Monday Meditations: It’s Not Always About You
Sometimes, homeschooling is easier when I get out of my own head and try to see things through my children’s eyes.
“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.”
There is a Taoist fable about a wealthy man who wants to entertain his seabird visitor — he pulls out all the stops, putting together the parties, feasts, and celebrations that he would want someone to throw for him. The bird, of course, is baffled by all this, and basically hides in a corner the whole time, not even venturing out to take a bite of any of the fine food. People don’t all need the same things, is the point, and sometimes the adage that you should treat other people the way you want to be treated doesn’t play out in the real world the way you hope.
This is the lesson I learn over and over in my homeschool life: It’s not about me. I love this book. I love writing essays. I love taking tests. (I really do.) I love reading poetry out loud and watching documentaries and illustrating my notes. And sometimes my children love these things, too. Often, though, they don’t, and I have to take a step back from what I love to recognize what they love, to see them for who they are, and to make their joys our homeschool priority.
I want to open myself to what is, to see my children for who they are and our homeschool for what it is. So how can I do this? Well, for starters, I can step back — I can open up our routine to see how my children fill their days when I’m not there to direct them. (I can be willing to let go of my own anxieties if this means that sometimes that means they play Minecraft all day. I can also let go of my own need to be cool to tell them that they can’t play Minecraft all day every day.) I can close the plans and curricula and to-do lists for a little while and observe how they tackle something on their own. And I can do this not once or once a year but regularly, every season, so that our homeschool changes as they change.
I also need to remind myself of this when we hit a hard patch. Sometimes, yes, there’s something I can change to make things easier or better, but sometimes, the problem is not mine to fix. Sometimes, when my child is struggling with something, my job is not to fix things but to give her the space to find her own solution. Sometimes, my job is to sit on the problem until she recognizes it for herself. My perspective isn’t always what’s necessary to solve a problem.
I can’t do this every day. Some days, there are things to do. There are SATs and commitments to homeschool groups and work I want to see through, and that’s okay. I don’t have to do this every day. But I can do it sometimes. I can do it today. And every time I do it, every time I try to look at our homeschool through their eyes instead of my own, I can see it more clearly.
Food for thought
What parts of our homeschool day are for me? What parts are for them? Does that balance feel right?
What do I love about homeschooling that my kids don’t? What personal outlet can I find for that love?
What do my kids love about homeschooling that I don’t? How can I be more open to that in our everyday homeschool?
What I’m Reading: 1.23.19
Steampunk, Scoobies, spooky hotels, and more books crossed off my TBR list recently.
The classes I teach started back this week, so my reading habits definitely reflect that!
Larklight by Philip Reeve
My son and I are reading this together, and it’s kind of a case study in how different the same book can be with different kids — my daughter, when we read it together, was skeptical: “It’s like Charles Dickens but with space pirates?” My son, this time around, was delighted, “It’s like Charles Dickens but with space pirates!” Note to self: Find more steampunk graphic novels.
Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero
I’m glad I don’t try to give star ratings for books because I would have a really hard time figuring out a rating for this book. On the one hand, sign me up, I am all in for a Scooby Doo-Lovecraft mashup, and this book absolutely delivers on that front. There are tons of wink-wink, nudge-nudge references to classic Scooby mysteries and other plucky detectives (“Nancy Hardy, girl reporter”), and while they’re maybe a little overdone by the time you get to the last quarter of the book, mostly they are delightful. And the story is great: A gang of kids famous for their summer detective work are still — more than a decade later — dealing with the repercussions of their last case, which is much darker than they like to remember. Tough-as-nails former tomboy Andy and former kid genius-turned-bartender Kerri team up to break former comic relief sidekick Nate out of an asylum (where he’s committed himself because he sees the ghost of the late team leader) and head back to finally solve the mystery that still haunts them.
I loved the structure of the book, which hops around between perspectives and literary styles, occasionally breaking the fourth wall, anthropomorphizing random objects, and shaking things up with metafictional transitions. I know this can get annoying, and your tolerance may be lower than mine, but I found it perfectly suited to the wacky storyline.
I did run into some bumps: Like a lot of people, I didn’t love the treatment of LGBTQ people in this book, which seems superficially fine but gets more problematic the more you look at it. And there were places where the tongue-in-cheek charm felt like it was just trying a little too hard — it felt more forced than funny. Overall, it was more hit than miss for me, but there were definite caveats.
Bellweather Rhapsody by Kate Racculia
This one, I loved. I picked it up because it won the Alex award (almost always a sign of a book I will like) and because of a review that called it a mashup of Glee and The Westing Game. Who could resist that? Of course, no book could live up to that comparison, and this one doesn’t, but that’s okay because I found it pretty delightful anyway.
The Hatmaker twins, Rabbit and Alice, have been selected for the annual Statewide high school music festival. Among the throngs of musical teenagers, a young woman is returning to the Bellweather for the first time since she witnessed a murder-suicide there 15 years ago. Minnie wants to face her demons, Alice wants to be a star, and Rabbit wants to finally tell his sister that he’s gay, but none of them is prepared for what happens when Alice’s roommate disappears under mysterious circumstances. That’s an oversimplification of a complicated plot that also includes a conductor with a damaged hand, an evil music director, a teacher recovering from a deadly home invasion, and a concierge who has never gotten over that murder fifteen years ago. There’s a lot going on, but as you would expect in a novel about an orchestra, all the different themes weave together in a satisfying harmony. I kind of loved it.
Rose Daughter by Robin McKinley
I told you not to read this one right after Beauty, and then I went and did it anyway! I think the recommendation stands, but Rose Daughter is a lovely, dreamy story. I do love that McKinley subverts many of the fairy tale conventions in this story: Beauty’s sisters are brave, kind, and intelligent; there’s almost no mention of Beauty’s physical appearance at all; and the spell on the Beast is weirdly metaphysical. I like Beauty better, still, but this one’s lovely.
Sherlock Holmes: The Major Stories with Contemporary Critical Essays edited by John A. Hodgson
I’m gearing up for my Sherlock class, so rereading these was essential. I’m teaching “A Case of Identity,” which I enjoy teaching because I get so angry with Holmes denying the solution to his client; “The Speckled Band,” which is a great opening to talk about Victorian Orientalism; and “A Scandal in Bohemia,” which is just great fun. I’ve obviously got a loose women-in-the-Holmes-canon thing going on, but to me, that’s one of the most interesting pieces of the Sherlock Holmes narratives.
The Storm Keeper’s Island by Catherine Doyle
Cogheart by Peter Bunzl
If I have a literary pet peeve — who am I kidding? I have a list of literary pet peeves! But one of them is books that end without a satisfying resolution. I don’t love cliffhangers, but I understand the point of them, and I’m never going to complain if a book doesn’t wrap every single thing up in a neat bow. (In fact, books that do that are often unsatisfying in a different way.) As Melville wrote, truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges. I can appreciate a ragged edge. What I don’t like is investing my time, energy, and interest in reading a book that just ends.
The Storm Keeper’s Island was kind of that book. I loved the set up: An island off the coast of Ireland is home to an ancient magic and a group of families who protect the world from the evil forces buried within it, and Fionn Boyle — still traumatized by the death of his father — is the top candidate to take over for his grandfather as Storm Keeper. There’s a lot of mystery and adventure, a little time traveling, and a lovely relationship that develops between Fionn and his grandfather. But then the book just ends — almost none of the threads that you’ve been following resolve. And that’s when you realize: Nothing has really happened. All this set-up has been for the sequel, not for this book. It feels like reading half a book. There were a lot of things I liked about this book, but I’m not sure I’ll pick up the sequel because the end was so disappointing. It just stopped.
On the other hand, there’s a sequel to Cogheart, and I plan to scoop it up, stat — not because it left me hanging but because I’d love to revisit Lily and Robert’s world. There are loose ends in Cogheart, but the story feels finished: Lily’s inventor father has vanished after an attack on his ship, and Lily, her mechanical fox, and their new ally Robert, a clockmaker’s son, set out to rescue him. Middle grades steampunk always seems to hit the sweet spot for me — it glides over the technological marvels with just enough detail to make them seem wonderful but focuses most of its energy on storytelling and character building. I liked this so much I flipped back to the first page to read it over again immediately after I finished — it’s just a delight. (And I do want to know what plucky airship captain/investigative reporter Anna is up to at the end of the book!)
The Deceivers by Kristen Simmons
It’s about a fancy boarding school for grifter teens, you guys. If that is up your alley, you will dig this book. If not, steer clear. I found it fun and funny — not a great book but a totally enjoyable read. (Apparently the author intended it as a riff on Norse mythology, but I did not get that at all.)
The Dead Queen’s Club by Hannah Capin
I did get the riff in this one, which plays with the Henry VIII story, but you’d have to have completely skipped British history not to get it. In this take, Henry is a small-town football hero with a chip on his shoulder, who dates his way through a succession of girls who echo the Tudor queens, some of whom end up suspiciously dead. The story is narrated by Cleves (so-nicknamed because she hails from Cleveland), Henry’s BFF and — for 15 days — his fourth girlfriend. Gradually, Cleves starts to suspect that Henry’s bad luck with the ladies may be his own fault, and she teams up with his other surviving girlfriends to discover the truth about what really happened to Anne and Katie. It’s a fun idea, though it lags a bit in the telling and it has plenty of plot holes.
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Monday Meditations: Make Room for Silence
Silence feels like a rare commodity in my life right now, and I miss it.
“One of the greatest sounds of them all—and to me it is a sound—is utter, complete silence.”
Our homeschool life is full of wonderful sounds. There’s the sound of our daily readalouds. The sounds of music practice — that have gotten a little louder since my son got his first electric guitar. The sounds of non-stop conversation. The background noise of podcasts and video games and YouTube videos. I love all of these sounds, but there is a part of me that sometimes just craves silence.
