The Misfit homeschooler: Living in a secular world

With the crazy schedule we have now, it's a bit harder to get some things done. So It's become a case of "here's home ec. kids!" While Kaitlyn and Dad got stuff going in the school room... I got stuff going in the kitchen! First up I finished organizing my new bread and baking area: Everything I use for bread and baking is now in one area. Then I started the Fridge so I could organize everything instead of having a FULL fridge of "unknown" and get it all cleaned up. I took the top two shelves for bread/baking and stuff The kids don't handle on a daily basis and everything the kids can get into are in the bottom several shelves. The top shelf is my bread stuff (the starter gets going a day or two before the actual bread so I need a place to keep it going without little fingers trying to figure out "what's that". Today was Arianna's turn and we put some ciabatta bread together. 2 loaves of Italian herb and ...

When working with a kiddo who is ADHD and trying to figure out ways to help them stay focused while allowing fidgeting..I've had some GREAT idea's and some NOT so great idea's. The GREAT ones: Some kids really like the bounce balls to sit on, but my kids bounce. Not just a little wiggly bounce, but REALLY bounce so I didn't want to go thru the bounce problem. I also figured since we do so much thru discussion and wanting to encourage reading in a comfortable environment that hammock chairs would be perfect! They are! The kids can sway gently, curl up to read, or watch a movie or work on their tablet, etc. which keeps her moving but doesn't get wildly out of control and another plus is that she also gets a feeling of being "hugged" which is nice for those kids that might feel a bit anxious at times. It's a very comforting feeling. The NOT so great ones: I originally thought that she could sit there and play with the putty while doing stuff...

The kids got their own planners this year to help them keep on track. It works fairly well to just plop down in front of them and we work on the schedule together. The front of the planner has some info for the kids (Here's a small sample) Then the main planner pages look like this. It gives them space under the date to write down what is happening on each day class/club/lesson wise. i.e. Mondays = music lessons, Tuesdays =Science group,etc. Then on the next page under "parent/teacher notes" they write in which books they are working on, what pages they want to cover, any websites or online classes that they are signed up for etc. and then the list of spelling words can be either spelling words or reading words that they are working on and then keep track of how much they are reading each week. It's been working out well so far. and helps them to remember what they wanted to do and when. For me I have a 2 part system. I use my Franklin Covey planner...

We had a storm system coming up thru the area and started to prepare for possible blackouts. Then we got a flier from a friend. A local school district had donated over 2000 books to the local library and the friends of the library were having a "book giveaway" the same day the big storm was supposed to arrive. The kids of course wanted to go see all the books and since the storm wasn't supposed to arrive until early afternoon we figured we would have time to get there and get back home before the storm arrived.  We got there as soon as the posted time and they must have opened a little earlier but not by much. When we went in I mentioned to the girls that the flier had said each child gets 2 grocery bags full. Well, the people working there heard me and said not to worry about it and take as many as you want. I really should have warned the poor workers! So the girls went to work! By the time they were done, I was borrowing the libraries cart to take everything to the ...

After we got home from our camping trip, we had Oma and Opa come to visit for a couple of weeks. The kids always love seeing them and not a LOT of school got done..because..well, life happens. We started slowly with a few things here and there but didn't hit our full schedule until the end of September/First full week of October. Most of our new stuff arrived for the year. So it was fun looking thru everything! For our social studies/geography/culture studies the kids picked out a few different books. We are still working on some of our books from last year so this was just rounding out a few areas. Then of course they have the "country club" that meets every other week and we have each "student" and/or their family present a different country (they get to choose) and generally have a small talk about the country, do a project, get to taste some yummy food from each country and then the kids go out and play for 20 minutes or so afterwards. Some of the oth...

In between everything else we got in our last camping trip of the year at Nehalem Bay State Park with a couple of our homeschooling families. It was a ton of fun as usual. We camped next to each other and ended up just hanging at one campsite most of the day while the kids played at the playground or we went down to the beach for some adventures. Our first afternoon the kids hit the beach pretty fast after tents were all set up! While the girls got wet, the boys decided to do some digging in the sand. of course we were there towards the end of the day so before long it was back to the campsite for dinner! Thankfully this time, we made almost all the meals in advance and all we had to do was take them out of the cooler and put them on the fire so not a lot of food prep necessary which let us have more of  a relaxed evening. The next day was beautiful and the ids headed back to the beach where Dominic got his first kite flying lesson from dad! The girls got ...

As you have probably noticed I took a short (or long) break from blogging while I was crazy busy! We had visitors for a couple of weeks, needed to finish up projects around the property and get the school room almost finished! Had a couple of trips, started up school..yeah, life happens. so I'll start with the room..yes, the school room. once the new windows were in and the carpet put into place we had a mostly carpeted room just waiting to finish the other section so we didn't have concrete and carpet for the room.As a reminder here's the room before (although at this point it the walls had already been painted. Here's the room with the concrete and carpet look... Then my husband finally got to get working on the concrete part and got it put together (mostly in a day). Then it was time to head into the attic to get reinforcements done for the hanging chairs... So I'll reveal a little bit of the room (because I don't have all the pictures d...