Menu planning and budgeting

Yesterday, Grandma sent some money for treats.  So I told them we'd have to all work together to pick our favorites and spend the money from Grandma. :)  Jones piped up that it would be great to lasagna for Valentine's, after all candy isn't good for us.  Surprisingly everyone agreed.  So I decide to challenge the four older ones. 

The challenge was this: Make a meal for Valentine's Day for $20.  Obviously this transpired yesterday  and so the meal won't be on Valentine's Day, but our family has always been flexible about these things. There must be 5 things in this meal: Beverage, Main Dish, Salad, Bread and Dessert. 

I must add a funny note that some of you may have seen on Facebook.  Tank asked if he could find a special plate to use.  I said yes and continued making plans with the older four.  He was frantically rummaging through the cupboards until "Aha!" up he came with my grandmother's platter, "Here is my main dish!" he says.  It was very hard not to laugh while we explained to him that main dishes are something you eat, not what you serve it on. :)

Each child (now Tank was included because I couldn't bear to turn him away) was to take a cookbook and some writing paper to quiet time and individually and somewhat secretly make out their proposal for a meal. 

After quiet time, they brought their proposals to me and I estimated what I thought each would cost, as I looked up the recipes they had chosen and used my knowledge of current prices to write a total at the bottom of their menu.  OOOPS!  All of them were over, though one only by 25 cents. 

Since I had written by each dish/beverage the total for that particular item and even an amount next to each ingredient.  I gave each one back their menus and told them to work them over so that it would fit within the budget.  We had fun doing this, as each decided what they did or didn't need under such conditions.  And no, x-ing off a whole category was quickly nixed.

After they brought them back for approval, I typed up a ballot.  All were to vote even those too little to make up their own menu.  So we had five menus and nine voters.  But instead of just having them vote on the menus, I decided to have two pages - one with menus and one with each category.  So they would have to choose the overall menu they liked best and the beverage, the main dish, the salad, the bread and the dessert they liked best.  So much more fun than watching TV and Dad even had fun as they bombarded him with his ballot the minute he walked in the door.  He had to ask what some things even were.

It was fun and we had to vote on some ties.   There were some tears over not being chosen  the most, but we worked through that.  After all everyone can't be picked, but it turned out that each of the four older ones were a favorite in something, but poor Tank didn't have any top things. 

Consolation prize is making monkey bread with Mom today. :)

Then I added up the favorite categories, turns out it's a cheaper meal than the menu chosen.  So I think we might do that.  Then I'll have different helpers make the categories they won in.   Sharpie will be making Pepsi Burgers; Jones - garlic bread and ice cream cake; Waterman - Sparkling Kool-aid and Bugaboo - Macaroni Salad.  And surprisingly it's a great combination.  Lasagne never even entered the picture in anyone's menu, though that was the meal that started it all.

I'm also going to bring out these menus and their prices today and talk with the children about why these aren't some of our normal choices.  Our budget says we spend $10 a day on meals.  So how do we make some of our favorites work?  Jones wanted a store-bought ice cream cake, but when he found out that he could probably make it for half, he decided to go with that.

Our next step is for me to take the four oldest shopping.  I haven't decided yet how I'll do it.  We may all work together to see if we can make it under the $20 or I may divide it out and give each one their portion and have them see if they can do it.  I'm leaning toward the second idea.

To build on this for a more long-term teaching idea, I think I'll sit down with the older ones and have them help me decide what they will cook when it's their turn on the schedule.  They will also have to submit proposals and try to keep it within budget.  Problem: They don't cook for a whole day, so it's hard to figure out $10/day, but I may just let them plan one day's worth of meals.  Not sure yet.

I really want my children to fully understand running a home.  Yes, even the boys.  Can you imagine if they understand the difficulty of planning meals on a budget?  They will be helpful to their wives and more understanding through the process.   I am definitely not perfect at it, but I love working at it. :)

So thank-you, Grandma, for the gift and to the Lord for giving us brains to work up some ideas to train our children in the way they should go. Oh and by the way, there's still some leftover for those conversation hearts, the only thing they could think of to get on Valentine's Day.  We may be finding some on the icecream cake. ;)

Steph

Consistency

Someone asked me this weekend how I have time to blog.  Guess I don't have a lot of time to do this, but this my way of getting my thoughts on "paper" as it were.  I find when I log how things are going, I'm more inclined to see a way through to progress.  I do this during our quiet time or sometime during the day when things are somewhat settled. 