Silence feels like a rare commodity in my life right now, and I miss it. In the world of words and noise, we’re pulled from ourselves — pulled to our to-do list or some idea of what we should be doing or someone else’s idea of what we should be thinking. And while those things can all be valuable, they all exist outside of us. In silence, we move beyond words and into a different kind of awareness, into a space of being rather than a space of doing. At first, your mind may race, filling the silence with thoughts and projects and plans. But slowly, our minds unknot, our thoughts loosen. We relax into the silence.
I have spent many years making space for the noises of our homeschool life, and I love them all. But this year, I want to make space for silence, too — and not just for myself. I want my children to learn silence, to learn how to sit comfortably with themselves in silence, to wander free and easy in the space that silence creates. Our morning routine has changed so many times over the years, but the noise has been a constant. Bringing in a little silence now feels right. As we sit together watching the morning candle’s flame twisting and shivering in the cold air, our silence feels like a kind of communion.
It’s not easy to find silence — and there are times where stopping the noise means stopping something good and productive that I don’t want to put a stop to. But I am looking for ways to bring more quiet moments into our routine. I also find that when I am seeking silence, I find it in odd places — on the drive home from Japanese lessons or in the kitchen waiting for the water to boil — and I am learning to embrace those kernels of silence when they appear, for as long as they appear. I am not sure I would have recognized the value of those little moments if I were not actively seeking silence in my day.
Food for Thought
When was the last time you were in a truly silent place? How did you feel?
What are the noises of your everyday life?
How can you make room for silence?
What I'm Reading: 1.8.19
Metafictional madness, snarky reimagined classics, time-traveling historians, lots of classic mysteries, and more new books to start the New Year.
Suzanne is continuing her Library Chicken sabbatical into 2019 (though she is still providing many of the book recommendations you read here!), so I’ve decided that since, let’s just be honest, I cannot fill her shoes, I’m just going to do a casual roundup of what I’m reading without keeping score. I read too many non-library books to keep Library Chicken interesting, and I am just not as brazen with my checkouts and holds as Suzanne — though you should definitely still play if you want to! (The rules are here.) You should chime in with what you’re reading, too!
I always start the New Year on a burst of reading energy, and this year I’m doing a great big crazy reading challenge, too — which, of course, means that I am constantly being tempted into reading books that don’t meet any of the challenge requirements, which is hard since the challenge list is apparently endless, but there you have it.
The Quiche of Death by M.C. Beaton
I picked up this cozy mystery on a Kindle deal just to see if I’d enjoy it — and I did, but not enough to actively seek out the next books in the series. (I do love the series with Ashley Jensen — who will always be Christina from Ugly Betty for me! — though. It is just the right mix of entertainment, British accents, and gorgeous scenery to have going in the background for complicated knitting projects.) Agatha retires from her successful life in London to a Cotswolds cottage, where she has trouble fitting into the community of locals, especially when her entry in the village quiche competition ends up poisoning the judge. Agatha makes up her mind to solve the murder and clear her name, apparently kicking off an entire second career as an amateur sleuth.
Beauty by Robin McKinley
Robin McKinley has written more than one retelling of Beauty and the Beast, but this is the first one I read, back in the 1980s via Scholastic book order, I believe. (Don’t you wish they had Scholastic book order forms for grown-ups?) Her other Beauty retelling, Rose Daughter, is really lovely, but I DO NOT recommend reading the two books close together — they are so different, it feels like losing the rhythm halfway through the song. (Rose Daughter is technically a better book, but Beauty is the one I like best.)
It had been many years since I last read Beauty, and I was pleased to find that it was as lovely and lyrical as I remembered. Beauty, the youngest and least beautiful of three sisters, is the daughter of a wealthy merchant in some 18th century world — I’m guessing based on the fashion (fancy ballgowns), literature (printed books in large quantities), and methods of conveyance (horses and wagons). When her father loses all his money — and her oldest sister loses her sailor fiancé — in an unfortunate series of shipwrecks, the family leaves the city to live with the second daughter’s fiancé, who is returning home to the country to work as a village blacksmith. The country is mysterious, and their cozy new home abuts a mysterious forest that no one enters. Of course, you know the story: On his way home in a storm, the merchant gets lost in the forest and finds a magical castle, where he’s fed, sheltered, and protected through the night. On his way out of that enchanted place, the merchant stops to pick a rose for Beauty in the garden, and the Beast of the castle shows himself, enraged: The merchant must trade his own life or his daughter’s life for the stolen flower. And so Beauty, who is brave and loyal and also ready for an adventure of her own, goes to live with the Beast in his magic castle, where she slowly falls in love with him, eventually breaking the curse that turned him into a Beast in the first place.
Beauty and the Beast is a problematic story, of course — most of the time, you cannot make a monstrous man turn into a prince with just the power of your love, right? But I love this book anyway. I love how McKinley stays true to the original fairy tale, both in the beats of her story and in its dreamy, otherworldly tone. And I love that all of her characters are likable: Beauty’s older sisters are beautiful, but they are kind and practical, gentle and supportive. (It’s notable that neither of them is interested in marrying a prince — or even an earl!) Her father is a kind, hardworking man who does his best. There are no bad guys in this fairy tale — even the Beast, appearances aside, does not act like a monster (apart from the whole you-must-live-with-me-forever thing, which, okay, is pretty monstrous). Rereading this makes me want to put together a comparative literature class focused solely on Beauty and the Beast.
A Tangled Web by L.M. Montgomery
I almost always reread an L.M. Montgomery book on New Year’s Day. This one is one of my favorites: When Aunt Becky dies, the Dark and Penhallow clans are in a frenzy about who will inherit the Dark jar, and Aunt Becky stokes the fire by telling them that the lucky legacy won’t be announced until a year after her death — which means their behavior during that year might well be the determining factor in who gets the sacred but utterly hideous heirloom. Marriages, quarrels, reunions, breakups, and much drama ensue during that chaotic year, which ends up with everyone right where they should be.
I reread a whole spate of Agatha Christie books because there was a huge Kindle sale on them. I have a soft spot for Agatha Christie books, which are the literary equivalent of potato chips in a good way — I can never read just one.
This is a weird little collection: The mysteries are all riffs on mysteries that appear in other Christie books, but the non-mystery stories are odd and haunting. “The Lonely God,” about two people who fall in love at a museum exhibition, and “While the Light Lasts,” about a woman on her honeymoon who discovers that her killed-in-combat first husband is still alive, are good examples.
Again, nothing really surprising in this collection, but it’s notable as the first appearance of Countess Rossakoff, the over-the-top Russian émigré/criminal who always charms Poirot.
I’d forgotten how little actually happens in this book! It’s a great locked-door mystery: An American gangster is murdered in his locked compartment on a snowbound train, and everyone on board has an alibi. (I really liked the Kenneth Branagh adaptation when I saw it, and I liked it even more after reading this — all those narrow compartment shots really emphasize how confined the space on the train is.)
There is almost no actual mystery here, but the narrator Anne Anne Beddingfeld is delightful. (And is this the first book with Colonel Race? I believe it is.)
This was always one of my favorite Christies, and I think it’s the next adaptation Kenneth Branagh has lined up. (Edited to add: It is! And apparently Gal Gadot is playing Linnet Ridgeway!)
Weirdly, this is the first Agatha Christie I ever read — I think I picked it up in a beach rental on vacation. It doesn’t feature any of the usual Poirot/Marple people (though Colonel Race does make an appearance), but it definitely got me hooked on Poirot. Beautiful Rosemary Barton committed suicide at her birthday dinner, and a year later, her grieving husband dies exactly the same way — which means Rosemary was murdered, and a lot of people had reasons to want the glamorous socialite out of the way.
Another untraditional Christie: A young man finds himself caught up in a weird mystery featuring a murdered John Doe discovered in the house of a blind woman by a secretary who was mysteriously summoned to the scene to make the discovery.
And the Rest Is History by Jodi Taylor
Number nine in the Chronicles of St. Mary’s series, which is about a band of time-traveling, tea-drinking, trouble-making historians. I am so fond of this series, which is the literary equivalent of a binge-worthy television series, and even though this is a pretty dark entry in the series, Taylor leaves the door open for some happy endings in book 10. (PLEASE GIVE US THE HAPPY ENDINGS, ESPECIALLY FOR PETERSON.) If you’re already reading this series, you’ll want to pick this up, and if you aren’t, there is really no way to explain what is happening at this point. It’s all very complicated with multiple timelines.
Deadfall by Stephen Wallenfels
This was an advance reader copy. Twin brothers on the run discover a girl locked in the trunk of a crashed car in the middle of nowhere, which means they’re now also on the run from her kidnapper, who — surprise! — may be someone they already know. I’m sure there’s an audience for this book, but it’s not me: The mystery was too predictable, and chase sequences (of which there are many) were just not exciting.
Revenge of the Translator by Brice Matthieussent, translated by Emma Ramadan
This book, on the other hand, probably isn’t for everyone, but it was definitely, 100-percent for me. It was utterly, completely WEIRD, and I loved it. It is definitely one of those books that you have to just jump into and be willing to go along for the ride — if you pause to try to make too much of sense of what’s happening, you’ll fall right off the roller coaster.
Revenge of the Translator is an American translation of a French novel, which is about a French translation of an American novel — that novel, the one being translated, is about an American translation of a French novel. I’m sure that’s all perfectly clear. The narrator — the book has a narrator — of the book is Trad (from the French word traducteur, which means translator), who increasingly dominates the novel he is translating through its footnotes, eventually even managing the vanish the literal typographical line between the footnotes and the actual text. At first he is the translator; gradually, he is also the editor; he becomes the author; and by the end, he is a character, too. (Again, all of this is perfectly clear, no?) It’s dizzying. And fun. As the narrator toys with the boundaries and the implications of what it means to be a translator, he’s also inviting us to explore the perpetually interesting question of what it means to be an author.
