Don’t Believe These Common Myths About Homeschooling High School
From getting into college to standardized tests, everything you think you know about homeschooling high school may be wrong — and that’s a very good thing.
Everything you think you know about homeschooling high school may be wrong— and that’s a very good thing.
Once upon a time, homeschoolers were more likely to turn to traditional schools when high school rolled around—fewer than 17 percent of the 210,000 homeschooled kids reported by the U.S. Department of Education in 2001 were high school students. There are lots of reasons parents may choose not to homeschool their teens through high school, but don't let false fear be one of them.
Myth: High school is too difficult for the average parent to teach.
Fact: You don’t have to teach everything.
In many ways, homeschooling high school can be much simpler than the early years because your teen is capable of independent study. Just be honest with yourself: What are you capable and willing to teach, and what do you need to outsource? Maybe you love the thought of digging deeper into history, but the prospect of teaching trig makes you want to break out in a cold sweat. Outsource subjects you don’t want to tackle—co-op classes, tutors, community college, online classes are all great options. As your student advances, your job will shift from teacher to educational coordinator—listening to him and guiding his class choices and extracurricular activities to prepare him for the college or whatever post-high school path he's interested in. It also means keeping track of classes for his transcript, staying on top of testing deadlines for standardized and achievement tests, and helping him start to hone in on the best people to ask for letters of recommendation.
Myth: Homeschoolers can’t take Advanced Placement (AP) tests.
Fact: Homeschoolers can take AP tests—whether they take official AP classes or not.
AP is a brand-name—like Kleenex or Band-Aid—which means the College Board gets to decide whether or not you can call your child’s course an AP class. (The College Board has a fairly straightforward process for getting your class syllabus approved on their website, and few homeschoolers run into problems getting their class approved.) You can build your own AP class using the materials and test examples on the College Board website and call the class “Honors” or “Advanced” on your transcript—and your child can take the AP test in that subject as long as you sign him up on time and pay the test fee. (Homeschoolers have to find a school administering the test willing to allow outside students, which may take some time. You’ll want to start calling well before the deadline.) If you’re nervous about teaching without an official syllabus, you can sign up for an online AP class or order an AP-approved curriculum. And remember: just because you take an AP class doesn’t mean you have to take the test.
Myth: It’s hard for homeschoolers to get into college.
Fact: Homeschooled kids may actually be more likely to go to college than their traditionally schooled peers.
This myth may have been true 20 years ago, but not anymore. Researchers at the Homeschool Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) found that 74 percent of homeschooled kids between age 18 and 24 had taken college classes, compared to just 46 percent of non-homeschoolers. In fact, many universities now include a section on their admission pages specifically addressing the admissions requirements for homeschooled students. In 1999, Stanford University accepted 27 percent of its homeschooled applicants—twice the rate for public and private school students admitted at the same time. Brown University representative Joyce Reed says homeschoolers are often a perfect fit at Brown because they know how to be self-directed learners, they are willing to take take risks, they are ready to tackle challenges, and they know how to persist when things get hard.
Myth: You need an accredited diploma to apply to college.
Fact: You need outside verification of ability to get into college.
Just a decade or so ago, many colleges didn’t know what to do with homeschoolers, and an accredited diploma helped normalize them. That’s not true anymore. (In fact, you may be interested to know that not all public high schools are accredited—only 77 percent of the high schools in Virginia, for example, have accreditation.) What you do want your child’s transcript to reflect is non-parent-provided proof of academic prowess. This can come in the form of graded co-op classes, dual enrollment courses at your local college, SAT or ACT scores, awards, etc. Most colleges are not going to consider whether your child’s high school transcript was accredited or not when deciding on admissions and financial aid.
Myth: A portfolio is superior to a transcript.
Fact: The Common App makes transcripts a more versatile choice.
Portfolios used to be the recommended way for homeschoolers to show off their outside-the-box education, but since more and more schools rely on the transcript-style Common Application, portfolios have become a hindrance. (Obviously, portfolios are still important for students studying art or creative writing, where work samples are routinely requested as part of the application process.) In some ways, this format is even easier to manage than a portfolio—you can record high school-level classes your student took before 9th grade and college courses he took during high school in convenient little boxes. And don’t worry that your student won’t be able to show what makes him special: The application essay remains one of the best places to stand out as an individual. Some schools even include fun questions to elicit personal responses: The University of North Carolina, for instance, asks students what they hope to find over the rainbow.
Myth: Homeschooled kids don’t test well.
Fact: On average, homeschoolers outperform their traditionally schooled peers on standardized tests.
All that emphasis on test prep in schools doesn’t seem to provide kids with a clear advantage come test time. Homeschooled students score 15 to 30 percentile points above the national average on standardized achievement tests regardless of their parents’ level of education or the amount of money parents spend on homeschooling. That includes college entrance exams like the SAT and ACT. Research compiled by the U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics shows that homeschoolers scored an average 1083—67 points above the national average of 1016—on the SAT in 1999 and an average 22.6 (compared to the national average of 21.0) on the ACT in 1997. This doesn’t mean these tests aren’t important—good scores can open academic doors—but it does mean you may not have to worry about them as much you’d thought.
Myth: Homeschooled kids are not prepared for college.
Fact: Homeschooled kids adapt to college life better than their traditionally schooled peers.
This one always makes me laugh. Homeschooled kids probably have more hands-on life experience than their traditionally schooled counterparts. Homeschooled kids are usually more active in their communities, and because homeschooling is a family affair, they are more likely to have everyday life skills—the ones you need to make lunch for yourself or comparison shop for a tablet. Homeschooled teens also tend to be active participants in their own education, figuring out ways to manage their time and workload with their social lives long before they start college. Most importantly, they are able to interact and work with people of different ages, backgrounds, and cultures in a positive way, which is really the most important life skill of all. Perhaps that’s why homeschoolers are more likely to graduate from college (66.7 percent of homeschoolers graduate within four years of entering college, compared to 57.5 percent of public and private school students) and to graduate with a higher G.P.A. than their peers. Homeschoolers graduate with an average 3.46 G.P.A., compared to the average 3.16 senior G.P.A. for public and private school students, found St. Thomas University researcher Michael Cogan, who compared grades and graduation rates at doctoral universities between 2004 and 2009.
Tips to Make Homeschooling Math Less Stressful
If math is a pressure point for your homeschool middle or high school student, you’re not alone! Math anxiety affects lots of kids, but with patience and persistence, you can help your student become math-confident.
When more than half of college students say that math stresses them out, what can you do to help your student shake math anxiety?
Make individual problems the focus.
Researchers in a 2011 study found that math-anxious kids performed almost as well (83 percent correct answers) as kids who didn’t worry about math (88 percent correct answers) when their concentration kicked in. By really focusing on one problem at a time, kids were able to work with less anxiety. Try practice worksheets with fewer problems on the page, or have students copy each new problem into a clean notebook page to isolate it.
Don’t assume it will just go away.
Math anxiety is like any other phobia and should be addressed accordingly, says Kaustubh Supekar, a researcher at Stanford University who has studied math anxiety in elementary and middle school students. Some students may need help learning to regulate their emotions more effectively in general before they can apply that skill to conquering math anxiety. If your student is anxious about math, pay attention to other places where they may feel anxious. It might not actually be about the math.
Find a good tutor.
According to Supekar, cognitive skill-building is one of the most effective ways to reduce math anxiety. Not only does it help kids solve math problems more successfully, it also lowers overall math anxiety levels over time, as students get more confident in their abilities. If you know how to get the right answer but don’t know how to explain what goes into getting the write answer, a tutor can help bridge that gap for your student.
Don’t share your own anxiety.
Plenty of homeschool parents stress about math, too, but math-anxious parents and teachers tend to pass their anxiety on to their kids, found researchers at the University of Chicago. If your child’s math has reached the point where you can’t comfortably solve problems with him, consider outsourcing your math classes — or sign up for a math class yourself to finally beat your own math anxiety.
DO YOU HAVE MATH ANXIETY?
Indicate your anxiety level in the following situations:
[1] not anxious at all, [2] a bit anxious, [3] somewhat anxious, [4] definitely anxious, or [5] extremely anxious. If you have more than five [4] and [5] answers, you may have math anxiety.
How anxious would you feel:
If you were given a set of arithmetic problems involving fractions?
Figuring out the tax on a purchase?
Standing in the supermarket line and trying to figure out if the total makes sense?
Splitting the check with friends at a restaurant?
Interpreting mathematical information in a news story?
Calculating the amount of money you save when buying something on sale?
Figuring out how much eight gallons of gas will cost at $2.66 a gallon?
Learning a new math skill?
Opening a math workbook?
Explaining how to solve a math problem?
Who should we ask to write college recommendations for our homeschooler?
Recommendations give homeschool college applicants a chance to share what makes them special, so how do you find the right people to write recommendations for a teen who’s never been traditional school?
We’ve homeschooled all the way through school, and now my high school junior is getting ready to apply to college next fall — but because we’ve done almost all of our learning at home, there’s no obvious person to ask to write a recommendation for him. Should I just write his counselor recommendation and his teacher recommendation and explain that we are homeschoolers?
Congratulations! You must be so proud and excited for your son.
What colleges are looking for from a recommendation letter is deeper understanding of a student’s personality, ambitions, academic interests, successes, and challenges. Recommendations, along with your student’s transcripts, test scores, and application essay, give colleges an idea of what kind of personal and academic contributions your student will make to their institution.
The truth is that you’re probably the most qualified person to talk about these things for your son — but you should do that in your counselor letter, and ask someone else to write your son’s teacher recommendation. There’s a reason for this: If you’re putting together your son’s transcript, writing his counselor letter, and writing his teacher recommendation, colleges will only get one view of what your son is like as a student. Ideally, you’d want to offer them a variety of perspectives so that they get a more holistic view.
An obvious way to find someone to write a recommendation for your son is to sign him up for an outside class, preferably one that ties into his interests and abilities. I write lots of these letters for students who take my classes, and it’s always a pleasure — in fact, I assume that one of the reasons students are taking AP Literature or philosophy with me is because they want experience with an outside teacher, including a possible recommendation. But that’s not the only option: You can also ask troop leaders, teachers from art, music, or drama lessons, employers from internships or part-time jobs, volunteer directors and managers, or other adults who have a mentor-type relationship with your son. All of these people can speak to your son’s willingness to work hard and ability to work with other people, his time management and organization skills, his resourcefulness and talents — all information colleges look for in a recommendation later.
