Homeschool Recap 2026!

 Last week, we wrapped up probably the best year of homeschooling we’ve had to date. It was the most orderly, most focused, and best-scoring year for us. A couple notable things we did this year:

1. I required my kids to hand write and mail one letter every week. In addition to experiencing the delight of connecting with friends and family (many thanks to those of you who wrote back to them 🩷), the boys got a personal tour of our local ski mountain with Ski Patrol, Allen got a package full of Costco swag and a postcard from Mojang (the creators of Minecraft), and Cici got a response from the creator of her favorite video game. Oscar is now in the habit of making birthday cards for all his extended family. I’m thinking of doing something like this next year but focusing on phone skills (still trying to figure out how to make that work).

2. Adam and the kids read through the entire Bible together. It took them more like a year and a half to read through the Bible-in-a-Year, but it’s a huge accomplishment nonetheless! The kids got to practice their read-aloud skills everyday and learn theology at the same time! An informal poll indicates that the favorite book was Judges and the overwhelming least favorite was Leviticus.

Some personal accomplishments: sophomore Oscar took two online classes this year (Chemistry and World History). He started the year barely able to execute a simple Google search and ended it navigating Canvas and Google Docs with ease, researching online databases for papers, and maintaining robust email correspondence with several friends and extended family members. He handled 100% of his communication with his professors, and he ended up getting A’s in both classes (with a 98% overall class score in Chemistry!). I’m so proud of him and have no doubt that he is going to rock college classes next year when he begins Running Start with EWU. He finished Calculus a few weeks ago and immediately started the textbook over again because he “wants to get REALLY good at calculus!” Whatever floats your boat, I guess! 😅

Allen wants to go into the military after he graduates high school, so with the ASVAB in mind, we really focused on improving his test-taking skills this year. He improved on his yearly standardized test by eleven percentile points, so I think we’re on the right track! Another thing we focused on was studying and note-taking skills in preparation for high school. He’s definitely more of a “get it done” rather than a “get it perfect” kind of a kid, so it’s been a struggle. But we’re getting there!

On to my fifth-grader! If you have been on my homeschooling journey with me for a while, you’ll remember that it took forever for Cici to learn how to read, despite all our efforts. She was almost nine before it finally “clicked” for her. Fast forward two years to now: this school year, she read all five of the Hunger Games books, plus all the Newbery Award winners I could throw at her, plus a whole lotta nonfiction. And that was just the stuff she read for fun. This girl loves to read, which makes me so happy. She actually outperformed the boys in language mechanics on the standardized test this year and increased her overall battery score by a whopping NINETEEN percentile points! She may have had a late start, but she is making up ground quickly.

So this was a year of tremendous growth in many ways. If anyone is interested in another post talking about some specific things I try to do for homeschool success, I will make one. I don’t write this post to be like, “Look at us, look how cool we are” (there were definitely elements of this year that sucked); my motivation comes from seeing so much negative press about homeschooling ever since COVID-19 made it more visible, and wanting folks to get a more balanced idea of what homeschooling looks like. Unfortunately, the premise “I got a fine home education in a stable household and went on to be successful in life” doesn’t sell very many autobiographies! At any rate, I am super happy with how this year went and hope we can continue the good habits formed into next year.

Our Summer Without Video Games

Today marks the end of three months at our household without video games. I'm pretty sad it's over, to tell you the truth! It really was a wonderful summer. We're a fairly low-electronics household already -the kids don't have tablets or phones- but they do each get a half hour of video game time every day after schoolwork and chores are done. It doesn't seem like a lot, but three kids plus a husband on his days off work were adding up to a lot of time of the family just sitting and either gaming or watching other people game. I was concerned that the kids were losing a lot of precious childhood hours glued to the couch. Also, we live in a really small house, and there is literally nowhere to get away from the constant noise of the video games. Between the mom guilt and the noise, I was going a little bananas.

So at the end of June, we packed up the Switch and put it in a closet. I really appreciate Adam going along with the challenge because I'm pretty sure this is something he 100% did just to indulge me. He was a total champ. The kids were also pretty chill about it, all things considered; they never once asked to play video games the entire summer. I was very clear that this wasn't a punishment of any kind, and this was an opportunity for everyone to practice getting their dopamine from actual living.