I didn’t love the toxic masculinity, especially when the text becomes a three-way competition (between our translator-narrator, the author, and the author’s American translator) for an objectified female secretary — that pulled me out of what was otherwise a delightfully wild ride, and I don’t see how it contributed to the story except for as a kind of obligatory plot point. I would have loved a shorter version of this that omitted that trope entirely. It is, of course, interesting in light of this that the actual translator of the novel — the person who translated Matthieussent’s French novel into its English version, is a woman.
My Plain Jane by Cynthia Hand, Jodi Meadows, and Brodi Ashton
Reader, this book is BONKERS. And I say that with a heart full of love. As you know, I did not love Jane Steele, despite my best efforts, but I think the sheer silliness of this one is what bumped it in my affections. I do not think this is a better-written book than Jane Steele. (It’s actually sloppy in many places, which with three authors is either inevitable or inexcusable.) I just found myself able to relax and go with this Jane Eyre retelling more than I could with Jane Steele, which made reading it so much more enjoyable.
Here’s the set-up: It’s Jane Eyre, except in this version, Jane sees dead people, including the ghost of her best friend Helen Burns and of recently murdered head of Lowood School Mr. Brocklehurst. She also happens to be at school with a young Charlotte Bronte, who adores Jane but has no idea about her friend’s psychic gifts.
The Society for the Relocation of Wayward Spirits (founded by George III, who also saw dead people, which made people think he was not in his right mind) does discover Jane’s gift, however, and is determined to recruit her. In fact, Society superstar Alexander Blackwood is so eager to recruit Jane that he allows Charlotte and her brother Branwell to tag along with him when he follows her to her new job as a governess at Thornfield Hall, which is one seriously haunted house.
There is no getting around it: This book is silly, and there are plenty of moments where the authors get so caught up in their own silliness that they bog the book down with witty asides and comments. This book also falls into the trap of making the reader much quicker on the draw than the characters, which means we spend a good chunk of the books waiting for Charlotte et al to catch up to us. Also, I can appreciate wanting to poke a little fun at Charlotte Bronte, who did have a tendency to take herself very seriously, but making her character crush on Jane Austen’s Mr. Darcy when Charlotte — frequently — expressed her disdain for Austen’s work seems a little cruel, especially when the rest of the story treats her so affectionately. (Plus Mr. Darcy is not dark and brooding, is he? I would never characterize him that way. Mr. Rochester, of course, is practically the poster child for dark and brooding.) I’m also not sold on the boy craziness of the two female leads, though I appreciate that the text makes the point that getting married was like getting your dream job in 19th century England. Frankly, there are many, many things that I could nitpick — I keep thinking of more as I write this! — but I had such fun reading this book despite them, which I guess is saying something.
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Monday Meditations: Everything Is Too Much
It’s not just okay to let go of being perfect — it’s essential.
“What makes you worthwhile is who you are, not what you do.”
What is it that makes us think we have to do it all?
Motherhood, all by itself, is a full-time job. Keeping a house is a full-time job. Feeding multiple people three-plus meals every single day, 365 days a year, is a full-time job. Homeschooling one child is a full-time job — and homeschooling more than one child? Yeah, it’s a full-time job and a half. Add in all the other parts of your life that require your attention — having a job outside of home, being a partner, being a friend, making time for yourself, showering at least occasionally — and it’s so obvious that “doing it all” is utterly, completely, and absolutely impossible.
That realization should be liberating. The realization that it is physically impossible for us to do it all should free us up to let go of the feeling that we need to do it all. So why doesn’t it? Why, even in the face of this clear, indisputable knowledge of reality, do I feel guilty that I can’t catch up on laundry or that I gave up and ordered a pizza last night because I was in a writing flow and didn’t want to stop? Why do I feel guilty when I give time to work AND guilty when I give time to my family AND crazy-out-of-control-ridiculously-guilty when I give time to myself?
I don’t know. But I do know that I am fighting an uphill battle learning to accept that I cannot do it all, and I need to stop trying to do it all. What, after all, is the problem with last-minute laundry? I do love those beautiful magazine spreads of perfectly folded socks, but in reality, we just need socks to wear when we need them, and pulling them out of the dryer is just as effective for that as a beautiful, rainbow-arranged sock drawer. It’s okay to just get it done. And it’s okay NOT to do it. It’s okay to order pizza, or pay for grocery delivery, or let someone else take care of cleaning the hall bathroom. It’s okay to not get to something one day, even that something is your 11-year-old’s science lab or your winter issue table of contents. It’s okay because you can’t do it all — you have to pick and choose, and you have to live in your choice. Why waste energy and guilt when you are doing something important? Being fully present in one important thing at a time is better than being scattered across an endless to-do list, never taking the time to be in the moment. My goal for 2019 is to let go of multitasking and to take each day moment-by-moment as it comes.
Food for Thought
What am I doing that isn’t important to me in my everyday life? How can I let go of some of the responsibility for that?
How can I make my expectations for myself more reasonable?
What can I be proud of in my everyday life today? How can I celebrate that today?
The Power of Thinking Aloud
Want to raise critical thinkers? Showing them — out loud — how you think critically is a good place to start.
Want to raise critical thinkers? Showing them — out loud — how you think critically is a good place to start.
When our children are small, we parents guide their language development by explicitly demonstrating how language works. To get our kids using language, we make exaggerated shapes with our mouths, point to pictures to make vocabulary connections when we read aloud, and quiz toddlers over animal onomatopoeia.
When kids get older, though, sometimes that tendency toward showing children how things work can evaporate, especially when it comes to more advanced language skills.
As children get older, language arts instruction tends to shift more and more toward a model of asking the child to do work and then telling the child what he or she did incorrectly after the work is finished. Kids are assigned pages of reading and comprehension worksheets or they’re given a writing assignment that will be critiqued by a more skilled writer after the writing is finished.
Instead of only interfering in the end product, though, wouldn’t it make more sense for that more skilled writer or more skilled reader, in this case a homeschool parent, to share his or her expertise during the learning process when the potential for knowledge building is at its greatest?
“Talking to our kids about how we comprehend will yield better results than a whole pile of comprehension worksheets. ”
Readalouds are an ideal time to model the thinking skills that you want your children to achieve. When a character innocently coughs, don’t keep what you know from your experience with reading Victorian novels to yourself. Tell your kids that a cough almost always foreshadows a character’s illness and often a character’s death. When a character dons a coat or an umbrella, talk to your kids about what you can infer about the setting from that little nugget of information. When you reach the end of a chapter, practice making predictions about what’s to come. When a sentence is confusing and you feel lost, demonstrate backing up and reading it slowly and deliberately until it does make sense. Talking to our kids about how we comprehend will yield better results than a whole pile of comprehension worksheets.
When it comes to writing, don’t check out after you’ve handed down an assignment. Work alongside your child to model exactly what you’re thinking as you brainstorm about a topic, organize your thoughts, and construct a thesis statement. You don’t necessarily need to complete the entire assignment yourself, but talking your child through the speed bumps that are slowing him or her down is far more effective than passing down a judgement after the work has already been done.
Much like we teach our children habits of brushing their teeth, making their beds, or clearing their places at the table, it’s up to us to teach our children the habits of good readers and writers, and there’s no better way to do that than by graciously sharing our thoughts when we read and write.
Monday Meditations: What Brings You Joy?
What brings you homeschool joy?
“We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives… not looking for flaws, but for potential.”
The New Year’s resolution is a time-honored tradition, but it’s not always the best way to look at our homeschool lives. The idea of a resolution is to find something you can change, something you can improve, something you can make better or smarter or more efficient. And sure, those are things worth thinking about — but sometimes it just makes more sense to think about what’s working well and look for ways to get more of that in your everyday routine.
What brings you homeschooling joy? I know I’m always saying this, but one of the best pieces of homeschool advice I got when we started homeschooling a decade ago was to keep a joy journal, to write down three great things about every homeschool day. I’ve ended every day that way since my now-junior was in 2nd grade by writing three good things in my homeschool joy journal. (I’m on my third Moleskine now.) There have been lovely days where choosing just three things has been hard, when I write pages. And there have been challenging days where I had to stretch my idea of “good things” to come up with three things to write about. Flipping back through the pages, I see what’s made magic in our homeschool over the years: reading together, my willingness to wait instead of pushing, letting projects and subjects sprawl outside my planned boundaries.
And when it comes time to start a new year — a fresh slate — I know where to start. Not with new structures and routines and curricula but with more of what we already love. Instead of resolving to do something new or focusing on what’s not so great, I can build my goals around joy — and reap the benefits of that happiness all year long.
Food for thought
What brings you joy in your homeschool?
How do you make time to appreciate the good parts of your everyday homeschool life?
How could you include more of what makes you happy in your homeschool life this year?
Amy’s Library Chicken :: 11.27.19
Intergalactic music competitions, royal biographies, and more in this week’s Library Chicken.
I know I’m late with my update, but somebody has to make the pie! (Please help me convince Suzanne to do a special Library Chicken update focusing on Jane Austen fan fiction because she has been reading some TRULY TERRIBLE stuff, and she is the funniest when she is complaining about terrible stuff.)
Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente
So earlier this fall, I told Suzanne that I needed to read something that would just make me happy, and she suggested this space saga. NEVER DOUBT SUZANNE. This zany, Douglas Adams-ish (and I don’t throw that around lightly) story centers around an intergalactic version of American Idol, in which planets compete not for record deals but for the right for their species to be considered sentient by the rest of the universe. All newly space-faring species must compete to prove their sentience — and if they come in last, their whole species will be wiped right out of existence. Now that Earth is in the space game, and the future of humanity is in the hands of aging 70s rocker Decibel Jones. It sounds wacky and all over the place because it is wacky and all over the place — but in a way that made me really happy. I am not going to claim this is the greatest book I’ve ever read, but it was absolutely the book I needed. THANK YOU, SUZANNE. (I loved the cat!)
