good options, but any pasta will do.) Meanwhile, sauté a generous handful of breadcrumbs in butter; add Parmesan cheese and garlic to the pan. Stir in cooked pasta with a little cooking water, add salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes, and cook for a few more minutes.
CHICKPEA SALAD SANDWICH
Mix a can of drained chickpeas (15 oz.) with 3 Tbsp. tahini, 1/2 tsp. Dijon mus- tard, 1 Tbsp. maple syrup, a pinch of dried dill, a little chopped red onion, and a scoop of toasted, unsalted sunflower seeds, if you have them on hand. Serve on toasted whole-grain bread with avocado slices and onion.
RAVIOLI LASAGNA
Spoon one-third of a jar of tomato sauce (26 oz.) into a baking dish, top with a layer (about 12) of thawed cheese ravioli and thawed, drained frozen spinach. Sprinkle with shredded mozzarella and Parmesan; repeat layers until ravioli is gone, ending with a layer of cheese-sprinkled sauce. Bake at 350° for 35 minutes.
MIX-AND- MATCH DINNER POTATOES
Bake foil-wrapped potatoes in 400° oven until tender (about an hour). When potatoes are done, split in half and heat a package of frozen broccoli in cheese sauce (10 oz.) and/stir a cup of chopped ham or bacon into a jar of alfredo sauce (10 oz.). Let your crew top their own baked potatoes.
What homeschool subjects are good when you have kids across a wide age range?
The best homeschool subjects for families with an age gap are the ones where kids can get hands-on and dive as deep as they want to.
My kids cover a wide age range. Are there any homeschool subjects that are good for tots through teens to do together?
When you’re teaching across an age gap, the biggest challenge is finding something that’s engaging enough for older students while still being accessible to your younger ones. Fine arts classes, like art, music, and poetry, often fit the bill. A program like Meet the Masters or a book like Discovering Great Artists: Hands-On Art for Children in the Styles of the Great Masters gives kids an opportunity to study art history by making their own artistic creations, which can be as appealing to an artistic teen as to a scissors-happy kindergartner. (If you want to skip the history and go straight to the art-making, Mona Brookes’ Drawing With Children: A Creative Method for Adult Beginners, Too, is a fantastic resource for this.)
For music appreciation, it’s hard to beat the Classical Kids series (including Beethoven Lives Upstairs, Mr. Bach Comes to Call, and Mozart’s Magnificent Voyage), which introduces composers through music and words. These programs are just as likely to pop up on college radio stations as in preschool classrooms, so they really do have multi-age appeal.
With its dramatic costumes and exciting storylines, opera has surprising kid appeal, and the free Opera for Everyone podcast introduces the genre well.
And don’t underestimate the power of poetry as a multi-age study! A stack of poetry books from the library can be a springboard for great learning conversations.
Bottom line: When it comes to teaching multiple ages, hands-on topics that can go deep or stay light are your best bet. You can’t really go far wrong with fine arts.
Do you have any advice for homeschoolers writing their college essays?
Your college essays are your chance to show who you are beyond numbers and letters — and the best essays tell a story about who you are in simple, everyday experiences.
My daughter is just starting to think about applying to college (yikes!), and I am feeling nervous about the application essay. Do you have any advice for homeschoolers writing their college essays?
People often ask me for advice on writing application essays, but there’s really no secret to a great college application essay. The only trick is getting away from the notion that your essay has to be A Very Special Piece of Writing and giving yourself permission to just tell a story about who you are.
Think of it this way: Admission offices go through thousands of application packets, many of which contain earnest essays about mission trips to Haiti, learning about leadership on the sports field, or similarly repetitive topics. Don’t waste your big chance to break out of the dry application box by writing about what every other hopeful applicant does. And don’t repeat the same information over and over either: If you’re sending a recommendation letter from your creative writing teacher and your application includes a long list of writing awards and publications, don’t also use your essay to focus on your love of writing — share something else. Skip the stories about life-changing trips abroad, too — you’ve had plenty of epiphanies in your own backyard, and those are often the most compelling ones to focus on. Seize the opportunity to talk about something more personal instead, like how you made the decision to become a vegetarian, why you decided not to get your driver’s license, or how you spent an entire year studying Minecraft as an academic subject.
Bottom line: Aim for an essay that makes your daughter’s friends say “That’s totally you,” and she’s on the right track.
Do homeschoolers need an accredited diploma to get into college?
Homeschoolers worry about accreditation, but we should really be focused on our teen’s classes, test scores, and other academic and extracurricular achievements — that’s what colleges will really be looking at.
I keep hearing about accredited diplomas and programs now that my son is in middle school. Do homeschoolers need an accredited diploma to get into college?
There’s a lot of confusion around accreditation when it comes to homeschooling. First of all, curriculum can’t be accredited; only institutions can be accredited. So unless you’re enrolled in an accredited institution — which makes you a student at that institution rather than a homeschooler — you won’t receive an accredited diploma.
And that’s fine! No U.S. state requires any homeschool curriculum or diploma to be accredited. Some homeschoolers look into accreditation because they plan to return to traditional school at some point and want the work they did as homeschoolers to “count.” In most states, it will count whether it’s accredited or not until your student starts 9th grade; from 9th grade on, homeschool credits probably won’t count as required credits toward graduation whether they are accredited or not. U.S. public high schools also don’t always accept credits from private schools or public schools in other states, so if you know your plans include a return to public high school after 9th grade, accreditation may not be the solution you need. (In that case, it’s smart to talk to a counselor at the actual school you want to attend; they can give you the best advice about transferring as a homeschooler.)
