Feral Kids Academy

Hello Internet,

It has been a little over a year since we last posted anything on Feral Kids Academy, so I thought it would be appropriate to write an update and explain where we’ve been, what we have been doing, and where we are going from here. If you are new to this website, my name is Steven, and I’ve been married to Jennifer for about three years now. We are a homeschooling family of 5, with three adopted children, and we all live on the Oregon Coast.

When we first started this site, we were using an eclectic, customized curriculum, which we are still using today, albeit with some modifications. You can check out this original post to get more background on us and how everything got started.

When I posted last, we were transitioning from the valley to the coast and were living in a 29-foot travel trailer, tying up loose ends. Here are the updates thus far on those:

1. We finished the remodel of Jennifer’s house and put it on the market, and were able to find a buyer back in August 2024. We were able to use the profit from it to pay off our outstanding debts.
   
2. We made the decision not to start remodeling Steven’s house for our adult daughter, but instead, through a series of serendipitous events, we were led to relocate to a neighboring town fifteen minutes south of us, and we purchased a large commercial building and a three-bedroom house in the center of town. This was purchased for multiple reasons. First, we thought Steven’s mother would be living with us full time (she moved in, May 2024). But she has subsequently moved to Eugene to an assisted living facility. Second, we were being led to procure storefront office space for the writing and teaching ministry that we feel God is convicting us to pursue. Third, we both (actually all of us including the 3 kids) are very active and excitedly pursuing the adoption of more children, specifically a sibling set (there have been several sets of 5 that have crossed our path lately that we have been praying for), and this would not be possible if we only had the houseboats to live in. The property in the middle of town, we have coined “The Garden” (the commercial building) and “Sanctuary” (the house). The Sanctuary will primarily be where our adult daughter lives, and we’ve also decided to turn the living room into a game room for the kids. As a result of these changes, we have just put Steven’s house up for sale and hope to get enough money from it to pay for the bulk of the remodeling we need to do on the other two buildings.
   
3. Our pontoon houseboats: We have decided that living year-round on houseboats with no other recourse or place to go is not practical with the three children we have, nor does it align with our desire to adopt more children in the future. Because of this, we have put the houseboat project on hold temporarily, moving from a two-year plan to a five-year or more plan. We are currently attempting to vacation at the houseboat property this month (August) and hope to get a better feel of the property during this time as well as let the kids roam free and turn completely feral for a while. Plus, Jennifer and I (and our kids) have not had an actual family vacation in the three years we’ve been married, so we have closed our calendar for the entire month of August and plan to do nothing except for relax in hammocks, read lots of books, spend quality time with the kids around the fire, and do a lot of tubing in the boat, fishing, and hiking and kayaking in the lazy dog days of summer. We did procure a 46-foot pontoon boat (just the pontoons and deck frame – I posted about this here). This has hit a challenge. When we were ready to have the towing company deliver the boat to our new property so we could do some needed repairs on the boat, it was initially going to cost $850 to move it the 10 miles to the neighboring town from its current location. They have now said, after actually looking at it for the first time (we are not sure why they didn’t do their due diligence beforehand), that they cannot move it on its current trailer but will need to use a semi-truck and crane to transport it. This will now cost us $4000. We hope to get it moved in September 2025.
   
4. We have continued and expanded our dream of starting and maintaining a large library. First, it was going to be on the boats, which we still intend to do, but now we are incorporating this idea into a large private library in our commercial building, “The Garden.” This is partly the reason for the name, as we are envisioning the library in the largest part of the structure, with its high ceilings and open space, where we can have multiple rows of bookshelves, chess tables, study tables, reading chairs, etc. We will have stained glass (simulated) in the western wall windows that are up near the ceiling. These are very large windows (4×6) and will hopefully be light tapestries of creation and biblical accounts, casting fascinating and inspiring light displays from the setting sun in the evening. We intend to have a large Garden of Eden mural painted on the southern wall in the peak triangle. In the middle of this “garden” will be a massive tree installation that hosts a circular staircase of “books” (actual bookshelves in the center and also under each step, that ends at the top of the building in a reading nest where we will have a chair to read from. We also hope to have the library decorated with vegetation, so it will simulate a garden inside, mixed into the fora of the library itself. We hope to have a water feature of a creek flowing through the facility. We have started collecting our books from second-hand stores and informal donations. We currently have 2000+ volumes of fiction, non-fiction, and kids’ books. We also have 5000+ Logos books (digital books in our Logos Bible Software library), and Steven’s collection of ebooks that is at about 100K volumes (this will be in a private online and hard drive backup repository that will be accessible via digital download and online reading. We hope that this will be streamlined in the next few years so that all titles can be easily accessed via our devices or through our Kindle apps. This private library will primarily be utilized by our family, including Steven and Jennifer in our writing and teaching ministry, and the kids in their homeschooling projects. Steven is also trained as a philosopher and theologian, has worked in academia in the past, and currently pursues independent research in Christian Philosophy, Biblical Philosophy, and Philosophical Theology. We are all interested in science, mathematics, theology, the Bible, philosophy, history, and how-to, especially wilderness survival. The kids like to do crafts, art, and love Contemporary Christian Music, and have various individual interests they are encouraged to pursue during school time.
   