What if you’re really the only person who can write your son’s recommendation? Unless your son has stellar test scores (and even then), I’d really encourage you to consider at least a semester with an outside teacher so that you can add independent verification of his grades and abilities to his application — for homeschoolers, this kind of verification can be a big deal. (And really, it’s not a bad idea to let your son test the waters learning from someone other than you before he heads off to college anyway.) If you’re determined to write his recommendation, stick to the facts and try to give as many concrete examples as possible — don’t say “Allen is hard-working and responsible,” give a specific example of a time when he demonstrated hard work and responsibility. The more concrete examples you can give, the more your insight your letter can offer into your son’s abilities and ambitions.
Movies for Women’s History Month
Celebrate Women’s History Month this March with a homeschool movie marathon.
March is Women’s History Month, and every year, it feels more than ever like a time to think about how far women have come in the modern world — and how far we still have to go. These films will inspire and engage as you explore women’s history.
One Woman, One Vote
Susan Sarandon narrates PBS’s American Experience documentary on women’s rights, a well-rounded and informa- tion-rich introduction to women’s suffrage in the United States. Bonus: This documentary does a really nice job of exploring the role of black women in the suffrage movement.
Iron Jawed Angels
Hillary Swank and Frances O’Connor star in this sometimes weirdly directed but ultimately very compelling story about the U.S. battle for women’s rights. There are some invented historical incidents, but the overall story is rooted in real events.
Nine to Five
Maybe an indictment of women’s treatment in the 1980s workforce shouldn’t be this hilarious, but sometimes laughter really is the best social commentary.
Not for Ourselves Alone
Ken Burns takes on the women’s movement with this documentary focused on the lives of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, two of U.S. history’s best known fighters for women’s rights.
The Magdalene Sisters
This film about the Irish institutions where“wayward women” were sent — and often abused — definitely deserves its R rating, so you may want to preview it. But since the last of these institutions didn’t close until the 1990s, it’s a movie worth watching with your older students.
The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter
The women who — more than capably — took on “men’s work” during World War II are the subject and stars of this poignant, powerful documentary.
A Midwife’s Tale
This fascinating documentary explores the life of an 18th century Maine midwife and the 20th century historian who discovered her diary and brought it to light.
14 Women
This sometimes overly earnest but still engaging 2007 documentary focuses on the — wait for it — fourteen female Senators in the 109th United States Congress.
Heaven Will Protect the Working Girl: Immigrant Women in the Turn-of-the-Century City
Before women won the right to vote, immigrant women crusaded for safer and more reasonable work conditions in booming factories and sweatshops. This short documentary illuminates their struggle — and victories.
The Burning Times
Some feminist scholars call the persecution of witches that occurred from the 1400s to the 1700s the “Women’s Holocaust” because of the huge number of women who were executed during this time. This documentary considers the history, causes, and effects of this problematic period in women’s history.
Thinking Beyond the 5-Paragraph Essay
Essays can be a good evaluation tool if you’re homeschooling high school but if you get stuck in a read-this-and-write-an-essay rut with your high school homeschooler, try one of these strategies with your high school homeschooler.
Essays can be a good evaluation tool in high school, but if you get stuck in a read-this-and-write-an-essay rut with your high school homeschooler, try one of these strategies with your high school homeschooler.
One challenge homeschoolers run into is how to evaluate your student’s learning — how can you help your student master the art of synthesizing information and expressing her own ideas about it? An essay is the classic approach — and it’s certainly a useful one — but essays can get boring if they’re your go-to for every single class. Here are some alternative evaluation projects to try.
Graphic Novel Adaptation
Transform the information into a graphic novel made of comic strip-style segments. This is ideal when you want to check understanding — do you understand what happened and the order it happened in? — so it can be handy for history or science evaluations. I also like using this method with poetry since thinking about how to illustrate a poem in a series of panels pushes you to think about it in a more nuanced way. This strategy works best when you’re dealing with a narrow, focused topic — trying to illustrate, say, Robinson Crusoe, would be a bigger project than you usually want.
Timeline
Another good option for corralling lots of factual information is the timeline, which can get more sophisticated as students move into higher learning. History timelines are common, but you can also use a timeline to track a novel where the timeline is significant (over years, like One Hundred Years of Solitude, or hours, like Mrs. Dalloway) or to explain a scientific process or concept.
Walking Tour
I love this idea for books where geography matters, like The Odyssey or Ulysses. This project encourages you to think about the significance of place in a very specific way, so it works best if you really push students to work to explain the significance of each place in their walk- ing tour. Instead of thinking about what happens in each place, think about why it matters and what the specifics of that place bring to the theme.
Metaphor Map
These are one of my favorite ways to explore complex ideas, like the categorical imperative, or complex texts, like modern poetry. Student have to really drill down to unify complicated information into one clear metaphor — essentially, coming up with their own creative explanation of a complicated text. The final illustrated metaphor, done well, is often more academically sophisticated than any essay could be.
Annotated Reading Notes
If your goal is to explore a wide range of texts, making comparisons and connections as you go, an annotated reading journal can accomplish that with more nuance and specificity than an essay. The key to doing this successfully is to model a set of annotations for students — if you’ve never done annotations, having a base to work from can be helpful. This is handy in classes like science and history where you’re covering lots of information you want to remember, but you don’t love the idea of giving lots of tests.
Podcast Series
Almost all the skills you need to write a great research essay — researching a topic, developing a thesis, and creating a structured argument around your thesis — come up when you’re creating a podcast. Aim for multiple episodes; ideally, you’ll ask for at least three so that students have a chance to do a proper introduction to the topic and a clear conclusion, but you can pick any number that seems appropriate.
Oral Defense
This one can be stressful for students the first time, but you may be surprised by how enthusiastic they become with a little experience. Basically, you treat your evaluation like a classic dissertation defense: Students prepare to face a panel of advisers (you can include friends, siblings, or just go it solo), and in a directed conversation explain their understanding of a topic, making connections and thinking on their feet to answer the questions posed them.
The HSL Guide to Finding Your Homeschool Style
Your homeschool style isn’t exactly a philosophy, a method, or an academic approach, but understanding it can be the key to a successful homeschool. What kind of secular homeschool parent are you?
Your homeschool style isn’t exactly a philosophy, a method, or an academic approach, but understanding it can be the key to a successful homeschool. What kind of secular homeschool parent are you?
Homeschoolers talk a lot about homeschool philosophies and methods, but it’s your homeschool style that really shapes your family’s secular homeschool.
There are as many homeschool styles as there are people, which is why your homeschool doesn’t look exactly like anyone else’s. Hand any homeschooler a shiny new book or math game and say. “Come back in a month and tell me what you did with that,” and the answers you’d get back would be totally different.
Some people might have read the book together, others might have used it to launch a unit study, and a few might have created activity sheets around it. All of these approaches are totally valid.
Whatever choice you made, you probably wouldn’t be thinking too hard about your homeschool philosophy or your curriculum — you’d be thinking about whatever was happening in your particular homeschool at the time I handed you the book. That’s why understanding your homeschool style can be so helpful — knowing how you approach homeschooling can help you make better, smarter choices for your homeschool, both in the moment and in the long term.
Your homeschool style isn’t something you can use a formula to figure out. There’s no quick and easy quiz that will tell you what kind of homeschooler you are. Instead, it’s something you come to learn through self-exploration and reflection. Your homeschool style may change over time; it may also not match up to the vision of yourself as a homeschool parent you have in your head.
To get to the root of your homeschool style, start by thinking about your life in any context unrelated to homeschooling. When you get together with a group of friends, do you make the plans — or do you go with the flow of what everyone else decides? When you children were toddlers, did you plan your days around their nap time, or were you more likely to be spontaneous? What’s your negotiating style? What does your perfect lazy afternoon look like? What are your strengths? Your weaknesses?
The point is not what you think you should do or what you’d like to do — that data can be handy for lots of things, but your homeschool style is all about the way you normally approach your everyday life. Skip the “should” and the “ought to”s, and just focus on how you actually deal with everything. How do you exercise? What’s your meal planning strategy? How do you write a grocery list? How do you interact with your family and friends? What about with strangers? Are you good at letting go of control, or do you need a master list for every project? The more you pay attention to yourself — something that can definitely end up on the back burner for a busy parent — the more you’ll understand your natural homeschool style.
And the more you understand your homeschool style, the better you can determine how to build a homeschool that really works. Are you spending your homeschool budget on the things that fulfill you and bring you joy? Are your homeschool resources appropriate for your personality? Are you prioritizing resources and activities that align with your passions and beliefs? When challenges pop up and homeschooling gets hard, how do you respond and react? How can you minimize stress and maximize happiness in your homeschool? It’s your homeschool style that points the way.
Though there are dozens of homeschool styles, most people fall under one of four big umbrellas. (We’ve named them the Dude, the Metronome, the Ocean, and the Magpie.) All four of these styles can be the foundation of a happy, successful homeschool — you just have to trust yourself.
Quick Question: How do you usually plan your homeschool weeks mid-year?
Don’t think about the planning you do in the summer but the week-to-week planning you do (or not!) every weekend.
If: You like to look back on what you accomplished each week instead of planning every day in advance.
You’re probably a: DUDE
If: There are weeks where you plan everything out and weeks where you just sit back and let your kids lead the way.
You’re probably an: OCEAN
If: You enjoy making plans for next year’s homeschool more than checking off your to-do lists for this week.
You’re probably a: MAGPIE
If: Once you get your daily rhythm down, your schedule takes care of itself.
You’re probably a: METRONOME
Homeschool Style: THE DUDE
Dudes set their own pace for homeschooling. They rely on rhythm and routine more than schedules and curriculum to guide their homeschool, and they tend to keep going until they are finished with whatever they are working on.
YOU MIGHT BE A DUDE IF:
You homeschool year-round.
You track what you’ve accomplished each day instead of planning days in advance.
Your day is anchored by a series of specific rituals.
You usually finish your curriculum or unit study, even if it takes you across multiple years.
You store your homeschool materials in plain sight.
You tend to try new crafts and activities with your kids.
You do a lot of homeschooling in your pajamas.
If you’re a Dude homeschooler, you probably spend a lot of time in your pajamas. Dude homeschoolers embrace the relaxed possibilities of homeschooling — they usually lean into academics, but they prefer to dive deep and slow rather than to try to get to a finish line. They rarely work at tables or desks, preferring to set up on the couch, the deck, the floor, or even in bed. Their homeschool routine looks the same most days, and most days of the year are homeschool days. They’ll often continue activities like readalouds or nature journals even when their homeschool is officially “on vacation” because they tend to see homeschooling and parenting as intricately connected projects. They tend to be patient and optimistic, willing to give their students time and space when they seem to need it.
