The Misfit homeschooler: Living in a secular world

I’ve been asked to restart the blog or add some more info, etc. and yes, it’s been a while! I’ll be updating things over the winter break and adding a bunch of information. Since I’ve been asked a lot about cool educational Christmas, Yule, etc. gifts I’m going to do an updated list of out top fun educational stuff . I’ll put that together this weekend so people can have it before Black Friday so they can take advantage of any sales that might be going on. See you all soon!

And we are doing a lot of it! We are switching charter schools this summer and it's been an interesting  process to switch from the first that pretty much let us "unschooling" for three years we were there, to the new school which wants a lot more information, and an actual "plan" for each of the kids. All three kids will be in the new school together. There are some big advantages to the new school. $2000 per child per year to help buy curriculum, memberships. outside classes/lessons, field trips, etc. (but again, a lot more reporting). So the older kids got to make a lot of fun decisions on what they wanted to do this year. I started by breaking down the year into 3 sections and filling out what classes they wanted to do after I had their list. I keep having to remind them they don't have to do "all the things" in one year but they are so excited I'm going to have to see how it goes once they actually start the classes. They'll be doing...

Here are a few things we use and love for the kids: 1) All About Reading (AAR) - we are currently using this for our dyslexic daughter, who is behind in her reading. The system is pretty easy, laid out for you and you just have to take it at your own pace. A single level may or may not last you a while depending on how well your child likes it and sticks with it. We have only used a single level at this point but will be ordering our next level up soon. We will be using it for our youngest as well so having all the levels will be nice. While I haven't used the All About Spelling system yet, we will order a level of that and see what we think. 2) Pandia Press - Carries both the History Odyssey and the REAL Science Odyssey both of which we like. History Odyssey is more of an outline and has maps, suggested reading, etc. more than an actual curriculum itself. The one down side is that the level one's do use Story of the world which is not exactly secular. The good news is they...

Last time we posted it was early February and I couldn't believe it! and Now here we are Almost done with March!! In the last few weeks we've been hiking, went camping in a yurt, found a bucket full of obsidian, checked out some lava rock, played in the snow, and signed up to change charter schools for next year...so yes it's been busy! big waterfall is from our hike at Silver falls, Snow pictures are from our camping trip to Bend, Oregon. Our first time staying in a yurt and during winter no less! The website says sleeps 8 but we barely slept 7! We visited Glass Butte, Oregon and picked up a bunch of obsidian, saw fresh signs of a bear, walked in the old mill district of Bend, and headed home. 4 days and 3 nights in Bend with friends and had a ball. Next time we might even let Dad come! The girls discovered hiking in snow might be fun and want to give snowshoeing and snowboarding a try. Dominic is looking at starting kindergarten in the f...

Hard to believe that it's already February! Over the last week I finished my training class for 4h so I can take over the photography class for the kids club. The kids 4h cooking project area cooked a valentines dinner for the kids families and served 25 people! They did a great job. The kids did the first week of Couch to 5K running program, swam laps for an hour and then played in the pool with little brother for another hour. Mom got to go on the ladies hike on Sunday (despite having kneecapped herself on the car door and limping all the way!), we did have to shorten the hike but it was really nice and today we did a mom and me kids hike! I'm going to post several photo's from the last two hikes :)

What a week! Monday was the ODFW fieldtrip to feed Elk at Jewell Meadows, then up to discover 2 waterfalls, play at Fort Stevens (since Fort Clatsop was down for the government shutdown), dinner in Tillamook, spent a night in Garibaldi and then headed home on Tuesday. Friday was Seaside Aquarium and SNOW on the way there! Ended up taking home a different route to avoid the snow and it took 4.5 hours! WOW!! With us being home and gone all week today is a clean house, catch up on stuff, and maybe a game for family game night tonight but not a long Dungeon and Dragons game. I started a Women's group for exploring the outdoors in Oregon with weekly walks (no kids!) and mom and me monday hikes for moms/kids or if you don't mind kids and want some nice easy starter hikes. The kids are all excited about the 52 hike challenge and want to make sure they get all 52 hikes in! Next week is a bit quieter thankfully, we are all pretty tired from this week!

One thing a lot of homeschooling parents talk about it the lack of "me time" or being able to just do something for themselves. When you have the kids 24/7/365 it can be hard to keep the sanity thing going. While the kids keep me busy (and I do mean busy! You can read their field trip and adventures on their blog here https://lb2dadventures.blogspot.com   ) finding me time is a priority as well. This year the kids and I have joined the 52 hike challenge which is basically a hike a week for a year.  So far we are doing pretty good. I've completed 5 while the kids have completed 3. Yes, I'm ahead of them. I'm meeting up with other women to get into the outdoors! Yes, some are homeschooling moms and yes, we've gone without the kids (and it was GREAT!). It's nice to have mom time and being able to go faster than a 4 year old pace and knowing you can go a bit farther as well. As the year goes on, I'll be doing more adult only hikes as well as those tha...