(+1)
Victoria the Queen: An Intimate Biography by Julia Baird
I know I have mentioned my love of Sunfire’s YA historical romances before, and I feel that this biography of Queen Victoria is a worthy successor — okay, there are fewer detailed dress descriptions and no romantic tug-of-war (Albert is the clear choice), but Baird’s book definitely focuses on the personalities and stories that make history so interesting. Happily, Baird also manages to elucidate the major events of the Victorian age so that you feel totally virtuous while reading this very entertaining tome.
(+1)
The Light Years by Elizabeth Jane Howard
This first book in the Cazalet Chronicles follows the titular family through 1937: the Duchy and the Brig have brought their sprawling, very British family together for the summer holidays: Handsome, philandering Edward and his uber competent wife Villy; Hugh, who is still recovering from his experiences in World War I, and his pregnant wife Sybil; artist Rupert and his young, beautiful second wife Zoe; and sister Rachel, who has never married, all converge for one of the last happy summers before the war. You know I love big, sprawling British families who are polite and plucky, and the Cazalets deliver big time. I would jump right into the second in the series, but I want these to last, so I’m reading The Light Years again. (I am solidly in favor of the back-to-back read.)
(+0, read it on my Kindle)
Love à la Mode by Stephanie Kate Strohm
I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this frothy little book — I passed it right on to my teenager, who loves cooking shows and Paris boarding schools as much as I do. Henry and Rosie have both won spots a competitive cooking school in Paris, and they can’t wait to hone their cooking skills under the tutelage of a famous celebrity chef. There’s a little too much artificial stuff getting in the way of their romance in an attempt to keep the will-they-or-won’t-they going (why do YA books do this?), but it’s a sweet story with lots of descriptions of eating and cooking, so it’s on my nice list.
(+0, advance copy)
The Camelot Code, Book #1 The Once and Future Geek by Mari Mancusi
A computer game pulls Sophie and her best friend Stu back to the time of King Arthur — while King Arthur ends up the cool kid in Sophie’s high school in this middle grades fantasy. While Arthur’s working on scoring the winning touchdown, Sophie and Stu are trying to get history back on track with a little help from Merlin: pulling the sword out of the stone, winning the jousting competition, and preparing for the war that will make King Arthur a hero. This is a fun, upbeat take on the King Arthur story, though there are places where the writing and plotting feel a little forced.
(+0, advance copy)
Charlie and Frog by Karen Kane
All Charlie wants is to have his parents spend time with him instead of dumping him at his grandparents’ house. All Frog (Francine on her birth certificate) wants is to be a detective. Together, they’ll team up to solve a mystery signed to Charlie by a stranger on his first day in town. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book that treated deafness so deftly — Frog happens to be deaf, and her parents run a school for the deaf, and sign language figures into the mystery, but none of these things feels forced at all. Charlie and Frog’s friendship develops naturally over the course of the story — sometimes they click like best friends, and sometimes they annoy each other — and the droll humor reminded me a little bit of David Walliams and Roald Dahl. For a middle grades novel that’s half mystery, half comedy, this little gem really delivers.
(+0, advance copy)
This Week: +2
Running Score: +8
(We’re Amazon affiliates, so if you purchase something through an Amazon link, we may receive a small percentage of the sale. Obviously this doesn’t influence what we recommend, and we link to places other than Amazon.)
Amy’s Library Chicken :: 10.24.18
Middle grades screwball comedy, YA Victorian steampunk mysteries, and a little historical fiction were highlights of this week’s reading list.
I’m happy to report that this week’s readerly efforts have paid off in some books I can actually recommend enthusiastically! And Suzanne assures me that if I read Space Opera, everything will be better, so that’s at the top of my list for next week.
The Clockwork Scarab by Colleen Gleason
This was on super-sale for the Kindle this week, and I couldn’t resist rereading it to see if it was as fun as I remembered. Happily, it is — Irene Adler (remember her?) recruits Sherlock Holmes’ niece Mina and Bram Stoker’s little sister Evaline to solve a mystery involving missing society girls, a mysterious Egyptian cult, and an unexpected time traveler. Miss Holmes and Miss Stoker don’t immediately hit it off — Mina is as logical and inflexible as her famous uncle, and Evaline is a pretty, popular young lady (who also happens to be a vampire slayer) — and their gradual grudging respect for each other is well-earned over the course of the book. In their steampunk alternate London (where electricity has been officially banned), the city is both familiar and strange, full of both Victorian conventions about what proper young ladies should and shouldn’t do and new fangled clockwork gadgets and steam guns.
What I loved about this series — aside from all the wink-wink Victorian references, of which I can never get enough — is that Mina and Evaline are such different kinds of feminist heroines, and they tackle the challenges they run into in totally different ways. I also appreciate that their differences mean they don’t instantly become best friends forever. Mina and Evaline really have to work to trust each other, and that reluctance really rings true in a wold where they are so rarely allowed to let their talents shine. They’re not used to being trusted, so learning how to trust someone else — and be trusted by them — is a new thing.
(+0, read it on my Kindle)
The Lost Book of the Grail by Charlie Lovett
I am going to stop reading books that people tell me are “just like Possession” because 1.) they never actually are anything like Possession and 2.) usually I’m so annoyed that they aren’t anything like Possession that I can’t appreciate them on their own merits.
I bet you can guess that I did not love this book. It’s true that it sounds up my alley: Arthur Prescott is a professor of literature at the University of Barchester, but the only thing he really likes is sitting alone at his desk in Barchester Cathedral Library reading old books about the Grail, which he’s been obsessed with since he was a kid. Enter plucky, beautiful (the book makes sure you know she’s beautiful — also kind! funny! smart!) American Bethany, who has come to digitize the library’s collection of medieval manuscripts. It turns out Bethany is obsessed with Grail, too, and together, the two of them discover a clue that may actually lead them to the secret of the Grail’s connection with Barchester.
The books flashes around in time, illuminating little pieces of the history of the Grail and a missing manuscript from the library. I love old manuscripts and literary mysteries as much as the next person — honestly, probably more than the next person! — but this was pretty much a complete miss for me. Part of it is that people talked a lot about manuscripts, but because it’s mostly talking, there’s not really an opportunity for the reader to look for clues of her own, which is part of the fun of this kind of literary mystery. Then there’s the fact that Arthur is just terrible — he’s utterly self-centered, rude to his students and everyone else, uninterested in anything beyond his narrow focus, and oh my gosh, he is the worst professor ever. And Bethany, who falls in love with him, rarely feels like more than Archivist Barbie — she’s a catalogue of attractive qualities that never add up to a real person.
The solution to the mystery is fine, but there’s a big twist to Arthur’s character that we’re supposed to believe without any evidence at all that anything about him has changed to make him such a completely different person.
Honestly, I’m still mad at this book, so I should just stop now.
(+1, thank goodness because I would be so angry if I read this and didn’t get a point for it)
#MurderTrending by Gretchen McNeil
I don’t even know where to start with this. In a not-too-distant future, convicted criminals who have received the death penalty get shipped to a Survivor-style town, where they work minimum-wage jobs, hang out with their fellow criminals, and get hunted down on live television by celebrity assassins. Dee didn’t murder her stepsister, but she was convicted anyway, and pretty teenagers are always popular additions to the cast of Alcatraz 2.0.
There’s no real character development in Dee or her friends in the Death Row Breakfast Club (I’m not making that up), and while the serial killers’ murderous methods are described in gory, painstaking detail, there’s no real character development on that end either. I wouldn’t mind that so much if the plot held together, but it’s such a crazy mess: Wait, this whole thing has always been about Dee and getting Dee specifically to Alcatraz 2.0? Doesn’t that seem a little — complicated? — for a revenge scenario? I mean, there are actual laws that had to get through Congress to make this happen, which seems like a lot of work to get revenge on one teenage girl. How many years would that take? Did this whole plan start when Dee was in kindergarten?
I’m on board for a good accused-criminal-proving-her-innocence arc, and I’ll happily ruminate on the evils of reality of television, but this book was a mess. Which maybe would have still been okay if it had been an entertaining mess. Alas, it was not.
(+0, advance copy)
My Name Is Victoria by Lucy Worsley
I am currently watching Victoria, so I was definitely ready to hate on Sir John Conroy for a while. He is definitely the villain of the piece from the moment he makes his daughter (named Victoria) give her beloved puppy as a gift to the future Queen Victoria. Not long after, he drags his daughter — who must now be called Miss V. so no one confuses her with the princess —to be Victoria’s companion. Sir John wants Miss V. to report back on Victoria’s emotional state, but Miss V. finds herself growing fond of the princess, who is really just a lonely girl kept in isolation by the people who want to control her. Miss V. and Victoria are both stuck in situations created by their controlling guardians, but they forge a cautious friendship — after all, they could always be spying on each other — that blooms into a lovely, supportive relationship.
I loved the historical details, and it wasn’t at all surprising to discover that the author is a curator at Kensington Palace, which is where Victoria grew up — this reads like a book written by someone immersed in Victoria’s early life. And while the twist ending may be a little surprising, it’s also kind of delightful to be thrown by something unexpected in a world that we think we know so well.
If you’re in the mood for a historical YA, you could do much worse.
(+0, advance copy)
The Mortification of Fovea Munson by Mary Winn Heider
This is a weird little book, but that’s not a bad thing. Seventh-grader Fovea works part-time in her parents’ cadaver lab, which is weird. Her parents tell a lot of random body parts jokes, which is weird. And three defrosting disembodied heads have started talking to Fovea, which is very weird.
Just go with it: The wacky premise is the price of admission for a screwball comedy that’s worth reading. Those heads need Fovea’s help — and, as it turns out, she needs their help, too — kicking off a series of hijinks that will have you laughing out loud. This was a surprisingly light, fun readaloud.
