Jumpstart Your Homeschool Batteries: Menu Planning Ideas

As I write this post, The Studly Muffin is making an emergency run to grab some Chinese Take Out.

“The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men…”

Have I mentioned that I’m sick this week? Even my son (who thinks his mama is still beautiful) looked at me today and said, “Umm. You don’t look too good, Mom.” 

Bless him. 

I think my boys got tired of eating ramen and ham sandwiches. I told my husband that if he wanted any real food he was going to have to cook it himself. 

I am that wife.

Sometimes you got to do what you got to do. 

It’s ironic that this is day I write about Frugal Menu Planning. 

Here is the whole ball of wax. These people in my house want to eat. They want to eat every day. 

Several times a day.

Feeding a family on a very tight budget is a constant juggling act. And then you have all of the noise about what to feed them. You need to eat organic. Eat gluten free. Don’t eat gluten free. There is always some kind of food fad that the adherents of this particular food fad swear by. “If you don’t eat this way you are going to turn purple!” Or some such nonsense. 

 All the noise makes my head hurt. It could be that I also have the plague. But anyhoo.

I decided a long time ago that I could only do what I could do. My goal was to feed my family real, nutritious food. I have always had somewhat of a beef against processed food so this wasn’t difficult. I have also lost 4 dresses sizes over the past 2 years. I know I need to make food that is oing to help me continue my weight loss journey and get back to my “pre-fluffy me” weight.

Or thereabouts.

So here they are my 5 tips on Frugal Meal Planning. Take what you can use. I will say that I omitted some of the obvious ones. You need to cook. And when I say cook…I mean cook from scratch. The best way to save money is to cook real food yourself. And cook it good.

I know what I'm talking about. Not only have I been responsible for my own family's food, but for a time I cooked for a Daycare/preschool. I realize that I might have been a bit over qualified (my boss used to tell me I was the most qualified teacher there and I was in the kitchen!), but I loved my job and I absolutely loved my boss. I had to feed between 40-50 every day. It worried that these mamas had to send their babies off every day. The least I could do was make sure they ate good, nutritious food. I cooked real food. It can be done for a big crowd. And it certainly can be done for the small crowd.

Here are some of my thoughts. 

1.       I do my meal planning once a week. Because our budget is so tight, I base our menus on what I already have first and then I add in what I would like to fix. We live paycheck to paycheck.  There is seldom anything in my pantry that doesn’t eventually get used for something. I am a big fan of the Use What You Already Have method. If you don’t know what to do with something you have or someone has given you Google it.

These are "cabbage" rolls. Except I used swiss chard from the garden...not cabbage. My mama said it could be done. They were scrumptious. 

2.      When I first started my weight loss journey I read a good piece of advice. The book told me that I could eat the same thing for my daytime meals everyday if I needed to.  If you have read many weight loss plan books (and I have!) you will notice that many of the menu plans give you different options for every day and every meal. I would look at that plan and freak out! How in the world can we afford that much food? Variety is expected for an evening meal, but breakfasts and lunches don’t have to be so varied. It is more economical to pick a few things during the week to eat for those meals. So every week I plan out just a few choices for breakfasts. I usually always have oatmeal and I will fix my family bacon and eggs or pancakes on the weekends. Eggs can go a long way and it provides an important protein for Josiah’s brain early in the morning. For lunches, we either do sandwiches and chopped veggies or leftovers. I like to make up bento boxes. I can use little bits of leftovers and whatever else I have that I need to use up.
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These "bento" boxes are my favorite way to fix lunch for our Cousin Camp (and at home for Josiah!). I can take a few odds and ends and make a fun lunch. Yes. That's a choo-choo shaped sandwich. This picture was a few years ago. I wouldn't even dare now. Josiah is too cool. 

3.      I make a pot of beans every single week. Beans are a healthy and economical protein choice. I always make a big enough pot that I can use the leftovers for other things. Let’s just say that I make a pot of pinto beans for Monday night supper. I serve them with my favorite lemon cilantro rice and chimichurri sauce. On Wednesday night I add a cup or two to a pot of chili. On Thursday I put the last cup or two in a batch of quick quesadillas for lunch. You don’t have to just limit this trick to beans. I use do the same with chicken or a pork roast. I like those Stretchy Meals. 

Nothing beats a big pot of chili in the fall. This chili made another appearance later on in the week. 