As far as life after high school, it’s worth asking yourself whether anyone has ever checked that your high school diploma is accredited. (Don’t assume it is if you graduated from a public high school! Not all public schools in the United States are actually accredited.) My hybrid high school is not accredited, and our graduates go on to great colleges every year. Colleges are waking up to the fact that homeschoolers make great additions to the university scene, and in recent years — especially since COVID threw learning off the rails — they’ve become much more flexible about requirements for homeschooled applicants. You may have a few hoops to jump through with some colleges or after-high school programs if you bypass accreditation (here in Georgia, for example, you’ve got to hit a certain SAT score to qualify for the state’s merit-based HOPE scholarship if you graduate as a homeschooler), but if you’ve made it through SAT tests, dual enrollment, AP classes, and all the rest of it with your homeschooler, you’re probably pretty good at jumping though a few hoops. You don’t need an accredited diploma, and most homeschoolers won’t have one.
So why consider accreditation? If your son has his heart set on one of the very few universities or programs that actually requires an accredited diploma, it’s obviously worth setting the wheels in motion to obtain one. If you’re hoping to get certain state-funded college financial aid, check the requirements — an accredited diploma might be a smart choice for students who struggle with tests if it overrides a minimum-score requirement. I’ve had students get their diplomas at our hybrid homeschool accredited through Bridgeway Academy and Clonlara School. (It feels a little like paying to get your diploma rubber-stamped, but sometimes a rubber stamp gives you extra peace of mind.)
Bottom line: The transcript is what counts. Your child’s classes, test scores, and other academic and extracurricular achievements are what colleges will really be looking at.
What’s the easiest way to homeschool a subject my child hates?
There are three surprisingly simple ways to tackle a subject that’s causing stress in your secular homeschool.
Option A: Skip It
Sometimes, your child’s brain just isn’t ready to process certain kinds of information — and no amount of solving for x is going to make algebra click for her until she’s ready. Instead of powering through, consider pulling back and taking a three-month break from your problem subject.
Option B: Outsource it
A bad subject can make homeschooling feel like a chore for you and your child. If you’re both struggling, let someone else do the heavy lifting. You can find a teacher to tackle almost every subject — check with local classes and co-ops or on Outschool to find people excited to tackle the class that’s sucking the joy out of your homeschool. Homeschooling doesn’t mean you have to take the reins for every single subject.
Option C: Streamline it
Some curricula script every lesson and schedule everything from practice problems to review sessions. If you’re really struggling, de-personalize the subject by using a boxed curriculum. (For math, try Saxon or Teaching Textbooks.) Sure, you’ll sacrifice some flexibility and spontaneity, but it’s a small price to pay for your sanity.
Homeschool Unit Study: The Harlem Renaissance
Black History Month is the perfect excuse to celebrate the Harlem Renaissance, a flourishing of African-American culture that lit up the creative landscape of the 1920s with its epicenter firmly located in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood.
Black History Month is the perfect excuse to celebrate the Harlem Renaissance, a flourishing of African-American culture that lit up the creative landscape of the 1920s with its epicenter firmly located in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood.
Jacob Lawrence, 1917-2000, To Preserve Their Freedom, from Toussain L'Ouverture series, serigraph, 1988-1997. Museum of Arts & Sciences, Daytona Beach.
The Harlem Renaissance is one of my favorite periods of U.S. history to explore in our high school homeschool. My students get excited by the sheer abundance of possibilities: You’ve got art, you’ve got literature, you’ve got music, you’ve got social criticism, you’ve even got food. On apparently every front, Black Americans were bringing their culture and creativity into play, and the result is almost an embarrassment of riches. There are several directions you could go with this unit: Treat it as a literature unit, and dive into some of the period’s most important works, or use it as a jumping-off point for a big, interdisciplinary study of early 20th century African American history. We usually do the latter, since the Harlem Renaissance also provides an impetus and meaningful background for the civil rights movements of the mid-20th century.
READ
Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. DuBois
The sociologist and activist W.E.B DuBois was in many ways the father of the Harlem Renaissance, and in this, his most important work, DuBois makes a claim for re-thinking of African-American identity that was to resonate with a generation of African-Americans. DuBois was himself a remarkable figure — the first African-American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard University, he wrote many books, founded the Niagara movement, which opposed Booker T. Washington’s policies of conciliation, and fought for the rights of African-Americans to vote and enjoy the same privileges as other Americans. Souls of Black Folk memorably and movingly describes DuBois’ dawning awareness of his “double consciousness” as an African-American, “this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness, — an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”
“The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” by Langston Hughes
One of the central debates of the Harlem Renaissance was the question of what art, specifically African-American art, was meant to do. Should the concern of black artists be to counter white stereotypes or simply to portray black life as realistically and authentically as possible? While DuBois thought the former, a younger, more militant generation of black artists, most prominent among them the poet and novelist Langston Hughes, aimed to show all of Black life in their art. In this essay, published in the Nation magazine in 1921, Hughes criticizes those middle-class Blacks who are ashamed of their race and calls on African-Americans to embrace their own heritage and “indigenous” art forms, such as jazz.
Cane by Jean Toomer
Blending poetry with sketches of black life in the South and North, Toomer’s Cane is one of the literary masterpieces of the Harlem Renaissance. Toomer was a racially mixed man who could pass as white and, according to Henry Louis Gates and Rudolph P. Byrd, often chose to.
Every Tongue Got to Confess: Negro Folk-Tales From the Gulf States by Zora Neale Hurston
Though best-known for the classic (and staple of high school English curricula) Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston began her career carrying out anthropological field work in the South. This collection of her sketches from her travels in Florida, Alabama, and New Orleans show how central the African-American experience in all parts of the United States, not just in Harlem, were to members of the Harlem Renaissance
LOOK
Carl Van Vechten
Van Vechten was one of the most unusual figures of the Harlem Renaissance. A prototype of what Norman Mailer would later call the “White Negro,” Van Vechten saw himself as a champion of African-American culture, and though his involvement in the movement was controversial, he was instrumental in bringing the work of African-American writers and artists to a wider public. A novelist, dance critic, and Gertrude Stein’s literary executor, he also photographed many of the Harlem Renaissance’s prominent figures, including DuBois and Zora Neale Hurston.
