Baking & cooking
Never Too Young!
When I was a child, my mother was a professional baker/cook. She would get very stressed if her children were in the kitchen and would never let us in without a lot of yelling. Therefore, when I got married at age 22, I had no idea how to cook anything. My culinary skills were limited to boiling water and making a peanut butter and jelly sandwhich.
For the first 5 years of our marriage, I cooked very simple things with the help of my husband. Most of what I cooked was terribly unhealthy, like Hamburger Helper (5 days a week) and frozen pizza (2 days a week). My husband and I each gained 80 lbs and blood pressure and cholesterol levels shot through the roof for my husband.
I became determined to change our lifestyle. When my son was 4 and my daughter was 1, I pulled out the dusty recipe books from above my stove and turned to page 1. I have been cooking new recipes about 5-6 days a week for the past 5 1/2 years. My husband loves it, and I have found that I very much enjoy cooking! We keep the recipes that we both love in an antique recipe box. I plan on typing them into our own recipe book someday when my kids are grown and have homes of their own.
But I didn't stop there! We started homeschooling in August 2009. Since that month, I have been teaching my children to cook! My son finds a strong sense of pride when he is able to make oatmeal or macaroni and cheese with the stove by himself. My 3 year old helps me daily with preparing meat, stirring ingredients, baking, and more! All 3 of my children love to help in the kitchen. I do find that I can easily become ''stressed'' like my mother did when there is a lot of commotion in the kitchen and things are not going smoothly. And I am not perfect, so I do catch myself losing my cool occasionally. But more often than not, I take a breath and remember why I am teaching them. I love them, and I desire them to be well rounded and healthy adults when they are grown. | | sensan2000 |
| | Homeschool helps
Pairing Together Older & Younger Kids
Have you tried pairing your younger children with an older sibling? It is a great learning experience for both the older and younger child and it allows you some one-on-one time with a third child. Assign each sibling 15-20 minutes each day with your younger child. Depending on the age of your children, you might let them create activities or you might need to be very specific. You can either pull out a container of ''special'' toys (reserved only for this time) and let them play together or you can have them play learning games together.
The older child can have the younger child identify her body parts, listen to him read board books, or sort through toys by color or shape. You can have various tubs of pre-made educational activities (like alphabet magnets or counting bears), puzzles, books (espcially good picture books that are related to what you're studying), workbooks, beginning readers, and craft projects (paint, scissors, construction paper, etc.). You can assign what each child is to do with your younger child that day or you can let them make selections from the already prepared options. | | nohermanv |
Other
Make the most out of your space!
When we first began home schooling, we only had one child. We had plenty of room! I had one room set aside as my schoolroom and vowed never to change that. Never say never, right? Sure enough, four more children came at rapid pace and the set aside schoolroom no longer existed. I finally succumbed to using the kitchen/dining room as the schoolwork. Another thing I said I would never do, so now I've learned just to not say never.
I didn't have room to put up a white board but one day I was looking at my refrigerator and thought, ''why not?'' Our refrigerator is titanium, which looks like stainless steel. I used a dry erase marker and sure enough, it worked really well on the refrigerator surface. I now use that as my chalkboard and is really handy is working through math problems. I even made some magnet chore cards to use on the frig as well. Now, if you try this, please test the dry erase marker in a small area. I have found that it wipes off easily. I love using it when guests are over and they don't realize I'm using a dry eraser! | | tots2teen |
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