Last week we had a special day of learning about lions…. how they live in prides, that the daddies are the ones that have manes, and that the mommies are the hunters. Grace is fascinated by the facts and she just soaks them in. She loved talking about the parts of the Lion King that she remembered and how they relate to the facts that we were studying. The girls loved making daddy lions from paper plates. Here they are in progress:
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day…. at least that is what I have heard, but according to the meals that Danny makes for us, you would not assume that he believes this. Danny and Grace make very chocolaty chocolate chip pancakes EVERY Saturday and he occasionally makes Stewed Crackers (Saltines, butter and water). Now he has moved on to another nutritious breakfast for our family: homemade doughnuts in the deep fryer! Yup… nice and healthy!
He uses refrigerator biscuits to make the actual doughnuts and fries them for about a minute on each side. Then he adds cinnamon sugar, powdered sugar, or a chocolate glaze! They are delicious and we ALL LOVE them… but as far as a great start to the day… we have to balance it out with milk and a LARGE FRUIT!!
After a nap time this week, Grace still had a few things that I wanted her to do for school so I had to find something for the little kids to do. I pulled out the bag of split peas and barley that I have for the kids to play with. Both Josiah and Hannah love to pour and dump so I knew that this activity would be a hit! They also love making messes so I had to prepare myself for the mess to come!
There were many squeals of delight and joy!
When Grace finished her work, she joined the fun… and spiced things up a little with a twist or two of her own (which made a BIGGER mess)!
They made a HUGE mess, but they had a lot of fun! I loved seeing them together… all doing the same thing at the same time. I can’t believe that Josiah is able to do things that the girls are doing… he seems so grown up. I am thankful that they all genuinely love each other and care for each other.
It is no secret that Danny and I are Dave Ramsey fans… we have really learned a lot from his program and continue to live with one income and 3 (almost 4) children with money to give and save. We want to teach these things to our children as well, so we began a new plan for their chores this new year. The girls have jobs around the house to do – according to their age and ability – and they get to check off when they do those things on the job chart. If they do those things and the other jobs that we ask of them throughout the week, they are given money. We have divided their earnings from before the first of the year into three jars: Give, Save, and Spend. Now when they are earning money, they must put at least ten percent of their earnings in the Give Jar, some in the Save Jar and the rest in Spend Jar. We have found that it is easier to give the girls their money in small coins so they can divide it easily.
Give Jar – this jar is meant to encourage them to be “cheerful givers” as the Bible commends. We want them to know that all of what we have and what we earn comes from the Lord, it is a privilege to give back to Him, and all we have is His anyway. We have seen that kids are great givers; both of our daughters had NO PROBLEM putting the required amount into this jar – they even put MORE than that! How rewarding to us as parents!
Save Jar – this jar is meant to encourage them be patient and delay gratification for a season. We want them to work for their wants and know that items cost money. It will be hard to save and save until they can get enough money for some of their wants as time goes on, but this is an important quality that we desire to build within our children.
Spend Jar – this jar is meant to encourage them to work hard and get rewarded for it; buying is fun! It is rewarding to go to a store and get something that you want. We want our children to make wise choices in what they spend, but to work hard without everything being handed to them.
Thank you, Dave, for all of the great ideas and encouragement to start our children early teaching them the basics of money and money management!
I have a hard time being creative when it comes to what to serve the kids for lunch… I usually am stuck in a rut, but the kids don’t seem to care. There are things that they LOVE and they don’t mind eating them over and over. Some things I think they would eat every day! They don’t seem to be bored, but to make the same things a little more exciting, I some times put the same food in different packaging.
So… last week, I made the same yogurt with fruit and granola, but I put it in GLASS mugs to make it look pretty. The girls loved my extra effort to make things look good and they ate every last spoonful.
PS I have been trying new things and new ways to present the old meals… Pinterest helps!
We have come to the point in our home school year that it is now time for a little review. We have been very diligent in the first half of the year in our studies, so we are taking a break for review and more fun! For the next two weeks we are going to review while studying a unit about the Zoo! Grace has been doing SO well in reading that she challenges herself to read sentences backwards! What a kid! She reads whole books and rarely asks for help. Hannah is more interested in learning letters and numbers, so I am going to capitalize on that immediately!
We started off the week on Monday with a fun game that the girls wanted to play over and over and over. I gathered many different Fisher Price animals that you would find in the zoo and made name cards for each one. I hid the animals around the room and put the cards in a basket. The girls took turns taking one of the cards out. After reading the card, they both searched for the animals around the room and put them with their card on the stairs. If they got a card with the word “zoo” then they had to lose a turn! BUMMER!
We have many special things planned for this unit. Today we learned about Zookeepers and the jobs they do for the animals at the zoo. If you would ask my precious girls about it, they would just talk about scooping up poopie. Yup… I hope other things sink in! We also reviewed a lot with numbers by having Hannah add animals to her cages to correspond to the number that I said while Grace finished number sentences with her animals’ help. She also created number families by using 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, or 10 animals to help her. For example, she made 0+5 1+4 2+3 3+2 4+1 5+0. It was fun! What will we do tomorrow?
It has been a tradition just about every weekend for me to make homemade pizza for the family. Danny has been getting into it recently and making it himself with his special blend of herbs and spices (aka Italian seasoning). We love this meal especially when we have lots of veggies on the top! YUMMY! Until a few weeks ago, we only had chicken wings occasionally, but Danny has been anxious to use his new deep fryer (RIP WING MAKER from James and Bethany! You were so faithful and made such yummy wings, but you were getting harder and harder to clean!) Now our girls are really into wings… we have to make at least 2 for each of them. I pull the meat off of them for Hannah but Grace is now a Pro at eating them herself… and she gets as messy as her Daddy in the process!
Hannah stuffing her mouth with pizza while Josiah is playing with the crushed red pepper flakes