Aaron Douglas
The visual arts were central to the Harlem Renaissance, and Douglas’s African-influenced modernist murals caught the attention of the leading intellectuals of the movement like Alain Locke and W.E.B DuBois. Douglas’s best-known work were the illustrations he created for James Weldon Johnson’s books of poetic sermons, God’s Trombones.
LISTEN
“Prove It On Me Blues” Ma Rainey
Big, bold, and fearless, Ma Rainey was one of the first female blues singers to achieve fame. Though she didn’t have a great voice, Rainey delivered the double entendre-laden lyrics of her songs with a power and intensity that paved the way for later female singers like Bessie Smith. Here, Rainey sings in remarkably bold terms about her romantic pursuit of a woman, and of her preference for lesbian relationships. The theme of homosexual love was central to the Harlem Renaissance, the historian Henry Louis Gates even arguing that the movement “was as much gay as it was black.”
“T’aint Nobody’s Business if I Do” Bessie Smith
More than any other singer, Bessie Smith embodied the spirit of the Harlem Renaissance — its emphasis on race pride, its uncompromising view of the value of African-American lives.
“Black and Blue” Louis Armstrong
Originally written by Fats Waller for the musical Hot Chocolates, “Black and Blue” became, in Louis Armstrong’s hands, a defiant statement on what it was like to be black in America (Ralph Ellison riffs poetically on the song in his great novel Invisible Man.)
WATCH
The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross
Henry Louis Gates’ sweeping survey of African-American history provides a good general background to the movement and his section on Black popular arts and film of the 1920s is particularly helpful.
Against the Odds: Artists of the Harlem Renaissance
Focusing mainly on the visual arts, this documentary shows how art and politics were inextricably linked for members of the Harlem Renaissance.
Langston Hughes’ “The Weary Blues”
Jazz cadences and rhythms can be found throughout the poetry of Langston Hughes and in this spoken reading, Hughes reads his own poetry to jazz accompaniment, from a broadcast of The 7 O’Clock Show, 1958.
The Ultimate Homeschool Problem Solver Guide
All of our very best advice for dealing with everything from burnout and library fines to high school record-keeping and making your own curriculum.
Your Homeschool Problems: Solved.
All of our very best advice for dealing with everything from burnout and library fines to high school record-keeping and making your own curriculum.
conference shopping tip
It’s as important to know what you DON’T need as what you do.
How to Shop the Homeschool Conference
1. Do your reconnaissance.
Scan the vendor list in advance to pick out the curriculum companies you don’t want to miss — there’s a lot of stuff happening at homeschool conferences, and advance planning will ensure you get peek at everything you wanted to see. At the same time, make a list of any “black hole” subjects where you don’t have a clear plan in place — you might discover the inspiration you need. Finally, list subjects you’ve got covered and curriculum vendors you know you want to avoid. (Especially at inclusive conferences, you may find vendors selling non-secular science or history that looks cool until you get it home and realize it isn’t actually secular.) In the excitement of the sales floor, it can be easy to buy materials you don’t really need.
2. Set your limits.
Establish your total budget, as well as the maximum amount you want to spend in any area. (You may want to limit literature spending to $50 but be willing to spend up to $500 if you happen upon the perfect science curriculum.) At the same time, make a note of methods, projects, and learning styles that just don’t work for your homeschool. This reduces your risk of buying stuff that isn’t the right fit.
3. Don’t feel pressured to buy.
It’s true you can score big deals at conferences, but the big draw is the chance to check out materials in person. (Just be prepared for long lines and crowded tables.) If you decide a deal is too good to pass up, great — but don’t feel like you have to come out with a bagful of homeschool materials to count your experience a success.
How to Make Math More Homeschool-Friendly
Struggling with math? The problem may be with the way that the subject is usually taught and not with your child’s ability to understand it. Wellesley College mathematics professor Oscar Fernandez suggests that non-mathematicians often master math most effectively when they start with real world examples and gradually build up to theory, but most math classes do the opposite — echoing the way that naturally math-minded folks think but often confusing as many as 80 percent of students, says Fernandez. Using math to figure out real world problems (like the best seat at the movie theater or the fastest route to karate class) gives kids math experience that helps them make sense of more abstract theories.
curriculum tip
If you find a homeschool curriculum you love, you can use it as a jumping-off point for creating other curriculum.
How to Break Up with Your Curriculum
You put a lot of effort — and sometimes, a lot of money — into choosing the right curriculum, so it’s not always easy to let one go.
Consider your timing.
Maybe the curriculum is great — just not right now. Your child might not be academically or emotionally ready for a particular curriculum, in which case, putting it back on the shelf for a few months or years may be all you need to get the perfect fit.
Tweak the assignments.
If a curriculum has too much writing or too few hands-on activities, you can easily change some of the writing assignments to oral presentations or add a few experiments. An okay curriculum can become a great one with a few strategic tweaks. But if your tweaks end up rebuilding the curriculum from scratch, you might be better off letting that curriculum go and forging your own path.
Use it as a guide.
If you like the content a particular curriculum covers but not its methods, you can always use the syllabus as a starting point to create your own curriculum. Similarly, if you love a curriculum’s method but wish it covered different topics, you can use its methods to inspire your own curricular creations.
Recoup your loss.
If a curriculum doesn’t work, don’t let it glare at you from your schoolroom shelves. Resell it, and use the money to invest in a program that you DO love. Chances are, that not-right-for-you curriculum is perfect for another family, so you’ll be helping someone out and getting rid of a problem in one swoop.
How to Maximize Your Homeschool Budget
If you’ve got money to spend, you’ll always benefit from investing in these homeschool essentials:
1. Travel
You will never regret the money you spend on adventures with your kids. (In fact, more than 90 percent of homeschooling parents said they wished they’d made travel dollars a priority in a survey conducted by Atlanta Homeschool magazine.) And don’t be afraid to think bigger: Set aside that $2,000 you’d spend on a trip to Disney and use it as a starter fund for a trip to Europe.
