The Misfit homeschooler: Living in a secular world

In the last 5 and a half months we have received as much rain as we do in a year! So it's been a very wet and somewhat icky year so far. More snow than we normally get as well! So this weekend it was time to get out of the house and enjoy a little sun! We headed to the coast for a bit of a break from the normal rain. Our first stop as we left the house was the dollar store and their spring, beach toy aisle! Then it was off to the beach in our new car. Our old SUV had finally started having more issues than it was worth, so finding another new (new to us anyway) car was needed. Dominic loves the color (he calls it "fire engine red") and all the kids love the DVD player for long trips. I must say that I do have a love/hate relationship with the DVD player..It does make for very quiet rides when I need some quiet, but I also find that we don't discuss things as much in the car as we generally do (this may change however as the "newness" wears off). Arri...

Yes, our "current" top 10 things..because I'm sure there are a lot more we will discover as well. So as of today..(1/25/17) these are our favorite things!  (and not in any particular order) Do keep in mind that a few of these can cause injury so take proper precautions! Not everything will appeal to all kids, but may give you an idea of something to try! 1) OSMO  - Yes, Osmo for ipad. It's been a great investment. Currently have the "genius" pack plus coding, which is the "wonder kit" now available. We purchased it before the others were available and recently purchased the coding.  While the coding is supposed to be 5-12 my 31/2 year old enjoys playing it as well. Great for language arts, math, coding, and art.  Pizza Co. where they get to "run" their own pizza place looks interesting and they get to learn to handle money, make change, etc. We really hope to add this to our library soon! 2) Dremel 4000 set up - Dremel? Yes, Dre...

No, we did not drop off the end of the planet. In December we decided to start a new home business which is still in the works and has kept me super busy! Everyone got sick! and we had snow (which isn't a huge thing, but it was unusual for us. We very seldom get any snow and almost never before Christmas!) Yes, we did take some "snow days". Right now we have Omi and Opa visiting from The Netherlands (and sorry Omi! we didn't mean to get you sick too!) We have my SUV in the shop (for almost a week!) and even had to take a look at the possibility of having to replace the darn thing. Good News is they did end up (they think) being able to repair things, but we won't know for sure until we can pick it up! Bad news, we did hope it would last at least another 2 years but we may have to do something before that.. So yes, even as homeschoolers life happens. I am currently hoping to have our top 10 list of stuff we love and use updated and posted by next week. plus...

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'...