“Dudes like the freedom of slowing down and speeding up as the mood takes them.”
Dude homeschoolers are relaxed planners. They tend to start and finish curriculum at different times instead of starting a year with a stack of new curriculum, so they’re rarely in hyper-curriculum-shopping mode. They spend time finding a rhythm for their days and tend to stick with it, even as their kids get older and move into more independent work. They’re more likely to keep up with what they’re accomplishing as they go instead of trying to plan out every week in advance — they like the freedom of slowing down and speeding up as the mood takes them. Dude homeschoolers gravitate toward homeschool philosophies that rely on rhythms and repetition, like Classical or Waldorf homeschooling, but Dude homeschoolers can adapt any homeschool philosophy to their relaxed vibe.
Dude homeschoolers value harmony and community, so they may find it challenging when their students push back or resist deadlines. While following directions and hitting due dates might not be important in your everyday homeschool, they are important skills that students need to learn before they graduate from high school, so Dudes need to find ways to enforce some standards. Students need the experience of following through and finishing projects, and Dude homeschools may need to add more structure to support procrastinators and students who need scaffolding for executive function skills. It’s important not to always prioritize harmony over academic success.
A few other things for Dude homeschoolers to keep in mind:
Don’t be afraid to let stuff go. Dudes tend to hold onto student work, books, curriculum, and other homeschool resources. It’s fine to save stuff, but some people have a hard time tossing old homeschool materials because they’re afraid of the loss — or too nervous to commit to a permanent decision,” says Susan Bartell, PsyD.
Buy supplies that inspire you. It’s worth it to spend money on the fancy pens and notebooks you love since you’ll be spending a lot of time with them. A basket or envelope system that lets you collect important stuff as you go to sort later will help keep you feeling efficient without making you feel rushed.
Take some risks. Dudes can tend to be homebodies, which is fine — but give your kids the opportunity to participate in social activities with other kids sometimes, too. “Pick one day a week or a couple of days a month as your designated Out And About Days, and work on making them part of your routine,” says Timothy Pychyl, PhD.
Say no. Dudes can be people pleasers, especially when it comes to their kids. It’s OK to say there’s no space for a karate class right now or that you really do have to clean up your science project before you go to the park. You’re also allowed to tell your kids you need a break or you’d like them to stop teasing you about something — being a supportive parent doesn’t mean never putting yourself and your needs first.
Delegate sometimes. Dudes tend to be mostly DIY homeschoolers, but it’s good for students to experience learning from other teachers. Look for opportunities every year for your kids to learn outside your home, whether it’s a one-day workshop or a semester-long class.
Homeschool Style: THE OCEAN
Oceans homeschool in cycles: Sometimes, they’re focused, organized, and hands-on; other times, they relax into a routine that’s largely student led. These cycles come and go naturally, so your homeschool may look very different from one season to the next.
YOU MIGHT BE AN OCEAN IF:
You have found a few curriculums that work well for you, but you don’t necessarily use them all the time.
You do a lot of planning some years and not much planning other years.
You usually go into planning with a specific list of things you want to look for or accomplish.
There are times when you go to the library twice a week and other times when you don’t go for months at a time.
You generally have a few outside activities that you stick to from year to year.
You sometimes rely heavily on your planner and sometimes don’t keep one.
You have holiday routines that your family looks forward to all year.
You enjoy planning vacations and other travel far in advance of your trip.
Your bookshelves have books and materials for several different years and subjects.
Ocean homeschoolers move from high-intensity to low-intensity homeschooling. Sometimes, their homeschool will change from month to month to month or week to week; other times, they may be high- or low-intensity for a year or more. Sometimes your homeschool intensity may be determined by your kids — they need a slower pace, or there’s somewhere they need to grow. Other times, it may be determined by life, your mood, or even the weather.
“During high-intensity times, ocean homeschoolers will lean heavily on schedules and planners; during lower intensity times, they may do little or no record keeping. ”
Ocean homeschoolers usually plan each year in advance, but they let the weeks happen as they happen. During high-intensity times, they might plot out every week. Ocean homeschoolers can follow any homeschool philosophy, but they often lean into an unschool or project-based approach during their slower times. During more focused times, they rely on more structured philosophies, which often change over time. Their organization process tends to follow the same rise and fall pattern: During high-intensity times, ocean homeschoolers will lean heavily on schedules and planners; during lower intensity times, they may do little or no record keeping. Activities and outside classes tend to pick up during low-intensity times, and high-intensity periods may mean little to no outside activities to make room for hands-on learning at home. Ocean homeschoolers may ease gradually from one mode to the other, or they may wake up one day and find themselves ready for a different mode with no warning at all.
The challenge for Ocean homeschoolers is in knowing when you’ve entered a natural low-intensity phase and when your homeschool is hitting a bumpy patch. Your feelings will be a good indicator for this: If you feel bored and frustrated, like you’re not getting anything accomplished, it’s a sign your homeschool may need a little TLC; if your low-intensity periods feel peaceful and productive, it’s a sign you’re in a normal homeschool cycle.
These tips can help you make the most of your Ocean homeschool:
Stay organized. You can’t always predict when you’ll speed up or slow down, so keeping records is essential so that when you’re ready to return to something, you know where to start.
Keep lists for life stuff and school stuff. If you keep running lists of things you want to get to, it will be easy to pick up projects when you enter that phase, says Melissa Maker, organization expert.
Keep important dates on the calendar. Time-sensitive projects, like AP exams or summer camp, may require high-intensity you during a low-intensity mode, so keeping them on your radar can significantly reduce your overall stress.
Be aware of down time. When your high-intensity mode powers on for several months, you may need to block off time for a break, even if you would normally just keep going. “A week off every three months is a good rule of thumb for most families,” says Amy Johnson, PhD.
Homeschool Style: THE MAGPIE
For the Magpie, planning the next thing is always more exciting than the thing you’re doing right now. This isn’t inherently a bad thing — that excitement and energy keeps your homeschool moving forward. Magpies need a steady injection of new ideas to feel fulfilled in their homeschool lives.
YOU MIGHT BE A MAGPIE IF:
You are constantly researching new curricula.
You spend a lot of time planning your homeschool but rarely follow through on your plans for more than a few months.
You love finding programs and classes that last for a few weeks.
You spend a lot of time looking for homeschool ideas on forums and in groups.
You’ve gone through several different homeschool styles over the years.
You have accumulated several different homeschool resources that you’ve never used.
You love field trips and homeschool travel.
You get bored doing the same thing day after day.
Magpie homeschoolers always have their eyes on the horizon. They’re less interested in the everyday than in the big picture. They’re always willing to try something new — a new curriculum, a new homeschool philosophy, a new routine. As long as they stay busy, they’re happy and enthusiastic, but too much routine drags them down. Magpies love buying curriculum but rarely finish a curriculum — knowing this, it makes sense to shop second-hand and buy curriculum in the smallest increments instead of giant packages to see how well it works for you. Magpies are great at living in the moment, embracing spontaneous field trips and rabbit trails with enthusiasm and following their kids’ interests wherever they lead. Magpie homeschooler are always ready to change directions and scrap things that aren’t working, which means they can constantly tailor their learning plan to their particular students.
“Magpies are great at living in the moment, embracing spontaneous field trips and rabbit trails with enthusiasm and following their kids’ interests wherever they lead.”
Magpie homeschoolers can thrive with almost any homeschool philosophy — and will probably test-drive most of them at least once. Unit studies and project-based learning are natural matches for the Magpie’s ongoing desire to start something new. Magpies love planning their calendars, but often shift gears dramatically as the year progresses — sticky notes and Trello boards make it easy to move things around and delete things that are no longer relevant from your planner. Magpie homeschoolers are always keeping an eye out for fun new additions to their homeschool, whether it’s a budding local homeschool group or a new history curriculum. They love sharing ideas — you’ll find lots of Magpies in homeschool chats, asking for recommendations and sharing things that worked in their homeschools.
The challenge for Magpies is in following through. Their early hyper-organization often falls apart after a few months, and even curriculum that works well for their particular kids might not hold their interests long enough for them to finish it. There’s no intrinsic value in finishing a curriculum — plenty of traditional schools don’t finish their curriculum every year — but there is real value in feeling finished. Sometimes magpies can get so focused on the next thing that they forget that kids benefit from the feeling of completion. Find ways to mark beginnings and endings so that your students can feel successful — and don’t get so focused on the future that you forget to lean into the things that are making your homeschool happy right now.
Magpies often thrive on the flexibility and freedom of homeschool life, and keeping these tips in mind can help you make the most of your homeschool:
Plan quarters instead of the year. This gives you the opportunity to recharge your homeschool four times a year instead of just over the summer and means that researching new stuff for your homeschool is always relevant.
Pay attention to what’s working. Shiny new curriculum can be hard to resist, but if you have a math curriculum that’s been working great for your kids or a science class that everyone loves, resist the urge to change for the sake of changing.
Keep a list of goals for the year. When you’re busy homeschool planning, jot down the three or four big accomplishments you’re aiming for this year — mastery of multiplication, essay writing, making friends, whatever your particular homeschool goals happen to be. This gives you a touchstone to check back in with, even if your everyday plans change.
Check your motives. “Homeschooling lets you give into what feels good in the moment — when you’re scheduling lessons and activities, it feel like you have control,” says Timothy Pychyl, PhD. That’s great, as long as you’re not using homeschool planning as an excuse to avoid something else you need to do. When you find yourself in hyper planning mode, do a quick self-check to make sure you’re not putting something you don’t want to do on the back burner.
Set deadlines. Magpies can get so engrossed in researching and tracking down resources that they never get started. “Pick a due date for buying or one subject at a time to focus on so that you’re not always in research mode and never in doing mode, says organization expert Linda Cobb.
Give opportunities for evaluation. If you know you have a tendency to not finish classes or curriculum, look for a few outside classes or activities where your kids can have other teachers rate their performance. Students will get the satisfaction of finishing something, and you’ll still have the freedom to follow your inner compass where it points you.
Homeschool Style: THE METRONOME
Metronomes are naturally organized. Organization doesn’t look the same way for everyone: Some metronomes have messy houses, but their routine runs like a well-oiled machine. They thrive on consistency and schedules. They like rules and checklists and knowing “what’s next.” They like clear parameters and guidelines.