2. Technology
“Our computers are by far the things we use the most in our house,” says unschooling mom Tama McGee. “We use them for research, games, email, Skype with friends and family, typing stories, doing puz- zles—the list never ends.”
3. Art supplies
The better your supplies, the more fun it is to make art. With sales, coupons, and smart shopping, you can afford to invest in your child’s creativity.
How to Beat a Bad Homeschool Day Before It Even Starts
On a good day, when you’re feeling energized and excited about homeschool life, write a message to yourself to read next time you’re having a bad day. Think about the words you need to hear when a math lesson ends in tears or you snap at your toddler for making a mess of the science center. Pull it out when you need to as a reminder that you’re doing the right thing even when things don’t go just right.
homeschooling high school tip
If you prep for the most rigorous college on your “possible college plans” list, you’ll know your transcript contains everything it needs.
How to Survive Homeschooling High School
To survive high school as a homeschooler, you’ll cut your stress significantly if you start by thinking about the end game. Figure out what the academic requirements at three of the colleges your student might be interested in are (obviously your child’s interests may change between 8th grade and application time, and that’s fine), and zero in on the most stringent list. How many history credits do applicants need? How much foreign language? Then use the information you’ve culled to piece together a four-year outline for high school that includes all the essentials. You’ll have a few blank places and a few options for some classes (like English or history), but don’t worry about completely filling the schedule. You don’t need to know what you’re going to use for each of these subjects, but planning this way helps ensure that you cover the bases while still leaving room for your child to pursue her passions.
Next, you’ll want to come up with a system to track your child’s high school career. (We like the envelope system we recommend below, but there are online databases, old-fashioned checklists, and even companies that do all of the tracking for you, so choose the method that best suits your organization style.)
You will have to be organized about keeping track of classes, credits, and book lists if you don’t want a last-minute graduation panic, so enlist your student’s assistance. After all, this is her future, right? Plan quarterly or annual meetings to compare notes and go over your records together and to make adjustments to your plan. (Maybe she’s decided to study computer programming instead of history and needs to add more math classes, or she’s aiming to go into classics and wants to add Greek to her foreign language studies.) If you track on a computer, back up your files or print them out regularly so that if you have a technology meltdown, you don’t lose four years of records and your last remaining shreds of sanity.
It may seem smart to ease into high school, but it’s best to carry a full load in 9th and 10th grade, says homeschooling mom Elizabeth Ackley, who has sent two homeschoolers to college and has a junior in high school still at home.
“By the time you get to junior and senior year, you’ll have internships, college classes, and other activities that take up a lot of time, so you don’t want to have to catch up with geography or first year French then,” she says.
Also, let go of the notion that you will ever teach your child everything you want him to learn him to in high school. You’ll make yourself crazy thinking that you have to teach your child everything he needs to go to college or out into the world. Trust your good work, and give your student the space to learn some things on his own.
When application season rolls around, Ackley recommends putting your student in charge. “Let her figure out the deadlines and what she needs,” she says. “If she’s not responsible enough to handle applying to college, she may not be responsible enough to go to college yet. Taking a year off never hurt anybody,” she adds.
curriculum writing tip
Make plenty of room for the fun stuff up front — that’s the learning your kids will be most likely to remember.
How to Write Your Own Curriculum
It’s easier and less stressful than you might think. Really.
Once you’ve been homeschooling a while, you realize something. However excitingly irresistible a curriculum seems when you’re researching it, by the second week of using it, you’re itching to tweak it. Maybe it’s little tweaks, like subbing one science experiment for another one or adding books to the recommended reading. Often, though, it’s big changes you’re making: Slowing down and adding more information to focus more closely on one topic, skipping a subject that you’ve already covered in depth, cutting this and adding that until your curriculum feels like the right fit.
One of the biggest complaints about public school education standards is the notion that any packaged curriculum can be one-size-fits-all, but it’s easy to feel intimidated by the notion of eschewing professionally produced curriculum for a DIY version. Don’t you have to be an expert or a great writer or a professional educator to write a curriculum? Of course you don’t.
It’s time that we stop thinking of the perfect curriculum as some Holy Grail that we’ll eternally seek and never find. Shift gears: Stop being Indiana Jones, and channel your inner Frank Lloyd Wright instead. Think of making your own curriculum as making a master plan. You’re not an expert in your subject? That’s a perfect starting point to learn more about it. You’re not a great writer? Well, fine — you’re not writing a script. You’re making a tool, one that will combine different resources and ideas into a personalized study program.
THE BIG PICTURE
Your first job is to hone in on what you really want your homeschool — not your curriculum — to accomplish.
If you’ve never made a homeschool mission statement, here’s your chance. (If you have a homeschool mission statement, revisit it to make sure it still reflects your homeschool’s spirit and goals.) Get creative: You can jot down words and ideas, but you can also make a Pinterest board, a collage, or even a series of drawings. Don’t worry about being super-realistic: Dreaming is allowed. (If you’re stuck, think about that future day when your homeschooler is graduated. What do you want him to look back and think about his homeschooling experience? What will he have accomplished through his years of home education?) You need a clear vision of where you want to go before you start drawing a map to get you there.
At the same time, work on a one- or two-sentence description of your student’s learning style. What work does your student enjoy? Is she a reader or a doer? An experiencer or an analyzer?
You’ll use these two things — a vision for your homeschool and an understanding of your student’s learning style — to craft your curriculum. Constantly ask yourself: Does this mesh with our homeschool goals? Will my student be inspired by this? When the answer is yes, you know you’ve got a keeper.
While you’re at it, start a list of “Absolutely Nots.” Here’s where you can make note of the things that just plain don’t work in your homeschool, whether that means workbooks or narrations. As you dive into planning, it’s easy to get excited about ideas or resources that just don’t work with your real life homeschooling style. This list will help you avoid those things.
