Wednesday, May 28, 2008

School's out!

Have I mentioned how much I love being the principal?

Each year we continue formal studies in language arts and math over the summer break, as well as whatever informal studies we can dig up! (No pun intended...)

This year, though, I'm going to take a couple of weeks off and tackle our closets and basement! The weather is still cool enough outside so that the kiddos can get out there and play most of the day, and mommy can get busy decluttering and organizing.

We've taken more time off than usual this year, but as I've heard so often, that is the beauty of homeschooling. We'll have all the time in the world to catch up when the weather is too hot to get outside this summer! We're probably going to jump back into the middle of things around the beginning of July. If anyone knows of a great unit study for the 4th of July, I'd love your recommendations!

Until then their main subject will be:

From allposters.com




Alas the best-laid plans...

I had truly meant to show you pictures of my clean refrigerator and dining table, but I took the pics without my memory card in the camera and I haven't yet worked out all the kinks to get those to where I can post them.


Now that my fridge is clean (and empty!) I'm finally starting to meal plan. I looked at tons of sites last week on the best way to get started, and here are some of the helpful links I've found:

I've gotten a lot of menu planning ideas
from Life as Mom recently. Here's a link to Meal Planning the 1950's Way . I think this is a fascinating idea and would save me loads of trouble...if we were eating more meat. As it is, we've cut way back on meat to save on cost and calories, and it just gets too depressing writing out "pasta" or "vegetables" for every night of the week. Maybe after I get a larger recipe bank built up I'll be able to categorize better and utilize this idea.

And here is a link to her last week's menu plan.
(And a quick note...looks like she also posted on meal planning today, but I haven't gotten around to reading it yet!) Instead of listing out the menus day-by-day, she lists the number of dishes she will have for each type of meal. I'm not sure how to explain it better than that...just go check it out! I think that this will work fabulously at our house, as we typically change our minds about what we'll be having for dinner, or inviting people over at the last minute. Truthfully, that's one of the reasons I've been procrastinating about meal planning. I guess this takes away my excuses, doesn't it?

I love the way that Michele lists her menus at Frugal Granola. Here is her most recent. She lists items to do along with her daily menu so that everything will be ready for the next day! I'm hoping to incorporate this somehow, I'll have to let you know what I figure out on this one.

And for those of you who like more specific meal planners, here's a link to some beautiful FREE meal planners from Heavenly Homemakers. She also has tons of meal planning and
healthy eating ideas on her blog.

I'm actually excited about grocery shopping this week! I'm starting out with just three days' worth of meals until we find a greater variety of healthy meals that we love. Baby steps...

From allposters.com




Please continue to pray for Beth and Jimmy...



2 comments:

Michele @ Frugal Granola said...

Oh, my prayers go out for your friends...


Thank you for the link to my blog, and for leaving a comment this week! :)

Blessings,
Michele
www.frugalgranola.blogspot.com

Anonymous said...

nice to have all of these good menu planning links. That is definitely something I need to work on. -Rachel