The Misfit homeschooler: Living in a secular world

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...

We started a new schedule today, and I knew it might be a pretty bad day. I even tried to mentally prepare myself for the day it COULD be. It started out pretty good actually. I had one child on the laptop doing coursera's "Greek and Roman Mythology" and the other kid on the desktop doing their "Paleontology: Ancient Marine Reptiles". Then we moved onto a unit study for Oceans and worked on both ocean posters. Next we got started on Lunch..and then reading. Reading is where it all went wrong..Yes, Some days make you wonder! We are talking meltdowns of Epic proportions. It took awhile before she could calm herself..and then she went to her room and took a 3 hour nap. I know it'll get better (it always does). I know a full new routine may cause some initial meltdowns. I know she gets frustrated, and then slowly starts closing down. I know it'll take a good week before she's starting to get the schedule to feel normal. I know after that she'll get...

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...