Tuesday, March 6, 2012

How I Menu Plan


Okay, if you read my blog, then I am sure you know how much I absolutely love E-meals. You can read my review on it here.   They have since added more plans and I have switched to a Kroger plan.  It is not local to me, in my experience my Kroger just has different sale start dates and the prices match up pretty well.

Ok, ok, so since I don’t exactly menu plan, I still have to figure out what day we will eat what. 
I am so lucky.  My aunt made me this way cute menu planning board.

  It is a picture frame with a different themed paper under it for each month.  I just use a dry erase marker on it.
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This is a great way to be flexible, if I change my mind about a meal for one day, I just erase it and rewrite it.  I also note my scheduled grocery shopping day.

This is such an inexpensive GREAT gift idea.  I LOVE IT!!!!


This post is  linked to Works For Me Wednesday over at We are that family .

Monday, March 5, 2012

Jewelry Making Hobby for Girls.


Emily received jewelry making supplies for Christmas from her Grandma.  She has been simply loving this hobby.  She loves jewelry and is a true girly girl that can do what any boy can do.  P1010047

She also loves to be unique, so this is truly the perfect gift for her. 
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These earrings were the first project she created, since then she has made a matching necklace and bracelet.  She has also made many pairs of earrings.  She made a pair for me, and Katey.   She has made so many pieces now, that I can’t keep track.  She even gets complimented on her jewelry all the time!   This has been such a fun neat thing for her to do.
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Thanks Grandma! 

Sunday, March 4, 2012

I Went to Church Today.

Free LDS Clipart provided by Jenny Smith's Mormon Share

Today I went to church.  I have mentioned before that I am not really active in my church.  My children actually go to many church functions.  Me, not so much.  I am still LDS (Mormon).  I still love and believe in Christ and my Heavenly Father.  I also still discus the importance of the Gospel to my children.  Taking a break from church did not change those things about me. 

It was Fast Sunday- that is where during our first meeting (Sacrament) anyone is invited to get up and share their praises and testimony of the Gospel.  Fast Sunday’s are pretty neat.  I love hearing all the stories of miracles happening.  Some big, some smaller.

In our second meeting (Sunday School)- We studied in the Book Of Mormon.  I have always struggled in Sunday School before.  I often felt like a lot of what they were talking about was over my head, be in the Bible, Book of Mormon, or Church History.  I did NOT feel like that today.  I really enjoyed the lessons.  We read a few verses together and then discussed what we felt they meant.  I even had input!!  That is rare. 

Our third and final meeting (Relief Society, a meeting for women).  We discussed service and how important it is.  They played this video that really touched my heart.

We discussed how service can be an amazing thing for the person receiving it or the person serving.   Service doesn’t have to be this big either.  You can do small simple things.  Smile at someone, call someone just to check in, help with a fussy baby at church, taking extra cookies to a neighbor or even just leaving a blog comment Winking smile.  

I felt really good about going to church today, everyone was extremely nice to me and they invited me to an event later in the week.  See what all are meetings are about.

And get this I found out that Liz, The Food Nanny will be coming to our stake to do a presentation.  I love her show!!  I love her menu plans!! I love her ideas to make dinner time a family time!!  I am so excited about that!!

I just want to leave you with this talk.  Reading this will be well worth your time! 

Feb Goals Check in and March Goals.

 

 

My February goals were

  • To have a planned grocery day each week.

This has been going fine according to me.  According to meeting the goal as far as having a set day.  That has not happened.  However it has stayed between Tuesdays, Wednesdays or Thursdays.  I mostly wanted to do this because I live in a small remote town and the grocery stores here are out of so much over the weekends.  They are also super, I mean SUPER, busy over the weekends too.  I have been menu planning using E-Meals and I just go to the store when my menu runs out (which would mean I am out of groceries for the weeks menu). 

  • To workout 5 days a week

This has been much more of a challenge.  I was doing so great.  I worked out every morning until about Feb 14th.  My husband was off for a week and it just messed with my schedule.    That’s my excuse.  LOL. 

So my new March goals will be:

  • To get back to working out.  I was really feeling good about myself, I drank more water and I had more energy. 
  • To have a scheduled dinner time each night.  We are going to try for 6:30pm to be sitting at the table eating.  