NAME YOUR TOPIC
Now you’ll direct your focus at the topic you want your curriculum to tackle. Maybe you’re determined to cook up an animal studies curriculum or you’re yearning for a good U.S. history program. Take a little while to consider what you want your curriculum to achieve. Are you interested in a broad introduction? Is mastery your goal? Do you want to work with big themes or specific chronologies? Use your homeschool goals and student learning style to guide you as you narrow your focus: Your student who loves knowing about the people behind historic events may be inspired by an art history curriculum that focuses on the lives and works of great artists, while a hands-on, creative kid may respond better to a curriculum that focuses on techniques and allows them to experiment with the styles of great artists. Both approaches will teach art history, but the The People Who Shaped Art History and Art History Lab are very different classes. Naming your class will help you zoom in on its focus, which will make weeding through all the available information a lot more efficient.
BIG PICTURE SCHEDULE
Along the same lines, breaking down how much time you want to devote to your curriculum on a weekly basis will help you get organized. If you want to spend five hours a week on the History of the American West, you can dig a lot deeper and include more rabbit trails than you can if you want to limit your study to an hour a week. Be honest as you consider how much time you want to spend on a given topic: If you’re dedicating an hour of poetry time a week, you can’t feasibly choose twenty different poetic styles and fifty different poets to talk about. You’re going to have to tighten up your focus and aim to simplify your list to include the very best examples. Be as pragmatic as possible: If you know you have a busy schedule of activities, don’t just tell yourself you’ll make time somehow. Work with the time that you really have, and you’ll be a lot more successful.
Think about the kind of work you want your student to do: Weekly readings and narrations? Book reports? Journaling? A weekly art project? Labs? There’s no right or wrong answer, as long as you’re meshing your goals with your child’s learning style, but you may want to scan one of the “What Your X- Grader Needs to Know” lists to see if there’s any kind of academic milestone — like writing a research paper or doing a science project — that might be a good fit for your curriculum.
BREAK IT DOWN
Here’s where the work most people think of as curriculum planning begins. Look at as many existing curricula in your topic area as you can: Check online for freebies, search your bookshelves, borrow copies from friends, scour textbook tables of contents. Keep a notebook, a Pinterest board, or a master document on your computer where you can make lists of things like topics covered, reading lists, organization, projects and activities, special tools or equipment, and anything else that feels relevant to your project.
Your task here is to break the course you described in Step Two down into its component parts. Say you’re putting together a curriculum about Big Issues in Philosophy. You may decide that truth, beauty, love, and goodness are the big issues you want to tackle. If you’re working on a grammar curriculum for your elementary student, you may break it down into nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, prepositions, sentences, and punctuation. If your smaller subjects are still pretty big, you’ll want to break them down into smaller sections, too. So, for instance, you might break your punctuation section down into periods, exclamation points, question marks, and commas. As you work, you may go back to the drawing board to start over a few times, but eventually, you’ll start to see an outline for your subject emerge.
THE FUN STUFF
Before you jump into scheduling reading and projects, take a few minutes to consider the fun in your curriculum. Look around for field trip opportunities. Consider putting together a soundtrack to go with your class — songs inspired by poetry for a poetry curriculum, or a chronological journey through American musical history for American history. Rustle up movies and documentaries to support your studies. These extras are often the things that make the biggest impression on your students, so make room for them from the beginning instead of trying to squeeze them in as you go along.
COMPILE YOUR RESOURCES
Now, you’ll make a list of all the materials you want to include in your class — the books, websites, and other things your student will use to explore this subject. Go ahead and make a ridiculously big list — you know you want to! Include any book, workbook, or activity that you think you might possibly want to use. Though it seems counter-intuitive, knowing that you’ve really done a thorough job of listing all your resource options will make it easier to narrow it down to the dozen or so resources you can actually use.
Once you’ve made your list, start trimming. You don’t need ten books on cells for a life science class, so you’ll want to weigh titles against each other to choose the one that’s really the best. As you do this, something kind of cool will start to happen: You’ll become an expert — you’ll feel good about the choices you’re making, the resources you’re choosing and the ones you’re leaving out, because you’ll have a real sense of your subject and the available materials. You may make copies of chapters from different books, taking a section from this title and a timeline from that one, and clip them together into a book for your class. Or you may just want to make notes to yourself about what you’re reading and why.
PUT IT TOGETHER
Here’s where the outline you made back in Step Four achieves its destiny. Fill in your topic breakdown outline with your resources. Jot the fun activities and resources you’ll be using to cover each topic beside the topic name. (Include relevant page numbers, or you’ll end up doing a lot of frustrating page-flipping.) You may find you’ve left a topic without a good resource. If that happens, head back to your resource list to fill in the blank. Or you may find that despite your best resource trim- ming, your plan is heavy in a particular topic and you have to winnow down your materials a little more. When you’ve finished, check your plan against your resource list and your fun stuff list — did you leave out any- thing really fabulous that you really wanted to include? Are you excited about each topic? Go back and fiddle with each section until it feels just right.
ASSESS AND ADAPT
Remember: Your curriculum isn’t set in stone. If it feels like you need to change something, add something, or drop something, do it. You’re the expert.
How to Tell How You’re Doing Without Grades
Without tests and report cards, how can you tell if your child is making educational progress? Happily, evaluating outside the test bubble actually gives you a better measure of how much your child is learning since you can weigh his success using a variety of methods.
Trust yourself.
If your child clearly seems to be zipping ahead in science, he’s probably zipping ahead in science. If you feel like your child is struggling with reading, he’s probably having trouble with reading. Your experiences teaching your child are some of the best indicators of his learning that you have.
Keep a portfolio.
Stash a few of your child’s pieces of work in a folder every week, and pull the folder out every six months or so. You’ll be able to see his progress right in front of you, making it clear where your child is excelling and where he might need extra help.
Ask your student.
Kids often know what subjects they feel intimidated by, even if their work on paper sug- gests otherwise. Talk to your student about how he’s doing, and let his input guide your thinking.
