Back-to-School: 5 days of healthy snack ideas

**  Repost from the archives

Another thing that can be challenging about homeschooling is the amount of food consumed by children who are home all day.  

Children are just hungry.  

My boys seems to be hungry ALL the time!!  

The girls not as much.  

But it goes without saying that when they are home as opposed to away from home (i.e. a school) they are consuming more of your grocery budget!!  One frustrating tendency that my children have is eating hardly anything at breakfast and then finding themselves "STARVIN'" about 2 hours before lunchtime.  Then commences the constant grazing and rummaging through the kitchen,

 spoiling and plundering all my meal supplies for the week!!  

So, in addition to meal plans, I have found I need to have a "PLAN OF A-SNACK" as well!!

Additionally, for children with ADHD, when hunger kicks in it often triggers angry emotional outbursts and annoying behavior.  So keeping those hunger pangs in check is another key to a more peaceful school day!!

I like to have a morning snack and an afternoon snack planned.  You'll usually see us taking a break and refueling around 10:30 am and 3:00 pm.  Here are a few ideas that work really well for us!!  I'm still sticking to a list of things that are not a part of our diet anymore including high fructose corn syrup, MSG, artificial colors, less cow's milk and less gluten.  My official list is found here.

5 Days of Hunger-Busting Snacks

Monday:  "Power Balls"

In a blender, coarsely chop: 

1 cup raw sunflower seeds

1/4 cup raisins

Mix with:

1 T. oat bran

1 - 16 oz jar crunchy or creamy peanut butter

1 T. apple juice concentrate

Mix with hands.  This will be sticky.  I have chopped a little more of the seeds and raisins together and added it to the mix so it was easier to roll into balls.

Roll in unsweetened shredded coconut.

Store in refrigerator.

Makes 3 dozen

** You can add in carob chips or whole raisins too!!

Tuesday:  Apple "Cupcakes"

These are so simple to make:
Half an apple crosswise and scoop or cut out the middle with the core.
"Frost" it with peanut butter or cream cheese (that has been mixed with a little sugar).
Sprinkle on any fun topping you like:
Raisins
Cereal
Nuts

Wednesday:  Fresh veggies and hummus dip

Hummus Dip

Drain a 15 oz. can of chickpeas reserving 1/4 cup of the liquid.
Toss the chickpeas into the blender.
Add 1 clove of garlic (I sometimes use two as we love garlic!!),
1 tsp. cumin,
splash of lemon juice,
dash of salt,
and the reserved 1/4 cup of liquid.
Blend together until very smooth.
DELISH!!!
Also, lovely when served with Tortilla Strips

**I do have to be honest and say that not all my children are crazy about this one.
If they like the hummus, they prefer it with the tortilla strips that I buy from Costco (gluten free).
But we're working on eating more veggies, and I firmly believe that the more a child is exposed to certain veggies, they will eventually learn to enjoy them.  You could even slather some peanut butter on that celery too.  The pretty the presentation, the more excited they are also!!!

Thursday:  Mini Clementine Oranges

"Very-Berry Smoothies"

(I hope you can tell this is a picture I copied from somewhere on the web.
But this is exactly what mine would look like!!)

In a blender,
pour 3-4 cups of milk (I use skim, cow but you could use soy or almond or goat, etc.)
1 cup frozen strawberries
Handful of frozen blueberries (you could also substitute frozen bananas too!!)
Couple tablespoons of honey or "splenda" if you prefer
Scoop of ground flaxseed

Blend it all on high until smoothie like consistency.  I like ours really thick, so I may add more frozen berries if too thin.

Friday:  Popcorn  (Fresh popped or microwave)

Making popcorn on the stove is so much fun!!

It's a great fall/winter treat too!!

And.....gluten free!!

Here is a simple way to do that!

Back-to-school: Making the first day fun!!

I've always tried to make the first day back to full time homeschooling special.

I think it's important that we celebrate the freedom we have to start when we want, and do the subjects we want, and keep the schedule we want, and do things a little out of the ordinary as we want!

And it's fun to make a big deal out of the first day!!

This year, I planned much of the same things as I have in the past.

Usually, I try to plan a field trip on that first day to give everything an exciting kick-off, but I just didn't want to figure that out this year.

To get an idea of other things we've done on the first day back, check here and here.