No I didn't really fall off the face of the earth. It has been a CRAZY time this fall. I've updated the kids blog a bit recently. School got started, 4H got started, Karate got started, and I got sick. The kids are currently in multiple project area's in 4H they are: cooking, dogs, vet science,marine science, leather working, archery and photography. One is doing the same classes except wasn't interested in doing the vet/marine science. They started Karate in October and have already tested in to yellow and just today tested into their orange belts. They are doing enrichment classes on Thursdays and a couple of field trips a month. of course I had to come down with "something" and now two months later after first coming down with it am still coughing, still constantly tired but trying to push thru. I have a lot to catch up on, but the kids have been doing good. When they are "entertaining themselves" they have been watching vet video's online (m...

Oh my it has been a while! Things got so busy! Omi and Opa visited, we had birthdays, fieldtrips, came down with bronchitis, had the dryer breakdown on us, school got really into session, martial arts started, 4h is getting ready to rev up and There are changes all over the place! We've been going thru all our new curriculum, and I have some great ones to share, I have some new things in the school room to share and well, I'll try to get everything added in this weekend. It's a rainy couple of days so I may as well get caught up on stuff right?! Kids blog is going to be updated as well, so if you or the kids are reading that one, new stuff posting over the weekend as well.

The majority of our new stuff arrived today so it's really time to get started in the planning stages now! We drove out to get everything, saw some friends, got to pick up some free stuff hanging out in the shelves at the charter and came home with more than I was expecting! Some of our stuff this year in pictures! Some of it looks really interesting! Can't wait to jump in and go thru everything. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending how you look at it ;) ) we have a new garage door going up tomorrow and the school room/hang out room is full of garage stuff until this weekend! So It'll be a few days before I can really go thru everything and get organized. I'll do that as soon as I can and get some reviews going for some of the stuff we used last year as well! If your trying to catch up with what the kids have been doing don't forget to check out their blog as well! Here's the link to that as well:  https://lb2dadventures.blogspot.com/

We do child led interest learning (also called unschooling in some circles) and people always seem to assume that it means we don't do planners/schedules etc.  but I've found that if we (as a family) don't have a plan than we don't have time to do anything. That's going to be especially true this year! So I've been asked a lot lately how exactly do I plan stuff and still call it "child led interests". In a nut shell this is what I do: Every year I ask the kids "what do you want to learn this year?" they give me a list of stuff they are interested in. After talking about each thing and getting me on the same page as they are, we start talking about books, curriculum etc that they can use to learn the items on their list.Then I start my "master list" for, well, everything! Basically the idea is that if I was sick or couldn't help them for awhile, someone could pick up this notebook and basically just step in if needed. I usuall...

Starting to get organized for the coming school year. I just got an email that the student planners for the kids are now available at franklin covey, so those will be ordered soon. They have 3 different levels for the kids. An elementary, a middle school and a high school planner. the older selections being more detailed while the younger ones are getting them prepared and used to keeping track of their work, etc. We used them last year with the kids (although I did drop the ball later in the year when I got crazy busy), so I need to make sure we keep up on them for the school year. It really helped my ADHD/dyslexic kiddo to see what was on her schedule each day/week/month and keep track of how she was doing on things so she could visibly see an improvement in area's like reading where she struggles. It helps with executive functioning as well, and learning to keep track of what needs to be done, what you'd like to get done and what is just "extra" and learn to priori...

Once again it looks like we will have a very busy year starting in September. I've gone thru lists of things we want for next year, the final lists will be ordered in July and should be here sometime in August so I can go thru things and see what we think. I have to admit I do hate at times ordering things without being able to really see them first hand. I'm a hold over from the non-digital book generation and still love the feeling of a book in my hands vs. a tablet. The kids have picked out some interesting things and we have (once again) changed how we will be doing things for next year. We are going back to a more hands on approach. Lots of field trips, etc. Part of it is being stir crazy after this last very (VERY) wet winter/spring. Some of the things on our list: REAL Science Odyssey - earth/space, life (both level 1) and then Bio level 2 and hoping that astronomy 2 comes out for the fall so we can get that as well. Marine science, Oceanography, geography and histo...

We finally have ordered our "field" gear for our mobile science lab. Which means starting next week we get to go exploring in the field! We are pretty excited! This last week we received our UV flashlight (blacklight) and have gone out at night to see how different life forms fluorescent and even taken a few pictures. We do need to head out to somewhere that we don't have any other light sources (in other words while it's dark in our front lawn etc. the street lights give off enough light that we don't get the full effect. I'll add a few pictures we've done as well (these were taken with just the ipad and not on the actual camera.) We've been working on an ocean unit and are currently discussing and learning about the different ocean zones, and their perspective life forms. I'll include some pictures of what we have been working on for that. We also have our chemistry stuff we are working on, currently working on atoms and then starting wi...