The Misfit homeschooler: Living in a secular world

So we used to homeschool in the living room. Using a set of  cube shelves to hold things and using the homemade school table my husband built for us. It worked great until we sort of out grew everything. Before So here are about the same shots of each angle as above on the "mostly" finished room. And now here are the many different options for the new school room. ( I made all the changes, took photo's and put everything back in place in under 10 minutes, so it's not time consuming at all!). First up is just using the small science center table. This is great when they just need a small table to do some writing on, or just want to pull out the microscope and look at a slide and then put it away. Also nice if they want to do some drawing/art work while I'm using the big kitchen table and we don't want to pull out the big table. Then the small table can disappear into the background again when they are done or what to start a lar...

The two girls and I were up early this morning and heading to the coast! Hatfield Marine science center had their homeschool day today and it sounded like it would be fun! We drove a while then hopped out of the car in Depot Bay, Oregon to appreciate the beautiful fall morning at the coast! We checked out the waves a bit then headed on to our destination. We got split into three different groups, and we were off to do some science! First stop was Denizens of the Deep...The kids learned all about some of the different adaptations fish had in the deep sea and then got to make their own "deep sea fish".  I need to try and get a better picture of Kaitlyn's under a black light, but Arianna's showed up pretty well! You notice the Lure it uses to attract it's food, the lights around it's eyes to help it see better and of course all the pretty bio-luminescent defense and alarm system (you know to attract a larger prey item than the one tha...

It's always nice to hear about things that other people do that you might be able to incorporate into your schooling as well. One of the things we've done and really have a lot of fun with is a group we started for local homeschoolers. We meet up every couple of weeks and do a fun "country club" where we get to learn about different countries. Each child gets to pick a country to present to the group (if the child is young or shy the parent gets to help out). Each meeting the kids talk about the country, have an activity and/or a food to try from that country. The kids have a lot of fun with it, and learn a lot. So far they have learned to write their names in Chinese, painted fish for France's "fish day", celebrated Dutch "Kings Day", learned about Israel  and then there is pinata day! So the floor got cleared and set up for the activity... The kids were a bit "ick, this is messy!" (I used to love this stuff, so I'...