(+0, advance copy)
A Circle of Quiet by Madeleine L’Engle
Every few years, I reread this book, which is basically a memoir L’Engle published in 1971. I always seem to find something that I need in it; this time, I started crying when I read: “We can surely no longer pretend that our children are growing up into a peaceful, secure, and civilized world. We’ve come to the point where it’s irresponsible to try to protect them from the irrational world they will have to live in when they grow up. The children themselves haven’t yet isolated themselves by selfishness and indifference; they do not fall easily into the error of despair; they are considerably braver than most grownups. Our responsibility to them is not to pretend that if we don’t look, evil will go away, but to give them weapons against it.”
(+0, from my shelves)
This Week: +1
Running Score: +6
(We’re Amazon affiliates, so if you purchase something through an Amazon link, we may receive a small percentage of the sale. Obviously this doesn’t influence what we recommend, and we link to places other than Amazon.)
Amy’s Library Chicken :: 10.15.18
Vampire bonding stories, middle grades mysteries, U.S. history, and more in this week’s Library Chicken roundup, brought to you by Amy.
Filling in for Suzanne is no easy task! I have to admit, I’ve read a few extra books this week just so I don’t have to be embarrassed not to keep up with the Book Nerd.
These Truths by Jill Lepore
Next year I’m teaching U.S. history and literature and I usually enjoy Jill Lepore, so I was thrilled to pick this up. Reading it was harder than I expected because Lepore’s central question — Has this country lived up to the Truths (political equality, natural rights, sovereignty of the people) on which it was founded? — feels particularly salient in today’s political climate, and Lepore brings us right up to the present day (the last chapter is called America, Disrupted). I always love Lepore’s ability to humanize history through the stories of individual people, and this book is full of people like Margaret Chase Smith and Mary Lease who are left out of other history books. No one volume book of U.S. history is going to feel totally comprehensive, but this one’s a good start. I liked it.
(LC score: +1)
American Indians in U.S. History by Roger L. Nichols
I picked this up for my U.S. history research, too, and I can recommend it if you’re looking for a Native American history textbook to add to your U.S. history studies. Nichols starts in pre-colonial America and traces Native American history through the creation and dominance of the United States and all the way into the 21st century. It’s a clear, chronological account of Native American history in the United States, and I really appreciate that Nichols tried to balance European and U.S history sources with tribal accounts.
(LC score: +1)
The Bookshop Girl by Sylvia Bishop
The problem with this book is that I kept expecting it to be more than a light, pleasant story, and it’s not. If you’re not waiting for the deeper impact, I think this is a charming little middle grades book: Property Jones (so-named because she was abandoned in the Lost Property box at a bookstore) has found a happy home with the family who own that ragtag little bookshop. When they win the Montgomery Book Emporium — the world’s greatest bookstore — the whole family is thrilled. But the bookstore turns out to be more like a curse than a gift, and Property must save the day. That’s pretty much the whole story, but it’s a pretty charming story if you know that’s what you’re getting going in.
(LC score: +0, advance copy)
The Guggenheim Mystery by Robin Stevens
Robin Stevens wrote this as the sequel to Siobhan Dowd’s lovely The London Eye Mystery, and her after-note about Dowd (who died in 2007) is a tear-jerker. I love Stevens (her Murder Most Unladylike series is a family favorite here), but she’s really channeling Dowd in this book, telling this story, just as the London Eye mystery is told, through the eyes of a 12-year-old boy with Asperger’s. This time, Ted and Kat travel to New York, where their cousin Salim has moved so his mom can work at the Guggenheim Museum there. When a smoke bomb goes off and a Kandinsky painting is stolen in the confusion, Salim’s mom is the chief suspect — and Ted teams up with Salim and Kat to clear her name. I really loved this — it’s maybe a little less suspenseful than The London Eye Mystery, but it’s a well-paced, interesting mystery that turns on Ted’s unique understanding of the world.
(LC: +0, advance copy)
Wicked Nix by Lena Coakley
I am always sold on the idea of Lena Coakley’s books, but they never seem to come together in a way that works for me. Mischievous fairy Nix is determined to do his fairy queen proud by keeping humans out of the forest, and he’s very good at playing tricks. But there’s more than just Nix’s mischief at play, and someone may be playing a much darker trick. So many people loved this book, so I must be missing something, but it just felt unsatisfying to me. The big twist was obvious early on, so I wanted something more to come from it, but it never did. The illustrations were gorgeous, though.
(LC: +0, advance copy)
Sunshine by Robin McKinley
I’m reading this with my daughter as part of our vampires and feminism literature seminar — I read it some years ago, maybe even when she was still a baby, but I didn’t remember much about it. I’m glad we read it together. Rae’s world is full of Others — demons, weres, and monsters — but the vampires are the most dangerous. When she’s captured by a band of vampires, she thinks her ordinary days of baking at her stepdad’s coffee shop are over forever — and they are, but not the way she expected. Instead of making her dinner, the vampires turn her over to a vampire who is also their prisoner, and Rae and her fellow prisoner form an unexpected alliance that just may have the power to change the world. There’s tons of stuff going on in this YA novel — and while, yes, OK, it is a little Buffy-ish in all the right ways, it’s worth reading on its own merits. Our seminar is off to a great start!
(LC: +0, from my shelves)
This Week: +2
Running Score: +5
(We’re Amazon affiliates, so if you purchase something through an Amazon link, we may receive a small percentage of the sale. Obviously this doesn’t influence what we recommend, and we link to places other than Amazon.)
Don’t Be Hard On Yourself, Homeschool Parents
Homeschooling isn’t always easy, but you’re probably doing a better job than you give yourself credit for.
Homeschooling has its challenges no matter what. Even if your kids are healthy, non-special needs, and you have money, there will be difficult moments. Throw in anything else, and homeschooling can be extra tough. Every homeschooling parent will have days when they’re wondering if it’s the right decision.
I don’t have any remedy for the difficult parts. All kids are different, and all families are different. We all have our strengths and weaknesses and our own capacities for dealing with certain stuff. While some parents handle stress well, others might feel it’s not working.
Either way, it’s okay. None of it means we’re better or worse than anybody else. It just means our situations are different.
My husband reminded me about something that made me feel so much better that I thought I’d pass it on in case it helped anyone else. He reminded me that the public school down the street didn’t have one teacher. It has a huge staff, and every person working there supports each other. There are the teachers, but there’s also the principal, assistant principal, librarian, IEP specialists, nurse, cafeteria workers, and the janitor. There are people who order the books, pick out the curriculums, and there are people who continue to teach the teachers how to teach. Not to mention volunteers or tutors that come to help.
Granted, many homeschoolers don’t like how public school works for their children, and that’s why we’re not sending our kids there. But regardless of how you feel about them, you have to admit that there are a lot of people (usually good people!) working hard to try to teach and help the students.
And at home, there’s just me. There’s also my husband when he can help (and I’m lucky I have a husband that helps!), but I’m the main teacher, librarian, curriculum chooser, lesson planner, cafeteria worker, janitor, and occasionally nurse. And not to mention, I must also be a motivator, disciplinarian, appointment maker, calendar-keeper, chauffeur, and don’t forget Mom.
I also have to teach myself how to teach. I have to figure out why something isn’t working and find something that does work. I rarely have the opportunity to speak to an expert. (And I’ve had experiences where the “experts” I did speak to were not helpful for my particular situation.)
Fortunately, I only have two students, but they are in different grades, and they have different learning styles. I still have to go through all the steps with each of them. I don’t get the advantage of teaching the same material year after year until I know it like the back of my hand. I always have to teach something new, and I always wonder if there’s a better resource or way to teach it. And since it’s impossible to teach everything, I have to decide what to teach and what not to teach. (That’s what worries me the most – the things I’m not teaching. Am I failing them?)
I’m not complaining. I actually love being a homeschool mom. I love planning lessons, shopping for materials, and I love learning with my kids. I feel like I’m finally getting a good education for myself! But I’m not saying everything is perfect or easy.
It’s hard for one or two parents to take on the role of what in our current society is usually left to an entire institution with a full staff and trained teachers. There was a time in history when all kids learned at home or on the farm, but today we have many more expectations for our children. They will become adults in a much different world, and they will need to find careers that will support them in a very competitive job market.
So if you’re feeling a lot of pressure as a homeschool parent, I think that’s normal, and if you’re having a hard day and wondering whether you’re doing it right, I’m here to tell you that you can give yourself a break. You’re taking on a lot. And you’re probably doing a much better job than you think you are.
A Day in the Life: Flashback to Amy's 4th Grade and Preschool
Here’s what a typical day looked like in our homeschool when the kids were in 4th grade and preschool.
As we round the corner into my daughter's junior year of high school, I've been feeling very nostalgic about our homeschool life. I found this old post chronicling a day in the life of our early homeschool—when my daughter was in 4th grade and her brother was a tag-along preschooler—for the summer issue.
We didn’t set out planning to homeschool, but traditional school stopped working for us by the time our daughter was in second grade. So we pulled her out and dove into homeschooling with no idea what we were doing. We’re still figuring things out, and our typical homeschool day definitely reflects that work-in-progress feeling. Still, if we’re going to stalk other people’s homeschool days, it seems only fair to share our own.
8:45 A.M.
I’m scouring my favorite websites for a good story to post on the Atlanta Homeschool Facebook page before the day starts in earnest. I’ve been up for a while, responding to email, updating the calendar on the website, and trying to find a photo for a story in our winter issue, but finding a good morning post is proving elusive.
The kids are still asleep. When we first started homeschooling, I worried about them getting up at a regular time, but their natural rhythm seems to be waking up later and staying up later, and since there’s no real reason to push them in another direction, I’ve tried to just go with that. Honestly, I enjoy having the morning to myself.
9:15 A.M.
Jason and I are having coffee on the couch and trying to make sense of his schedule for the day when T comes running downstairs. He stops off in the schoolroom first and then races the rest of the way downstairs.
“We do have Hogwarts letters!” he says.