Keep a checklist.
Books like the What Your X-Grader Should Know series break down skills and knowledge by grade, so it’s easy to pinpoint what your child should be mastering each year.
Take a standardized test.
If your child doesn’t get stressed out by testing and you use the test as only one factor in your overall evaluation, a standardized test can be a helpful measurement tool.
How to Deal with Homeschool Conflicts with Your Kids
Homeschooling can test your parenting skills like nothing else, and there will be days when you hit serious relationship turbulence with your kid. The most important thing to remember during these admittedly trying times is that they pass — next week, this math-fueled shouting match will be a distant memory, and you’ll both be back to your regularly scheduled homeschool groove. In the meantime, these functional strategies can help pave the way for fewer future conflicts:
Don’t be a fake.
If your daughter’s study habits drive you crazy or you can’t stand the way your son walks into walls because he has his nose in a book, speak up. Your goal here isn’t to try to change your child, simply to express how you feel. Keeping annoyances bottled up robs you and your child of the opportunity to learn how to disagree productively, explains Carolyn Cowan, a family researcher at the University of California at Berkeley.
Do be narrative-aware.
The way we talk about our homeschool lives can have a significant impact on how we feel about them. Complain about grumpy kids, impossible assignments, and sloppy work? Aer a while, those things might be all you see. Focusing your conversation on the positive can help you see the good stuff more clearly.
Be the change you want to see in your homeschool.
If you’re unhappy with your homeschool life, do something about it. Sure, you can try to change your child, but it’s a whole lot easier — and ultimately more beneficial — to change yourself. Unless your child’s behavior is clearly harmful, turn your correcting eye inward: Why do you respond to him this way? What could you do differently?
How to Hire a Homeschool Tutor
Start with recommendations from other homeschoolers.
Teaching a homeschooler can be radically different from teaching a student in traditional school.
Interview a few.
Not only will you increase your pool of options, you’ll also get a mini-education in your child’s chosen subject as you chat about resources and methods.
Define your goals.
Knowing what you want your child’s tutor to provide — a basic intro to chemistry, mastery of Spanish grammar, or the skills to knit a sweater, for instance — will help you pinpoint the right tutor for your teen.
Focus on your subject.
If your teen wants to do a novel study of Jane Austen, you want a tutor who’s spent time studying Austen. Help your teen hone in on some of the specifics on his learning wish list so you can address those topics with potential tutors.
Get references.
Talking to other people a tutor has worked with will give you an idea of her teaching strong points. If you can, let your teen talk with other students a tutor has worked with so she can ask her own questions.
Take a trial run.
One tutoring session is often all you need to tell whether a particular tutor is a good fit.
How to Socialize Your Homeschooled Child
Really, this is going to be the easiest thing you do as a homeschooler. (The hardest thing may be not sighing loudly when non-homeschoolers ask you about socialization.) Go to homeschool events, play at park days, talk to families at co-op, plan a few playdates, go grocery shopping, do volunteer work, take a class — trust us, your child will be socialized.
homeschool tip
Check in with yourself and your kids frequently to make sure homeschooling is still the right path for your family.
How to Tell When It’s Time to Stop Homeschooling
Homeschool burnout can be hard to talk about, but it happens to almost every homeschooling parent at one time or another. It often strikes in midwinter, when post-holiday blahs and cabin fever collide with the January blues to make homeschooling a chore rather than a pleasure. These are the days when you feel like homeschooling was a massive mistake, you are a terrible teacher, and your children are going to grow up to be unhappy, uneducated adults because you have failed them utterly — which would bother you more if they weren’t grating on your last nerve.
Homeschooling is hard work — and smart homeschoolers pause occasion- ally to make sure that home-based education is still a good fit for their families. If you’re questioning whether your homeschool funk is a temporary setback or a sign that it’s time to make a change, ask yourself these questions:
What would make homeschooling happy again?
If the answer is something straightforward — like trimming your schedule so you do less running around, making more time for field trips, or saying goodbye to a not-a-great-fit curriculum — just making the change might be enough to put things back on the right track. More complicated answers may also have easy solutions: If chaotic mornings make you feel like a nag, consider pushing back your daily start time, or if you’re butting heads with your child over a difficult subject, outsourcing that class to a tutor or co-op could put the fun back in your homeschool. Still not sure? Pretend you have an infinite budget and infinite time for homeschooling. What would you do with those resources? If time and money aren’t the problem, you may have deeper issues.
How is your homeschooling making a difference for your child?
Homeschooling without a strong sense of purpose is like cleaning the bathroom: You know you have to do it every day, but it’s never going to be something you get excited about. Working hard without feeling like you’re making an impact is demoralizing, but a little perspective can help you give yourself the credit you deserve. Not convinced? Think about the other benefits of homeschool life — stronger family ties, a more relaxed schedule, lifetime learning — and try to see your homeschooling as a means of achieving those goals. If you genuinely feel that your homeschool efforts aren’t making the least bit of difference, it may be time to make a change.
What are you learning?
Of all the problems you can run into as a homeschooling parent, feeling like you’re mentally stagnating can be one of the most insidious. Lots of homeschooling parents appreciate the heady thrill of learning new stuff right along with their kids, but what happens when you’re not learning anything new? Being bored is, well, boring. It could be that all you need is a perspective shift — if you view learning as a mutual endeavor rather than as a project that you have to facilitate, you may be surprised by how much you can learn. But if you’re genuinely at a mental impasse, you definitely need a homeschooling break.
How would life be different if you stopped homeschooling?
Think about the prospect of letting go of your homeschool days for a while. Does the prospect inspire you with possibility — maybe there’s a project of your own you’ve been yearning to pursue or you can see your daughter blooming in an environment where she gets to spend time with her friends every day. If the thought of letting go of homeschool for a while lights you up inside, you may want to seriously consider taking a break. If, on the other hand, the idea of not homeschooling feels like a mistake or a great loss, it’s worth seriously considering ways to improve your everyday homeschool experience.