We do what we can!  A little cheese makes the world go around.

4.      Our families all have favorite meals. I also like to try new recipes. I have a list of my family’s favorite things to eat. Now. I might not make those things exactly the same way every time. Take, for example, spaghetti. Josiah loves spaghetti. I have my tried and true recipe. It never fails me. But sometimes I need to use something I already have and need to switch it up a bit. Last week I had some beef roast left in the fridge. I used it in my spaghetti sauce. It wound up being wonderful. Consider trying Variations on a Theme. This week I have some Geneoa Salami that needs to be used up. I am going to try to make Spaghetti Carbonara with it.  You can fix your family’s favorites by using what you already have.

I adore Asian food. It is my favorite. Ever. Once a week, I try and make some kind of stirfry or Asian inspired dish. My husband is not as crazy about Asian food as I am. So I need to mix it up. This is Kung Pao chicken (and homemade egg roll). I can do this one week and Thai Peanut noodles the next and he will never complain. Mix up those favorites! 

5.      I have told this story before. I knew an older lady who talked about that when she and her husband were first married they were so poor that they ate a lot of soup. Been there? Everytime she served soup, however, she served it in the prettiest bowls she had. It felt as if they ate as kings. I try and make our mealtimes together special. Our meal might be beans and ham, cornbread and greens. But, I make sure I put on my checkered table cloth. I serve chopped onions with the beans. I dish out a little homemade apple butter in my favorite old berry bowl. Just those little touches makes this meal (of which costs under $5) feel like we’ve spent a fortune.

even a little bit of watermelon seems special in a pretty bowl. 

These might be dollar store cookies, but the lemonade is freshly squeezed and everything looks pretty....perfect for a summer tea party. That tea cup is one of my favorites. I think I need go fix me a cup right now! 

I also want to share with you some cute printables I made. They are Menus. At least this is a view of this week's menu. I need to admit that most of this didn't happen. My menu is another victim of my nasty cold. This picture is another. Could it be any blurrier?

 The menus will help you in your efforts to make your mealtimes special. I printed mine out at Staples. I got a frame from The Thrift Store and used my dry erase marker to add my meals. This way I can change my mind. And I have somethiing pretty to display. Make sure you click on this link to catch them up. I made a separate post so I can easily find them again. I only have a few up right now. I have made a bunch, but I need to figure out how to make them all into an ebook so they are easier to download.

I hope you have enjoyed this week's Blog Hop. Be sure to check out my friends' blogs below. You can click on the banner to read even more goodness!

Marcy @ Ben and Me
Lisa @ Farm Fresh Adventures
Jenn @ Treasuring Life's Blessings
Michele @ Family, Faith and Fridays
Dusty @ To the Moon and Back
Jacquelin @ A Stable Beginning
Gena @ I Choose Joy!

Jumpstart Your Homeschool Batteries: Homeschooling in a Tight Space

Welcome Back to my 5 Days of Back to Homeschool.

I haven't done much in the way of homeschool this week. I had intended to take the week to organize, and plan and purge. Instead I have come down with a nasty cold.

That's the way of it sometimes. One of the blessings of homeschooling is that we can be flexible. Next week I've got an appointment with the Homeschool Cabinet! At least that is what I'm telling myself. I also have an appointment with the Laundry Basket and the Bedroom Floor.

So today I want to talk about Homeschooling in Tight Spaces. We live in an apartment that is about 700 sq. feet. We had intended to live here temporarily, but "temporary" has turned into a few years longer than we anticipated.

Nevertheless, it is close to my husband's work (though we commute an hour to our church) and we live in an area of downtown that always has something to see or something going on. Now mind you...some of the stuff going on we wish we didn't have to see. It has made for an interesting education for Josiah. "Hey, Mom? Is that guy wearing a tire on his head?"

You should know me well enough (by now) to understand that I am a bit high maintenance. I like to create, I like pretty things around me and I lack in the organizational skills department.Which is a dangerous combination.

Homeschooling, by its very nature, takes stuff. We are hoarders of school supplies, curriculum, art supplies and books. Ah, yes. Books.

The castle I have created for myself in my head has a large homeschool room...with lots of shelving for books. And more books.  I have a huge farm table with plenty of old stuffed chairs for lounging with said books.

The reality is more like this....

 

 In my defense, I took this picture a year or so ago when I was doing some organization. 