YOU MIGHT BE A METRONOME IF:
You get grumpy or frustrated when your routine gets interrupted.
You prefer a curriculum that plans things out by the day or the week.
You mostly wake up and go to bed at the same time even when you’re on vacation.
You make your grocery lists following the store layout.
You have a specific spot for storing your holiday decorations.
You have an “order of things” that you usually follow.
You fold and sort your laundry as soon as it comes out of the dryer.
You keep track of birthdays without relying on Facebook.
You tend to do quick chores or activities when you have unexpected free time.
If you’re a metronome homeschooler, your daily schedule is the most important tool in your arsenal. You can’t relax unless you have a rhythm to relax into, so finding your homeschool rhythm is more important than finding the right curriculum. In fact, you might be wasting your money if you go curriculum shopping or start signing up for classes before you find the rhythm that works for your homeschool. Spend time just getting to know your routine — do you do better getting things started right after breakfast, or is early afternoon your most productive time? Do you need to have a clean sink before you start homeschooling? How long does it take you to get everything tidied back up at the end of the day? Homeschooling is different from just parenting, so if you’re a new homeschooler, you may find that your routine needs revamping to include at-home learning time. Giving this kind of space won’t feel natural, but the more room you can give your routine to settle around you, the more likely you are to find a routine that works well for your family.
“Metronome homeschoolers may or may not use a planner, but they definitely have a plan.”
Metronome homeschoolers can do well with most homeschool methods, including unschooling, as long as they feel like their days have a consistent structure, but metronomes are often drawn to methods that have small daily to-do lists, like Montessori or Charlotte Mason. Metronome homeschoolers may or may not use a planner, but they definitely have a plan. Metronomes enjoy planning holidays and time off at the beginning of each year, and they mostly stick to their beginning-of-the-year schedules. They’ll read books and do research so that they feel like they’re working from specific instructions. And while they may be neat or messy, metronomes prefer to be organized in a way that makes sense to them. Metronome organization may show up as binders, tabs, and file folders, or it may be a tottering pile, but it’s easy for them to find exactly what they need.
The big challenge of being a metronome homeschooler is that there is no outside authority to stamp your annual homeschool report with “Good job,” which means metronomes can be overly critical of themselves and spend a lot of time analyzing and overanalyzing their homeschool. Learning to trust yourself is an essential piece of your homeschool journey. So is learning how to embrace the places where things go wrong: Sometimes, metronomes can stick with curriculum or methods that aren’t working because they don’t want to be wrong, so getting comfortable viewing failure as part of forward momentum is an important skill for metronomes to master.
Metronomes are usually happy, successful homeschoolers — just keep these things in mind:
Make finding your rhythm a priority. Your homeschool will feel successful if you’re crossing things off your to-do list, but a too-rigid routine will make you feel like you’re always missing something. Focus on a rhythm instead so that you can adjust your schedule as you need to.
Be willing to compromise. Your schedule is important to you, but your kids may need you to be flexible sometimes. Don’t let your need for order and routine keep you from supporting your kids in the ways they need you to.
Give positive feedback. A lot of metronomes tend toward perfectionism, which means you may be too hard on yourself and your kids. Your expectations are high, and you meet them often! But it’s important to recognize growth and effort, not just getting the right answer, so make sure you’re finding opportunities to tell your kids — and yourself — what’s going well.
Try using a timer. If you have trouble transitioning between activities because there’s always “one more thing to do,” a 7-minute timer can be your best friend. Set it when you’re ready to wind up a subject, you need a quick clean-up blitz between activities, or you need to get everyone ready for park day.
Set clear priorities each year. Your steady pace means that your days usually feel successful, but you may feel less confident when it comes time to evaluate your year. Make this easier by starting each year with a short, concrete list of goals so that you know what you’re working toward in the long-term as well as in the everyday. This way, you’ll get daily satisfaction and the satisfaction that comes with feeling “finished,” says Susan Bartell, PsyD.
Keep a master checklist. Believe it or not, metronomes can get so caught up in the details that they lose sight of the bigger picture, says organization expert Linda Cobb. “When you find a window of time, consult your master checklist before diving into a project or activity. This way you’re steadily making progress toward your goals.”
Be deliberate about scheduling downtime. Metronomes sometimes keep going because they’re afraid to slow down, says Bartell. “Some people are afraid they’ll be judged if they relax, so they feel like they have to prove that they’re not wasting any time. But everyone needs space to unwind.”
How do I put together a high school transcript for an unschooled student?
The key is to figure out how all the learning you've been doing unschooling through high school fits into the framework your dream college is looking for. Because it does.
Lisa asked: My always-unschooled 17-year-old has always been adamant that college isn’t on is to-do list — but now, just as he’s getting ready to start what’s technically his senior year this fall, he’s fallen in love with a fairly traditional college (with a reputation for being tough on homeschooled applicants) and made up his mind that’s what he wants to do next. I want to support him, but I have no idea how to pull together a high school transcript (which his dream college does require) when we’ve done very little formal schoolwork for high school. Can you help?
Obviously your life right now would be a little easier if you’d been keeping careful records for your son’s high school transcript since eighth grade, but honestly, it’s no big deal that you’re just starting to think about it at the end of junior year. (I’m not sure if it’s exactly comforting, but there’s a not-small percentage of homeschool parents who don’t start thinking about transcripts until their student’s senior year is ending — and many of them do just fine pulling them together even at that very last minute.) Putting together this transcript is totally doable.
Start with a simple transcript template like this one so that all you have to do is fill in the blanks. (Transcripts for very traditional colleges are one place where creativity doesn’t really pay off — you’ll usually fare best if your transcript looks like everybody else’s.) Now look at the college your son has his sights set on: What core academic classes does it require for incoming freshman? Often, the requirements look something like this: 4 units of English, 2 units of algebra, 1 unit of geometry, 1 unit of trigonometry, calculus, statistics, or other advanced math, 1 unit of biology, 1 unit of chemistry or physics, 1 unit of additional science, 1 unit of U.S. history, 1 unit of European history, world history, or world geography, 2 units of the same foreign language, and 1 unit of visual or performing arts.
Now a list like this might initially make you feel kind of panic-y because it seems like the most structured thing ever and your problem is that you’ve got almost no structured stuff to draw on, right? In fact, though, a list like this is a great thing for homeschoolers because it helps you focus in and figure out how all the learning your son has been doing might fit into a more traditional framework. Just because he hasn’t been checking off boxes for the past three years doesn’t mean he hasn’t been learning — which you know, of course, but which can be easy to forget in the face of a form full of those boxes. For instance, all that time he spent hatching tadpoles, creating microscope slides, growing carnivorous plants, dissecting owl pellets, and volunteering at the zoo? That might add up to Biology. Or the year he spent reading every Philip Dick book and comparing the books to movie interpretations of them? That’s comparative literature in action and can count as a semester of English. What about math? Frankly, if you haven’t done organized classes, the simplest thing to do may be to just to ask your son to take a few placement tests to see what math he’s mastered — then you can list the maths he’s mastered on his transcript. As you realize how much your son has actually accomplished over the past three years, his transcript will fill in pretty quickly — and you may be tempted to get whimsical with course names and descriptions, but if the school he’s aiming for really is super-traditional, it really is best to just keep it as simple as you can: Biology, rather than Exploring the Natural World, or Literature: Science Fiction instead of The Worlds of Philip Dick. Yes, coloring inside the lines is a little boring, but you’ve happily lived outside the lines (and can continue to do so). This is just a hoop that you’ll jump through more easily if you present your out-of-box experiences in a form that fits neatly into the admission committee’s boxes. (Plenty of colleges are receptive to homeschool resumes and appreciate the kinds of interest-driven classes that homeschoolers have the opportunity to take. You just want to know what the school you are applying to is looking for.)
After all this list-making, you may have some holes — but you’ve got his entire senior year to fill them. Don’t worry if you have multiple classes to fill in — maybe you need to cover geometry and trigonometry or take two English classes. This is pretty easy to manage with a little strategic planning. Sit down with your son, and come up with a game plan for what to do over the next year so that his transcript matches up with the requirements for his dream school. (If you need to, you can set your graduation date for the end of summer instead of spring to get a little more time. Remember, you’re the one who has the power to determine your academic year.)
You don’t mention whether you’ve been doing any outside classes, but if you haven’t, make sure to enroll in a couple this fall. They’ll make your transcript a little easier, yes, but they’ll also connect you to other teachers who can help describe your son’s achievements and college suitability when the time comes to start soliciting teacher recommendations for your application. You can handle the transcript thing on your own, but you will definitely benefit from having outside, unbiased teachers for your son’s teacher recommendations.
Good luck! It can feel intimidating to tackle this on your own, but just like every other part of homeschooling, taking it one step at a time and keeping your student top of mind will get you through.
Great Nature Books for Your Spring Library List
Fill your library bag with books that will get your secular homeschoolers excited about spring — whether the weather's in the right mood or not.
Nature study isn’t just for the littles! Greener pages inspire greener pastures for middle and high school homeschoolers, too. These nature books will make you want to head outdoors, whether you’re looking for a new project to take on or just for a little motivation to make nature time part of your everyday routine.
THE STICK BOOK: LOADS OF THINGS YOU CAN MAKE OR DO WITH A STICK by Fiona Danks and Jo Schofield
Who knew a stick had so much potential? This book makes it clear why the humble stick was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame and gives kids lots of ideas for creative outdoor play. Tweens and teens can challenge each other to craft the best stick-based creations.
THE KIDS’ OUTDOOR ADVENTURE BOOK by Stacy Tornio and Ken Keffer
There are 448 ideas for playing outside in all seasons in this handy tome — that’s more than one idea for every day of the year. Kids will enjoy this book, but it’s also a good pick for parents who aren’t sure how to help their children ease into free play or make the transition from little kid outdoor to adventure to big kid outdoor fun.
OWL MOON by Jane Yolen
Your kids will want to take a nighttime owl walk after reading this poetic story about a child’s owling adventure with her father. A lot of us start to phase out these kinds of activities as kids get older, but this is actually the time when these activities can be the most magical.
AN EGG IS QUIET by Dianna Hutts Aston
An egg may not have a voice, but it’s still pretty interesting — a fact that this gorgeously illustrated picture book makes clear as it introduces readers to more than 60 different eggs, from fossilized dinosaur eggs to tubular dogfish eggs to giant ostrich eggs. If you’re studying biology, this is a fun springtime surprise to pull out for older students.
