Meal Planning

I've never been great about this and in the past would find myself about 11:55 am scratching my head wondering what was for lunch. Day after day that gets to be really old fast. So I gathered up some of my/our favorite recipes that were also really simple and easy to make (and pretty inexpensive too) and threw together a menu plan. Fwiw, here is my 8 week cyclical menu plan (I'll try to post recipes for some of these when I get time in the future (lol):

Week 1

• Sunday: Spaghetti (make bread)
  
• Monday: Biscuits & Egg &/or mushroom gravy
  
• Tuesday: Egg salad sandwiches, Soup (Broccoli, potato, or tomato)
• Wednesday: Patties (Gluten, potato/egg, rice /potato/egg/tofu...)
  
• Thursday: Haystacks (taco salad/tacos/tostadas/burritos)
  
• Friday: Mac n Cheese ( like the Tofu Rarebit recipe), Green beans, Corn on the cobb (or frozen corn)
  
• Sabbath: Special K (or Cottage Cheese) Loaf, Green Bean Salad (or just green beans and/or salad), Mashed Potatoes
  

Week 2

• Sunday: Pizza, Make Bread
  
• Monday: Shepherd's/Pot Pie, Mashed P&G
  
• Tuesday: Egg & Tomato, Sandwiches, (Soak beans for tomorrow)
  
• Wednesday: Black Beans & Rice
  
• Thursday: Curry (Egg, potato/chickpea or lentil...) & rice, Chipaties
  
• Friday: Muffins, fruit & soup (usually a supper, not sure what to do for lunch, leftovers?)
  
• Sabbath: Potato/Tomato Galette
  

Week 3

• Sunday: Spaghetti, Make Bread
  
• Monday: Tater tot casserole
  
• Tuesday: Egg salad sandwiches
  
• Wednesday: Patties (Gluten, potato/egg, rice /potato/egg/tofu...)
  
• Thursday: Haystacks
  
• Friday: Mac n "Cheese", (make extra cheese), Asparagus, (Soak beans)
  
• Sabbath: Conch Stew, Rice & Beans
  

Week 4

• Sunday: Pizza, Make Bread
  
• Monday: Shepherd's/Pot Pie, Mashed P&G
  
• Tuesday: Tomato Soup, Grilled "Cheese" Sandwiches (Cheese leftover from Mac n Cheese), (Soak beans)
  
• Wednesday: Cornbread & chili, Salad
  
• Thursday: Chicken a la king, Broccoli, Salad (tomatoes, lettuce, mayo/catsup /soymilk dressing)
  
• Friday: Lunch: Perogies w/ "Nice Spaghetti Sauce," Peas & Corn
  
• Supper: Muffins, fruit & soup
  
• Sabbath: Special K Loaf, Green Bean Salad, Mashed Potatoes
  

Week 5

• Sunday: Spaghetti, Make Bread
  
• Monday: Something with rice (make extra rice)
  
• Tuesday: Egg salad, sandwiches
  
• Wednesday: Patties (Gluten, potato/egg, rice /potato/egg/tofu...)
  
• Thursday: Fried Rice (add broccoli, scrambled eggs, onions, slivered carrots, frozen peas...)
  
• Friday: Mac n Cheese, Brussels Sprouts
  
• Sabbath: Pierogies
  

Week 6

• Sunday: Pizza, Make Bread
  
• Monday: Biscuits & Egg gravy
  
• Tuesday: Egg & Tomato Sandwiches, Soak beans
  
• Wednesday: Black Beans & Rice
  
• Thursday: Haystacks
  
• Friday: Supper: Baked Rice Pudding
  
• Sabbath: 1 Dish Meal, Salad, Bread (rolls?)
  

Week 7

• Sunday: Spaghetti, Make Bread
  
• Monday: Tater tot casserole
  
• Tuesday: Egg salad sandwiches
  
• Wednesday: Patties (Gluten, potato/egg, rice /potato/egg/tofu...)
  
• Thursday: Chicken a la king, Broccoli
  
• Friday: Mac n Cheese, (make extra cheese), Spinach
  
• Sabbath: Special K Loaf, Green Bean Salad, Mashed Potatoes
  

Week 8

• Sunday: Pizza, Make Bread
  
• Monday: Shepherd's/Pot Pie, Mashed P&G
  
• Tuesday: Tomato Soup, Grilled "Cheese" Sandwiches (Cheese leftover from Mac n Cheese)
  
• Wednesday: Cornbread & chili, Salad
  
• Thursday: Fried Rice
  
• Friday: Supper: Muffins, fruit & soup
  
• Sabbath: Pierogies

Alternatives: Alternatives:

Spanish Veggie Rice
Tofu Stuffed Shells & Sauce
Sloppy Joes
Polenta
Mexican Lentils & Rice
Taco Style Lentils & Rice
Tomato Rice Pilaf
Meatloaf

Soup Ideas:

Lentil Soup
Potato Soup
Tomato Soup
ABC Soup
Cream of Broccoli Soup
Vegetable Soup with Dumplings

Once a Month Treat:

Banana Bread
Dilly Bread
Cream of Wheat pudding
Fruit soup (breakfast)

Homeschool Progress

We will be going into our fourth week of homeschool tomorrow and so far so good (-ish). I seeing some improvement so that's at least good. I decided on AmblesideOnline (a la Charlotte Mason [CM]) after much reading and determining that it's at least as good as everything else out there and it's FREE! I'm also adding some of the books from Old Fashioned Education (OFE, another great site, also free!). Charlotte Mason was a strong believer in "Living Books" (engaging and interesting books on a wide variety of subjects written by one author who is passionate about their subject and draws the reader in as opposed to a committee of writers as for a dryly written textbook) and "Narration" (telling back what the student heard or read), in addition to Nature Study (another huge component and beginning science in the early grades), Bible, Art, Music, Copywork (handwriting), Dictation for grammar and spelling in middle grades, Poetry, History, Foreign Language, Geography, Literature, Handicrafts (learning to make useful things, things with a purpose or beautiful things to be given as gifts as opposed to useless arts and crafts that just sit around collecting dust). Classes are kept short so as to not bore the student causing them to "check out" and stop paying attention. School is usually wrapped up by early afternoon leaving the afternoon for free play, chores, free reading, child-led learning if they want, art, music, ...