This year, we’re doing a Hogwarts correspondence program (I spent way too much time planning this around their favorite readaloud series!), so most of the kids’ assignments get delivered (by owl post, of course) to their designated Hogwarts mailboxes while they are sleeping. There is a lot of prep work involved in this, but the kids love it.
T wants cereal and milk for his first breakfast (the kid eats like a hobbit), so I pour his Cheerios while Jason gets ready to teach his math lab at a nearby group that offers homeschool classes.
9:45 A.M.
O’s still sleeping, but T can’t wait any longer to open his Hogwarts mail, so I tell him he can wake her up. I gulp the end of my coffee and run to check my email one last time before school starts.
10 A.M.
We always start the day with a readaloud, so T and I snuggle up on the couch while O grabs a strawberry smoothie from the fridge. (She won’t eat breakfast these days, but she loves fruit smoothies.) We’re reading Dealing with Dragons as part of our Care of Magical Creatures class for Hogwarts and comparing literary depictions of dragons.
Sometimes T kind of drifts off and colors or builds with his math manipulatives while I read, but today he’s very interested in how the princess in the story is going to do a spell to make herself fireproof. O reminds him of the time we had a Girl Scout science class here, and the instructor taught us how to soak a dollar bill in alcohol and set it on fire. (The bill stays intact and unharmed, which made a big impression.) I jump in, too, and it takes us a while to get back to the story.
10:45 A.M.
The kids tear into their Hogwarts mail, which turns out to be a letter from Professor Sprout telling them that it’s time to learn about chamomile, an herb that has the power to calm people down. O starts to make a page for it in her Herbology notebook, then flips open the Rodale Illustrated Encyclopedia of Herbs to find a picture to copy. The picture in the book isn’t very good, so I grab the laptop and google “chamomile.” O finds a picture she likes, and we print out a copy for her so she can use it while she’s working. While she carefully draws and labels her chamomile, T is drawing dragons in his notebook. He wants me to write down their names and a story about them, so I do. I suggest that he could use his alphabet stamps to write the dragons’ names, and he says okay — but he’s actually more interested in just randomly stamping letters, which is fine with me. For now, anyway.
11:30 A.M.
O tells me all about chamomile, and we decide to have chamomile tea with lunch. She asks if we can grow our own chamomile, and I suggest she see how she likes the tea before we start growing anything. (I’ve learned that automatically agreeing to every project means we start a lot of things that we don’t follow through on — which is okay sometimes, but I want to also introduce the idea that we can be thoughtful about what we choose to do.)
12:20 P.M.
Jason isn’t home for lunch, so I make grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup for lunch. We eat at the table — O is reading her American Girl magazine, and I’m flipping through an old issue of Smithsonian.
The chamomile tea isn’t a big hit, so we pour it out and have orange juice instead.
1 P.M.
O and T remind me that I promised I would watch an episode of Beakman’s World with them after lunch, so I remind O that she still has some Latin from her Monday Hogwarts Ancient Runes assignment hanging around to finish. Does she want to finish that before we watch Beakman?
“Maybe not all of it,” she says, but she sits down and works on her translation. (We use Ecce Romani for Latin, so each chapter has a short story to translate.)
1:35 P.M.
We watch an episode of Beakman’s World, a show about a wacky scientist and his curious sidekicks that my daughter loves. We’re doing Herbology, of course, and a little chemistry in our Potions classes, but I feel like we’re a little light on general science this year, so I am happy to let the kids squeeze in a little Beakman science.
After the show, O decides she wants to work on her Littlest Pet Shop village, a project she started a week or so ago with her friends J and C, so she heads up to her room. At first T goes with her, but he comes back down to me complaining that O is too boring, so I offer to paint with him. I tell him to put on an old T-shirt while I check my email. (I check my email a lot.) While I’m at the computer, I see a tweet about a homeschooling article that looks interesting, so I post it on the Atlanta Homeschool page. I’m also thrilled to see that an expert I’ve been waiting to hear from about a story has gotten back to me with a great answer, so I send off a quick “Thanks.”
3:00 P.M.
T and I are painting peg people at the school room table when Jason gets home from class with a few bags of groceries. I take advantage of the fact that he’s home for a few hours and wrap up our painting project so I can work on a few articles. O asks if she and T can play Fossil Fighters for a little while, and I give them the go-ahead while I’m cleaning up the paint and wiping down the tables. I realize that I meant to work on the letter of the week (It’s H) with T and didn’t get around to it, but I figure I can let it go for today.
5:00 P.M.
I’ve put in a couple of hours of work. The kids have been in and out of the house a few times, but now they’re back inside since it’s O’s night to cook dinner, and we have to serve it before Jason heads out for his evening tutoring classes. (He’ll leave around 6 p.m. and be back home a little after 9 p.m., which makes today a fairly light day for him.) O makes scrambled eggs with cheese and broccoli, and I help her out by making toast and keeping it warm in the oven while she’s cooking. Most days of the week, we manage to squeeze in a family dinner, though there are days — like Thursdays, when Jason’s only home between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. — when we eat at weird times and end up having a dinner-snack later in the evening. When I finish the article I’m writing, I’ll knit on the couch while the kids watch a movie.
This article was in the summer 2018 issue of HSL. (We’re Amazon affiliates, so if you purchase something through an Amazon link, we may receive a small percentage of the sale. Obviously this doesn’t influence what we recommend, and we link to places other than Amazon.)
The Bigger Picture of Multiple Intelligences
Thinking beyond a single learning style can open up the possibilities in your homeschool. Maggie explains how it works for her.
Thinking beyond a single learning style can open up the possibilities in your homeschool. Maggie explains how it works for her.
“Find out your child’s learning style.” It’s advice that’s frequently given to new homeschool parents, and it’s not bad advice. Certainly, the more we can know about our children as learners, the more effectively we’ll be able to tailor our efforts to their needs.
Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences proposed that there are eight different types of human intelligence (musical, visual, verbal, logical, kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalistic), and he later added existential and moral to his list of intelligence modalities. There are plenty of resources out there for determining your children’s learning style. You might simply read a description of each modality and realize that it fits your child’s aptitude to a tee, or you might decide to take a quiz to narrow down your child’s top intelligence modalities. Either way, it’s a handy little nugget of knowledge to have about your child.
When you hit a proverbial educational wall with your child, it can be valuable to consider your child’s strongest modalities. A child who is struggling with division and has strong kinesthetic intelligence might finally “get it” by walking along a number line and placing a marker to divide the number line into equal parts. A musically-inclined child who struggles to memorize the parts of speech might finally be able to recall the definition of an adverb by singing School House Rock’s “Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, Get Your Adverbs Here.”
At the same time, I think that sometimes multiple intelligences are misunderstood. Sometimes people think that when they discover their child is strongest in one area, it’s best to focus only on learning via that method. The thing is that all people are capable of learning using all of the intelligence modalities. In fact, it’s best if we can teach using as many of those modalities as possible. When we’re using methods that appeal to many of Gardner’s intelligences, we’re taking a multi-sensory approach.
Why is it important to use a multi-sensory approach? In a homeschool setting, there are two major advantages:
Appealing to more than one sense (or type of intelligence) means more pathways to learning. If you’ve had the privilege of sitting in on a good lecture, you know that you can learn a lot just from listening to a dynamic, knowledgeable speaker. If that speaker either draws or uses a slide of a visual organizer that illustrates his or her talking points, that learning becomes even more clear for you. Then, if you record the speaker’s words and visual organizers by hand onto your own paper, your knowledge of the lecture content is yet further enhanced.
When students make more connections in the brain by using multiple senses, long-term learning is more likely to happen. A young child might see the letter s on a paper and then recall the “sssss” sound she made while she carved the letter shape into a pan of shaving cream, which reminds her of the “s” puzzle piece she manipulated in her hand, which reminds her of when it was her turn to say “s” when she and her mother took turns singing the letters in the alphabet song.
Research shows that knowledge occurs in webs, or, in other words, that we build knowledge by attaching it to other knowledge. Let’s help our kids build really great webs with plenty of diverse strands that attach in many ways.
Book Nerd: The Brave New World of Science Fiction
The science-fiction/fantasy genre has never been more exciting — or more inclusive. Suzanne examines the new directions of an old favorite and highlights the genre’s new must-reads.
I’ve loved science fiction ever since junior high, when I found my dad’s copies of Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot and Robert Heinlein’s Citizen of the Galaxy in our home library. Fantasy, via C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, wasn’t far behind. I read everything I could in the genre, clearing out the sf/fantasy shelf at the library and saving up my allowance for trips to Waldenbooks. In those bad old pre-Internet days I did as much as I could to research the genre classics and Grand Old Masters, keeping a list of books to look for at the local used book store. Soon I discovered fandom, and by high school I was going to every sf/fantasy convention around (or at least the ones I could convince my mom to drive me to). The sf/fantasy genre at that time was exciting, smart, perspective-shifting, often funny, occasionally mind-blowing — but one thing it wasn’t was diverse.
Primarily, sf/fantasy was written by white men, with white male protagonists, for (judging by con attendance) a white male audience. Often, even the aliens or far-flung galactic empires behaved in a suspiciously European manner, retelling stories of the Roman empire (or other major events from the history of Western Civilization). Fantasy epics drew on familiar European myths and legends, giving us dragons, elves, unicorns, and princesses that all behaved in predictable ways. Perhaps that’s why I got out of the habit of reading the genre in my 20s and 30s — whether it was military sf, a fantasy adventure, or yet another vampire story (seriously, what’s with all the vampires?!?), it all started to feel a bit samey-samey.
Things have changed, though, and I’m excited. A lot of people who weren’t necessarily white and/or male grew up, like I did, loving the genre and seeing themselves spell-casting or traveling to the stars. And now they’re writing about it for all of us. There are so many great authors publishing right now — N.K. Jemisin, V.E. Schwab, Yoon Ha Lee, Nisi Shawl — that I can’t even keep up. Even better, those stories — with diverse characters, diverse content, and diverse settings — are being embraced by authors writing for children and young adults. I still think you can’t go wrong with Asimov and Tolkien, but if you want to take advantage of what’s out there now and start your budding sf/fantasy fans off the right way, I’ve got a few suggestions.