Our schedule is changing a little bit, for which I'm terribly excited, so it meant I would've had to go alone with all my children, and that is usually very stressful for me.

So today we started with a newer tradition of taking pictures......

 

.....followed by a fun Back-to-School Breakfast......

 (Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins)

(Watermelon cut into shapes)

Later......we had a little Bible lesson.........

........got everyone started on their brand new Math books and video lessons......

and eventually worked on our traditional End-of-Summer Collage......

an art project that we'll finish later this week and add to our growing collection of placemats.

We capped off the day with an hour of P.E..........

I certainly don't take for granted the privilege I have of homeschooling my children!!

Grateful.

Back-to-school: Preparing my heart for homeschooling

School starts for us on Monday.
I've spent the last couple weeks getting ready for this.
Meal plans, baking, charts, curriculum orders, bookshelf purging, cleaning out.
I'm also taking time this year to really prepare my heart for our 11 th year of homeschool.
This isn't an easy road.....often one I would like a detour from.
But I feel it's what the Lord has for us again this year.
So I'm pulling from the archives a post I wrote a couple years ago about what a homeschooling home REALLY looks like.
It's good for me to remember to have realistic goals and visions for our year!

Since beginning our homeschooling journey 8 years ago, I've learned a thing or two.

I am by no mean a "know-it-all," but I've been around the block a time or two, and made dozens.....no.....hundreds of mistakes.

I think that one of my biggest mistakes was thinking that you can manage teaching several different ages and learning abilities, all the core subjects all at the same time with 2 pre-schoolers stealthily snooping around, while preparing 3 meals a day, cleaning up after said pre-schoolers, keeping the laundry neatly folded and the house neat-as-a-pin, and participating in a myriade of outside sports teams, church activities, homeschool "co-op" groups, music lessons, and remain smiling and completely peaceful and sane all at the same time!!

Let me blow the lid off this cover-up right now.

Let me give you a peek at the dirty laundry laying around in nearly every homeschoolers home.

Let me let you in on the big, dark secrets.

It ain't happenin'!!

If you are considering homeschooling

or if you have just begun homeschooling and you handled the first year okay,

but you're adding more children as the years go by and you're starting to feel overwhelmed,

won't you allow me to put your mind at ease.

Because when you are homeschooling multiple children (with a new baby or toddler or two):

1.  You have to adjust your priorities to what's realistic,

and accept what you're really capable of.

2.  You will always have dirty dishes in the sink.

3.  You will have a difficult time keeping on top of the laundry.

(Unless you can afford to bring in an extra person to handle this for you)

It takes a herculean effort to figure out the best strategy for YOU to handle your family's laundry efficiently with the limited time you have during schooling days. 

With a large family that produces several loads a day this is particularly challenging.
If you'd like to take a look at the system I've come up to tackle my own laundry challenges,
just click here.

4.  The pre-schoolers will make messes (that probably won't get cleaned up right away)

and there will be days when you cave to letting them watch more PBS or videos than they should.

5.   Not every homeschooling family wakes their children up at 6:00 am to start lessons, happy and smiling,

hair combed, and dressed at the kitchen table by 7:00 am.

6.  Your bathrooms probably won't be as clean as they would be if you were cleaning them all the time,

but since you are letting your older children learn these skills,

they won't be as thorough as adults yet.

7.  You will be late to nearly everything you leave the house for.

Especially if you have more than 5 children or a newborn in the house.

8.  Money will always be an issue.

No, the lack of money will always be an issue.

Especially in large families.

Because usually if you're homeschooling, that means you're only bringing in one, full-time income.

So you learn how to live large on way less.

You get your priorities straight really quick, and you figure out you don't need nearly

any of the stuff that you think you really do.

And the stuff you really do need, the Lord takes care of.

9.  Unlike teachers in a school (of any kind) you probably won't have an "aide" to make copies for you,
and cut out visuals for bulletin boards.  Nor will you have a cafeteria to send the children to where there
are lunch monitors who help your children open their juice boxes and cooks who have the meals already prepared, giving you a quiet lunch break by yourself.  So being organized and having meals planned (and even prepared in advance) is a huge plus.  It takes a couple weeks or so to figure out the best plan for your family, but having a meal plan is one of your most critical tools!!

