Back-to-school: 5 days of crock-pot lunches

In addition to having an artillery of breakfast ideas, it's almost more important to have your lunch all ready to go at the time appointed when you are homeschooling.  I've found it's so hard for me to get my head out of the clouds of the Civil War or whatever it is we've been studying, to preparing 8 meals in a kitchen already a little disheveled by the morning's activities.

I was inspired by this idea over here, so please know that the crock-pot lunch thing is not original with me.
But I have found that using a crock-pot is a BRILLIANT way to have hot, healthy meals ready to go with little preparation!!  These are our favorites!!

Monday:  Spaghetti

Great with salad or green beans
I've been using gluten-free pasta and it's really delicious!!

Tuesday:  Taco Soup

Serve with shredded cheese, frito corn chips, sour cream

Wednesday:  Macaroni and Cheese

I've tried two different crock-pot recipes for this so far, with one more to go.
Here is our favorite so far.

Thursday:  Chicken and Rice Soup

I haven't actually tried THIS recipe yet, but this will be the next one I do try.
I have another recipe that actually calls for canned veggies and it's a taste sensation!!

Friday:  Sloppy Joes
Serve with baked beans or your favorite chips along with some fruit.
Although my children are not sloppy joe fans, I really like them.
I have a recipe for the crock-pot that we haven't fallen in love with, so the above recipe is next for us to try.  




If you LOVE your crock-pot, then you've just GOT to check out this website!!!
A different recipe for every day of the year and mostly
gluten-free too!!!

Back to school: 5 days of quick, healthy breakfasts

One thing that has taken me several years to figure out is that when homeschooling,

you absolutely cannot wait until the moment a meal needs to be prepared to figure out what you're preparing.

I have learned that making a meal schedule (a minimum of a week's worth of meals, preferably a month's)

is an invaluable tool to keeping things less stressed and chaotic.

Nothing is worse than having 5 or more children whining they're hungry,

scavenging through the refrigerator,

a husband about to walk through the door after a long day's work,

and you're out of certain ingredients and having nothing quick in the freezer to grab and heat up.

So I have figured out what my children will actually put in their mouths that is good for them,

and come up with 7 breakfasts that we rotate through the week.

Some days we have a repeat of something earlier in the week.

Usually on Saturday morning, I'm frying up my pancakes for that day and putting a couple dozen more in the freezer for later in the week.

The same with muffins for Sunday morning.

Making extras of something and stashing it in the freezer for later has become one of my secret weapons

(although I know TONS of Mom's who already do this.....so it's technically NOT a secret)!!

If you click on the particular breakfast item that is underlined, it will take you to the recipe that I use.

I've mentioned before how I've spent a lot of time overhauling the foods we eat,

so I'm trying to find more ways to add more protein at every breakfast,

less sugar (especially high fructose corn syrup), 

and eventually even less gluten (more on that later!!).

Here's what I've come up with that works nicely for our family:

Monday:  Scrambled Eggs with Toast.

                Sunshine Smoothie

(skim milk, frozen strawberries and/or banana, ground flax, honey all processed in the blender)

Tuesday: Whole Wheat Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins, Milk

Wednesday:  Whole Wheat Pancakes with Turkey Sausage

Thursday:  Cereal and Milk (Honey-Nut Cheerios at our house)

                  Fruit

Friday:  Oatmeal

Back-to-school: Our schedule this year

When I was in college and pursuing a degree in Home Economics (which I'm pretty sure is obsolete anymore), one of the courses I took was entitled "Personal and Home Management."  Loved the course, but the detailed homework was a bit mind-numbing.  In an effort to get a picture of how much time we waste every day, we were required to chart minute-by-minute what we did through-out our day.

 I learned several things from this:
 1.  I have WAAAAAY more time on my hands than I think I do, 

2.  I could fill in some of that wasted time with something profitable, and 

3.  It helped me pinpoint where in my day I had extra time that I didn't think I had.

I started out homeschooling this way.  I made a schedule (albeit NOT minute-by-minute), and did pretty good to stick by it.  But over time, it got too complicated, and I started feeling almost compelled to stay within the confines of this schedule lest I stray due to something unforeseen (usually by the toddler) and I was running the rest of the day to keep up.  I highly recommend coming up with something on paper that you can post in your home somewhere to help keep on track and to help you figure out where you can fit in the mirade of things you need to do everyday.