In The Jumbies, author Tracey Baptiste draws on Caribbean folktales to tell the story of Corinne, a young girl who must save her island village and her family from the monsters in the woods and an evil witch. This is a fun and just-the-right-amount-of-scary story for middle grade readers, and Corinne is a fierce and resourceful heroine. We meet another heroine in Nnedi Okorafor’s Akata Witch: 12-year-old American-born Nigerian Sunny. Sunny is an albino, and between that and her American accent, she finds it hard to fit in with her classmates — which becomes less of an issue once she discovers that she is heir to magical powers and (like Harry Potter but in an entirely different context) begins to explore the hidden magical world that exists within and beside her own. Like Corinne, Sunny must channel her own strength and bravery to save her world and her friends from a supernatural challenge. Fortunately for readers, we have more adventures to look forward to with Corinne and Sunny: Baptiste’s Rise of the Jumbies and Okorafor’s Akata Warrior both come out in fall 2017.
Daniel Jose Older takes us to a diverse Puerto Rican neighborhood in Brooklyn with his acclaimed YA novel Shadowshaper. Teenage Sierra plans to enjoy her summer hanging out with friends and painting wall murals, but when one of the murals begins to weep real tears, she realizes that there’s something strange going on. She learns that she’s inherited the ability to shadow shape — to do magic by infusing art with ancestral spirits — and she needs to get good at it in a hurry if she’s going to defend herself and her community. (The sequel, Shadowhouse Fall, is also due out in fall 2017 — clearly we need to clear our calendars for all the great reading coming up.) Alaya Dawn Johnson’s The Summer Prince takes us out of the world of magic to the far future, on a high-tech Brazilian island called Palmares Tres. Palmares Tres is ruled by a matriarchy (set up after men almost destroyed the world in a nuclear holocaust) and guerilla artist June finds herself unexpectedly in rebellion against the powers that be when she becomes friends with the teenage Summer King. Immediately after finishing this book, I bought a copy for home and showed up at 16-year-old daughter’s bedroom door insisting, “YOU MUST READ THIS NOW, and please pass it on to your sister when you’re done.”
And I can’t leave without mentioning three of my new favorite sf/fantasy novels, beginning with Zen Cho’s Sorcerer to the Crown. I’m a sucker for historical-Britain-plus-magic stories (see Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke, also Sorcery and Cecelia, or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot by Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermer), but Cho’s story of Regency England plus wizards is a version I’ve never read before. As the new Sorcerer Royal (and the first one ever of African descent), Zacharias Wythe has enough problems, but he’s really in for it when he has to deal with a woman who believes that she should also be allowed to practice this male-only profession. (My only problem with Cho is that she’s not writing the sequel fast enough!)
Gender roles are upended in an entirely different way in Ann Leckie’s multiple-award-winning story of galactic empire, Ancillary Justice. The sentient AI protagonist of this novel is from a culture that doesn’t bother to linguistically discriminate between genders, instead using only feminine pronouns and nouns. I’ve never before read a book where the gender isn’t actually identified for most of the characters; it’s an interesting and eye-opening experience. Author Ada Palmer plays with gender in yet another way in her novel of 25th century Earth, Too Like the Lightning. In this far future, affinity-based Hives have replaced geographically based nation-states, public discourse on religion has been outlawed, and gender-neutral terms are the norm in polite society. Our narrator, however, has decided to tell us the story in the style of an 18th century Enlightenment novel, so he apologetically uses gender-specific pronouns (and not always the ones a reader might expect) when describing others.
I couldn’t be more excited about the new voices and new perspectives showing up in my favorite genre. If you’ve never explored science fiction and fantasy novels, now is a great time to take a look and see what’s out there. And if you don’t see yourself reflected, maybe pick up a pen — there’s room for everyone on the bookshelf, and I’m always looking for something new to read. Happy reading!
(We’re Amazon affiliates, so if you purchase something through an Amazon link, we may receive a small percentage of the sale. Obviously this doesn’t influence what we recommend, and we link to places other than Amazon.)This column was originally published in the summer 2017 issue of HSL.
The Pleasures of Spring Homeschooling
For our family, spring is when we emerge from hibernation.
For our family, spring is when we emerge from hibernation.
February is over, and home educators (in the northern hemisphere at least) breathe a collective sigh of relief. In my first years of home educating, I’d never heard the term “February-itis.” I didn’t know that the slump I was experiencing was a recognized homeschool condition and that many home educators, like me, considered throwing in the towel in February. Now that I’ve weathered many Februaries as a home educator, I acknowledge my own grumpiness and try to look after myself a little better and embrace a little bit of joy in each of these 28 (29!) days. I know that, come March, spring will be on its way, along with all of the things I look forward to about the warmer, brighter months.
This winter was particularly dreary. A too-mild December meant that it rained most of the month. For days on end it seemed that the sun never rose. Winds of over 60mph kept us indoors, and we’ve all been going a little stir crazy. I don’t think my feet have been properly warm since August.
For our family, spring is when we emerge from hibernation. It’s as though we rub our bleary eyes, stretch our arms to the sky and yawn. In the lengthening evenings we look out the windows and wonderingly remark that “it’s still light outside!” When we rise in the morning, dawn is already peeking around the edges of the curtains, inviting us to gaze open-mouthed at the scarlet sunrise.
My insect-loving son’s pupae tank, in which all of his metamorphosing caterpillars sleep and transform, has been in the cold garage all winter. Now it’s time to bring it indoors, to begin misting them daily with water so they know it’s time to wake up and emerge as the beautiful moths and butterflies they will become. We’ve just hauled his moth trap out of the shed and brushed it of spider’s webs and woodlice. Soon he’ll start running his black light in earnest, checking it every morning (sometimes at 5 a.m.! Send coffee!). He’ll note what he’s caught and release the tiny, fragile creatures after marveling over the patterns and colors of their wings. Already he’s found frogspawn in the pond, watched nesting birds gathering fluff and twigs for their nests, and helped us cut back the dead growth in the garden, ready for shoots to emerge.
The days are longer, which means more opportunities to enjoy the outdoors, play in the tree house or even just feel the sun on my head when I hang the washing out on the line. In this cold Northern European country, we shout about every blooming daffodil, every new green shoot we find. Each clue that spring is on its way is a discovery to be celebrated.
I’ve started clearing out the house too, my half-hearted tip of the hat to spring-cleaning. I’ve gotten rid of 17 years worth of hoarded/collected magazines, bags and bags of baby clothes from the attic, and I’m side-eying my cupboards because it’s time to give to charity everything I don’t wear, which is, let’s face it, most of what I own. I’ve got ideas for a fabric-stash-busting quilt, and I’m about to finish a blanket I’ve been crocheting for months.
March feels like a new beginning. There’s a freshness, a newness about the start of spring that lights a little fire in my heart and lends a twinkle to my eyes. I think, at long last, my toes might be thawing.
Homeschool Moms Need Friends, Too: How to Make Time for Mom Friends
New friends for myself was not a perk I expected when I started on this journey so many years ago, but it’s one I would encourage every mom who makes a commitment to homeschooling to look for. Make sure you take some time to make friends with parents who are embarking on similar journeys.
For my debut entry at the home/school/life magazine blog, I thought I’d write about one of those happy side-effects of thirteen (or so) years of unschooling three kids. I call this side-effect: Unschooled Mom Friends.
This past week, you see, I drove to a playdate… alone.
It was the same highway that has been host to hundreds of games of I Spy With My Little Eye and a maybe a dozen versions each of 20 questions, the alphabet game, and can-you-rhyme that once kept my children entertained for the hour-long ride to the at-least-once-weekly playdates with our eclectic mix of homeschool friends. It was the same highway, but without the backseat full of chatter and kid/DJ riding shotgun, customizing song selections to set the mood for the day.
Our Mom-gatherings started as Mom’s Night Out, an occasion to dine together without anyone having to worry about house or kitchen clean-up. For several years, we called our meetings Book Club. We were even studious, intentionally broadening our horizons by occasionally reading books.
Playdates evolved. The kids did what kids grow to do. They went from trampolines and skateboards to driving around in cars. Some got jobs, joined clubs, tried out school, got girlfriends/boyfriends, suffered broken hearts…
With kids in tow, and sometimes without, we moms continued to gather as schedules allowed. Where we once assured each other over late readers and screen time, we continued to assure each other over our children’s relationship developments and first apartments.
Get-togethers without the kids began as our way of helping each other remember that the job of being Mom, while big, was not all-encompassing. We still needed to make time for ourselves, once in a while, and in doing it together, we gained experiences and explored and socialized, much like our kids.
The kids who once filled our houses and backyards when we gathered, or wandered off on park trails for hours at a time, got busy with their own lives, and my Unschool Mom Friends and I… we made a conscious decision, at some point, to keep getting together regardless of kid schedules, because we still had so much to learn from one another.
New friends for myself was not a perk I expected when I started on this journey so many years ago, but it’s one I would encourage every mom who makes a commitment to homeschooling to look for. Make sure you take some time to make friends with parents who are embarking on similar journeys. They will make you stronger, over time. They will help lift you when you are down. They will give you words you need to hear when you are at a loss for comforting your child, your teen, your young adult.
Your kids will refer to you collectively as “The Moms” and you will appreciate having adults in the lives of your children who understand the kind of investment and choices you are making as a family.
Yes, you are doing this for your children, but you are growing in your own right, as well.