Today, I'm picking up after a week of somewhat discouraged work.  That kind of work is not too productive as you all know.  For one thing, I was exhausted last week from some late nights, part of those were my choice and others were not.  Other things happened during the week to leave me feeling somewhat defeated. 

Over the weekend, I asked God to renew my mind, my strength and my desire to serve Him.  He did in a place I least expected it.  You see, God knows all of the things I love doing and one of those things is organizing.  Don't ask me to maintain it after it's organized, I'm not so good at that.  It's one of those things I'm working on. :) 

I was working in my kitchen making breakfast and I found myself bumping into my husband who was either making the coffee or getting it, not sure which.  I couldn't get to the flour etc without him moving and I didn't really want to push him out of the way so I could get on with my agenda, after all we're working on serving one another.

This was where the coffee pot was.

All of the sudden it hit me that the coffee and the mugs should be together and that the edge of the kitchen by the fridge would be the best spot.  But that meant the spices would have to move.  So I ended up re-organizing my kitchen.  It gave me a fresh start to my Saturday and I was excited to keep on organizing until things were in their place. 

A much better place

That start helped me to continue on to a fresh start on Monday.  Last Thursday I made a new chart with definite schedules of things to do throughout the day for the little ones and how the older ones should fill their schoolday and when piano should fit in there so that it's not waking the baby etc.

Today we started it.  It's taking all of my time to keep people on track and to work with them in the areas they are struggling in, but that's my job.  Sometimes it's draining, but quiet time is a well-known time to them all, so while it took a bit longer to get everyone where they were supposed to be and settled, now I have a few minutes of my own, almost an hour actually.  It's a time to refresh myself and prepare for the last half of the day.  By the time QT is over, we have only three hours till parents come and pick up their kids.

Consistency is the key, but as I said before maintenance isn't something I'm super good at, not good at all really.  Even though I know I'm not good at it, it doesn't mean I'm throwing up my hands in despair and it doesn't mean I'm saying, "Oh well, I know I'm not good at that, so I'm not going to try." No, it's my thing to work on and it encourages me to see progress. 

One lady came to visit our house and said, "I can see that you are getting settled into being home full-time, the house is so much more organized."  Although I feel a stab of embarassment at the fact that it used to be unorganized and messy because I was working a lot outside the home, I am thankful that she saw the work God is doing in my heart, and her words made me realize that I have come along some. 

"He's still workin' on me, to make me what I ought to be.  It took Him just a week to make the moon and stars, the sun and the earth and Jupiter and Mars.  How loving and patient He must be!  He's still workin' on me." 

I don't know if you know this song, but I love it.  I'm so thankful that He never gives up even though He's gonna be workin' on me for a lifetime.

Philippians 1:6 "For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus."

Fridays are my favorite!!!

My littlest one (3 years old, and if I could figure out how to get pics up here I would, but I don't like half of the pic being green :( ), anyway, my littlest boy loves to say "That's my favorite. " Last night I passed out some chewable vitamin C as we are struggling to get over coughs and colds, and he came up to say, "Mom, you're the bestest mom and these are my favorite."

I thought I'd tell you about my school plan currently. Right now, my plan is to have five months of school with one month off. I have Bible study on Thursdays, so as much as possible I want to take those off and have our thorough cleaning day that day. Also once a semester, my in-laws come for a week so we take that off. Our birthdays that fall during school days are also days off.

So every year, I sit down and look at the calendar about 15 times during the school year and revamp everything once more because I forgot about this or that. Also, I have struggled with how to keep everything in front of the kids that they need to do on a particular day. I found a website that has been extremely helpful.

It's an on-line planner, that generates a new activity only after I've checked the activity off. More about this part later. Google "homeschool skedtrak" and you'll find it. It is a Christian family that needed a planner that worked for them and it works well for me, as you also mark quiz days and test days and you have to tell it what percentage each thing (quizzes, tests, etc) has and then as you go you plug in their scores and voila you have a report card. So nice for me.

During the week, Monday through Wednesday, everyone must do one lesson in each subject no matter how far ahead they are. Then, because Thursday is a Bible Study and cleaning day, if they are behind they have to work those subjects. And Friday, if they are ahead in anything, they don't have to work on those subjects. For example, we were to be finished with Lesson 94 at the end of the week. So my first grader only had to do spelling and writing, because he was on lesson 90 in those subjects. Now, today, Friday, he doesn't have to do Language because he's on lesson 95. This helps me to give them some incentive to have a 3-day weekend, though some don't really worry about it much. It also helps me to give them a bit more say on what they do and don't do, because they can do a lesson in each subject every day and stay ahead or they can use their day each week.

