Break Time!

From now until March 10, I will be taking a break!  We are going to have a little vacation and my boys are getting some great grandparent time!  So I will not be posting over the next few weeks, in order that I can enjoy some rest and relaxation.  

Weekly Wrap Up

With Valentines Day this week, we did some extra fun stuff!  We made cookies, painted and had a few extra fun papers.  I have really struggled this year with finding time to get the fun things to work into our schedule.  That is one thing I am going to change going into next year, I am thinking ahead and planning to add fun holiday things.

Look who found a new spot to read!

Icing our Valentine cookies

This is the result of me going to get the camera!

Very meticulous!

Tasting the icing just to make sure its good.  

These two have not been getting along so I was happy to see that they were playing so nicely together.

Once again caught playing nicely!

First experience with painting, I think he liked it!

Homemade Mac and Cheese

Growing up my mom always made homemade mac and cheese, we NEVER had the boxed stuff!  So now as an adult I still do not care for the boxed stuff.  Awhile ago a friend of mine and I were chatting about dinner and what to make, and she mentioned this wonderful mac and cheese recipe she found.  I of course asked her for it and I have never turned back!!

What's so great about it you might ask??  Well for one, its got this amazing bread crumb topping that gets nice and crunchy!  It also makes a good meal if you add chicken or broccoli to it.

The recipe was found at All Recipes and its called Chucks Favorite Mac and Cheese.

Ingredients:

1 (8 oz) package of elbow macaroni
1 (8 oz) package of shredded shard cheddar cheese
1 (12 oz) container of small curd cottage cheese
1 (8 oz) container of sour cream
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
salt and pepper to taste

1 cup dry bread crumbs
1/4 cup butter, melted

Directions:
1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil, add pasta, and cook until done; drain.

2)  In 9x13 inch baking dish, stir together macaroni, shredded Cheddar cheese, cottage cheese, sour cream, Parmesan cheese, salt and pepper.  In a small bowl, mix together bread crumbs and melted butter.  Sprinkle topping over macaroni mixture.

3) Bake 30-35 minutes, or until top is golden.

To make this a complete meal, I add cooked chicken or broccoli during the mixing process.  This is also amazing as leftovers!!

If you try this recipe I would love to hear your thoughts.  This quickly became a family favorite at my house, although not too healthy!

Homeschooling Style

Last year when we decided to homeschool, I had no idea what I was getting into!  After the decision had been made,  I began  my research into curriculum.  I talked with friends who were homeschooling, and I read books, lots of books!

To my surprise there wasn't just curriculums to choose from, there were homeschooling styles as well!  Oh boy!!  I had no idea where to begin.  My head was spinning from all of the options!  Traditional, Classical, Charlotte Mason, Un Schooling, Eclectic and the list goes on!

The advice I was given from a friend, was to figure out what style of homeschooling fit us best and then choose a curriculum from there.  I really had no idea, so I looked at Cathy Duffy's book 100 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum.  In that book she has an Approaches to Learning quiz to take that pointed me towards which style would be best for us.  For us that was Unit Study, Charlotte Mason, and Eclectic.

Next she has a learning styles section, that describes the different types of learning styles.  So you can find your learning style along with your children's learning styles.  By doing so, it enables you to find the curriculum that would best suit your needs.

The rest of the book is descriptions of curriculum that she has reviewed over the years, hence the name 100 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum.

Even after the extensive research, I still was not confident in what the book had said would be best for us.  In hind sight, I should have listened!  Anyway, here we are getting ready to round out our first homeschooling year, and guess what, I am going with a Unit Study/Charlotte Mason approach next year!  This year we went with a Traditional, textbook based, one because I thought that would be easy, since Elijah had been in Public School for 2 years.  The problem with that is, it was kinda boring, and a LOT of busy work, in my opinion.

I am excited to dig deeper into the Charlotte Mason method.  She has some awesome philosophies and I think it will be a great fit for our family.  You can read more about her philosophy here.


If you are considering homeschooling I would strongly suggest getting Cathy Duffy's book, it really helped me to narrow down choices.  Its also a great reference guide when looking at curriculum.

What's the Tot Up To

Today I thought I would share a little bit of what my tot has been up to, well besides being our dedicated homeschool terrorist. 