THE NATURE CONNECTION: AN OUTDOOR WORKBOOK FOR KIDS, FAMILIES AND CLASSROOM by Clare Walker Leslie
Clare Walker Leslie’s book about nature journaling changed the way I look at the natural world forever, and her follow-up guide, full of activities and ideas for experiencing and exploring nature with your family, is a must-have. I used this book when my kids were little and pulled it out on a whim when the oldest was finishing up middle school — it was like an entirely new book! Definitely worth revisiting even if you used it for elementary homeschool nature study.
SWIRL BY SWIRL: SPIRALS IN NATURE by Joyce Sidman
A Newberry Honor poet and Caldecott medalist illustrator team up for this beautiful book about spirals in nature. This is a great book to inspire kids to look for shapes and patterns in the natural world and to get creative with how they think about nature study.
DIARY OF A CITIZEN SCIENTIST: CHASING TIGER BEETLES AND OTHER NEW WAYS OF ENGAGING THE WORLD by Sharman Apt Russell
Citizen science has big appeal for kids who want to be a part of something bigger, and this book, from a non-professional science fan who stalks tiger beetles, catalogs galaxies, and participates in other citizen science projects, makes an engaging read for older kids. (Bonus: You can find tons of citizen science projects to participate in if you’re feeling inspired.)
THE SENSE OF WONDER by Rachel Carson
Carson’s book, published in 1956, is hauntingly prescient, reflecting the importance of nature through a series of everyday outdoor experiences with her nephew along the Maine coast. This is a great book for reminding tweens and teens that their nature observations are part of bigger way of experiencing the world.
ALL THE WILD WONDERS: POEMS OF OUR EARTH edited by Wendy Cooling
Delicate watercolor paintings accompany nature poems by Christina Rossetti, Ogden Nash, John Agard, Thomas Hardy, and more. Kids who prefer writing to hiking may find that nature-inspired poetry is the perfect way to make outdoor time feel inspiring.
WALDEN by Henry David Thoreau
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” Thoreau’s classic work about the importance of living a life connected to the natural world still resonates today, and teen readers will probably be both inspired by Thoreau’s ideas about a “simple” life and ready to critique some of the class and gender dynamics that are happening behind the scenes of that simple life.
THE CLOUDSPOTTER’S GUIDE: THE SCIENCE, HISTORY, AND CULTURE OF CLOUDS by Gavin Pretor-Pinney
Learn more about morning glory, cumulus, nimbostratus, and all those other clouds in this odd but awesome little book about the science, history, art, and pop culture significance of clouds. We spent hours making cloud charts and painting clouds in our high school nature study, and it was a welcome, meditative moment we looked forward to in our busy homeschool routine.
THE KID’S BOOK OF WEATHER FORECASTING: BUILD A WEATHER STATION, ‘READ THE SKY,’ AND MAKE PREDICTIONS! by Mark Breen and Kathleen Friestad
Who needs a weather unit study when you can build your own weather machine in the backyard? We tested this book out in elementary school, but my daughter was really too young to take ownership of the projects. Middle school proved to be perfect timing for us.
ROOTS, SHOOTS, BUCKETS & BOOTS: GARDENING TOGETHER WITH CHILDREN by Shannon Lovejoy
Lovejoy’s mix of practical information (you can start a garden with your kids using the information in this book) and inspiration (including a moon garden of night-blooming flowers) makes this an ideal volume for would-be gardeners of all ages.
TAKE A BACKYARD BIRD WALK by Jane Kirkland
Part of the Take a Walk series, this practical and engaging book helps kids develop the skills they need to notice and identify birds in their own neighborhoods. If you are just getting started with birdwatching, it’s not too late! And books like this make it much easier to let your tweens and teens lead the way.
A SEED IS SLEEPY by Dianna Hutts Aston
Sylvia Long’s accurate, detailed illustrations are a big part of what makes this book such a great addition to your nature library. Kids will learn about all kinds of seeds, from the ones light enough to float on the breeze to ones that can weigh up to 60 pounds. I think this would be a great book to include as part of a middle grades botany unit.
AND THEN IT’S SPRING by Julie Fogliano
Waiting and watching for signs of spring can sometimes feel like an endless process, a fact that Fogliano beautifully captures in this simple story. We read this book out loud every year when we’re on the lookout for those first indicators that winter is on the way out.
WHAT THE ROBIN KNOWS: HOW BIRDS REVEAL THE SECRETS OF THE NATURAL WORLD by Jon Young
A naturalist explores the language of birdsong in this book that manages to be both thoughtful and practical advice for birders. This is the kind of book that appeals to kids who explore their world like nature detectives, putting together clues and making deductions about how the world works.
SPRING: AN ANTHOLOGY FOR THE CHANGING SEASONS edited by Melissa Harrison
This tribute to British springtime includes spring-themed writings by Chaucer, Orwell, Hopkins, Larkin, and more. It’s a great gateway to comparative literature, exploring tone and mood, or digging into creating setting in literature — and it’s fun to read, too.
Alternatives to To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee’s classic To Kill a Mockingbird is worth reading — but don’t make it the only book about racial justice on your list, or you’re missing the point.
Harper Lee’s classic To Kill a Mockingbird is worth reading — but don’t make it the only book about racial justice on your list, or you’re missing the point.
It’s not that Harper Lee’s coming-of-age classic isn’t a good book — it is. The problem comes when we try to make it the great American novel about racial justice — which it’s not. How could it be when it’s focused on racism as an incident in the coming-of-age story of a white woman and when its hero is a white man who never actually comes out and condemns racism? So read To Kill a Mockingbird — please read all the banned books! — but also read these books that shift perspective from a young white girl to actual experiences of people of color.
The Hate U Give BY ANGIE THOMAS
If Scout were a young Black woman and Tom Robinson was her friend, you’d get close to the vibe of this YA novel. Starr Carter lives in a poor Black neighborhood and attends a ritzy white private school, putting her smack in the middle of two worlds. Those worlds collide when her best friend is killed in a police shooting during a routine traffic stop — while Starr is sitting in the passenger seat. Like Mockingbird, The Hate U Give looks at the ways racism affects institutions we trust — like the courts or the police.
All American Boys BY JASON REYNOLDS AND BRENDAN KIELY
Quinn didn’t see what happened in the store, but he did see the aftermath: His friend’s police offer brother relentlessly beating Rashad. Told in Quinn and Rashad’s alternating perspectives as they navigate the aftermath of Rashad’s beating, this is a hard book to read in light of everything that’s happening in the world right now. That’s exactly why you should read it.
Dear Martin BY NIC STONE
Justyce is used to living in a world where the fact that he’s a young Black man is enough to make the people around him fear and suspect him — but that doesn’t mean he likes it. He finds solace writing letters to his hero Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who made great strides for Black civil rights — but who also ended up dead because of racism. (The sequel, Dear Justyce — about two friends who grow up together in Atlanta before their paths diverge — one to Yale University, one to the Fulton Regional Youth Detention Center — is also a contender.)
Internment BY SAMIRA AHMED
Mockingbird was set in the past, but Internment imagines the future: In a not-too-distant United States, Muslim-Americans are forcibly relocated to internment camps. Teenage Layla is one of them, and she’s more than ready to join the brewing rebellion. Though Internment has some literary flaws (including an unfocused second act and spotty character development), its premise is enough to make it worth reading. When is it OK to decide someone’s existence makes her a threat to society?
The Round House BY LOUISE ERDRICH
Young Joe is the Scout figure in this story: When his mother is raped and beaten, Joe wants to bring her attacker to justice, but the law around the Ojibwe reservation is so twisted and complicated that justice is hard to find, even for his father, who works as a judge. As his mother retreats more and more into herself, Joe turns to Ojibwe myths and spirits (which the book treats — appropriately — with the same world-shaping significance as Greek myths and spirits) to solve the mystery. This is a stark and lyrical reminder that justice looks different depending on the color of your skin and where you live.
Monster BY WALTER DEAN MYERS
Steve is on trial for his role in the shooting of a convenience store clerk — Steve was supposed to stand lookout while another kid robbed the store, but the clerk ended up dead. Steve didn’t kill him, though, so he doesn’t understand why his whole life has turned upside down. Of course, we see through Steve’s story that it’s more complicated than he wants to believe. The open ending means that we have to make up our own minds about how guilty Steve is — as well as what guilt the judicial system, racism, peer pressure, and profiling play in Steve’s trial.
The House You Pass on the Way BY JACQUELINE WOODSON
If you want a book entangled with rural Southern history but told from a Black perspective, Woodson’s dreamy, lyrical novel is a solid bet. Staggerlee’s grandparents are famous for dying in a civil rights era bombing. Her parents are infamous in their small town for their interracial marriage. Staggerlee knows she doesn’t want to become famous as “the gay girl” in town, but she can’t keep denying who she really is.
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption BY BRYAN STEVENSON
This non-fiction book illuminates the inherent racism of the U.S. criminal justice system through the story of one man's experiences. Stevenson demonstrates how the death penalty traces its roots back to Jim Crow "justice," pushing readers to question what they think they know about American justice and the American dream. The author is the executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama. (I’d probably read the original with high schoolers, but there is a young adult version if you’re reading with younger students.)
Beloved BY TONI MORRISON
This is the hardest book on the list — both in terms of complexity and subject matter — and not every kid will be ready to tackle this in high school. It’s worth reading if you have a student who can handle it, though. This is a horror novel — a gorgeous, dreamy, lyrical horror novel — about a woman who has escaped from slavery but remains haunted by its — literal — ghosts. This book recognizes the personal and na- tional trauma of slavery and its legacy in its dense, difficult story of the costs of surviving. Tom Robinson could be Sethe’s grandson; her history is his history.
Homeschool Cooking Class: Georgian Plum Tklapi
Cooking projects can be a great way to explore geography, history, and culture in your secular homeschool.
Sometimes a random rabbit trail can take your homeschool somewhere delicious.
We live in Georgia, and sometimes when we go hunting for information about our state, we turn up information on the country Georgia instead. Discoveries like this always seem to lead up down interesting rabbit trails, and this connection has been no exception. While our Georgia was home to the Creek, Cherokee, and Seminole nations before British colonizers arrived in the 18th century, the Georgia on the other side of the world has played a different role in world history for centuries. Cochis, in Georgia, was the place the Argonauts headed to find the mythical Golden Fleece, the Roman Republic stretched there in the first century BCE, it was part of the Muslim Empire during the 7th century CE, and it was absorbed by and then liberated itself from the Soviet Union in the 20th century. That’s a lot of action!
