home / school / life

find me elsewhere

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Most of you know that I also write for home/school/life magazine and blog, and if you’d like to read all my blog posts over there, you can click the icon in my right hand margin. (Or click here.)

But there are two recent posts that I’d like to point out to you because they almost appeared on this blog. (Sometimes it’s hard to decide what to write for home/school/life and what to write for my blog, and sometimes the mental guidelines I use overlap!)

So if you’d like to see what I do all day, or, err, what I did all day last year (this year’s schedule is similar but a little different), please read At Home with the Editors: A Day in the Life of a Homeschool Mom.

And if you’d like to see how I schedule our daily lessons, read At Home with the Editors: Planning Daily Lessons.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to ask me! (Or requests! I always need ideas to write about!)

My Year of Citizen Science

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{A Year of Easy Citizen Science Projects for Homeschoolers}

From the University of Oklahoma’s Soil Collection Program

Last year I gave myself a big project by declaring it “My Year of Citizen Science.” Every month, I tried doing one citizen science project, and I wrote about each one on the home/school/life magazine blog. It was a lot of fun, I learned a lot about citizen science, and I felt I was doing something good for the world right from my home. I’m continuing to participate in some of them too.

I picked easy projects that I could do from home because as a homeschool mom, our schedule is full, and I don’t get out much by myself. Sometimes my boys would help me with these projects and other times not. I didn’t require them to. This was something I wanted to do for myself because over the last few years I have come to love science, which I always hated when I was in school. I don’t think it was introduced to me properly when I was a child, but that’s another story.

Anyway, any homeschooler or conscientious citizen could easily do any of these projects. I’m going to list them here with links to my blog posts on home/school/life where you can learn more about what they were like to complete. From there, you can find the link to the project’s website. I can’t promise whether the researchers will continue to make these projects available, but most of them should be ongoing projects.

#1: Lab in the Wild: A project you can do right at your computer.
#2: The Great Backyard Bird Count (Takes place every February): Just what it sounds like. Lots of fun, if you love birds.
#3: Budburst: Find a plant or tree to observe year-round. Lots of good activities on their website for teaching kids about plants.
#4 & #5: Project Noah and iNaturalist: A way to record your nature observations and get help identifying them. Your observations may help researchers too.
#6: Citizen Science Soil Collection Program: Perfect for kids who like playing in the dirt.
#7: Got Milkweed? (The Not Quite Citizen Science Project): An organization who wants to help you plant milkweed, which will help the monarch butterflies.
#8: Bugs In Our Backyard: Learn about true bugs and try to find them.
#9: Project Squirrel: Easiest project in the world, especially if you have squirrels in your yard.
#10: mPING crowdsourcing weather reports: An app that uses crowdsourcing to improve weather radars.
#11: Project Implicit: Another project you can do at your computer. Researchers will test you for hidden biases that you didn’t even know you had.
#12: Flu Near You: Every week you will receive an e-mail asking if anyone in your household has flu-like symptoms. Helps the CDC and other organizations track illnesses.

There are many other citizen science projects that you can find by searching on the Internet and checking out the Project Finder on SciStarter.com. If you have participated in one that isn’t listed here, please tell me about it in the comments. Also, if you try any of these, please let me know!  I’d love to hear about your experience.

find me elsewhere

~ shelli ~ Leave a comment
We’ve been doing a lot of painting & drawing this week! I’ll write about that soon.

I have neglected to update you on my posts over on the home/school/life blog these last few months, so I’ve got a lot here for you to read over the weekend. (If you want to!) 😉

Citizen Science Project #2: The Great Backyard Bird Count

Citizen Science Project #3: Budburst

Citizen Science Projects #4 & #5: Project Noah & iNaturalist

Citizen Science Project #6: Citizen Science Soil Collection Program

Stuff We Like: 4.15.16

Stuff We Like: 7.15.16

At Home With the Editors: Shelli’s Kindergarten

At Home With the Editors: Shelli’s 3rd Grade

Don’t Cut the Screen Time — Just Make Sure It Counts

Getting the Education I Didn’t Know I Craved

The Music Gap That Filled Itself

Summer Has a Mind of Its Own

If you haven’t been to the home/school/life website in awhile, I urge you to take some time there. The Summer 2016 issue is out, and it’s full of great stuff! Besides a blog that Amy is updating every weekday, there is a store with some free stuff (and some stuff for sell and more stuff will be coming!), a podcast that I’m having a lot of fun listening to (it’s perfect for geeky homeschool moms!), and some online classes! That’s right. Amy has lined up some spectacular folks to teach some really interesting classes to homeschool students, and there will be more where that comes from. So please check it out!

find me elsewhere

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Here are a few items I’ve published elsewhere these last few weeks:

Ideas to Celebrate the Winter Solstice on Short Notice — on the home/school/life blog

The Lazy Parent’s Guide to Holiday Cheer — on the home/school/life blog

Stuff We Like :: 12.11.15 — on the home/school/life blog

Gift Ideas for Kids — Barrow Journal

And you can find my article about Cloudland Canyon on page 72 of the current issue of Georgia Connector magazine.

How do we achieve our academic goals?

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Be sure to hop over to the home/school/life blog and read about how I make and achieve academic goals in our homeschool. Click here for Achieving Homeschool Academic Goals, and I hope you will chime in on how you approach your goals too. (Note that this is about our academic goals or what I require my boys to learn and not my kid’s own goals.)