But over time, my daily schedule has evolved somewhat.  Now, instead of putting everything down on paper at a specific time, I split up my day into 3 parts:

Morning activity  8:00 am - 12:30 pm

Afternoon activity 1:00 pm - 5:30 pm

Evening activity 6:00 pm - 10:00 pm

I then make a list of all the school subjects we have to cover for the day, meal times, clean up times, and household responsibilities that need to be completed each day.
Then, I can decided in what part of the day each thing will fit, without having to have it done right at
a specific moment.  I have tried that many times, but after getting thrown off by the unexpected EVERY day,
I got tired of either getting frustrated and angry or thrown off the track completely without hope of ever recovering.
It's much more realistic and relaxing to know when something will get done, even if it's later than I would really like, and not having the pressure that the schedule is so tight we'll never fit in something we missed.

Here is what our daily schedule looks like most days:

I have this strategically posted in the kitchen area, so everyone is not surprised at what is happening next.

After we have family dinner, each of the children take care of their "cleaning chore."
I like to refer to it as an "opportunity for helping with a servant's heart."
Super easy.
Each child is responsible for a room (or couple of rooms) in the house each night.
I wrote their names on a piece of sticky note paper, and each Sunday I will
rotate who does what so they all learn how to properly clean each area of the house.
We even get the toddlers involved too.
They especially are excited to be helpers too!!
The rotation schedule is great for the older ones too because if they complain about a
certain area being too "hard" or time-consuming, they know it will only last until Sunday.

This also is strategically posted in the kitchen area right next to our "daily schedule."

We are entering our 3rd week of following this routine, and it has taken every bit of the last two weeks
to get everybody used to this.  We've been patiently walking the family through the daily schedule and teaching the younger ones how to do each of the household responsibilities, and we're slowly seeing some good results.
The hardest part of setting up any routine though is CONSISTENCY.
It takes discipline and perseverance on my part as the mom not to slack off and skip something.
If I do, it's like we take 3 steps backwards!!
But slow and steady wins the race!!
This race called life.
Life in my shoes.

Back to school: Fun, first day back activities and traditions

Two weeks ago (YIKES that was fast!), August 31 was our official "first day back to school."
I spent nearly the entire week before scurrying around trying to get lesson plans together,
and a planner organized and my thoughts together
as how to best structure our year this year.
I'm looking forward to all the "fun" things I want to do,
but am feeling more guarded this year since the last few years started out on good
notes, but ended up with lots of rough, rough days.
Even though this will be our 8th year of homeschooling,
I often feel like I have no idea what I'm doing and find
myself constantly questioning whether we're doing enough of the right stuff.
Having two children with ADHD,
(the oldest, 13,  who I need to be the leader and the one the others look up to,
and my oldest son who is 8 this year)
makes for constant frustrations with lack of attention,
disruptions,
needs for constant movement of some kind,
impulsive reactions to siblings,
learning difficulties,
and a mirade of other things.

So I pray, pray, pray for the Holy Spirit to do a mighty work
in my children's lives as we learn together,
as well as for me to have the patience, and kindness
that is expected of all teachers, and for persevering creativity
to have to keep changing things up to find solutions to the new problems for that day.

For the first day of school, I really want to start on an excited foot.
So I do not jump right in to heavy lessons and curriculum material.
The first day is simply "orientation."
I walk them through our daily schedule which I have posted on the wall,
and then we talk about some of the topics we will be studying in each subject
this year.
We cleaned out their school bins which had gotten filled in with Sunday school papers,
and library books, and miscellaneous junk from the summer.
I handed out brand, spankin' new pencils, and erasers, and pencil sharpeners, and folders.

We filled out a fun little "fact" sheet about themselves on this first day,
and we'll compare it to next year and the years following.
This year I have a 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 7th grader.

After some of these preliminary things were done,
we worked on our traditional:
Summer Memories Placemats
(click on the above underlined words for a link to instructions)


In the past, I discovered that when you send off 4 or 5 children to Vacation Bible School,
you end up with multiples of everything.
I began wondering what to do with all this stuff,
and it occured to me it might be fun to make a collage of sorts of summer memories
that the children could use as visuals in presenting an oral report of their summer activities to each other.
So we keep all the flyers and papers from all the VBS they attend, along with any other activity they
might participate in throughout the summer.
Then we pull it all out on the first day of school,
and have so much fun remembering all we did.

Well, that has evolved into making placemats.
Instead, of cutting and gluing all these objects onto a piece of poster board we'd never use again,
I gave the children each a giant size piece of construction paper and they fill up on both sides.
Then I take it to our local school supply store where they have this giant laminating machine.
We end up with 4 new placements this year, and it's so fun to pull out the ones from last year
to see how much they each have grown!!

After our placemats were finished,
we celebrated with a special "Back-to-School" themed lunch.


Back-to-school Lunch Menu:

Alphabet Soup

Tuna Turnovers (since Tuna travel in "schools")

Apple Slices

Alphabet Cupcakes

Super easy, lots of fun, the children loved it.