The other Georgia also has a rich culinary history, and we’re not the kind of homeschoolers who can resist food-based learning. We tried the warm and gooey cheese-stuffed bread called khachapuri, meat-stuffed dumplings called khinkali, and this tklapi, a surprisingly delicious take on fruit roll-ups.
An easy way to dry fruit is to let is sit in the sunshine for two or three days, until its surface is smooth and not sticky. (If you’re drying it outside, bring it in overnight.) If you’d rather (or if the weather is uncooperative), you can also dry your tklapi in a 140° oven for about an hour. It’s done when its surface looks smooth and is no longer sticky to touch.
Plum Tklapi
You need:
7 lbs. plums
3/4 cup granulated sugar
Directions:
1. Heat oven to 400°.
2. Wash plums. Cut in half and remove pits. Arrange, cut-side-up on large, rimmed cookie sheets, and roast for 20 minutes, checking frequently. (You want your plums to be soft but not burned.) When plums are soft, remove from oven and let cool completely.
3. In a food processor fitted with a blade attachment, blend plums until smooth. Transfer to large bowl, and sweeten to taste — usually between 1/2 and 3/4 cup of sugar tastes right to us.
4. Lined rimmed baking sheets with parchment paper, and carefully pour the pureed plum mixture so that it is between 1/8- and 1/4-inch thick.
5. Let the fruit dry, using your preferred method. Slice into strips with a pizza cutter, and store in an air-tight container in the refrigerator.
How to Throw the Ultimate Homeschool Pi Day Party
Is Pi Day on March 14 (3.14) the ultimate homeschool celebration? At least it’s a fun reason to celebrate the magic of math, any way you slice it.
March 14 is Pi Day — and celebrating this mathematical constant makes a fun family party, any way you slice it.
Pi Day was one of the very first homeschool holidays we celebrated together — and like creating our first successful batch of oobleck, celebrating Pi Day was one of the things that made me feel like a “real” homeschooler. As the kids got older, our celebrations got wilder and more creative, and now I can’t imagine not throwing a little homeschool shindig to celebrate March 14 (3.14, the rounded-off version of pi). Here are some of our favorite Pi Day fun ideas:
DO THIS
Turn your wall clock into a pi clock by translating the hours into radians. (You can use the pi clock by SB Crafts as a model if you want to get fancy with your equations.)
Put your pi skills to the test with Buffon’s Needle, a geometrical probability problem that dates back to 1777. It involves dropping a needle onto a sheet of lined paper and determining the probability of the needle crossing one of the lines on the page — an answer that’s directly related to pi. The Mathematics, Science, and Technology Education (MSTE) division of the College of Education at the University of Illinois has a cool simulation that walks you through the problem.
Take the Pi Day Challenge. Matthew Plummer, a former math teacher at Boston’s Hanover High School, likes celebrating Pi Day so much that he created a delightful series of online pi puzzles — some of which call for mathematical solutions, some for research, and some for critical thinking.
Write a Pilish — a poem based on the successive digits of pi. The number of the letters in each word of your poem should equal the corresponding digit of pi: so, the first word would have three letters, the second one, the third four, and so on.
READ THIS
In Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi by Cindy Neuschwander, the bold knight’s son Radius must find the cure to the potion that turned his father into a fire-breathing dragon.
WEAR THIS
The Einstein Look-a-Like competition is a beloved part of Princeton University’s annual Pi Day celebration, so join the festivities by getting dressed in your Einstein-ian best.
EAT THIS
Pie, of course!
Why Do We Do Science Experiments Someone Else Has Already Done?
There’s value in repeating science experiments other people have already done in your homeschool, but don’t forget to make time for your own science questions, too.
There’s value in repeating experiments, but don’t forget to make time for your own science questions, too.
One of the great things about the rise of the Internet is that you can find any science experiment on YouTube.
Sometimes, I’ll queue up a few versions to show my kids before we tackle an experiment at home. This is handy: We can see how the experiment is supposed to look, so that if something goes wrong, it’s easier to troubleshoot. It also gives the kids an idea of what to expect, which helps them focus on paying attention during the different steps of the experiment. And it’s fun to feel like part of a community of people doing the same experiment — that’s one of the things I miss being a homeschooler instead of a science teacher these days.
But a few weeks ago, when I started another video for a jelly bone experiment we were doing with the Thanksgiving leftovers, my son — he’s 11 — said, “What’s the point?”
“What?” I said.
“We’re not really experimenting to see what happens,” he said. “We already know. It’s already on YouTube like a hundred times. What’s the point?”
I hesitated. There IS a point to repeating experiments — it’s called science. We repeat experiments because every experiment doesn’t work out perfectly, and different scientists may get different results. If we repeat an experiment, we can see whether the results are always true, or sometimes true, or only true once every leap year.
Doing experiments someone else has already done also helps us build our science toolkit. That’s why those YouTube videos are so useful. When we can see how someone else does an experiment, we can develop a good lab technique — and, if things go wrong, seeing where other people went right can help us redo the experiment more successfully.
And, of course, there’s always a chance that repeating an experiment may teach us something new. We could discover something no one else did before. True, that’s unlikely when we’re doing the same strawberry DNA experiment every 5th grader in the country does in science class, but it’s always possible.
All of those are good reasons for repeating experiments, and I started to explain them to my son. Later, I did talk about them. But I didn’t answer him then because I realized that he was asking a scientist’s question.
“That’s true,” I said. “What’s a science question you think we should answer?”
And just like that, our science routine changed. We still do experiments where we know what happens, but I also make a point to do experiments based on our own real-life questions. We experimented to see what ants do when it rains and whether people are more likely to use a trash bin in the park if it has a white bag versus a black bag. Because repeating experiments is important but so it encouraging scientific curiosity.
Misty Heaslet is a middle school science teacher turned homeschool mom. She lives in western North Carolina.
Homeschool Field Trip: Birdwatching in New Mexico
Take a homeschool field trip: 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.
Take a homeschool field trip: The end of 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.
You Are Doing a Lot of Things Right, Homeschool Moms. Remember That.
Instead of noticing only the balls you drop, pay attention to all the ones you’re keeping in the air. Homeschool moms can be so hard on themselves, but we need to celebrate our successes at least as often as we worry about our failures.
“Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does. ”
It is easy to get lost in the endless to-do lists of homeschooling. We’re always juggling so many things, and all of them are important. With our eyes on the balls we need to pick up next, we miss the magic of the moment — the fact that we’re juggling all of this at all.
Have you ever watched a juggler in action? Our city has an annual juggling festival every February, and we always make time to go. The experienced jugglers, who can casually toss flames and glass and eggs, are totally impressive, but I’m always drawn to the new jugglers on the sidelines, the ones who are still glowing with the excitement of being able to keep three balls going at once. I watch them, and I see the carefulness of their movements, their delight when the balls come down and go up the way they are supposed to. And of course, sometimes I watch their balls fall, and I watch them pick them up and try again.
Homeschooling is a different kind of juggling, but it’s no less a combination of effort and grace, willingness to flex a little while maintaining a steady rhythm. It’s easy to drop those balls sometimes, too. (My Laundry ball has apparently rolled somewhere under the couch, and I may never meet it again.) But I think we spend so much time chasing balls and worrying about dropping balls that we don’t appreciate the most important thing: A lot of the time, we’re keeping all those balls in the air. We’re juggling — maybe not perfectly, maybe not always the way we’d like to, maybe not with fiery batons — but we’re juggling, and that’s a miracle of gravity and skill that we don’t give ourselves enough credit for.
It’s totally fine to push ourselves to do better, to do more, but we have to balance that internal drive with an equally powerful commitment to acknowledging all the things we do right — all the times when we aren’t actively dropping balls. It’s easy to fall into a mindset that focuses on what we’re getting wrong — after all, that’s what we tend to notice. It’s really obvious when a juggler misses a catch, and his balls go spilling across the floor. But pay attention to the times when you’re not missing the ball, too. Pay attention to the many, many moments when you’re juggling, and the balls are staying up. And give yourself the credit you deserve.
Food for Thought
What are you really proud of in your homeschool life right now?
What could you do to celebrate that achievement?
How can you recognize yourself for the work that leads to that achievement?
Homeschool Unit Study: The History of Spies
The end of winter is the perfect time for a secular homeschool unit study that takes a chronological deep dive into some of history's most celebrated spies.
This winter is the perfect time to take a chronological deep dive into some of history's most celebrated spies.
Francis Walsingham (ca. 1532–1590)
Queen Elizabeth’s adviser was the first great English spymaster, and the culmination of his secret intelligence work was the frame-up, capture, and execution of Mary Queen of Scots in 1586. Most of Walsingham’s efforts were directed against the Catholics, whom Walsingham, a staunch Protestant who vividly remembered the Protestant purges initiated by Elizabeth’s sister and predecessor, feared and mistrusted. Walsingham organized a spy network that would impress modern day intelligence agents, complete with forgers who could copy any seal, an army of letter interceptors, complex ciphers to protect his own mail, and spies everywhere.
Read This:
The Queen’s Agent: Francis Walsingham at the Court of Elizabeth I by John Cooper
Benjamin Tallmadge (1778)
The so-called Culper Ring, led by Benjamin Tallmadge, tracked Tory troop activities in British-occupied New York City by actually joining Tory militias, feeding crucial information to the colonial army. They’re also credited with helping to bring down Benedict Arnold.
Read This:
Washington’s Spies: The Story of America’s First Spy Ring by Alexander Rose
Mary Bowser (1860s)
Mary Bowser joined the Richmond Underground, a movement that worked to get enslaved people, Union prisoners, and Confederate deserters out of occupied Richmond, Virginia. When she managed to get work at the Confederate White House, Bowser was able to pass important confidential information on to the Union.
Read This:
Spy on History: Mary Bowser and the Civil War Spy Ring by Enigma Alberti and Tony Cliff
Belle Boyd (1860s)
The Confederates had their spies, too, and 17-year-old Maria Isabella Boyd was one of them. Under guard for shooting a drunken Union solider who had insulted her and her mother, Belle charmed secret information out of her guard and passed it on to the Confederate troops.
Read This:
Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War by Karen Abbott
Sidney Reilly (1890s-1925)
The “Ace of Spies” was the model for Ian Fleming’s James Bond. The handsome, womanizing Russian-born British agent spied on 1890s Russian emigrants in London, in Manchuria on the cusp of the Russo-Japanese War, and participated in an attempted 1918 coup d’etat against Lenin’s Soviet government. Reilly disappeared in the Stalinist Soviet Russia of the 1920s.