Website Launch and Free Give-away

~ shelli ~ 2 Comments

SUMMER15-coverThis has been an exciting week for me because after a long wait, home/school/life magazine finally has a brand new, shiny website! The magazine is growing up, and I’m thrilled to see it get the platform it deserves. Here are some of the highlights that the new website will have:

  • Subscriber accounts. Subscribers to the magazine will now have their own login/password, and they will have a virtual bookshelf where they can access all their past issues.
  • The home/school/life store. Now you can purchase a subscription, gift subscription and all the back issues right in the store.
  • Magazine content. This new site will have a section dedicated just to sharing free content from the magazine.
  • Blog. The blog will continue to offer the same great writers and content. You’ll find me there sometimes too. 🙂

To celebrate, this month the blog will be updated every day, and even better, we are giving away a FREE copy of the summer issue of home/school/life magazine. Until August 1st, you can go the website’s store and use the code OUTFORAWALK to download a free copy of the summer issue. You’re welcome to share this information with whomever you like too.

I hope you’ll take advantage of this and then let know what you think of home/school/life. Thank you so much for your support!

Find me elsewhere

~ shelli ~ Leave a comment

I have written two installments in a new series on the home / school / life magazine. This series, At Home with the Editors, is a look into Amy’s and my homeschool. Though we feel strongly that every family has to figure out what works best for them, we also thought it might be a good idea to let our readers know how we do it too.

So, check out Shelli’s Homeschool for a snapshot of how I educate my boys and all the curriculum resources we have used thus far, and then read Shelli’s Project-Based Homeschool for a good summary of how project-based homeschooling has worked in our home and the valuable lessons I have learned from it so far. To read all the posts in this series (because Amy is writing some pretty helpful stuff too), click here.

Holiday Sale and Free Gift

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w14saleI want to let you know that home / school / life magazine is on sale for the holidays. I think this is a great deal, and if you’ve been thinking about subscribing but haven’t, you won’t have anything to lose. (Current subscribers can also take advantage by renewing their subscription now.) A yearly digital subscription is just $10 from December 10-24th. That’s four issues filled with homeschooling how-to, family interviews, engaging features, unit studies, tons of book recommendations and much more. My feature for the upcoming January issue is on the science of happiness — such interesting stuff!

And what’s even better, if you subscribe, you’ll get a FREE issue of Art Together: Color, which is the e-zine I have blogged about in the past. I’ve found it very useful in my homeschool. Our art columnist, Amy Hood, does these e-zines, and she was kind enough to partner with us for this holiday deal.

Go to homeschoollifemag.com/elf to purchase your subscription, or just click the graphic on the left.

mindful homeschooling

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Well, I promised I was going to announce it whenever I published something in my mindful homeschooling series on the home / school / life blog, but I think I’ve failed to do that. I’m making up for it by giving you links to all my posts so far. The last one was posted today. 🙂

Mindful Homeschooling: Find the Beauty

Mindful Homeschooling: You Have All the Time You Need

Mindful Homeschooling: Find Peace In Your Home

Mindful Homeschooling: Let It Go

Mindful Homeschooling: What My Children Have Taught Me About Pursuing My Personal Goals

I hope you enjoy them as much as I’ve enjoyed writing them.

a few small things

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I think the last few months have surely been the busiest of my life. Fortunately, I love everything I’m doing, or I would be a little more batty than I am right now.

First, I’m happy to tell you that the fall issue of home / school / life magazine was released yesterday, and I think it’s excellent. Of course, I’m biased, but I’ve heard from a few other people who aren’t biased, and they think so too, and that makes me happy. I wish I could take credit for the wonderfulness of this issue, but my editor-in-chief did most of the magic with two fabulous articles — one is about the 10 best cities in the U.S. to homeschool in. She set certain criteria, did tons of research, compiled it together and scrutinized the data to come up with this list. Though we’re not planning to move, I now have some town envy for sure! She also wrote a great piece about asking yourself important questions that will be helpful to you as you enter and navigate this homeschool journey. I’m pulling out my journal one night with that one!

I also love all the columns in this issue, especially Amy Hood’s tips on visiting an art museum with kids and Patricia Zaballos’ letter to her beginning-to-homeschool self. She sure knows how to comfort the frazzled homeschooling mom!

As for me, I wrote an article about how to become a better family photographer. If you’re a novice behind the lens, you may enjoy it! And something about writing this feature stirred up photography in my life (before-hand I had pretty much put it to rest for awhile) because suddenly I found myself with three photography clients. What fun it was to take photographs beyond the family snapshots I had been taking! You can see my work on my photography website.

And this brings me to my next piece of news: I started a Facebook page for my photography. It will probably remain mostly personal work, which is what I intended my photo website to be, but I also wanted a way to connect more easily with my clients and share their photos. If you are interested, I’d love for you to follow me there.

Between all this busy-ness, I have not neglected my homeschooling duties, and my eight-year-old has been delving into some new interests. I already told you about our adventures with tardigrades. We also recently had the opportunity to visit a Makers Faire near Atlanta, and I wanted to go to that because I knew there would be a lot of robotics groups there showing off their latest creations. That’s because my eight-year-old has been interested in robots lately! I wish it were easier to support this interest faster, but since good robotics kits aren’t cheap, he’s going to have to wait a little while for his wish to come true on this one. Anyway, I’ll be sure to write about an easy scribble bot we assembled with a kit from the faire, and I also have a surprise continuation of a project that I thought was finished: growing mushrooms. You can read about part 1 here, and I’ll fill you in on part 2 soon. (Of course, if you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, you already know all this.)

I’ve been trying to support my five-year-old a little more with his drawing interest by displaying his work and also creating a corner in his room with art supplies and space to work! I’ll write about that, eventually.

Meanwhile, I’m getting ready for out-of-town guests. (I told you I’ve been busy, right?) So if you don’t hear from me for awhile, that’s why.

I hope you are having a wonderful fall season! Please write me and tell me what you’ve been up to.