Don't let the mountain of mess on my table scare you off.  This is the reality of it some days. 

But I am here to tell you that Homeschooling in a Small Space can be done. It just takes a bit of thinking outside of the box. (I wonder where I put that headband!)

Here are 5 Ways I Get It Done.

1. I do have a homeschool cabinet located in Josiah's room. (the picture above is obviously not it).  It is filled with art and craft supplies, extra school supplies, curriculum I am not currently using (but intended to use) and other odds and ends. I mainly work out of the shelf above. I have to go through it every month or so. It is located in our dining room (where most of the magic happens). 

For a brief time, I just toted everything back and forth from the homeschool cabinet. I found that it works better if I have some sort of shelf close by. It keeps the table from being overrun by school.  Don't be afraid to keep close at hand only what you are using for the time being.  It takes more work to constantly rotate what we need, but my tiny dining room isn't taken up by big pieces of furniture.

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2. This is my coffee table. As I look at it now I can see it needs a bit of spit and polish. I took this picture today, however, and I'm just thankful you can't see my big box of snot rags off to the side. Located in this simple chest are more Homeschool books. A few times a year, I go through this chest. I donate some stuff, bring out things I want to use in the next few months and store other items I won't see for a while. For example, many of my seasonal resources are located in here. I wanted The Studly Muffin to sand it and give it a good polish this summer. You can see we had other fish to fry (or bikes to ride).

It is helpful if I have a few things in the apartment that can perform Double Duty. 
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 3. While a good portion of our Homeschool Day happens at the dining room table, we aren't bound by that space. It's HOME school. We spread out on the couch, on the living room floor, in the kitchen.I think this happens even in homes that don't necessarily have to worry about space. It's just the nature of the lifestyle.

4. We also take our Homeschool away from Home. The Y, the library, the coffeehouse or the park. The picture below is from the Nursing Home we volunteer at several times a year.  I think Josiah is at a weaving class here. Some of our best school days have been romping about town.

5. This is it. This is the biggie. This is the secret to living in a small space (let alone homeschooling). Purge. And Purge some more. You have to understand how difficult this is for me. I can think of multiple uses for almost anything. I decided, however, that it was more important for me and my family to live a full life rather than live a life full of stuff. This getting ready of stuff is a constant process. I seldom get rid of curriculum that will cost me too much to replace, but I can't hang on to the other stuff. I donate it, give it to friends or try and sell it at one of our local used bookstores. Being able to let go of things has been a big and valuable lesson. 

So there you have it. I had intended to bless you with beautiful pictures of my organized space. Hah! You are just lucky I am not posting another selfie. I have that "glow" only a summer cold can give you. It is not attractive.

Tomorrow is the last day of the 5 Day Back to HomeSchool. I want to talk to you about frugal Menu-Planning ideas. You can check out my other posts here, here and here. Please take some time and read through my friends' blogs. I know you will be encouraged. They all have some wonderful ideas and thoughts. You can find even more blogs by clicking on the banner below.

Marcy @ Ben and Me

Lisa @ Farm Fresh Adventures
Jenn @ Treasuring Life's Blessings
Michele @ Family, Faith and Fridays
Dusty @ To the Moon and Back
Jacquelin @ A Stable Beginning
Gena @ I Choose Joy!

Jumpstart Your Homeschool Batteries: What's in Your Toolbox?

So how are you doing? Things going okay? So far so good? 

This week for us has been a bit crazy. Not crazy in the sense of “wacky”…who am I kidding? That is every day! 

I currently have snot running in every direction. I thought at first it was my allergies, but it appears that I might have caught a summer cold! Yay! 

But you know….given all that is happening in the world a little snot is small potatoes. 

Today I am going to talk to you about some of my favorite things in my Homeschool Toolbox. I have to be honest. It almost feels a bit irreverent to be discussing such trivial things when there is so much suffering going on in the world. 

Then I am reminded of this thing. 

 God is still in control. He knows the beginning to the end. He’s got it all figured out. 

Shew! I’m glad I’m not the one running the show. I can’t even find the remote to the DVD player!

So back to the Homeschool Toolbox. We all have our favorite things in the whole wide world. These happen to be 5 of my things that I think are necessary to run our homeschool day successfully.