If these questions don’t point you in a clear direction, take two weeks off. Your feeling when those two weeks are up — quiet dread or recharged enthusiasm — will reveal your attitude toward homeschooling. The truth is, there is no absolute right answer to the question of whether you should stop homeschooling your child. Only you can find the answer, and it may be an answer that changes from year to year. If you do decide quitting homeschooling is the right step for your family right now, don’t let that decision make you feel like a failure. Homeschool works so well because you can tailor it to your child’s specific needs — and sometimes those specific needs may warrant being educated outside the home.
homeschool organization tip
If you didn’t start out keeping records, don’t stress! Start now, and go back and fill in the gaps as you can.
How to Keep Homeschool Records, a.k.a. The Easiest Homeschool Organization System Ever
The envelope solution is elegant, effective, and so simple you can’t screw it up. Start it in 9th grade — 8th if you’re feeling particularly ambitious — and when it’s time to start the college application process, you’ll be all set.
Label a large envelope for each class with the full name of the course and grade number (9-Honors English 1 or 11-AP U.S. History). Add an envelope for extracurricular activities — if your child is serious about an activity, like soccer or theater, you may want to create a separate envelope for that as well as one for general extracurricular activities. Label another envelope with your teen’s grade level and Honors — you’ll stash certificates of achievement, pictures of science fair experiments, and other awards and recognitions here. Add one last envelope for community service — again, be sure to label it with your student’s grade level.
Make a basic information sheet for each class. Include:
the textbook(s) used, with ISBN numbera copy of the textbook’s table of contents (Do this now. The last thing you want to do is end up rooting through boxes in the garage in a couple of years to figure out if your son’s freshman biology class included a section on genetics.)
the course description and syllabus the name of the teacher (yes, even if it’s you)
the number of credit hours the course entails
Tuck this information sheet securely in the envelope. Add items to envelope as the year progresses. Things you’ll want to include:
graded papers and tests
samples of presentations, lab re- ports, or other work done in the class
a running reading list (Add titles of books and essays to the list as you read them so you don’t have to try to remember everything at the end of the year. Even better, have your student keep an annotated reading list — with notes about each book.)
notes about associated activities — visits to museums, lectures, theaters, etc. — that relate to the class
At the end of the class, write the final grade and total credit hours on the front of the envelope. Add:
official grades — community college report cards, printouts from an online class, or your evaluations
Ask any outside teachers to write a recommendation letter for your student. Do it now while your student’s work is still fresh in their minds, and add the recommendation to your envelope. If you decide to ask this teacher for a recommendation when you’re working on college applications, you can give him his original recommendation to refresh his memory.
If your student ends up taking an AP or CLEP exam in a subject, add the exam results to your envelope. Similarly, if your student publishes or wins an award for work she started in the class, add those credits to your envelope.
Use a binder clip to group your envelopes — depending on how your brain works, you may want them grouped by grade level, by subject matter, or by some other criteria. However you group them, they’ll make writing that final transcript a lot easier since all your information will be organized in one place.
How to Deal with Homeschool Mom Anxiety
1. If you’re worried about something specific — your child’s math skills or standardized test scores — the best thing you can do is to enlist a little help. Look for a teaching workshop or conference in the area you’re struggling with, or consider hiring a tutor or signing your child up for classes in the subject so that you can take a break from teaching it. This isn’t giving up: It’s using your resources wisely.
2. Schedule your days to emphasize problem areas. If your child is really struggling with fractions, change your daily math class to a cooking class so she can do some hands-on fractions work. If you’re worried about your child learning the states in the United States or the capitals of countries around the world, pick up a geography puzzle or game and make it a part of your daily routine for a while.
3. If your anxiety is more general, look for ways to relax, such as meditation, a walk, yoga class, or a solo cup of tea. You may also want to start a journal of good homeschool moments to flip back through during crisis moments to see that (at least sometimes) you really do know what you are doing. Joining a homeschool group where you can chat with other moms — many of whom have the same worries you do — can also help.
How to Skip Tests and Still Encourage Deep Learning
Want your students to really grasp a subject? Skip the tests, and let them lead them teach you the material instead. Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis found that students who expected to teach material to another student had better recall and more sophisticated understanding of their subject than those who just expected to take a test. Instead of just trying to memorize information, students who expect to teach seek out key points and organize information into a coherent structure.
How to Stop Losing Library Books
If you’re racking up library fines left and right, getting organized can save you big bucks in the future. Set up a library station inside your house, where you can store your library booty and post the list of checked out materials every week. When kids want to grab a book or CD, ask them to sign it out, the same way they do at the library, then sign it back in when they return it. Not only does this boost library responsibility — kids and parents are more likely to keep up with books when they have to sign them out — it also makes it easy to track down lost books since you have a record of who had them last.
How to Write a Homeschool Mission Statement (And Why You Should)
A mission statement can help you set a purpose so that your secular homeschool feels deliberate and successful.
It’s easy to get so caught up in your everyday to-learn lists that you lose sight of the bigger picture of what you want your homeschool life to feel like — but a mission statement can help you set a purpose so that your homeschool feels deliberate and successful.
A clear mission statement is what gives your homeschool focus, says Lillian Ahern, a life coach and homeschool mom. “Your mission statement is what helps keep you on track, helps you choose between Option A and Option B, helps you stay in touch with the values that matter to you, and helps you set goals and celebrate success,” say Ahern. “It’s one of those crucial things that we often don’t realize we need.”
A mission statement does three great things for your homeschool:
A mission statement gives you focus. With so many options — for curriculum and classes and activities and philosophies — how do you choose? If you have a mission statement, you choose the options that best line up with what's important to you. If family time is important, you might not want to sign up for every single activity so that you have plenty of downtime together at home.
