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A favorite outdoor summer homeschool activity for many families is camping and hiking–and Virginia is blessed with glorious outdoor adventure opportunities. With state parks opening up and outdoor recreation being the only kind readily available, this summer might just be the perfect time for you to explore the great outdoors with your family.  You can teach outdoor survival skills, logic, and more, without ever setting foot in a classroom. Even if you don’t homeschool year-round, you can make the great outdoors your classroom this summer! Camping can be a fun family hobby and might even be considered a rite of...

I don't know how it works in your family, but sometimes, in mine, we realize that dad is a little bit out of touch with what's going on inside the homeschool.Wait, what grade are the kids in? Which curriculum do we use? Who's Charlotte Mason? What's a living book? Where did all the snacks go? Why are the remains of science experiments strewn throughout the kitchen? Is the subjunctive mood a real thing, or did you just make that up? This lack of connection is not intentional! Dad is very pro-homeschooling, and wants to be involved, but he has a...

If there’s one thing that has helped me keep my sanity while being cooped up over the past two months, it’s our daily book time and seeing my kids deepen their love of reading. Because I’ve been getting lots of requests for book suggestions, I thought I’d share a few of our very favorites from our shelves (newly reorganized, thanks to quarantine angst)! I’ve found a lot of joy in sharing some of my favorite books with my kids as family read alouds and I’ve also found a lot of joy in my children getting wrapped up in a book...

Father’s Day 2020 was bound to be a little different, but since Mike is really coming into his own during quarantine, I guess it makes sense that a day with all his favorite things on his home turf would be a good one. Everything lined up just right— the weather, the food, and the company. I should never plan a Father’s Day outing again. Mike woke up and put in his breakfast order. He wanted a toasted cinnamon raisin bagel with butter and an egg white omelette with spinach, mozzarella and sausage. I looked at him and said, “Ummm…I don’t...

We’re all struggling through the pandemic in our own ways. Whether we’re marathoning too much TV, FaceTiming relatives at odd hours, or juggling sudden homeschooling with working from home. For creatives like poets, there’s the added pressure of trying to string together words into meaningful stanzas in the midst of all this. How do we write poetry during a pandemic? During the last semester, I was in a poetry workshop thematically focused on medicine and mortality, which seems oddly prescient now. Just before spring break, our school moved all classes online and shut down the campus. As the semester trudged...