Emba
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Posts posted by Emba
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I took a puzzle off of the free table at my library, and it turned out to be missing not one but six pieces. I still enjoyed putting it together, and I passed it along to a friend, with the warning about missing pieces (and all the missing parts circled on the box). She still wanted it. Maybe don't give it to the thrift store but find a friend who doesn't mind missing pieces.
ETA - If she hadn't wanted it, i would have thrown it away. I wouldn't have donated it, though I always figure that when i buy a puzzle at a thrift store, missing pieces are a possibility. If the prospect of a missing piece really ruins your puzzle experience, you probably shouldn't buy secondhand puzzles. ?
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My pinto bean recipe is super simple too. Cook the beans in water until tender (crock pot on low this means overnight). Add 3/4 tsp salt, a can of rotel tomatoes, and a tablespoon or two of brown sugar. Cook another 4 hours on low. Serve with fresh hot cornbread. ?
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I make beans and cornbread here every couple of weeks, pintos, though, not kidney. I have no instant pot, I use a pressure cooker or crock pot.
I also have an easy black bean recipe - one can black beans, one cup salsa. Mix in a skillet and bring to a simmer. Make 3 or 4 wells in the mixture and crack an egg onto each. Cover. Simmer until eggs are your desired level of doneness and serve with rice and maybe a sprinkle of cheese. I don’t eat eggs, so I just have the bean/salsa mixture, and it’s good that way too.
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There are a lot of things that it is barely any more work to make a double recipe and freeze half - I do it all the time with pizza dough, meatballs, chicken spaghetti, and oven-baked chicken fried steak. I think I’m going to start doing it with soups and chili, too.
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I just read an old book about freezer cooking for a month at a time. I’ve been in a cooking slump too, but we live rurally, and eating out all the time isn’t an option.
A week ago I did partial cooking for two weeks - just the main parts of the main dishes. Browned a lot of meat for various dishes, chopped a truckload of onions, breaded and froze some chicken fried steaks (I bake mine anyway, they just take longer from frozen), made and froze a bunch of meatballs, etc. It has been nice this week, having a lot of the work done.
I made a homemade biscuit mix that can be used for pancakes, biscuits, cheddar garlic biscuits, and scones ( sort of like bisquik but better). That’s been nice too.
I also have been using a cookbook someone gave me of 30 minute meals to fill in. They tend to use more convenience items than I usually do, but I’m fine with that for now.
Between thos three things, and generally just using more convenience foods, I feel like I’m getting my cooking mojo back. I also told my 2 older kids that they would be cooking a meal each each week for the summer. I let them do whatever they choose within reason and it’s worth suffering through the occasional hamburger and green bean casserole for the break. I don’t believe in putting canned green beans in casseroles, for the record.
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I love a good prank but to me anything that causes more than momentary annoyance to the prankee isn't a good prank, and a really good one will have them laughing too, at !east after a few seconds.? I really detest tasteless decoration of the car with condoms and such.
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At my sister's wedding i bought a Ring Pop and gave it to the best man to hand to the groom when the ring was called for. The look on the groom's face was priceless.
Also, same wedding, some of their friends put hay into the luggage. I didn't help with that. Too annoying to be funny.
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Funniest one I've seen is when in addition to decorating the getaway car, the groomsmen jacked the rear end up just enough to let the front wheels spin freely but not high enough to be noticed (front wheel drive car). I believe it took two bottle jacks. When they tried to leave, they have it the gas, and nothing happened. My brother got out thinking 'what a time for car trouble ', and everyone was laughing.
I live in Texas. There are usually shenanigans, decorating the car being the mildest. Once I saw a bride kidnapped in a wheelbarrow. My dad and others got into my aunt's house and messed up a lot of stuff. Took all labels off the canned goods and mixed them up. Some were dog food.
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I had a big basic Lego set as a child. I was oldest, so it got passed down and played with, and added to by my younger sister and brother too. But my brother and sister both have excellent spatial sense and mine is terrible. ☺
my daughter has had access to duplo and then lego since she was 4. She just never got into it. Her spatial sense is lacking. She has never been great at puzzles but she likes them. My oldest son likes Legos more, but really be plays with the mini figs and only builds very basic things with blocks. He hates puzzles, and has poor spatial sense. The youngest son loves Legos and puzzles and is just much better with spatial tasks in general.
I can't draw any conclusions about Legos and spatial sense from this, other than that my sample size is too small to be meaningful.?