So what did our summer look like? For starters, the kids were outside all the time. And I mean, ALL THE TIME. They formed a pack with several neighborhood kids and spent many hours bouncing from yard to yard. Cici and her girlfriends did a lot of makeovers. Allen led a bunch of Nerf battles. Oscar went on a run every day to keep up his fitness from track season (he is kind of a neighborhood celebrity now, haha. I get asked a lot by total strangers, "Is your boy the one who runs?") They all spent many, many hours snuggling the chickens and practicing 4-H showmanship.

Bathing Alexandria for fair. She is in favor of the video games.

We also played a lot of board games. I estimate we played a board or card game on at least 2/3 of the days! That's over sixty times we sat down together! I dusted off Ticket to Ride, and we played the heck out of that game; Splendor and Big Boggle were also popular. We had the opportunity to visit my parents in our old town several times this summer, and we made sure to play many board games with my mom, who loves games and rarely gets the opportunity to play. She actually ended up buying her own set of Splendor! One less game for us to haul down, haha!

One funny side story happened on a road trip we took to the East Coast in July. I told the kids they were in charge of packing things to entertain themselves on the long drive, only to find out to my dismay about an hour into the trip that they had packed a grand total of three picture books and one Rubik's cube. If they had asked to bring along one of Adam's retro handheld games or our portable DVD player, I would have said yes, but apparently they didn't think it was an option. And wouldn't you know, everyone did just fine! We played MadLibs (like flashlights and band-aids, I consider it an emergency essential and always have a pad in the car) and Twenty Questions, listened to audiobooks, and spent a lot of time just talking and looking out the windows. I gave Cici the road atlas and a highlighter and gave her the job of marking our trip progress. We are accidentally living proof that you can drive across the entire country- both ways!!- with kids and no electronics and still pass a good time.

The kids did bump up their time a bit on our desktop computer, which I was okay with because it was all research or creating videos on a 3D Movie Maker program. There was also one day with video games in August-- we usually give each kid unlimited video game time on their birthday, and didn't think it was fair to shortchange the one kid who had a birthday during the three-month window. So he got to play video games on his birthday.

All in all, I'm so glad we took the time off from video games! We will probably do this again next year.

Mega List of Smart Family Night Movies

Sunday evenings around here are our official Nacho Sunday Movie Nights, or, on alternate weeks, Pizza Sunday Movie Nights. It is exactly what it sounds like. We all load up a big ol' plate of nachos (or pizza) and watch a movie. This weekly tradition started a few years ago when 1) I got more intentional about making Sunday a day of rest, and elaborate dinners were the obvious thing to cut out of my Sundays, and 2) during the COVID shutdowns, we started watching a lot of classic movies with the kids. Eventually they coalesced into one of our favorite events of the week!

One of the most perfect foods ever. This is a hill I will die on.

In true homeschool mom fashion, I try to sneak as much culture and history into movie night as possible (although some nights are a total waste of brain cells-- looking at you, All Dogs Go to Heaven). On the nights that it's my turn to pick, I try to choose something that will broaden my kids' understanding of the world historically, culturally, or philosophically. This blog post is going to be a list of smart movies for older kids* that I can refer back to when I need ideas and also record what we've seen already. Who knows, maybe it will have some good movie night ideas for your family, too. If there's a movie that your family loves that isn't on the list, please let me know! I am always looking for more ideas for movie night!

*Obviously use your own discretion when picking movies for your own family to watch. These are all shows that I'm pretty sure won't scar my kids for life (from about 9 years old and up) but may not be great for other families. Several of these movies have violence and/or strong language. I have found the IMDB Parent's Guides to be helpful for determining suitability.

Italics: movies we have watched

Bold: movies I SUPER recommend!

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

The Adventures of Robin Hood (Errol Flynn version)

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Jeremy Brett) (This one is actually a miniseries)

The Agony and the Ecstasy

Alexander the Great (Richard Burton version)

Anastasia (Ingrid Bergman)

Anne of Green Gables

As You Like It (Laurence Olivier)

Babette's Feast

Ben-Hur

Black Beauty

The Black Stallion

Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin.