1.      The Whiteboard. Never in the history of mankind has there been such an invaluable invention (except maybe for Frozen Custard and contact lenses). Homeschool mamas’ are you with me? We use our whiteboard(s) for everything. Assignments, impromptu worksheets, copywork, tic tac toe. We even have little whiteboards to tote around with us. I have purchased whiteboards at the Thrift Store and the Dollar Tree. A friend recently gave me a bigger whiteboard that had come from her church. They were “revamping” their Sunday School areas and had tossed a bunch of whiteboards. Are you kidding me? There should be a law. Or an adoption program for unwanted whiteboards.

2.      The Read Aloud. I don’t care if your 42 (which I happen to be). There is something that happens in your brain when a story is read. The Read Aloud is an integral part of our school day…in fact it is an integral part of our day. Period. Even before we found out Josiah was dyslexic, I read to him. I am still reading. What you read is entirely up to you. I prefer the Classics, myself. There is something about the language and the timeless stories. This is not to say we haven’t read a few modern favorites.

I would suggest you start with what you have. Take a look at your bookshelves. I purchase most of my books from Thrift Stores or used book stores. We have a Kindle and I download lots of wonderful FREE books. You don’t even have to have a Kindle to download a Kindle App to your PC.  I also use audio books. There are several FREE sites you can access. We also check them out from the library and listen to audio books on youtube. There is quite a selection.  Just a note. I have read every articles that promote reading even to your grown children and family. I am going to suggest this to my Mom when I next see her. Are you listening, Sherry Lou? I want to start with Little Women and move on from there.

Consider when you schedule your Read Alouds. We used to do it before bedtime. Now I read after Josiah has finished the bulk of his schoolwork with me. This is after lunch and right before he tackles some independent work.

3.      Games, File Folder Games & Puzzles. Every Homeschooler needs to have a well-stocked cabinet or closet of games. You can create your own File Folder Games. This site has some very well done free ones. Typically, file folder games have been used with younger students, but I think they are still good as hands-on activities for everyone. They are also terrific to keep the Littles occupied. I used File Folder Games waaay back in the day when I taught preschool. And then Kindergarten. And then First Grade. They are a pretty terrific resource.

 Most of our Game closet stash comes from Thrift Stores. They are also things I might add to a Christmas Wish List. Games have been an invaluable part of our homeschool experience. They have been a gentle way to review math facts, work on problem solving and about anything else you can think on. There is a game for everything. And nothing beats that hands on experience.

4.      Brain Breaks and Timers. Say what? I read an article recently that talked about how kiddos (and adults) need pauses in their learning to reset their little brains. I do not have ADHD (like some other members of my household), but even I can wander off into my happy place if I am not fully engaged. I created a set of Brain Break Cards so that Josiah could have happy breaks during the course of his school day. These aren’t long breaks and there is always a specific task (usually physical) that he has to do. I used to give him brief 5 minute breaks in his room. He would always come back to me a little wound up. 

So I am sharing our Brain Break Cards with you! They are in black and white so you won’t have to worry about your ink. I sat down one afternoon while we listened to an Audio Book and hand colored mine, but you can leave them as is, print them on colored paper or have the kids color them. I put them in a little plastic sandwich container. The theory is that you take your child’s age and add 2 minutes to it. So in our case we stop every 14 minutes and Josiah takes out a Brain Break Card. He then completes the task on the card. Please download and share.

Brain Breaks

The Timer is a tool I primarily use for his independent work. The boy could easily make a task that should take 10 minutes last all day long. It helps him manage his time.

5.      The Laminator. Not to be confused with The Terminator. I have had mine for a coon’s age. It has certainly been the best 20 bucks I have spent. If I do have to laminate something that won’t fit in my machine I take it down to my local teacher’s store. It costs .25 a foot to laminate something.

So that’s my List of 5. What are some of your favorite things?

Tomorrow I am going to talk about Homeschooling in a Tight Space. For now, I am need to go stuff Kleenex up my nose! Happy Wednesday….

Ohh. If you are just now jumping in to our 5 Days of Back to Homeschool I invite you to check out Monday and Tuesday’s offerings. Are you reading my friends’ blogs below? I have really been enjoying them. They are all so talented and encouraging. You can check out even more by clicking the banner below.

Marcy @ Ben and Me

Lisa @ Farm Fresh Adventures

Jenn @ Treasuring Life's Blessings

Michele @ Family, Faith and Fridays

Dusty @ To the Moon and Back

Jacquelin @ A Stable Beginning

Gena @ I Choose Joy!