Postcard from my favorite homeschool season

another homeschool substack, a graphic novel, a short video on sharing

I love homeschooling this time of year. We are in a routine and getting things done together feels easy. Yet as the warmer season unspools and nice days pop up here and there, we can jump into them and enjoy them. We can shift our habits to match the longer sunlight hours and the warmer weather. We sense the focused, inside table work finishing up just as the outdoors beckon. Our mood matches the calendar. It’s just fun. If you walk outside every day, or even most days, there is something new to see growing and unfurling. Despite many complaints and refusals, on every single walk we got our 4yr old out on this week, ten minutes into the walk she’d say, “This is fun. Can we do this tomorrow?”

The work of getting into the routine, the work that happened after summer last fall, feels like a year away. “Why was it so hard?” I ask myself. Answer: rebuilding routines is always hard.

I was standing a playground with a friend recently, watching 12+ homeschool kids play. She and I were the only parents on duty, but there had not been a single issue amongst the children—everyone was finding their spot, shifting in and out of each other’s games. We were reflecting for a moment on how hard stages of the winter had been. It felt like an important thing to do—just reflect for a second on the tough stuff and be like, “yup, we did that. Well done.” The dark mornings. The freezing afternoons with tired kids and nothing but ice in the parking lot. The runny noses and coughs. The complete lack of inspiration. It all happened and we should give ourselves big hugs and high fives for getting through it as best we could.

beautiful print by artist Woo Woo.

recommending a homeschool substack

More homeschool substacks are cropping up and I absolutely love it. There could be so many different voices and ideas sharing on here, the capacity is endless. I love the approach of this one: How We Homeschool, just a list of things they did, with some links and other ideas, centered around a 5yr old and 7yr old.

“We classify ourselves as ‘unschoolers’, so pretty much everything the children do is voluntary, but I certainly try to put interesting and educational things in front of them.” Check it out! ↓

How we homeschooled today #9

A cute video about sharing

Here’s a video my kids love that’s very sweet and sometimes we reference it when discussing sharing videos and/or using chopsticks. Keep in mind that if you pay for a Youtube subscription you can download youtube videos onto ipads for them to play without wifi (ie in cars, on planes). I’ve found kids often prefer chill homemade videos to Disney’s dazzling (terrifying) storylines. Really long quiet videos of toys being played with are a hit as well.

a graphic novel 

Speaking of dumplings, Measuring Up is a current popular graphic novel in our house:

Cici moves from Tawain to Seattle, manages parental expectations, missing her grandmother, making new friends, combating stereotypes, and enters a cooking competition! Great discussion material. Amazon link but our libraries have it.

And, a quote for you

During the short school day, my boys’ teacher focused on fostering a love for learning, mastering life skills and reducing stress, rather than administering tests. She also gave the kids the typical 15 minutes of free play per every 45 minutes in the classroom to increase their ability to focus—all methods that lead Finnish kids to outsmart most of the world, including the U.S., in the international PISA rankings on language, math and science, by the time they are 15.

-Daily Jungle substack, on grammar school experience in Finland (and lots of other interesting observations).