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Especially in the summer, I would leave lots of space in the plan for stuff that comes up. Some days swimming or visiting relatives is just a better use of the time.
For homeschool I go week by week. I write out my plan and check things off as I go. The three R’s are my big priority, so if I get behind I look for ways to combine subjects (write about History for example) or just drop things that can wait.
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This may be completely out there but it’s working for my 10 year old boy- Make Your Bed , by Admiral William H. McRaven.
it is nonfiction, based on a famous graduation speech the author made at the U. Of Texas, about things he learned in SEAL training that can help you overcome challenges in life (e.g. “Judge a man by the size of his heart, not his flippers”) Wow, that sounds way goofier out of context. ?
Anyway, he tells s lot about SEAL training, playing on DS’s fascination with all things military while presenting good stuff about discipline and perseverance, which I like, and a view of the military that isn’t all guns and explosions, which is what DS has taken away from movies.
It’s not a kid book, I checked it out on a whim from the library for myself, but it doesn’t have any swearing or inappropriate content, either. A short book, too.
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I loved 52 Loaves!
King Arthur flour has a lot of good stuff online, and also a cookbook. I have an older edition of the cookbook, and i can't remember if it has recipes by weight, but it definitely has a lot of good stuff about how to do variations.
the bread book I use the most is Bernard Clayton's The Complete Book of Breads, which is all by volume. I like it a lot, though. I also have The Bread Baker's Apprentice, by Peter Reinhart. It gets rave reviews from many people, but I found most of the recipes too time-consuming to mess with. There was a lot of great information about the science bread baking at the beginning, though - why yeast needs certain conditions, what the differences between different types of yeast, baker's percentages, etc.
I don't really buy into weight vs. volume being better. Both work, though weight recipes are sometimes easier to scale up or down. Flour will absorb more or less water depending on the humidity of a particular place/day and so I don't think one is more accurate than the other in the scheme of things. To each her own.
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5 minutes ago, school17777 said:
Why blow someone off?
Some people, even grown people who should know better, have a very hard time saying no, not wanting to disappoint people, etc. So they don't answer, because that is easier for them, and even though it causes more turmoil for the person who has been blown off, they don't think of that or they don't care.
At least, that is my theory. I am of the "Say what you mean and follow through if you say you'll get back to someone" camp. Drives me nuts when grown people can't deal with just saying what they mean.
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The thought of planning an entire year out at once makes me break out in hives. I plan week by week. I mean, I know what curricula I will use for the year, and I have a general idea of what supplements and novels I want to use, but I don't actually plan lessons on specific days until the Saturday before. I change plans so often that planning out more than a two weeks at a time would be an exercise in futility. I usually try to sit down for awhile Saturday or Sunday, from about a half-hour to an hour, to plan the coming week. I write it all down in a teacher planner and then check it off as we complete it (or not ? )
And sometimes it's Monday before I get things all written out. Or Tuesday. Or hey, we just wing it all week and I write down what we did after we do it. ?
Halfway through the year, I kind of check and make sure we're on track to complete what I want to complete and start adjusting to complete it if we're not.
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I am not familiar with the cookbook referenced above by Carol, but she brings up a good point. There are different types of cookbooks. Some tea to a bunch of recipes, and some teach you how to cook. The real secret to being a good cook is not just knowing how to follow recipes, but how to improvise And get creative. A lots of cooking you just learn by doing, and sometimes by doing poorly.
When I was about 16 and first learning to cook I tried a lot of experiments in the kitchen that didn’t turn out. It was immensely helpful to me that even my very picky father made a point of not criticizing my cooking. Though sometimes a Gentle suggestion of what might be better done next time is helpful. There was one rice dish that even the dog wouldn’t eat.?
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I’ve got a book to read on teaching writing, and I’ll watch the IEW videos. I’ll probably read up on some ancient history, cuz that’s what we’re going to be doing in history and I’m pretty fuzzy on some of it.
i am madly researching curriculum; who knows how long that will take.
i also ordered a Bible with homeschool Devotionals that I’ll start when I get it and continue through the summer.
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I also know from personal experience that a whole lot can be learned without classes. Maybe if he's more social he would really like cooking with a teacher and/or other students, but if the money is a problem, there are so many videos now online and blogs, plus of course cookbooks. There are forums devoted not just to cooking in general, but to probably pretty much any sub-category of cooking you want to know about (my thing is bread - I used to be quite active in a bread forum). And if course the money you save on classes can be spent on fancy new kitchen gadgetry and ingredients. Because those can add up.☺
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I think it you don't push him, but just find new and fun ways to explore food and cooking, (and there have been some great ideas upthread) that it's a win-win situation whether he actually decides to go into the food industry or not. If he finds a career to pursue - win! If he just learns an enjoyable hobby and life skill that can help him eat better once he's out on his own and bring him closer to friends and family, plus make less work in the kitchen for you - also win!