Meet the Team: Rebecca
Rebecca is home / school / life magazine’s Curriculum Junkie columnist, and you'll be reading her first column in our Fall 2014 issue. Her writing appears in various national publications as well on her blog steampoweredclassroom.com. She is a community herbalist and interested in all aspects of sustainable, intentional living. She lives, laughs and learns on a small farm near the Adirondacks with her husband and three boys and a bunch of sheep, chickens and goats as well as their cat, dog and an unassuming pet shrimp named Weaver.
How I started homeschooling: When my oldest son turned three he announced his plans to become a scientist. He asked to begin school “immediately.” Seeing our farm as a perfect laboratory, we took on a hearty curriculum of worm hunting, puddle splashing, cloud gazing and dandelion picking. Our days were such glorious fun it never crossed our minds to stop!
My homeschool style: Learning at our place is usually messy and all-consuming. I do my best to adhere to a child-centered approach. The key detail is that my sons are driving their learning process. They are empowered and encouraged to help decide what themes we will explore together. This means lots of art, hands-on science, hours of reading, creative writing, walks to grandma’s and ample opportunity to seize inspiration from life, as it happens, all around us on our farm.
What a typical day looks like in my homeschool life: We generally start out over breakfast discussing the day ahead. Each of us shares our goals. Some of these are practical—math, using the microscope, bike riding. Many are big—find dinosaur bones, practice wizard skills, construct a robot. My oldest son and his dad do barn chores while the little boys and I clean up and prepare the homeschool room for the morning. The boys play till around 9, giving me time to do chores, think about dinner and do some writing. When we begin homeschooling, we usually start with whatever major theme we are working on. For example, right now the boys are interested in Ancient China. We’ll start off with a lesson that involves all three boys; this includes a family read, craft, travel video or some other hands-on project. Mid-morning everyone is able to enjoy some free time while I work one-on- one with each boy on math, handwriting and other age-specific tasks. We reconvene for lunch, which we make together and try to eat outside. Afternoon is spent doing science/nature studies. We take a walk most days and I usually go out with some specific goals in mind: find 3 signs of spring, hunt for monarch caterpillar eggs or tell me what you smell in the air. These walks ignite our imaginations; the formal science studies we do when we return home are fueled by these walks. Free time to play, read and run follows and takes us on into nighttime when dad is finally home. Stories of the day are shared with him and we eventually fall asleep tired.
Favorite readaloud: This is easy! Absolutely anything from Andy Stanton’s series of Mr. Gum books. These books are hilarious, imaginative, well written and full of zany creative fun. My whole family loves these books. The humor will appeal both to children and adults and they are perfect for reading aloud.
Favorite driving music: Like most moms,I can barely remember the last time I had a turn at the radio! I think, way back when, my first choice would be anything by the Dave Mathews Band. These days we listen to a lot of They Might Be Giants’ awesome tunes for kids. Our family’s favorite is Here Comes Science. My middle son is also a fan of Woody and Arlo Guthrie. I consider this fact my crowning achievement as a parent.
Things I like: Road trips and coffee, walking in the woods, Christmas time and wood fires. I love dirt roads in New England and any time spent with my family. I really like my chickens too.
Guilty pleasure: Expensive wool socks. They really are the only thing I splurge on for myself. I have only two pairs, but how I do revel in this secret little luxury.
What I love about homeschooling: All hours of the day our house buzzes with creativity: storytelling, picture drawing and science experimentation. I love the generous stretches of time homeschooling provides to explore whatever most lights up the eyes of my kids. I’m grateful that my middle son is home to feed his dog and that my youngest, not yet school-aged, is home with his big brothers learning from them all of the time. I’m so very thankful that there is time in the morning to read stories together while we are still in our pajamas. Picnic lunches in the middle of the week are awesome fun. I really could go on and on!
What I love about home/school/life magazine: The homeschooling movement is rich with people from all kinds of backgrounds; we all homeschool for a range of different reasons. I love that home/school/life magazine brings each of us to the same table. This really is a magazine for all kinds of homeschoolers, which provides for a fun, fresh exchange of worthwhile ideas and resources.
Meet the Team: Lisa
Meet Lisa Hassan Scott, one of our new bloggers. She is an American who married a Scotsman and has been living in Great Britain for 18 years. She's a Yoga teacher, breastfeeding counsellor, writer and home educator with three children. She blogs at www.lisahassanscott.co.uk. We asked her a few questions so that you can get to know her better.
What a typical day looks like in my life right now: My eldest daughter recently chose to go to high school, so the rest of us get up early with her to have a family breakfast and walk her to the bus stop. It’s a great way to get fresh air early in the day, and is especially good for helping the younger children to focus on the work we do together when we get home. Sometimes we stop at the Post Office or the greengrocers, but we always make it a longer walk and talk about the nature we find along the way. At home I normally make myself a cup of coffee while the children get a snack, then we do letter and number work, read together, go through our moth trap and record what we’ve caught overnight and plan the rest of the day. Later in the day we might go out to home ed groups, meet up with friends, or scoot to the skate park. I always try to have at least 10 minutes of quiet time for reading, writing and Yoga, but that doesn’t always work out.
Favorite readaloud: We recently finished all the Little House on the Prairie books and are now working our way through all 12 of the Swallows and Amazons series. But my favorite read aloud, especially for slightly older children, is Uncle Dynamite by P.G. Wodehouse—such witty and clever writing.
Favorite driving music: I haven’t chosen the driving music in our car for nearly 12 years!
Things I like: Language, nature, enthusiasm and a have-a-go attitude, compassion, cooking, running and cycling, Yoga and meditation, writing and alone time.
Guilty pleasure: Margaritas.
What I love about homeschool life: freedom.
What I love about home/school/life magazine: The focus on learning as a family culture.
Meet the Team: Idzie
Meet Idzie Desmarais, one of our new bloggers. Idzie is a grown unschooler, and she's the author of the popular blog I'm Unschooled. Yes, I can write. She has published her articles in various magazines and has spoken at home education conferences in North America. We asked her a few questions so that you can get to know her better.
Me in 100(ish) words: I use a lot of labels to describe myself, so I suppose I could start there! I’m a grown unschooler and unschooling advocate, a (confusedly) queer 20-something woman, a green-anarcha-feminist, a cook and baker, a writer, blogger, and speaker. I’m an INFJ, in case you’re into the whole Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator thing, an introvert, and someone who values intuition very highly. My dream in life is to help build a small intentional community somewhere both rural and wild, and live there with assorted family, friends, dogs, cats, goats and chickens.
How I feel about my background as an unschooler: I feel very positively about it, which is why I’ve spent so much time combining my love for writing with my interest in self-directed alternative education, specifically unschooling. I feel that by growing up unschooled, I really got the chance to learn, grow, and develop at my own pace and in my own way. I credit unschooling with making the anxiety issues I’ve always dealt with much easier to bear as a child, and with helping me grow into a much more confident and competent person than I might otherwise have been.
What a typical day looks like in my life right now: I get up, and almost instantly get on the computer to check email and messages, and go through my various feeds, reading articles on education to try and find some good ones to share on my unschooling Facebook page and other social media haunts. After that, I’ll eat something, do some work around the house, and probably get back on the computer to do some writing or editing. Right now it’s just me and my sister at home, since my mother has gone back to school to pursue her passion for building, and my father works full time, so we pretty much keep the house not-too-messy and make sure that things are running as smoothly as we can make them! Once my father arrives home, I usually go with him and our big hairy Irish Wolfhound cross to the dog park, and then, along with my sister, help make supper. We both like to try new things and don’t tend to do things half way when tackling food stuff, so we make some pretty good meals! The evening will then be spent watching TV as a family, writing, or hanging out with friends, depending on the day. My mother has just gone back to school this fall, so we’re all still adjusting to the new schedule, and my sister and I are still adjusting to not having a car on weekdays. Still, we’re finding a flow that seems to work, and I’m doing better with writing productivity and selling my work than I ever have before, so that feels pretty good.
Favorite book(s): That’s a tough one! I’m a big fan of fantasy novels, and I can say that current favorite authors include N. K. Jemisin, Kate Elliott, and Tamora Pierce. I also really love the Tiffany Aching series by Terry Pratchett. When it comes to books on education, I like 101 Reasons Why I'm An Unschooler by ps pirro and Life Learning: Lessons from the Educational Frontier edited by Wendy Priesnitz.
Favorite driving music: Once More With Feeling from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Great Big Sea, the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack…
Things I like: Food! Cookbooks. Fantasy novels. TV shows (especially Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Veronica Mars, and Orphan Black). Dogs and cats. Goats and horses. Big gardens. Downpours in the middle of a hot day. Snuggling with my furry family members. Hiking. Sunflowers and forget-me-nots. Curling up with a good novel. Going on roadtrips with friends. Unschooling conferences. The satisfaction of completing a difficult new dish. Folk music. Singing.
What I loved about homeschool life: The lack of pressure and rushing. Being able to spend as much or as little time on a subject as I wanted to, and as much or as little time as I wanted out with people or home with just my family. Being able to learn purely for the joy of it, and not because I was trying to cram for a test… A whole lot of things, really!
Introducing the New HSL Bloggers
I'm happy to announce that we have finally hired three bloggers who we think you're going to love! I'm not going to give you their full bios here because you can find them now on our Staff page, and they'll also be doing some Q&As so that you can get to know them better. But I did want to tell you that you can expect to hear more from... Tracy Million Simmons, who has tons of homeschooling experience as a mom of three unschooled teenagers. She's also a part-time farmer's market manager and fiction writer.
Idzie Desmarais is going to give us the perspective of a grown unschooler. You may be familiar with Idzie because she writes the popular I'm Unschooled. Yes, I can write. blog.
Lisa Hassan Scott is an American who married a Scotsman, and she's been living in the U.K. for 18 years. She writes beautifully, and she has many years experience as a mother and home educator too. She has three children, ages 11, 8, and 5.
I don't know about you, but I can't wait to read what these talented people have to say.
You can't do everything, be everything, buy everything — nobody can. So why do homeschool moms feel so guilty about it?