We have been working on fine motor activities with him.  So recently I went on a search for busy bag activities that I thought would interest him, but also using things that we already had.  Here are a few of the ideas that I came up with.  I have provided links to where you can find these activities at the end of this post.  The pom pom sorter I made myself and the Lauri Shape Puzzle I found at a garage sale and it seems they don't make it anymore.  

Lauri Number Puzzles

Pom Pom Stuffing, the container is an old plastic lunch meat container that I cut holes in the lid.  

Play Food

Lauri Sizing and Shapes Puzzle

Lacing Cards

These all seem to keep him somewhat busy, although the lacing cards are a little bit over his head right now at 17 months.  All the rest though, he really enjoys.  

I store all of these in plastic bags with the slider closure.  When I give him the activity I will take it out of the bag and place the activity on a tray for him to use.  Don't worry I always place the plastic bag back into the closet up high where he can't reach!  

In order to store all of these, I have found that book rings and binder clips work great!  I place about 3 bags per ring and clip them onto the rod in our closet.  That way they are up high where he can't reach but also still in an easily accessible spot for me to grab them quickly.  I like that these are things we don't have out all the time, so they are new and fun for him when they do get brought out.

Slider bags that I use.

Here is how they are hanging in the closet in our schoolroom.

Book ring with the binder clips attached.

A closer look at how they are attached.

 I also have some preschool busy bags that I made up, which I will share another time.  What are some ways you keep your tots busy during school time?  I would love some more ideas!

Where to find what we are using:

Melissa and Doug Felt Food Sandwich Set

Melissa and Doug Lacing Cards

Lauri Number Puzzles

Preschool Happenings

A few weeks ago I posted about some changes that I made to our preschool curriculum, you can see that post here.  Well since beginning it, I have to say I am loving how its turing out!  Noah is really growing in his ability to do some of these fine motor activities that were once quite tricky for him!

For Noah we begin schooling each day about 8:30 in the morning and we finish up by 9 or 9:15.  That's a total of about a half an hour to forty five minutes.  Which for him is plenty of time! We also only school 4 days a week.   After his formal schooling is finished for the day he can either play in his room or play some of his educational games on the iPad.  He usually chooses the iPad!  Some of his favorite iPad games are Starfall, Toca Doctor, Curious George at the Zoo, and The Electric Company.

As far as the curriculum goes, we are doing two letters and two numbers a week.  We are moving quickly through the alphabet because he can already identify all the letters he just needs some more review on the sounds.  Same with his numbers, which is why we are doing two a week.  We are also working on counting to 100.

He already knows all of his colors and shapes so we just review those occasionally.  I am also throwing in some math pages for him to work on.  Now he says his favorite subject is math!  He's a pretty funny kid!

He's playing Starfall on the computer, I had to get some headphones so he didn't disturb Elijah.  He thinks he's pretty cool with them on!

Doing some cutting and pasting activities.

Doing a bean counting game.  

Menu Monday

This weeks menu is titled "Items already found in my freezer"!  I haven't had time to do any major grocery shopping, but I realized that I had a lot of meals already in my freezer.  So this week we will be using up what I already have.  Here is what's on the menu this week:

Sunday:  Super Bowl Party Food
Monday:  Polksa Kielbasa 
Tuesday:  Spaghetti and Garlic Bread
Wednesday:  Tacos
Thursday:  Chili and Cornbread
Friday:  Pizza
Saturday:  Chicken Nuggets

I would love to eventually get in the habit of making a monthly menu, what a time saver that would be!!  That is on my mental list to do in the near future, we will see!

Do  you have any great tips for making a monthly menu?  I would love some ideas!

Pinterest Projects

I have these lofty goals since discovering Pinterest!  So this year I am committing to doing at least one a month from my pins!  Most of them are homeschool related but also things for around my house.

So this week our Pinterest project was Snowflakes Poke Patterns.  When I saw it I was so amazed at how cool it was, so of course I wanted to try it.  I have been putting it off because we haven't had any snow and I felt kinda silly doing a snowflake project in the midst of 60 degree temps!  I finally gave in and made them because it is the end of January after all!

The pin is from This Reading Mama, she has a pattern that can be downloaded and printed off.  Then you can either tape it to another piece of colored paper or I suppose you could print it on colored paper. Using either a push pin or toothpick have your children poke holes along the edge.  When done cut out leaving about a half inch border, then hang and enjoy!