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What you are calling book 1 - is that the "beginning" or " level 1" book? Sorry if I'm being dense.
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Thanks, both of you. So do you find that the beginning level is necessary, or would you start with Level 1 for a 6th/7th grader?
We used BJU reading too, and while I thought it was a great program, it was too labor intensive and we didn't make the kind of progress i wanted. I'm thinking of using CLE next year for our main program because it is a one semester program and will leave plenty of time for all of the other reading (novels) i hope to do that the in with other subjects, as well as supplements for DD's specific weaknesses.
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Funny story: My youngest DS has an unusual name. After he was born, my mother came to visit us. She is hard of hearing, and sometimes forgets that not everyone has as hard a time hearing what people are saying as she does. A couple of days into her visit, I was in the bedroom and I heard her in the living room next door, cooing loudly to DS "Oh, DS's name, Oh, DS's name. We don't like it, but we'll get used to it."
I must confess I dislike my nephew's name for a while, but now I don't think anything about it.
Edited to add: And I know my mother, so I am sure she wasn't trying to let me know what she thought about DS's name in a passive agressive way. I was equal parts amused and offended at the time, and now I am just amused. ?
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Yesterday I saw a reference in a thread to Reasoning and Reading, and after looking at it, it seems like something that my DD could benefit from, but I'm having trouble finding much information on it.
Has anyone here used it? What did you think?
My impression is that it is a supplement, not a complete program. About how long does it take to complete a level?
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I just saw on the Walmart website some Ticonderoga noir pencils that were shiny.
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My kids are loving Mossflower, which is part of the Redwall series, begging me to read another one. I, on the other hand, am reluctant because there are so many voices and different accents!
"What can I use for homeschooling that is free and all online and requires no parent interaction and reads outloud becaus the child can't read"
in The Chat Board
Posted
I'm in two Facebook homeschool groups, and I haven't seen any questions like these. I know those people are out there, though, because I met a couple of them in person. They were friends, and one had pulled all her kids out of PS a year or two before. I think there were four kids. They were doing some online option, or they would have been, if she had gotten all of them signed up in time, which she hadn't. So the younger ones weren't really doing school, because she didn't teach them on her own, it just wasn't part of her idea of what "homeschooling" was. And she had some serious health issues that disrupted everything for the family anyway. I heard one of the girls read, and she was definitely struggling and below grade level. I tried to help out a little - gave her some workbook stuff for the little ones, tried to get the older kids together with mine to play (they were seriously unconnected with the community in general, much less the "homeschool community"), but the parents seemed to want to keep themselves to themselves, really.
The other lady was her friend, and seemed to have reservations about how good of an education her friends kids were getting (I witnessed multiple attempts by her to turn playtime into educational time for her friends kids, stuff like "and we can make it a counting game!"). Then she pulled her own four kids out of school because of some issues with only one of them. This was about the same time I pulled my DD to homeschool. This other mom really seemed to want to give her kids a good education, but didn't seem equipped at all, or to have any concept of "homeschool" outside of what she'd seen her friend do, which was all online. (I, on the other hand, had multiple friends who had either been educated at home the old-school way, or who were old school homeschoolers. It was a revelation to me that there were so many options now that didn't involve unit studies or Abeka-style curriculum.) So she found a not-free online option that she wanted, but it cost more than they could afford. And given her husband was an alcoholic blue-collar worker who insisted for reasons of his concept of manliness that she not work, they weren't ever going to be able to afford it. And she was sort of at sea, because one of her girls was high school age. I tried to be helpful and sent her a link to Easy Peasy All in One homeschool, which I decided was not up to my standards but would have fit her situation, but I don't know what she ended up doing, because we lost contact soon thereafter. I saw her about six months later, though, and she told me emphatically that she was putting the kids back in public school.
I think homeschool could be done cheaply and adequately, using online and library sources and inexpensive books. But I think doing so requires a certain amount of knowledge that such things exist, and how to go about finding them, that some people don't have, especially when their examples of homeschool are not those things at all. And if you have to constantly worry about your family having food on the table, the time and effort required to do all that may not be there. So maybe some of the people asking about free online options are coming from the same sort of place. Not all , but some.