Born Free

The Boys in the Boat

Brave

Brother Sun, Sister Moon

The Buccaneer

Coraline

Chariots of Fire

Charlotte's Web

Cheaper By the Dozen (1950 version)

A Christmas Carol

Coco

The Court Jester

Darby O'Gill and the Little People

Davy Crockett

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951 version)

Doctor Dolittle (Rex Harrison)

Ender's Game

Fantasia

Fantasia 2000

Fiddler on the Roof

Finding Nemo

Frankenstein (Boris Karloff version)

Free Willy

Gone With the Wind

The Great Escape

Hans Christian Anderson

The Harry Potter series

Heidi

Henry V

The Hiding Place

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The Hobbit (Rankin and Bass version)

Howl's Moving Castle

Indiana Jones 1 and 3 (we all want the ninety minutes of our life back that we spent watching #2)

Inside Out

Iron Will

It's a Wonderful Life

Ivanhoe (1982)

James and the Giant Peach

Johnny Tremaine

Jurassic Park

The Karate Kid

Kedi (this one is a foreign film spoken entirely in Turkish, so make sure your kids can keep up with the subtitles)

Lilies of the Field

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (we're very partial to the 1979 version. The animation is SOOOO bad it's hilarious, but the music is one of the best movie soundtracks ever. We have a tradition of watching it on a snowy evening every year with Turkish delight and hot chocolate.) 

A Little Princess

Little Women

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

Luca

The Man from Snowy River

Mary Poppins

Matilda

A Midsummer Night's Dream (the old version with Mickey Rooney)

Milo and Otis

Miracle on 34th Street

The Miracle Worker

Moby Dick

Mr. Holland's Opus

My Fair Lady

My Neighbor Totoro

Nacho Libre

Newsies

North and South

Oliver!

Phantom of the Opera (the Royal Albert Hall version, NOT the 2004 film version)

The Phantom Tollbooth

Pollyanna

Ponyo

Pride and Prejudice (we love the BBC miniseries!)

The Prince of Egypt

The Princess and the Frog

The Princess Bride

Ratatouille

The Red Shoes

The Rescuers

The Rescuers Down Under

The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming!

Sarah, Plain and Tall

The Secret Garden

Silas Marner

Singin' In the Rain

The Sound of Music

Spirited Away

Split Infinity

Star Wars

The Sword in the Stone

The Robe

The Secret Garden

Secondhand Lions

Seven Samurai (another foreign language film; make sure your kids can keep up with the subtitles!)

Star Wars (the original trilogy)

The Swiss Family Robinson

Tall Tale

The Taming of the Shrew

Temple Grandin

The Ten Commandments

Toy Story

Treasure Island

Wall-E

Where the Red Fern Grows

White Christmas

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken

Without a Clue

The Wizard of Oz

Wonder

Zorro (The Mark of Zorro [1940] or The Sign of Zorro)

This next section with the *Asterisks* denote movies I either haven't seen in forever or haven't seen at all, and need to be previewed for questionable content. I can't recommend these movies; this is just a personal list for me. If you have seen any of these, let me know your thoughts on their suitability!

*Akeelah and the Bee*

*Animal Farm*

*The Book Thief*

*The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind*

*Camelot*

*Exodus*

*Gandhi*

*Groundhog Day*

*Hidden Figures*

*How the West Was Won*

*Hugo*

*The Hunt for Red October*

*Jason and the Argonauts*

*Jiro Dreams of Sushi*

*Joan of Arc* (Not sure which version to go with at this time)

*Land of the Pharaohs*

*Lawrence of Arabia*

*Luther*

*The Merchant of Venice* (BBC version)

*Patton*

*Quo Vadis*

*Rear Window*

*Remember the Titans*

*Searching for Bobby Fischer*

*The Secret of Roan Inish*

*The Song of Norway*

*The Truman Show*

*The Wind Rises*

*The Young Victoria*

Well, I started this post as a way to remember what I wanted in the future, but I think I just mainly gave myself movie FOMO. This is a seriously hefty list! 

Seven Quick Takes Friday: The Homeschool Edition

Seven Quick Takes Friday is a format I used to love to do back when the blog got regular use. I'd just take all those little subjects that probably weren't great for a standalone post and corral them into one blog entry. The blog that used to host SQT doesn't exist anymore, so I am free to do something wild like turn it into Five Quick Takes, or Seven Quick Takes But With Kittens.

Or better yet, chickens

Since my children's education takes up a huge portion of my brain cells these days, I thought this post should be all about homeschooling!

#1. Big Kids

It is disconcerting to look back just a few posts and see a tiny Oscar doing early elementary work, when my current reality is that he is now 5'11" and staring down the barrel at high school next year. The kid has a mustache and runs track with the local high school. WHAT.

Still not too big to take a selfie with his ol' mom.

 Allen is eleven, and Cici just turned nine, so we are completely out of the themed activity tray days. What a difference five years makes!