My schedule as it currently stands:

Bible/Character Training: MW we read an OT story, TTh an NT one, and Friday we review both stories. Will start adding in memorizing family rules, Sabbath School memory verses and discussing the importance of developing a good character and manners, etc.
Nature Study: MTW Nature walk, Observation, Nature Journal (when I can get one put together for Geo), and read about Mammals. Thursday, read from one of the Among the (Forest, Meadow, Farmyard, Night...) People books. Friday, either a science DVD from the library or a science experiment from a book we have.
Math: We are doing the Math Enhancement Programme from the UK, Year 1, but I'd like to get caught up to Year 2 so will probably go a little faster than the plan laid out at OFE, or at least we'll go year round and eventually get caught up that way.
Drawing (Drawing with Children by Mona Brooke, we'll also be watching some of Jan Brett's drawing videos)/Artist (Leonardo da Vinci) /Composer (Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov) /Folk Song (Go Get the Ax) /Hymn (Children of the Heavenly Father) /Handicraft things (for this term we're going to be working on/perfecting knitting. Right now Geo is getting pretty adept at finger knitting) will be scattered throughout the week.
Literature: Scheduled reading from assigned books MWF with Free Reading (from grade appropriate living books not assigned for this year's reading) on TTh
Phonics: M-Th (McGuffey's Reader & Speller, & Word Mastery per OFE schedule)
Sign Language: M-Th, Friday we review all known signs or at least quite a few.
World History: M
American History: TW
Book of Centuries: TF Collect entries from week's readings, compile with pics and blurbs from the web, print out and glue in Book of Centuries.
Geography/Social Studies: TTh Paddle-to-the-Sea (a story about a little model canoe that makes a journey through the great lakes region from just north of Lake Superior all the way to the Atlantic Ocean), F Seven Little Sisters... from OFE schedule (I'm guessing it features little "sisters" from each of the seven continents)
Mapping: We map things on Google Maps whenever we read of a notable place.
Copywork & Memory work: M-F

I'm very excited about the coming year. I'm scouring every CM resource I can find on the net so I can fully grasp her philosophy of education. I need some help getting Geo to pay attention and narrate back to me what he heard (if he even listened). I may play around with shortening lesson times and bringing back the lesson later in the morning if needed. I think I will be adding lapbooking to our narrating in that I want to turn each narration into a little book to go into a larger lapbook (maybe 1 a month or 1 a quarter?). Need to save my pennies so I can get a little recorder so that Geo can narrate into it and I can type it out later (or use DH's laptop for dictating narrations).

I have been able to get 85% of the books required free from the net as most of them are now in the public domain. The rest of them I plan to get from the library or substitute with a suitable free alternative (Project Gutenberg and Baldwin Online are my friends :). I've put the free books I can get onto my Palm Pilot so I can just pretty much pick up and go and I think that's pretty neat.

Splintzell Sprouts

Gigi calls Brussels' Sprouts Splintzell Sprouts and I think it's the most adorable thing (she loves them btw) and I don't want to forget it so I'm blogging about it here.

Oh, also, while I'm jotting things down (and was very remiss in not getting the exact days), Eli cut his incisors about a month ago (yeah, all of them at once), and his molars came in about a month before that.

I'm a speller, I can spell ([What about] Bob's in my head saying "I'm a sailor, I can sail")

A couple of double letter words tried to trip me up but in the end I was victorious, bwahahaha
Give it a try, it's short and kinda fun :)

I Scored a 100%!

Mingle² - Free Online Dating

Word Saving Glich

A few days ago I was working on Word and started noticing that things I knew I had saved weren't showing up when I closed the file and opened it again. It was frustrating to say the least! I did some searching around and at first I thought it might be a bad relationship between Adobe 7 & Word 2000, but was hesitant to uninstall Adobe. Instead I uninstalled/reinstalled Word (that took a good long time too tho), and it didn't fix the problem. Then I found something that suggested the normal.dot file might be corrupted so I deleted every instance of that file I could find. That seemed to be the magic bullet because now things are humming along again quite nicely, I'm once again able to make pdf files (that was messed up too) and my changes are being saved. I'm happy that it was such an easy fix.

The Final Straw

They've been sat upon, bent out of shape several times till the other day they were contorted to the max (by a friend's 2 yo) and then the final straw was when Geo bumped into me when we were reading a book on the couch and ... *snap* one of the ear thingies popped right off my glasses, broke clean off :( It stinks because the only way we can replace them is to dip into our tiny emergency fund that we're trying to grow for Financial Peace University (HIGHLY recommended btw), but I can't drive without glasses, I'll be a sitting duck. It really stinks. I was so hoping they would last a little longer. Not that I won't be glad to get new glasses (my lenses look terrible!), but this is not the way I wanted it to happen (not the time either).