5. Homeschool: Our current homeschooling curriculum and process are designed around several fundamental ideas. First, we believe very strongly in the “theory” of the Robinson Curriculum Method of Learning. This method entails a strong emphasis on reading for comprehension and learning. Because of this, we operate from a custom cultivated Reading List that the kids pick from for reading, and so at least complete an hour of quiet reading each day of the week (usually five to six days each week). Our ultimate aim is to produce self-directed learners who are in their later teen years directing their own education, picking their subjects, and informing us about their results via this website. We desire to produce independent, critical, rational, reasoning thinkers who can read, speak, and communicate through art and scientific inquiry. We desire to produce adults who are intimately familiar with and professionally trained in the Bible, theology, and philosophy, and who are not easily swayed by the doctrines of men or the deceptions of this age or the ages to come. I will post a separate article outlining in detail their school schedule and subjects shortly, but for now, here are some current interests the kids are pursuing:

Skye: She is engaged in becoming proficient at reading for comprehension and fluency. Her other interests and passions are cooking, taking care of younger children, Jiu-Jitsu, history, drawing, art, and Japanese calligraphy. She is also pursuing piano lessons, enjoys looking at art online, and researching and exploring the many facets of Christian Contemporary Music artists.

Jeremiah: He is still fascinated with how things work, loves building and constructing projects. Whenever we get a new piece of equipment or furniture, he is the one to put it together for us. He likes reading outdoor adventure books, has read The Hobbit, and several other books on the reading list. His interest in ninjas has seemed to wane over the last year, and he now seems more interested in aliens, and his favorite movies are from the Predator franchise. He is also taking Jiu-Jitsu lessons, piano lessons, and was taking violin for a short time last year. We were able to purchase a drum set for him this year, and we have a home study program on YouTube that he will be using to learn as part of his schooling each day this year. His interest in classical music has been supplanted to some extent by CCM after we went to a concert in Eugene last year for Toby Mac, Zach Williams, and Mercy Me; we will be going this fall to see Zach Williams, Ben Fuller, and Brandon Lake. We all (except for Jennifer) would like to one day see Skillet in concert.

Elly: She is still a dynamo in body and soul. She is now four years old, talking quite a lot, and has a natural love for learning. She is still hard at work terrorizing her older siblings and will, indeed, rule us all one day. This year will be her first “official” school year. Jennifer will be working with her individually for several sessions each day, learning to read, do basic mathematics, and other learning activities. She watches a lot of television, but mostly learning programming.

2025-2026 School Year:

1. Our focus this year, starting in September 2025 and running until August 2026, will be on establishing a consistent, focused, and priority schedule driven school week for the entire school year. We want to anchor our daily activities on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday on academic pursuits, with us staying home those days and having limited distractions. This year, our stated goal is to be doing less other stuff (such as driving around the countryside) and focus on our children and their education, rather than this being an afterthought or them having to do the bulk of their schoolwork from the backseat of the car.
   
2. We hope to allocate Mondays and Fridays to non-academic or hands-on activities, while school-related related are not necessarily academically focused. This would include hiking, other outdoor activities, and special trips.
   
3. We are also focusing on using a program called Touch Typing, Read and Spell. We have shifted to this program because it is geared for learning disabilities, and focuses on reading and comprehension while they learn to touch type. It has a very robust primary curriculum while also allowing us to import any text we like, so they can type and hear what they are reading about in other subjects, such as the Bible, history, science, etc.
   
4. We will also be continuing with our core Khan Academy classes in Mathematics, Science, Language Arts, and History.
   
5. We will also, of course, be continuing and refocusing our efforts on quality and quantity time spent quietly reading as well as out loud reading as needed from our Book List.
   
6. Over the last three years, the children have learned how to use a laptop computer, use email, and are somewhat familiar with word-processing and navigating the basic structures of the internet (Google search, AI searching, etc). This year, we are hoping to focus on writing articles, essays, and book reports, and instead of sending me an email each day summarizing their learning tasks for the day, they will be formulating these as daily accounts and posting them to this website. This will expose them to learning how blogs and websites work, what it means to use a digital portfolio for their education, and how to effectively communicate more through the written word. Both of us are now subscribed to the site, so we will receive via email notification every post they make, allowing us quick and efficient monitoring of their daily progress.
   
7. We would also like to incorporate a simple body-weight exercise program that we would do five days a week with the kids. We need something that will keep us active, especially during the winter months when it is rainy outside, and also will stimulate their brain so they can avoid brain fog during their academic studies each day.
   

That’s about it. We are off from school for August, but we should be back at the beginning of September, and you should see a flurry of activity here on the site as the kids learn how to maneuver around WordPress and begin posting summaries of their learning activities each day. Subscribe to be alerted to any new activity on our site and to stay up-to-date with what we are doing for our schooling and life.