#2. Rick Steves

We are binging the Rick Steves Europe show on Amazon Prime right now. It is such a great way to learn about the culture and geography of Europe! Here's a clip from one of our favorite episodes:

#3. Interest-Led Learning

This school year has been super duper relaxed. Ever since I was a high school freshman reading The Teenage Liberation Handbook, I have always been "unschooling curious". My main goal this academic year was just to survive through it, so I thought this would be a great time to ditch the curriculum and try something far less formal. Funschooling books helped the kids have some structure-- they are basically record/prompt books for interest-led learning. These were a few of the favorites:

 

 

The kids got to deep-dive into some really cool stuff. Allen has been hardcore studying food, not so much the cooking aspect but man's relationship to food. Things like artificial sweeteners, veganism, kosher food law, and high-quality food vs. fast food. He had a lengthy conversation with one of our older relatives at the funeral about aspartame. He was aghast to hear that I use artificial vanilla in my baking, so we're probably going to be making our own vanilla extract soon. He has also been creating 3D animation movies using the ancient Microsoft Movie Maker program, probably working an hour or more every day on his movies since July.

#4. Tiny Baking

Cici was into regular baking at first... until she discovered miniature baking on YouTube. Miniature baking is simply making tiny food with tiny bowls, tiny utensils and tiny ingredients. I thought it was kind of dumb until we got Cici her own tiny baking set, and now I actually think it's an ingenious option for kids who like to bake: they get the hands-on experience using a fraction of the expensive ingredients. There are no tempting piles of baked goods laying around, and the smaller recipes bake up in half the time, freeing up the kitchen that much faster for me to make dinner (that might actually be a downside 😅).

Cici's kit (Rainbow Resource)

#5. Art Class

One thing I have outsourced this year is art. We have a local organization that offers a weekly arts and crafts class, and the kids have been having a ball. Even I get to participate on slow days! I have a spot on the wall to hang up the creations as they come in.

 

#6. Library Love

Boy howdy, do homeschoolers love their local libraries, and we are no exception! In fact, I have a cart at home dedicated solely to storing library books. Does it keep my kids from losing half their books when they are taken upstairs to be read at bedtime? Not a chance. Our library is very cool because you can check out passes for the nearest science museum and the museum of arts and culture, as well as other things like Snap Circuits, a rock tumbler, and several board games. I am very thankful to have moved to the library system we have.

#7. Study Buddies

When reading inside the house just won't cut it.

Thus concludes Seven Quick Takes!

Three Dead Relative Stories

Yesterday, I went to my Uncle Mike's funeral. I didn't take any pictures, mainly because I hadn't seen anyone on my mom's side of the family since I was in grade school and felt super awkward asking grieving practical strangers to pose for a shot with me. The one relative I actually had seen on occasion as an adult, oddly enough, was Uncle Mike. He had just moved to my corner of the state a few months ago, and I was eagerly looking forward to reconnecting with him. Last month, I was at a wrestling meet in his town and briefly thought about seeing if he was available to visit over a cup of coffee, but I was already in the middle of a super long day and just didn't have the energy for a visit. Boy, do I wish now that I'd made the time anyway.

Another missed connection that has always haunted me is that of my great-aunt Marietta. Unlike Uncle Mike, I got to see Aunt Marietta a lot through high school and college, as she lived in my hometown and frequented my parents' restaurant often. Once, early in our marriage, Adam and I paid her a visit at her house, and what ensued was a wonderful hour or two of her pulling out all sorts of ancient family memorabilia and expounding on the family history all the way back to the early 1800's. WHOA! I thought. Here is someone who knows all our family details! Whoever knew? I determined to return next time with a recording device to preserve all this info for posterity. Well, as you may have guessed, that recording session never happened. Aunt Marietta, and a huge swath of the family history, died a couple years later.

The third story is happier. In 2018, when Adam was in training over in Seattle, I went over with the kids to visit him. My great-uncle Al, the last survivor of my grandfather's siblings, lived in the area. I don't know if I'd ever really met him before, but he and my dad enjoyed visiting together whenever they could, and I thought maybe he'd like to see me, too. I arranged to meet him at a McDonald's. It was a challenging meetup, as I was wrangling three small children fresh off a six-hour car ride, but he was gracious and had lots of funny stories about growing up with my granddad. We laughed a lot, ate some cheeseburgers, and went our separate ways. A year or two later, he passed away, leaving behind at least one great-niece with no regrets.