Watch This:
Margarethe Zelle (1914-1917)
Better known as Mata Hari, Zelle became one of the most famous spies in history even though chances are pretty good that she never actually did any spying: She was recruited by the French and by the Germans, both of whom saw potential in her globe-trotting work as an exotic dancer, but she doesn’t appear to have given any intelligence to anyone. Still, when the Germans outed her as a double agent, the French had her arrested and executed tout suite, despite a lack of actual evidence.
Read This:
Femme Fatale: A New Biography of Mata Hari by Pat Shipman
Virginia Hall (1930s-1940s)
“The limping lady” — so named because she’d shot herself in the foot and 1932 and replaced her amputated lower leg with a prosthetic limb — volunteered her services as a spy in occupied France, coordinating the activities of the Resistance under cover as a correspondent for the New York Post. Hall’s prosthetic foot, which she named Cuthbert, provided a convenient hiding place when smuggling top secret documents.
Read This:
The Wolves at the Door: The True Story of America’s Greatest Female Spy by Judith L. Pearson
Klaus Fuchs (1940S-1950S)
Fuchs was a nuclear physicist who left Germany in 1933 to come to England, where he worked on “Tube Alloys,” the British atomic bomb project, before joining the Manhattan Project in the United States. Fuchs hated the Nazis, but he had complicated feelings about the post World War II world — which led him to feed information to contacts in the Soviet Union. Fuchs was arrested for espionage in the 1950s and imprisoned.
Read This:
The Spy Who Changed the World: Klaus Fuchs, Physicist and Soviet Double Agent by Mark Rossiter
Melita Norwood (1962-1999)
Norwood worked as the assistant to the director at a British atomic research center for 37 years before her employers realized that she’d been passing secret information from her job on to the Soviets the whole time she’d worked there. By that time, Norwood was an 87-year-old grandmother, whose 1999 arrest made headlines and shocked everyone who knew her — including her family.
Watch This:
Expand your study further with these spy books for kids:
Spy Science: 40 Secret-Sleuthing, Code-Cracking, Spy-Catching Activities for Kids by Jim Wiese
How to be an International Spy: Your Training Manual, Should You Choose to Accept It by Lonely Planet Kids
DK Eyewitness Books: Spy: Discover the World of Espionage from the Early Spymasters to the Electronic Surveillance of Today by Richard Platt
World War II Spies (You Choose: World War II) by Michael Burgan
Homeschool Unit Study: The History of Cuneiform
Ancient Mesopotamia’s writing system offers a peek into geography, history, culture, and class in the ancient world. Learn more with a secular homeschool unit study for middle and high school students.
Ancient Mesopotamia’s writing system offers a peek into geography, history, culture, and class in the ancient world. Learn more with a secular homeschool unit study.
Some time between 522 and 486 B.C.E., a patient scribe carved the story of the rise of Darius the Great into a cliff in western Iran, not once but three times in three different cuneiform script languages. The finished inscription is 49 feet high and 82 feet wide, a virtually indelible record of the triumph of the most famous man in the world at the time — but it would be more than 2,000 years before any English-speaking historian could read it.
Cuneiform, along with Egyptian hieroglyphics, is one of the two most ancient written languages in human history. The birth of writing 5,500 years ago in ancient Sumeria was probably born of economic need instead of creative energy: The earliest written records, tokens made of stone or clay, record business transactions. Later, these tokens became pictographs, symbols inscribed on clay tablets that represented numbers or objects. Gradually, these symbols became more complex and sophisticated, and writing became about telling stories as much as about conducting business. By the time cuneiform faded from use — around the first century C.E. — people used it write letters, do schoolwork, write religious texts, and more.
Unlike an alphabet, cuneiform uses between 600 and 1,000 characters to write words or syllables — which may help explain why it was so difficult for Western readers to discover. To read it, you have to learn the language being recorded and then all the signs, which tend to have multiple possible meanings. Like other languages, cuneiform seems to be easier for children to pick up than for adults — many of the surviving cuneiform documents we have today are actually spelling and handwriting exercises probably done by Sumerian students.
Part 1: How Cuneiform Works
Do this:
Try this:
Pretend the alphabet doesn’t exist, and you have to invent a form of writing based around simple pictures. Brainstorm a basic system, and see if you can use it to write:
your name
a verb (like dance or read)
adjectives (like delicious or fun)
Talk about this:
What does picture writing do well? What are some advantages it might have? What limitations does picture writing have?
What is the purpose of writing? Think about commercial reasons (like buying and selling), political reasons (writing laws or training an army), and social reasons (telling stories or organizing religions).
Part 2: The Story of Writing
Do this:
Work through the interactive online activity The Story of Writing, which explores the development of the cuneiform character for barley over time.
Talk about this:
How does the development of the symbol for barley show how cuneiform evolved over time?
Think about this:
Why did the ancient Mesopotamians simplify their pictographs over time? How might this make writing faster or easier? What might be the implications of changing from direct representation (pictures) to abstract representation? (Think about who has access to education.)
Part 3: Writing as Artifact
Talk about:
Cuneiform gives us an idea of what life was like in ancient Mesopotamia and about what kind of lives the people from that place and time lived. So what does it tell us about these people that they started writing in order to record agricultural transactions? Why would these records be important? Who would benefit from recording these commercial transactions? (Think beyond the buyers and sellers — how might these records affect things like taxes and services?)
What else might be important to keep records of? (Births, marriages, and deaths? Property ownership? Work contracts? Religious rules and rituals?) How could writing be used to legitimize and extend political power? (Think of the carvings we talked about at the beginning of this unit — what is their purpose? How well did they succeed at accomplishing that purpose?)
Do this:
Explore some of the artifacts in the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute Tablet Collection. What do these artifacts tell you about life in ancient Mesopotamia?
Take a Virtual Field Trip to the National Gallery of Art
The National Gallery of Art has an eclectic collection that’s fun to explore with your homeschoolers. The museum is worth a visit, but you can also take a virtual tour of some of the collection’s highlights.
It’s the National Gallery’s birthday — and a virtual visit can start some awesome conversations about art in your secular homeschool.
March is the birthday of the National Gallery of Art, which was established March 17, 1941. Its mission was to make a broad swathe of art — from medieval altarpieces to abstract expressionism — accessible to all U.S. citizens, which is why it’s never charged an admission fee. The museum, which opened during World War Two, when cultural institutions in Europe were shutting down, represented both hope for the future and the importance of arts and culture, said then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who thought that art should be for the people, not just the elite who could afford to purchase it — which is why it’s appropriate that you can check out some of the highlights of its collection from the comfort of your own home.
Ginevra de Benci by Leonardo da Vinci
Da Vinci’s painting of the Italian woman poet is his only work permanently on display in the western hemisphere, and Ginevra’s expression is as inscrutable as the Mona Lisa’s.
Little Dancer by Degas
The only sculpture Degas ever put up for exhibition was almost universally scorned during its 1881 showing, but the ballerina statue has become one of the most famous in the world — and the original (complete with human hair in her braid) is at the National Gallery.
The East Wing by Alexander Calder
The East Wing of the National Gallery has the largest collection of the sculptor’s work, but the big draw — literally — is the unnamed sculpture in the entry. Calder didn’t believe in “naming the baby” until it was born, and since he died before this last — and largest — work was installed, it never received a name.
Hahn/Cock by Katharina Fritsch
The star of the rooftop, this giant electric blue rooster turns conventional art on its head: “I, a woman, am depicting something male. Historically it has always been the other way around,” says Fristch.
Into Bondage by Aaron Douglas
An unflinching depiction of the Atlantic slave trade and its impact on African-American life, Douglas’s painting is one of the masterworks of the Harlem Renaissance.
What If We Educated Our Kids for a Different Version of Success?
What’s the real point of education? The answer to that question can revolutionize your secular homeschool life.
It’s not all about getting into college, even if getting into college is one of your homeschool goals.
“How will they ever learn to listen to their boss if they don’t have to listen to teachers?”
“They’ll never make it in the workforce, you have to do things you don’t like to do and deal with jerks.”
“In the real world you don’t get to do what you want.”
There are a lot of ways that many people seem convinced unschoolers will fail, and most of those reasons lead back to the belief that unschoolers just have it too good. They get to be too happy, too playful, too independent, too creative. If they’re used to living such full and interesting lives, how will they ever manage to knuckle down, obey their superiors, and resign themselves to a job that’s unfulfilling at best, and nearly intolerable at worst?
I think this attitude is an indictment of the current education system (as well as the typical workplace environment and maybe even the current economic system). Unknowingly, people who express concern that unschoolers won’t be able to function in such unpleasant situations are saying just what they think schools are good at: namely, teaching people to function in unpleasant situations.
I should hope that school free learners aren’t holding up, as their greatest vision of success, that their children become good at resigning themselves to unhappiness. I’d hope, instead, that life learners are raising children who will seek to build lives that make them happy.
Is it important to be able to deal with unpleasant people and situations at times? Of course. Sometimes you’re going to have to take a job you don’t like so that you can put food on the table. Sometimes you’ll have to deal with a bully to get something you need.
However, I believe that people are best prepared for challenges such as these when they have a core of self confidence and self respect instead of just being accustomed to putting up with discouraging situations on a daily basis. I’ve always thought unschooling was a good way to help individuals develop a strong sense of what is and isn’t right for them, and to make choices that support the type of life they want to be leading.
There are certain qualities in myself that I try to cultivate and encourage.
A lifelong fascination and excitement about whatever catches my interest at any given time. In other words, a passion for learning that never ends.
A strong ethic of self care and firm boundaries, skills and practices that help me to stay healthy and grounded in a world that can often feel overwhelming.
Caring and empathy for other people, and a focus on educating myself about important issues, seeking with my words and actions to make the world at least a little bit better.
Trust in my own instincts.
Confidence and a feeling of self worth, no matter how much I’m struggling at any given time.
Striving always to keep my passions, dreams, and plans at the forefront, working to build my life based on what I truly want and think is right for me.
I share this because, when I think about my own future children and what I’d want for them, I don’t think about college acceptance or an ability to conform to the values and pressures of the dominant culture. Instead, I think about what I want for myself, and I hope that my someday children will have those qualities in even greater abundance than I’ve managed so far for myself.