10.  Unlike teachers in a school, you are also probably using a room that doubles as a kitchen, or laundry folding area, or any other number of rooms that are busy and full of household items not normally
found in a schoolroom.  It has taken me awhile to figure out that doing schoolwork in the same area in which you LIVE means things will get messy and your house won't look like the homes where children are not there.
No matter how long you've been training them and how many chore charts you have tried.

11.  I (ME, Mom) am the one who has had to learn the very most about what's really important.  What really matters, and that letting go of the other stuff (of course, to within healthy, safe, LEGAL limits) is what is the hardest for the homeschooling mom.  So what, if there is still bits of grass and papers on the floor after bedtime.  So what if the laundry is still piled up the next day.  So what, if there is yet another wall colored on with marker, crayon, pencil, or pen (GRRRRRR!!).  So what if the kitchen floor hasn't been swept in a week because we're still looking for it from when a child was using it outside to knock something out of a tree?
What about the smirk on the face of your ADHD daughter when she realizes that she DOES know how to figure out the additive and multiplicative inverses of fractional problems?
Or the smile of joy on the face of your anxiety riddled son who has begun reading from his Bible OUT LOUD
even though he's worried he'll make a mistake and be laughed at?
Or the great fun you had with your daughter as she realizes she is beating the clock
during timed math flashcards!!
Nobody sees the TIME you've invested into the growth of these children, but they often notice what isn't done around the house.

It isn't about how the house looks, but what do my children remember about their life at home?
Did I make them daily feel like an inconvenience to me?
Did they feel like they were in the way all the time, and the next thing on my list was more important than listening to them or sitting with them for a minute?
Did I see them as more important than the never-ending little chores that pull at me to be done?
Do they see me practice what I say?

Doing things for them (or for the sake of the house) isn't the same as being WITH them.

So you'll have to excuse the way my house looks.
No, it does not look like the cover of  "Good Housekeeping."
But I'm spending time teaching my children,
teaching them how to love.
How to love each other.
How to love the Lord.
How to love their parents.
How to love their friends.
How to love learning.
How to love who God created them as with all their individual struggles and weaknesses.
How to love the family God put them in.
How to love the Word of God.

12.  Homeschooling is not always the joyous, fun experience often advertised by retired homeschoolers.
Many days I don't like it at all.
Many days are ugly and tedious,
and messy and frustrating,
and the routine can be mind-numbing.

But in my surrender to what the Lord is doing in my home,
I'm learning that when I'm broken and crushed,
 I'm learning how to be more like Christ.
Our Mighty Elohim breaks us so that He can flow through us more fully.

The big secret?
That the teacher is the one learning the most.

Why do we homeschool?

What an amazing summer this has been!
June was characterized by 4 different week-long Vacation Bible Schools, and swimming!
July saw a trip to Philadelphia, summer camps, LICE (yikes!), and swimming!
August has been slower, very relaxed and full of.....swimming!

As the summer months wind down, I'm contemplating beginning our 11th year of homeschooling.
Let me just say.....homeschooling is NOT for the faint of heart.
It is NOT days full of quiet children just sitting around the fire place listening to their Mama read to them.
Just clear those romantic....unrealistic...visions out of your head!
It's plain 'ol hard work.
It's messy.
It's stressful.
So why would our family choose this?
Because this is what the Lord has called and led us to.

Here is a reposting of my explanation from a couple year's ago:

This is a fun question because it always stirs up passionate conversation. There are many reasons why parents homeschool...ranging from conviction to lack of options. I'm going to share
with you the reasons why OUR FAMILY homeschools, which may not be the reasons another
family would necessarily homeschool.
Homeschooling is not for the faint of heart. Nor is it always the easiest way to educate your children. If you're passionate about your childrens' educations, you've taken the first step. On the other hand, it is not for those who have a
tendency toward laziness. It should be a very personal decision made between Mom, Dad, and the Lord.

Our journey to homeschooling began six years ago, when our oldest child was ready to start school.
I knew in my heart that I did not ever want my children to go to public schools. I do not have a problem with parents who do put their children in public schools, and I'm not necessarily "Anti-Public Schools". I just know for me, and my family, it is not the right decision.

So then, if the public schools were out of the question, our next option was a Christian school.
I wanted to find a school that, first of all, held to the same faith and values that our family has.