I didn't know where I was going with this when I sat down to type, but I guess the moral of the story is to make time for the people you care about, especially the older ones. Uncle Mike's funeral was unlike any I've been to before, full of people who hadn't seen each other in decades saying, "Let's not wait until the next funeral to get together!" He was the first relative in my parents' generation to die, and one could just see all the siblings working through the horrible realization that everyone's getting older and life is unpredictable. Uncle Mike was 61, and I took for granted that he would be around for a while. Aunt Marietta was in her nineties, so I REEEEEEALLY should have known better than to put that meeting off. The future is not guaranteed, the past is gone; we only ever really have the present moment. 

Wait But Why has a thought-provoking blog post that I think about all the time; it visually lays out all the weeks you can reasonably expect in your life and what percentage of time you have left for things, such as how many days you will spend with your parents. Pretty sobering stuff. 

Well, I certainly have restarted the blog with a bunch of heavy subjects! Maybe now that I'm getting the big stuff out of the way, the more trivial will follow soon.

Whoops, I blinked and it was five years later

 Well, well, well, look who's back at the blog (it's me). There has been a lot going on in my life lately, but I feel really uncomfortable sharing things on Facebook. I always feel like I'm howling into the void of That Freshman Who Was In Music Theory 101 With Me, That Mom I Scheduled One Playdate With In 2011, and The New Acquaintance That I'm Hoping May Turn Into a Friend; and they have to listen to me howl on their feeds whether they like it or not, whether I have actually spoken directly to them in fifteen years or not. Despite being open for all to read, blogging feels a little more intimate because if someone is reading this, it's because they cared enough to navigate over here. So anyway, hi! It's been awhile!

Adam has gotten grayer, the kids have gotten taller, and I have gotten fatter. 

One thing that hasn't changed? My kids still don't know how to smile for the camera.

So what's been up with me? Probably the highlight up till this summer is that I got chickens, which should tell you how exciting life has been. We traveled a bit, the kids did sports, I made literally over a thousand pies, we hung out with my parents next door, I got involved in a lot of local groups like 4-H and the library board. Everything was swimming along for the past several years in our little remote corner of Washington. Enter this summer, when we up and moved to a different remote corner of Washington. So far, it has been fantastic for Adam and the kids-- Adam is really enjoying his job and the career possibilities that come with it, and the kids have made a ton of friends and have been experiencing amazing growth through the activities they're involved with here.

More sledding opportunities, for one.

 As for me, not going to lie, it has been ROUGH. Our new milieu is just fine, with gorgeous scenery and friendly locals; but I lost a lot in the move, and I'm not just talking about my cake pans. There's a lot to grieve about. I'd say the top three things I've had the hardest time with are 1) The loss of my ride-or-die people I could call upon for anything at anytime 2) the loss of identity. I'm not a homeschool group leader, pro pie baker, co-op facilitator, volunteer, or any of the other community pillar hats anymore. What am I now?? What purpose do I serve? Some days I just feel like a husk. 3) the loss of solitude. We are in a much smaller house and I can't send the kids next door to my parents anymore when I need a moment of peace. It is ironic to be in a place where I'm simultaneously lonely and surrounded by people ALL. THE. TIME. Literally 24/7. Psychologically, these past six or so months have been brutal.

This move has broken me in a lot of ways I wasn't expecting, but I think with time things will be better. In the meantime, I'm just kind of chugging along. In an attempt to plug into our new community, I abandoned my cardinal rule of One Activity Per Child (And It Will Probably Be the Same Activity Your Sibling Is Doing) and signed them up for all the things. I have made loads of acquaintances and become best friends with my minivan if no one else. We bought a house (first-time homeowners!!) and there is plenty in our fixer-upper to demand my attention. That is all probably worth several future posts, so I'll leave you on that cliffhanger there and hopefully write something else before another five years passes by.

The Cheapest Bedroom Art You'll Ever See

One of my goals for this year is to spruce up our master bedroom. In ten years of marriage, I don't think Adam and I have ever had a decently put-together bedroom once. So when we came into possession of a very sturdy 4'x2' piece of cardboard this week, I couldn't resist the low-risk opportunity to make a huge statement piece to go over our bed. It took about an hour and about two small bottle's worth of acrylic paint to make. I'm not the best judge of home decor, so it may just look like hot garbage, but I'm getting a lot of joy from it!