A mission statement prepares you for problems. Sadly, it can't eliminate all your homeschool problems, but it can help you see them coming so they don't knock you over one Monday morning. For instance, if preparing your kids for college is a goal and you know you don't want to teach high school math, you have plenty of time to figure out a way to deal with high school math that doesn't involve you teaching it.
A mission statement gives you metrics for success. One of the biggest challenges for homeschoolers is knowing whether we are doing a good job — are our kids learning what they need to? And what standard do we use to determine that anyway? A mission statement gives us our own standard of measurement, and we can evaluate each year in terms of how successful we were at living up to our mission.
So how do you write a homeschool mission statement? If you've never written a mission statement, it's surprisingly straightforward — no corporate lingo required. Instead, think about three big questions: What will your homeschool do? How will you do it? What will be the end result? After you've spent some time brainstorming in your preferred way — whether that's journaling, mood board making, or just talking it through with a friend — identify two values and one big-picture goal for your homeschool.
Values are the things that are important for your family — the ideas that you want your homeschool to support and reinforce. When we started homeschooling, we were pulling our daughter out of traditional school, so my values ended up being reactions to things that I didn't like about our life with her in school: 1, I wanted my kids to develop a deep love of learning and the confidence in their abilities that goes with that, and 2, I wanted our family life to anchor our days. Your values may be reactive, too — they may point to something happening in your life that you want to change — but they can also be proactive, envisioning future possibilities. Your values may include things like giving your kids a diverse and inclusive education that isn't whitewashed, or showing them the world through travel and learning, or nurturing their creative spirits. Every family's values will look a little different — that's one of the great things about homeschooling, being able to take those individual values and use them as a cornerstone in building your child's education. As you think, you'll probably come up with way more than just two values, so one of the challenges of writing a mission statement is honing in your focus to the two that best reflect what is important to you. Focusing in on just two values gives you a clear picture of your homeschool priorities — if you try to make everything a priority, you'll end up with perpetually scattered priorities. (Don't let this scare you: Lots of times, you'll recognize that many of your priorities can fall under the umbrella of one bigger value.)
In addition to values, you need a goal — something your homeschool is working toward. For us, that goal was always to prepare my kids so that they had all their options open for whatever they wanted to do next. (I didn't go into homeschooling expecting that we'd keep doing it all the way through high school, even though that's how it turned out!) Your goal might be to prepare your kids for college, or to meet your state's academic standards every year, or to empower them to start a business, or to give them the tools they need to build whatever future they imagine, or to enjoy their childhoods without worrying about the future. Just as with values, your goal is likely to be unique to your family — and you may have a big goal that carries you all the way through high school or a smaller goal that's focused on getting you through the next six months. Either way is totally okay, as long as it reflects what's really important to you for your homeschool.
To turn your values and goal into a mission statement, all you have to do is combine them into a sentence. It doesn't have to be a fancy sentence — in fact, when it comes to mission statements, simpler is better. (Our is just “I want our homeschool to instill my kids with love and confidence for learning and to put our family life first, so that my kids are emotionally and academically prepared for whatever they want to do next.”) Do take the time to write it down, though — preferably in your own handwriting because there's something weirdly empowering about the physical act of writing out a mission statement. Write yours on a fresh sheet of paper in your best handwriting, and see if it doesn't make you feel a little more confident about homeschooling.
Monday Meditations: Ignore the Nay-Sayers
Other people have a lot of opinions about homeschooling — but that doesn’t mean you have to be influenced by what they say.
“Don’t let the opinions of other people determine the image you have of yourself. There is no need to feel either appreciated or understood. Be even-minded. What you think about yourself is everything. What others think about you has no value at all, unless you choose to give it value.”
I’ll never understand why people think certain life choices are up for public debate, but homeschooling — along with what kids should be eating, whether you’re expecting, and what your family electronics policy happens to be — is one of them.
Thank goodness for that handful of lovely people who just want to cheer you on — “I loved homeschooling!” “I always wanted to homeschool my kids.” “My neighbor homeschools, and it’s so great for them.” — because so many people seem to feel that they need to warn us of homeschooling’s potential pitfalls. What about socialization? And reading levels? And calculus? And college? And, really, how do we do it all day? (The look that accompanies that last one is the same look your elementary schooler gets when he’s trying to identify a new and particularly weird bug.)
It’s not so hard with strangers, whose words are easy to let go when you leave them. But when your mother-in-law, or your sister’s best friend, or your mom’s favorite neighbor gets in on the action, criticizing or interrogating your choices, it can be hard not to let their words nag at your nerves. After all, homeschooling is a big project. What if you don’t do it right? What if you let your kids down? What if you really should be worrying more about socialization and calculus?
It is not easy to let go of the sound of other people’s voices, especially when there’s a part of us that holds many of the same fears.
But most of us have worked through those fears, many times. We’ve held them up to the light and planned parts of our lives around them: We want our kids to have friends, so we don’t lock them in the basement with their grammar books all day. We join co-ops and go to park days and schedule play dates. We want our kids to learn the skills they need to get wherever they want to go next — so we pore over curricula, sign up for classes, and enlist assistance from other homeschoolers. We face our fears — proactively — pretty much every day of our homeschool lives, so why do those voices get to us so much?
I don’t want to tune out the sounds of the world my kids have to live in, but I don’t want to give them any more weight than they deserve either. My rule is to listen — once. And to listen as thoughtfully and as thoroughly as I can, to consider the words and the meaning behind them, and to decide if I want to rethink my strategy because of them. After that one time, though, I smile and nod and tune them out. So the 33rd person who asks me if I’m worried about homeschooling gets the cheery “nope!” and not one second of my headspace.
Truthfully, I have plenty to worry about all by myself. I don’t need to add other people’s opinions to my list.
Food for Thought
What worries in your life are generated by other people’s ideas and opinions?
How much weight are you giving other people’s opinions about your choices? Does that feel like the right amount of weight?
How can you let go of the need to justify your decisions to other people? Why do you want other people to approve of your choices?
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