The Misfit homeschooler: Living in a secular world

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...