So using this planner and the example above, on Thursday, I only checked off spelling and writing, and so the planner generated new activities for these. Today I will not check off Language for him, so the computer will not generate a new activity for Language. I love this. I spend so much less time figuring out where they are supposed to be. As he had a writing test, I have to go to the test tab and under writing, type the grade for that. I'm done. At the end of the semester, I can print off a report card.

As a bonus, I have added other things, piano, typing, watching baby, watching preschoolers, and chores. They have different chores during the week. Also, I let them know on this planner what times they'll be doing each thing, so that I don't have two at the piano at once. It helps me so much as I just go up every morning to print off their lists. I just have to remember to check everything off the day it's done, or we get behind.

There you have it. That's why Fridays are my favorite. It's more relaxed and when they're done, they're done. Monday through Wednesday they have to work at school until a certain time, but not Friday or Thursday.

Have a great day!!!!
Steph

Day after Christmas

We added an extra cleaning day to our week this week. We don't have any extra people here today, so it's a good day to clean up, especially after our Christmas explosion. :) So we're having our regular cleaning day chores today and we are getting it done quickly as we have been faithful lately.

Later we'll be getting wood into the basement, so that we can stay warm this week. Maybe we'll be able to do more than just a week's worth. Thankfully, next weekend will be nice and Daddy has an extra day off again, but he'll be working on a Blue Valley Woods project. Still we should be able to get the wood room full hopefully.

Tonight we're planning on playing games and just being together before another week officially starts. I have to work on second semester for this year as well. Now that I've found an online planner, I should be able to stay ahead. When I have things planned ahead like this, it saves on confusion when I am teaching six different grades. So I find using my breaks to get this done really helps me in the long run.

Have a great last week of 2011.

Is it just me?

My older ones are struggling to keep up on their studies. Is it just me? With a houseful of nine kids, there is always activity. I'm trying to figure out a way to keep things quiet with a baby, two preschoolers, a kindergartner and a first grader.
Usually I have an older kid on duty to play with the little kids, but that has digressed to "We don't know what to do, so we'll play hide and seek." Needless to say it's very distracting for the older ones trying to study for exams. TV with us usually brings quiet but the TV itself distracts and the other toddler who we watch during the week wants to play tag even when the TV is on. So I have been looking at catalogs and seeing little people puzzles and games. Those seem like they would help, if an older child was playing with them or if I was.
I can't really leave the school scene too much or they get sidetracked as well. So I'm still working on this. How do I allow for little people to wiggle and be kids and the older ones the ability to concentrate. Anybody have any suggestions?
I'm committing to limiting the TV and to only turning it on after everyone is done with school, but I have to fill the hours with productive and enjoyable work for the little ones.

So after last week, I had a couple of pitfalls with working on patience. I guess we all have them. But the plan is still in effect and working well. We'll be doing some daily tweaking for the interruptions that I know are coming, but for the most part, we're sticking to it. The kids are finally out of the confused mode of "Where am I supposed to be again???" and "You mean I'm actually supposed to work on Math for one hour even if I finish today's lesson early????"

To that last question, I say, "Yes." Reasons abound here, but the main one is 2 hours of piano practice on Wednesday and three hours of bible study on Thursday. If you can get 5 lessons done in four days, Friday is free for you, at least from school that is.

Physical therapy is still a tough thing for me and even tougher for my son. He struggles with the pain and yet I can see so much progress in his back pain. So we continue and I see the value and in those 10 excruciating minutes of PT, he can't see anything but the pain. I rub his back and remind him that this pain is actually good. But his ears can't hear me for the pain. He's a trouper through it all and doesn't fight, though he does wiggle all over the bed, trying to remove himself from the pain. That only happens when the pain is unbearable and he isn't conscious of what he's doing.

Today he said, he may be a physical therapist one day. I told him that he would be able to be compassionate toward others because of the pain he's been through.

Patience

Planning produces patience. One active way I can be more patient is to plan ahead. The other thing planning does is helps me not to worry. It's an active way I can be obedient. I love it how God provides things to do instead of the things we aren't to do. How many times as parents do we say, "Don't do that."? But we don't give them something to replace "that" with.

We do need to be vigilant about these areas in our lives. The key thing for me though, has been putting my Bible study on my list of things to do. Yes, I know that may sound legalistic. But it's necessary for me. With only 8 hours off during the day, I can do a good job teaching my kids, if that's all I do. So spending time in God's Word was lacking a lot, not just sometimes, but most days. Since it's on my list, I'm having a blast, learning and growing. So, I guess I would say that's not legalism. The hope is that I would be diligent about this and keep it consistent in my life.