I was also looking for something that would fit inside my husband's salary. At the time, he was on staff at our very small church, so his salary was not extravagant, to say the least. I quickly became discouraged when I realized there were not many Christian schools in our area of like faith and practice. But what sealed it for us, was the cost. We simply could not afford it.
So, now what was I going to do. I had thought about homeschooling, but really did not know where to begin. I have a Bachelor's degree, but it certainly wasn't in education.
So I began reading some books, talking to people, researching the requirements for this in the state of Texas, and discovered that I could indeed do this.
But then once the decision was made, the grueling process of finding the right curriculum began. I was a bit overwhelmed as I looked through the internet and homeschool stores. But once I learned how my child enjoys learning and how I enjoy teaching, it made the process easier to find the right one. Once that decision was made, I was very excited about it. For the first few years everything went fine and we had so much fun. As we've added more children to our little schoolhouse, and discovered some learning issues, it has gotten more challenging.

So the question arises,
"If I had the option of sending my children to a Christian school, would I??"
I don't think so.

In this journey, I've traveled from the point of homeschooling because my options are limited to homeschooling because this is best for our family and what the Lord has designed for us.
I'm so glad I listened to the Lord's leading and didn't push for something that maybe I really just wanted.
This school year has been a revealing one to us. It has become crystal clear that two of our children have some learning challenges. On top of that, our second child was diagnosed with Type I Diabetes. The care for this disease is very complicated and time consuming and we've heard stories of schools where the staff know nothing about this, and are unwilling to care for a diabetic child properly.
The Lord knew this. He knew way back in 2002 what was coming to us and what would work best for us. I'm so glad I listened!
The bottom line is we followed what the Lord was saying to us!! We did our research, we talked to people, we looked to God's Word for direction, and did what we felt He wanted and not someone else.

In Deuteronomy 6: 5-7 it says, "And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up."
It seems pretty clear to me that the Lord asks us to be diligent about teaching our children HIS principles, HIS character, and HIS worldview every opportunity we have. I want to have as many opportunities that I can get to influence my children about the Lord and to teach them to love and serve Him.

Proverbs 22:6 says, "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it."
I firmly believe that it is the primary responsibility of the parent to train their children
in the ways of the Lord......not the church youth group, not Sunday School, not the teachers
at a Christian School.
If you want to have the heart of your child, if you want to prevent rebellion in your child, you MUST have a relationship with your child. To have a healthy relationship with your child, you have to spend time with them.
Is that something that I always enjoy? Not always. Sometimes they are grouchy or belligerent,
but they still need to know that I love them....even when they are not fun to be around.
It just made sense to me that to produce the type of relationship that I wanted
with my child,
I needed to be around them.....and be responsible for the majority of what they learn about life. I don't want them to be "sheltered" or "naive", but I do want them to learn wisdom and character, and to see things from their Designer's point of view.....to help them discover their true purpose in life.

Our journey is certainly not over and will definitely take some twists and turns here soon, but it's so exciting to follow the Lord's direction for your family and to see Him do miracles in the middle of it all.
It is for these reasons that we feel homeschooling is the BEST option for our family.

Summer Fun: Homemade Super Bubbles!!

Who doesn't love bubbles?

I know, I know.....you can buy it pretty cheap at your favorite superstore.......

but how sad when your toddler bends over to pick up their bubble wand

and dumps their little bottle of bubbles all over the porch.

Fun over.

With this recipe.....you can make a gallon of your own for a full afternoon of fun!!

And if it dumps.....oh well.....we'll just make some more!!

I followed the tutorial found here.

Summer Fun: Homemade Play-Dough!

Another idea I've been wanting to try since a friend of mine made some big batches this last winter and shared with us......is a recipe for homemade play dough!

My children will play with this for hours.

Much longer than anything else they own......which is perfect for those piping hot summer afternoons that are just too hot to play outside in, and that Texas is famous for!!
I used the tutorial found here.
I loved how this recipe turned out, and couldn't stop making it!
It turned out perfect, and I think I like it even better than store-bought play-doh!
Terrific to keep on hand for pre-schooler activities while older siblings are being homeschooled!

And just to keep in the spirit of this new found favorite.....
I was delighted to find this in my email the other day!!

Happy birthday, Grandma!!

The first weekend in August is my mother-in-law's birthday and we always enjoy

making her feel loved and appreciated on her special day!

 Dreamsicle Cake