Figuring out how to live a life in line with your ideals and values is hard no matter what your educational background. But I like to think that unschooling helps. It’s certainly helped me to trust myself because as I child I was never taught that I was untrustworthy. It’s taught me to value the perfection of flow in learning because having experienced it, I know I need to always seek that out in my adult life as well. It’s taught me to question the supposed “common sense” of the dominant culture, and to develop my own thoughts on various issues for myself. And it’s taught me to always follow my passions because doing so will almost always lead me in the direction of the greatest happiness in my life and the greatest contribution to the world.
“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
Let’s cultivate in our life learning journey a version of success based on what makes you come alive.
Great Readaloud Biographies for Women’s History Month
Looking for a great biography for Women’s History Month for your secular homeschool? We’ve got some suggestions for every grade level.
For Women’s History Month, take a homeschool road trip to some woman-powered regions of history that don’t always show up in traditional textbooks.
A note about reading levels: People ask me about reading levels a lot, and the truth is that I don’t think about reading levels a lot. I have had my most advanced high school students write dense academic papers about children’s and middle grades books, and I read Finnegan’s Wake to my daughter when she was in the NICU. In other words, I think if the book and the reader match, the reading level doesn’t really matter that much. Which is a long-winded way of saying that I would absolutely read all of these books with my tween and teen homeschooler and feel like we were doing solid academic work together.
Margaret Knight
With her father’s toolbox and her sketchbook of inventions, Mattie Knight could — and did — make almost anything, including flat-bottomed paper bags (which we still use today), a metal guard that protected textile factory workers from flying shuttles, and a numbering machine. In fact, she held 87 U.S. patents, earning her the nickname the “Lady Edison.”
Read more about her in:
Marvelous Mattie: How Margaret E. Knight Became an Inventor by Emily Arnold McCully
Bessie Coleman
Growing up in rural Texas, Coleman yearned to get out of the cotton fields and into school, so she made learning part of her life, checking the foreman’s numbers every day to practice her math. In her 20s, she moved to Chicago, where she learned French in order to study flying in France, where she became the first African-American pilot.
Read more about her in:
Fly High!: The Story of Bessie Coleman by Louise Borden
Elizabeth Blackwell
There weren’t any women doctors when Elizabeth Blackwell was growing up in the 1830s — so it’s not very surprising that the plucky girl met plenty of resistance (including 28 medical school rejections — ouch!) when she decided she wanted to be a doctor. Blackwell’s determination and hard work carried the day, however, and Dr. Blackwell became the first female doctor in the United States.
Read more about her in:
Who Says Women Can’t Be Doctors?: The Story of Elizabeth Blackwell by Tanya Lee Stone
Caitlin O’Connell
Scientist Caitlin O’Connell made an amazing discovery while studying elephants at Erosha National Park in Namibia: The elephants communicated with each other by “hearing” vibrations through special sensory cells in their feet.
Read more about her in:
The Elephant Scientist by Caitlin O’Connell
Ada Lovelace
Sorry, Steve Jobs, but Lord Byron’s daughter Ada Lovelace may just be the pioneering genius behind modern day computer science. Lady Byron steered her daughter toward science and mathematics, which inspired her to work wit Charles Babbage, a mathematics professor whose Difference Engine is often considered the first proto-computer.
Read more about her in:
Emmy Noether
Albert Einstein called Noether the most important woman in the history of mathematics, and even if you’ve never heard her name before, you’re familiar with her work if you’ve ever studied abstract algebra or theoretical physics.
Read more about her in:
Emmy Noether: The Mother of Modern Algebra by M.B.W. Tent
Queen Emma of Normandy
The grandmother of William the Conqueror, Emma of Normandy deserves her own spot in history. Emma, who married two kings and gave birth to two kings, helped shape French and English history during the tumultuous 11th century.
Read more about her in:
Queen Emma and the Vikings: Power, Love, and Greed in 11th Century England by Harriet O’Brien
Anne Carroll Moore
Kids owe more than they know to Moore, who helped create the young reader-friendly libraries we know today. Moore shook things up at the New York Public Library during her tenure there from 1906 to 1941, creating the first children’s reading room, extending library checkout privileges to children, and arguably helping to launch the children’s literature boom of the 20th century.
Read more about her in:
Maria Anna Mozart
Maria Anna was Mozart’s sister — and history suggests that she may have been just as talented as her younger brother, though after a few years as a child prodigy pianist, Maria Anna was forced to give up music for more ladylike pursuits and a suitable marriage.
Read more about her in:
Mozart’s Women: His Family, His Friends, His Music by Jane Glover
Josephine Baker
Born into poverty in turn-of-the-century St. Louis, Josephine Baker would become one of the icons of the Jazz Age, a dazzling performer whose singing and dancing earned her international acclaim. Baker’s professional triumphs are especially notable considering the racist climate of the United States in the early 1900s.
Read more about her in:
Jazz Age Josephine by Jonah Winter
Mary Shelley
Though best-known for her famous relations (she was the daughter of early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and radical philosopher William Godwin, as well as the wife of poet Percy Bysshe Shelly) and for her “monster novel” Frankenstein, Mary Shelley was one of the pioneers in the field of short stories, a critic, editor, literary travel journalist, poet, and devoted mother.
Read more about her in:
Mary Shelley by Miranda Seymour
Beverly Cleary
The writer who brought us Ralph S. Mouse, Ramona Quimby, and Henry Huggins always had an empathy for children trying to navigate the complicated rules of the adult world.
Read more about her in:
A Girl from Yamhill by Beverly Cleary
Henrietta Leavitt
Leavitt’s work at the Harvard Observatory in the early 1900s was supposed to be methodical and uncreative, but Leavitt was too intelligent to record without analyzing. Using blinking stars to determine brightness and distance from the Earth, Leavitt helped astronomers understand that the universe was much larger than anyone had previously suspected.
Read more about her in:
Look Up!: Henrietta Leavitt, Pioneering Woman Astronomer by Robert Burleigh
Amelia Earhart
Everyone knows Earhart’s story: An intrepid pilot , she vanished with her plane without trace on her last daredevil flight. But there’s a lot more to her story than many people know, from her carefully maintained image (she curled her straight hair every single day to give it that “carefree and easy” look) to her surprising business savvy.
Read more about her in:
Amelia Lost: The Life and Disappearance of Amelia Earhart by Candace Fleming
Patience Wright
One of colonial America’s most celebrated artists, Wright worked as a spy for the the United States during the Revolutionary War, smuggling information from England in her artwork.
Read more about her in:
Patience Wright: American Sculptor and Revolutionary Spy by Pegi Deitz Shea
Zora Neale Hurston
Dramatic, talented, and more complicated than you might have realized, Zora Neale Hurston lived a life as fascinating as her novels. Her struggle to balance her own literary ambitions with the pressure from her peers to communicate “the Black Experience” may fascinate older readers and trigger engaging conversations.
Read more about her in:
Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston by Valerie Boyd
Sarah Edmonds
Nineteen-year-old Sarah Edmonds was one of many women who disguised themselves as men to fight in the Civil War, but that was just the beginning. Edmonds also disguised herself as a black slave to spy for the Union Army and helped tend wounded soldiers on and off the battlefield.
Read more about her in:
Irena Sendler
During World War II, Sendler helped rescue some 2,500 Jewish children in German-occupied Poland by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto with false papers and placing them with sympathetic Polish families. She was arrested and tortured by the Gestapo but survived the war, after which she tried to reunite the children she had saved with their families.
Read more about her in:
Irena’s Jars of Secrets by Marcia Vaughan
Marie Curie
Marie Curie may be one of the best-known women in science, but you probably don’t know her as well as you think you do. The first person to win two Nobel Prizes (in two different sciences, no less), Curie lived a fascinating life in turn-of-the-20th-century Paris and started research that would literally change the world in the century to come.
Read more about her in:
Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout by Lauren Redniss
Alice Coachman
Coachman, who grew up in segregated Georgia during the 1930s, became the first black woman to win an Olympic medal (in 1948). Coachman’s story is inspiring not just because of her talent (she was named one of the top 100 Olympic athletes of all time in 1996) but because of how much she overcame to achieve her dream.
Read more about her in:
Touch the Sky: Alice Coachman, Olympic High Jumper by Ann Malaspina
How can I help my homeschooler learn to focus?
If your middle school homeschooler needs help building focus, that’s totally normal — and there are several ways you can help them work on developing focused concentration skills.
Now that my son is in 6th grade, he’s doing work that requires him to really dig in and focus. He’s doing good work, but he’s so easily distracted, and he has trouble concentrating. Is there anything I can do to help improve his focus?
It’s totally normal and developmentally appropriate for tweens to need a little support as they move into work that requires more focus and concentration, so if your middle school homeschooler is finding stretching his attention span a little challenging, building focus should be part of your secular homeschool curriculum. Learning to focus can be hard even for adults, but most of the time, all you need to boost your concentration is a change in your routine and regular practice, says Michael Coates, M.D., chair of the Department of Family and Community Medicine at Wake Forest School of Medicine. Try these easy-to-implement actions to help your son improve his focus.
Set a timer. Something about an established time limit — “Work on this math for 15 minutes” — inspires focus, so don’t hesitate to break out the kitchen timer when you get to a subject you know taxes your son’s concentration skills. Start with small increments of time, and gradually increase time spent until you reach the amount of focused time you’re shooting for. This works best if you don’t rush — you don’t have to increase the time every day. Instead, give your son a chance to really adjust to each increase before adding more time.
Check your sleep habits. Around sixth grade, some kids start making the shift to adolescent sleep habits, which means their bodies naturally want to stay up later and sleep longer in the mornings. Kids really need at least seven hours of sleep a night to concentrate during the day, so if your child’s sleep patterns are changing but your schedule isn’t, it may be time to try something different. Even just starting an hour later in the morning may be enough to improve your son’s concentration.
Practice mindfulness. If your son starts to drift off during reading assignments or conversations, it may be that he’s spoiled by the everything-now nature of video games, Wikipedia, and Twitter. To help him shake that I-could-be-doing-10-other-things-now feeling, encourage him to pause and wiggle his toes or snap his fingers. That moment of focused concentration will help his focus settle back down.
Have a glass of water. A 2012 study in the Journal of Nutrition found that being as little as two percent dehydrated — such mild dehydration that your body doesn’t even feel thirsty — can negatively impact concentration. Pour your son a big glass of water before his next intensive focus session.
Jump around. Exercise is one of the best ways to improve focus, so take plenty of action breaks to walk around the block, kick a soccer ball in the backyard, do jumping jacks in the living room, or play a quick round of Wii Sports between subjects.
Bottom line: Don’t expect your son’s concentration abilities to develop on their own. Help him sharpen them over time by test-driving different focus-boosting techniques.
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