These cupcakes were so simple to whip up, I think you can see from the picture

we just stuck some self-adhesive glitter letters to the end of a popsicle stick
and stuck it into the popsicles.
Now we can use these letters as helpers in teaching the two youngest to identify the alphabet!!

Back to school: What we are using this year to teach

Last year we had such good success with Math-U-See, that we are sticking with it again this year.
I love how quick and simplified the lessons are (not 4 million problems to work per page), and that the main concept taught per week is viewed on a video.  The curriculum also uses visual, hands-on manipulatives that are great for my ADHD students who need to SEE the concept to understand it.  LOVE it.

I am also going to continue using the Shurley English program for our Grammar/Writing lessons.  The approach is so unique in that you learn "jingles" for each of the parts of speech that help make memory and retention of the grammar principles so much easier.  Plus the lessons are fairly quick to do and include simple and short worksheet problems to reinforce the lesson for the day.  Highly recommend!!!

This year I'm also following a somewhat more "Charlotte Masoney" feel to our homeschool.  I printed out a Corebook to help me figure out how and where to fit everything in.  This teacher's planner gives great ideas and simple lesson plans for subjects you might not think to include (i.e. unstructured play indoors and out, habit of the week, music lesson with composer, healthy and safety, memory lists, and the difference between reading (out loud or independently) and literature (being read the classics) )

This year I'm thrilled to be going back to a teaching method I LOVE:  the unit study!!!!
We will be trying a new approach called lapbooking.  If you're unfamiliar with this, you just HAVE to check it out!!  I love hands-on stuff, and so do all my children.  It's a unique way of journaling what it is you're studying in a kind of scrapbooking way.  They work on the lapbook a little bit at a time, learn along the way, and in the end have this terrific visual that will help them remember all they learned.
Check it out:  http://www.ajourneythroughlearning.com/

This year my plans are to study the Civil War complete with field trip to the Civil War Museum near us, the history of the Great State of Texas complete with local field trips that reinforce the topics studied, and how are bodies work:
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My husband is taking over the Theology portion of our schooling, and has a 3-4 times weekly "Bible class" immediately after our evening family meal.  Since all of our children are in one place at that time, it just works for us to slide right into that after dinner is over.  Currently, he is going through a very basic Bible curriculum from BJU Press.

Finally, as a couple of really fun "extra curricular" projects, our children will be heavily involved in our Wednesday evening children's program at church called "Master Clubs."  It is similar in some ways to the Awana program, but very different in how the scriptures are taught to the children and the very tangible ways they learn to apply those scriptures to everyday life.

I also read about this recently and my artist-in-training, Lexi, is very excited about participating in this this year!!!  Check it out:  http://www.arthousecoop.com/projects/sketchbookproject

Lofty plans, I know.  Looks like fun on paper.  Will keep you posted on the reality of it all!!!

Saturdays are for: Baking and celebrating

Morning full of creating breakfast, put in the freezer, saved for later this week.

Afternoon full of celebrating a half century of staying together, ministering together,

 through

plenty and poverty,

good times and bad,

sickness and health.

Our former pastor and his wife, who have taught us so much about

the grace of God,

mercy,

forgiveness,

and supernatural provision.

True warriors of the faith.

New beginnings

We've been so busy the last few days so I haven't really had the time to sit still and post a lot here.

We started school this past Tuesday, and because I'm DETERMINED to make it even better than last year, my mind has been FULL of ideas and plans.  I am putting together a little series of posts about our schooling for this year, so please check back in the next day or so.  

One of the most challenging aspects of homeschooling 4 children with 2 young curious pre-schoolers coming up behind is accepting that I have to sacrifice some of the things I really love to do with my time and that these things aren't top priorities when looking at the big picture.  I have learned how to carve out just some quiet-alone time for myself, but even then I have to use that time wisely and that often means no time for blogging or snooping around on Facebook.  The most challenging part is making the decisions:  do I satisfy my own desires for some down time and later pay the price by having a lot of messes to clean up, or do I create ways to keep my children happily occupied and learning instead of squabbling and destroying our learning spaces?  Do I read my squirmy children some lovely children's literature, or do I read my own books?  Do I answer an email and eventually get sucked into internet surfing or do I take my children on a nature walk?  Do I  

text message my friend or do I fold the clothes stacked up on my bed?  

Those choices have to be made over and over every single day.  It can wear you down or force you to figure out how to be creative and innovative when living in a small, cramped house with lots of children!!

So stay tuned to see what we've been learning and what we've been creating!!  Here's just a sneak peek at our first day of school: