Fun stuff - Homeschool Humuhumu

A Japanese structure, brightly painted red with a peaked roof, overlooks a manicured garden.

A trip to the Japanese Tea Garden

Golden Gate Park's Japanese Tea Garden is now free to San Francisco residents, so we learned about Japan and took a field trip.

Painted background scene from a Disney animated Mickey Mouse short, showing L'arc du Triomphe in Paris.

Geography and cultures

Impromptu France

How an unplanned "trip" to France took shape—without disrupting our daily routine. Too much.

Fun stuff

Ciabatta!

I coached Wanda through making her first loaf of bread, a ciabatta.

Book recommendations

Book Day Supreme

A very special Book Day: a field trip to Alibi Bookshop in Vallejo!

Illustration of cats playing musical instruments in the snow, by Louis Wain

Methods

Our winter break

Every winter, from the day after Thanksgiving through to the week of Wanda's birthday in early January, we ease way up on our schooling and take a break of sorts. I've written before about how we manage our breaks. Wanda and I decide together how we want them to go.

Three images of Wanda, age 8, reading chapter books.

Book recommendations

Books we've loved in 2021

We're sharing some highlights from the reading we've done over the past year.

Tinkerbell hovers next to the front of a pink and red Christmas card with the words "From All of Us" in white.

Fun stuff

A day of Swedish Christmas, with Kalle Anka

You know Kalle Anka better as Donald Duck, and a Swedish Christmas isn't complete without him.

Wanda, wearing a Santa Lucia crown, with our Christmas tree.

Geography and cultures

Holidays around the world, via Acorn Airlines

Wanda and I yust go nuts at Christmas. We spend each December learning about how the world celebrates, with our very own fictional airline.

A dozen kids in a circle, holding the edges of a colorful parachute high over their heads.

Social

Homeschool socializing

A look at what homeschool socializing was like in San Francisco, before the pandemic goobered everything.

Geography and cultures

Happy Diwali!

We celebrated Diwali today, the Indian festival of lights. I'm a sucker for a light festival. We took a trip to India on Acorn Airlines (our fictional school airline, it's totally Pinterest-barfy, I'll post about it someday in case you need some text-based ipecac). The in-flight entertainment included a 18-slide

Fun stuff

Forest field trip

Yesterday we went foraging for chanterelle mushrooms in the Willamette National Forest in Oregon. I grew up in Seattle, and while I love California—deeply—most of its forests don't quite meet my lofty, spoiled standards. I've long wanted Wanda to get to experience my idea of a forest. We're

A sweet, tubby grizzly bear, sitting on the ground.

Fun stuff

My school uniform

As you read through all of these posts, and picture in your mind what our days are like, you'll need an important piece of information: I'm a bear. (This is what I wear every day. I like to be warm. Plus I can keep things in my pouch.) 💬Join the

Wanda in our living room, throwing colorful fall leaves over her head.

Fun stuff

Our First Day of Fall tradition

Welcoming the new autumn season in true city kid fashion: with fake fall leaves.

Science

Dressing like a scientist

Really, I just thought Wanda in a lab coat would be adorable, and I was RIGHT!

Tent in a dark room decorated with artificial jungle plants

Fun stuff

Fake camping in the fake jungle

We took last week off to go camping, only not really, because California is on fire. The lower level of our house is themed to be a nighttime jungle, and Wanda had the brilliant idea to set up our tent in the jungle and "camp" for a week. The downstairs

Book recommendations

The Curie Society

The Curie Society is a new graphic novel from MIT Press, the first in a planned series. It is about three brilliant young women who are recruited into a (fictional) covert organization, created by Marie Curie herself back in 1903, to support women in scientific research. Trailer for The Curie

Fun stuff

Fancy cupcakes made easy

Simple and inexpensive ways to make your cupcakes deluxe, and so you can whip them out easily and make ordinary days special.

Fun stuff

Irresponsible Day 2021!

Following in the tradition Wanda started last year, today was IRRESPONSIBLE DAY! Cookies for breakfast! IRRESPONSIBLE!Intentionally misspelling “butthole” to circumvent this stupid app’s swear word filter: TWO KINDS OF IRRESPONSIBLE! And also STICKING IT TO THE MAN!! Smell our buthole, stupid app!Balancing on the tippy-top of the

Science

PBS's It's Okay to Be Smart

I want to shine a spotlight on my favorite science education YouTube channel, It's Okay to Be Smart, by PBS. Biologist Dr. Joe Hanson has been making these videos for the better part of a decade now. He and the whole It's Okay to Be Smart team are excellent science

Book recommendations

Book Day!

BOOK DAY BOOK DAY BOOK DAY!!! These just arrived from Alibi Bookshop (order from them online here: https://bookshop.org/shop/alibibookshop), except for a couple I picked up from the library this morning. BOOK DAY! 💬Join the discussion of this post over on Facebook.

Science

Taste the diffusion rainbow

We wrapped up a few days of learning about Brownian motion (the wiggly nature of atoms & molecules), diffusion, and concentration gradients with this Skittles + plate + warm water activity. I don’t often do flashy science activities; I only want to do them once Wanda has the foundational understanding to

Fun stuff

Shaving Cream Day

Today was SHAVING CREAM DAY! I can highly recommend buying twelve cans of shaving cream (make sure its the foam kind, not the gel kind) and 10'x20' of plastic and transforming your living room for a day. This was a blast. We got some learning in: we learned about the

A collection of ordinary household items, plus a handwritten slip of paper saying, "The Taming of the Shrew"

Media recommendations

Table Top Shakespeare

If you could use a distraction over the next few days, consider brushing up your Shakespeare with this fun “Table Top Shakespeare” series on YouTube. A talented storyteller tells the plot of the play in plain but engaging English, using regular household objects to be the various characters, and moving

Fun stuff

Irresponsible Day!

Last night Wanda thought of a new holiday, and we celebrated it today. IRRESPONSIBLE DAY! Enjoy it as it unfolded, starting with its creation yesterday: (Not pictured: we didn’t get dressed today, we learned NOTHING [that’s a lie of course, we accidentally learned some stuff, whoops], and we

Title card for the Peanuts holiday special, "It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown"

Fun stuff

Looking forward to special days

We keep a whiteboard calendar with holidays marked, and special shake-up-the-routine school stuff happens on those days. When there aren’t enough holidays, we make up our own. Recently it was Bird Day, an excuse to lump together a bunch of bird-related learning I’ve been meaning to get to,