Now that my son is in sixth grade, he’s doing work that requires him to really dig in and focus. He’s doing good work, but he’s so easily distracted, and he has trouble concentrating. Is there anything I can do to help improve his focus? Learning to focus can be hard even for adults, but most of the time, all you need to boost your concentration is a change in your routine and regular practice, says Michael Coates, M.D., chair of the Department of Family and Community Medicine at Wake Forest School of Medicine. Try these easy-to-implement actions to help your son improve his focus. Set a ti ..read more

I have a problem: Our library is out of control. I don’t mind the bookcases taking over our house, but I hate when I discover a book that I bought for a particular subject but forgot about until months after we wrapped up studying that subject—or worse, when I buy a book only to find that I already own a copy of it. Is there any way to organize our homeschool library so that it’s a resource and not a headache? The key to useful and accessible homeschool library: Good organization. If you want to wrangle your book collection into a well-organized library, you’re going to have to get hands-on ..read more

I’m totally lucky to get to balance a job I love with hands-on homeschooling, which I also love, but hitting that balance isn’t always easy, and I’m learning to be okay with that. I work full-time. (And then some.) I also homeschool my kids in a pretty hands-on way. And you might think that this all gets easier as kids get older and more independent, but I’ve found the opposite to be true. High school homeschooling, when you’re doing most of it in the homeschooling-at-home kind of way, takes a lot of time and energy. People are often interested in how I balance these two big jobs, so I though ..read more

Sometimes, the way to get the homeschool community you really want is to build it from the ground up. If growing community is on your to-do list, try some of these strategies to make it happen. Whether you’re a new homeschooler looking to find your people, a long-time homeschooler whose community is undergoing a disorienting shift, or just someone who never really found the homeschool community you were looking for, 2023 can be the year you find your people. There are two keys to getting the community you really want, says Niofer Merchant, author of The Power of Onlyness. The first is to make ..read more

Don’t dread higher math! Get inspired with these resources that will give you confidence and ideas for middle and high school math in your homeschool. If math is pushing your buttons, reconsider your perspective. Math beyond the elementary years can be creative, inspiring, and even fun.   Read This : Rethink the Classroom Finally, an answer to that inevitable question: “But how will you teach your child calculus?” Wherever you are in your math timeline, you’ll appreciate the existence of MOOCulus, a massive open online course created by Ohio State University mathematics professor Ji ..read more

Why do people feel like it’s OK to make rude or intrusive comments about homeschoolers? We don’t know, but being prepared with a polite response when they (almost inevitably!) do can help keep their rudeness from getting under your skin. When Holly Rauser announced to her family that she would be homeschooling her first child, her mother was horrified.  “I only know one girl who was homeschooled, and she was weird,” Rauser’s mom protested. “I know hundreds of people who went to public school or private school, and some of them are beyond weird,” Rauser retorted. Looking back, Rauser — an ..read more

When I first started homeschooling, I’m pretty sure I believed that homeschooling was all-or-nothing: either you homeschooled your kids throughout their childhoods, or you sent them off to school. But many families I know aren’t like that. Maybe their kids homeschool for most of their childhoods, then head to junior high or high school. Maybe their kids avail themselves of select activities at schools but remain homeschoolers. Maybe some of a family’s kids attend school, while others homeschool.  We’re that kind of family — a part homeschooling, part schooling family. Our 13-year-old son ..read more

From Sherlock to chemistry prodigies and everything in between, classic detective fiction is sometimes just the comfort read you need. These are some of our favorites. It all started with Nancy Drew, of course. Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, the Bobbsey Twins, Encyclopedia Brown, the westing game, Trixie Belden, and Alfred Hitchcock’s Three Investigators. So it was natural that sometime around junior high, having exhausted my local library’s children’s section, I gravitated toward the mystery section over on the adult side and discovered Agatha Christie. (It wasn’t a very big section, as I re ..read more

One of the moms at our regular park day wants to turn every learning-related conversation into a competition where her kids are smarter and better than everyone else. How can I politely shut her down?   If you started homeschooling to get away from competitive education, you may be out of luck. For every chill, laidback homeschooler who’s never looked at her child’s test scores, there’s a homeschooling mom who watches her — and your — child’s academic progress like a hawk. Your son loves Harry Potter? Her daughter just finished War and Peace. Your daughter is finishing up her math workbo ..read more

If you’re planning to return to work when your homeschooling days are done, now—right now—is the time to start getting ready for career reentry  It’s the thing we all dread: That moment in the future, in two years or ten years or twenty years, when we have to sit down in front of a computer and try to figure out how to fit a decade-plus of homeschooling into our resume. Whatever your reasons for returning to the world of work, you couldn’t have picked a less hospitable time. Moms returning to the workforce have never had it easy — a Cornell University study found that just being a mom ma ..read more