 

Saturday, March 3, 2012

Family Game Night


This Winter has definitely not been as harsh as predicted.  We have barely even had enough snow to go sledding.  The temperatures have only gotten below 0 a few times.  Last year we spent the entire month of Feb barely making it above 0.    I am sad for that as well as grateful.  We still have been doing some fun indoor activities.  We pulled out the Twister game and had such a fun game night.
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Emily has been playing Pick and Draw, often and with friends.

All the kids have been having fun on the video games we own. 

We have also been getting in a ton of Science Experiments! 

We have also signed the kids up for some new outside activities.
Tommy is in a MMA class, yes fighting, I know, but I really like his Sensei and the values they teach. 
Emily is taking a Be The Best You class.  It teaches that beauty is from the inside.  It is a really neat class, with a bunch of homeschool girls her age. 
Katey is going back in swimming lessons.  She is taking the next level than she did last time. 

Winter is already almost behind us and then Summer is on it’s way.  Ahhhhh……….

K5 Learning

Online learning supplements are becoming more common nowadays.  One thing that many of them lack is the ability to be personalized. K5 learning really sets themselves apart here.  It can be totally customized to your child in no time.  There are over 3000 different prewritten lessons.

With K5 Learning your child can take 2 separate assessments.  One is for reading and one is for math.  When you are requesting their assessments you do need choose their current “grade level” in order to get the ones that would closest match them.

After the assessment the results are very easy to read.  It shows you exactly where your child placed as well as the grade range.  So it is very easy to see if your child is in their range.

 

Your child has their own log in separate from the parents. This is so you can set up personalized spelling lists, schedule or even exempt your child from certain lessons.

 

The lessons are fun and engaging even for my 5th grader.  They didn’t feel too childish for her, and sometimes she said she felt funny pretending something. (example: you pretend you are on an underwater mission for the assessments)  Other times she loved it. 

 

You can easily see exactly where your child is at. 

K5 includes 4 reading and math programs

K5 Reading helps kids become strong readers and develop a love of reading. This award-winning program covers phonemic awareness, phonics, sight words, vocabulary and reading comprehension.

K5 Math is an award-winning program which builds self confidence and a deep understanding of math concepts. K5 Math covers numbers and operations, geometry, measurement (including time and money), algebraic thinking and data analysis.

K5 Spelling is an advanced vocabulary program which improves language skills one word at a time. We feature adaptive instruction, automatic word generation, an optimized visual interface, and a 150,000+ word database.

K5 Math Facts uses adaptive technology to help kids develop instant recall of basic addition, subtraction, multiplication and division facts. Progress on each and every math fact is monitored until mastery is obtained.

                                                                                                                           ~taken from website

 

 

 

 

 

My favorite things of K5:

The parent dashboard.  The way you are able to customize everything and see exactly what your child has done and how well they knew the content.   It is full of reports, you know right where your child is at any time.

There are also math worksheets to bring the learning offline.

Some things to remember:

K5 was created as a supplement curriculum, a type of afterschool help, not a complete curriculum.  It is nice to keep skills fresh over the Summer or for the children of the mother that just had a baby.  The kid that learns on the computer or even a child that needs to learn how to use the computer.

K5 does things by grade level, however you can have your child’s grade adjusted up or down. 

It is full on instruction and not just review work.

There are no ads, no chat and no outside links.

It is 100% online, so you will need internet access.

They have sample lessons.

 

Monthly subscription

First child..........................$25

Additional children..............$15

Annual subscription

First child..........................$199

Additional children..............$129

Subscribe now

14-day Free Trial Offer!

- no obligation

- no credit card needed

- free math and reading assessments

- 14 days of free lessons

To see what others though of this check out this post. To see a wide variety of reviews check out our crew blog.

As a member of The Old Schoolhouse Homeschool Crew I review products like this, which I receive for free in order to be able to share my honest opinion.

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Blogging through the Alphabet Letter B

Photobucket

B is for Blogging.

I love blogging.

It is one of the ways I unwind.  I enjoy reflecting back and documenting our lives.

I love the tips and such that I get from other bloggers.

I hope that I can repay by sharing some tips of my own.  

Blogging really is my outlet.  It relaxes me and of course I get quite a few benefits from it.  Friends, ideas, items to review, I have won items from other blogs. 

I love that my children will be able to look back and read about their lives whenever they want.  

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