Elementary Planner.

How has your organization been going this year so far? I know many homeschoolers are coming to the end of their year. In our home, we homeschool year-round with our new school year beginning usually in early August. We've been doing this since the beginning and I love it. It just works for us. Taking weeks off as we need them and having a longer break in July. I find that it keeps the kids sharper and my house less chaotic. Does that make sense?

Anyways. I am a big believer is having a daily schedule. We use Managers of Their Homes to help us manage our day to day activity. It works wonderfully! I tend to be flexible with it, however, as I find that you kind of have to be when you have a lot of little ones running around. But things usually get done in the same order every day, whether we start at 8:30am or 9am. If you want to check out my post on my schedule, click here! It's been tweaked a bit since we have added and taken activities away, but the basics are the same.

Now this year, I had decided to give my kids their own planners to help build responsibility and good habits. I ordered some cute student planners from Pflaum especially for the primary grades. We used them quite a bit, but stopped about half year. Although great planners, they were too busy. A place for notes, spelling words, and all sorts of extra activities were causing havoc in my mind as I would write down their assignments for the day. And since they was little space for all their subjects (the planner is in a weekly format), I was getting frustrated.

So I began using my own lesson/assignment planner and the kids had been checking off everything in that. But it got old with the kids fighting over who my planner and I was ready to let them each have their own planner again. After searching high and low for a daily assignment planner that met our needs and always coming up short, I decided to make our own.

So if you need an elementary planner for your kids, feel free to use mine! Or easily create your own using mine as a template. I don't mind!

Elementary Planner

The subjects on our planners reflect our use of Angelicum Academy. If you want me to email you an editable copy, just leave a comment and I can send a Word document. I had our student planner bound, so the kids each have their own books.

That's my homeschool help for today! Enjoy!!

Lunch and Dinner Dilemma.

Seems like I've finally reached my breaking point in the lunch and dinner menu department. Frequent trips to the grocery store (like 4 per week!!), too many meals at the restaurant, and scrambling to make something quick before the whole family melts down...this has been my life for the past couple of months. It's driving me to insanity!!!

So after a meal of leftovers and cheese pizza, I decided to get my life back on track in the cooking department. I've always done menus and it has been a wonderful help to me. I'm a BIG buyer and believer of organic and natural foods, so planning my shopping trip is important if I want to buy the kinds of foods we eat and save money. Believe me, buying prepared meals at Whole Foods is not cheap!

I began by taking a look at some of our favorite family meals for both lunch and dinner. I love allrecipes.com and I have most of our favorite dinner recipes stored through their Recipe Box feature. My next step was to download an empty dinner menu planner from Donna Young's website. Finally, I just filled it in for the whole month. (I did the same for a lunch menu.)

I started with our Friday meals, since we don't eat meat on those days. After that, I planned our Wednesday meals since we have faith formation on those days and having slow cooker meals is most convenient. The rest just fell into place. Leaving the weekends open for leftovers or family trips to the restaurant works well for us too.

I opted for doing a whole month of planning in advance. I think this will prevent my weekend rushing around of trying to come up with something. And once the month is over, I can just start at the beginning again...maybe switching some recipes for others. But at least I don't have to think about what's for dinner (or lunch!) for a whole month!!

My grocery shopping trips are now being planned for every two weeks, with perhaps a small trip in-between for fresh produce. This will give me so much more time for when I have our babysitter watching the kids...and I'm sure she'll appreciate knowing what to make for lunch whenever she is here!

I have included a link to both my dinner and lunch menus. All my lunch meals don't require a recipe, I just make them off the top of my head. If you want the recipes for my dinner menus, a quick search at Allrecipes.com will help you find what you need! If not, just drop me a comment and I'll send it over!!

Monthly Lunch Menu

Monthly Dinner Menu

It feels good to go back to having a plan, especially now that I have a new baby on the way in less than 2 months! Now to start organizing other parts of my life...... :)

Good Deeds for Lent.

I've been working hard on making some preparations for Lent not only for my children, but also for my 5th grade Faith Formation class. It's nice that I can use the same resources for both! A Lenten activity we have done in the past is making a sacrifice/good deed jar. It's a great way to get kids more involved during Lent.

So I decided to go ahead with this activity for my 5th grade class as well. In the past, I would have my kids put a bean into a jar for every good deed or sacrifice they did. This year I am changing things up a bit to make it easier for classroom use. I created "Lenten Deeds" tickets to put in a bowl instead. Each ticket has a certain deed that has to be done in a week. The "deeds" correspond to prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Whether it be giving up video games for a week (fasting), reading from the Bible (prayer), or collecting food for the needy (almsgiving)...it's something that kids can do and feel good about.

The tickets have a space for the kids to sign their name once they complete their deeds as well as a space for the parents to sign as well. Coming up with good deeds and sacrifices was a lot harder than I thought!! But I think I have a good mix to keep things going all through Lent. Take a look at my tickets below!



I'll probably be printing this on some light purple, colored paper. But I'm loving that it's done and am excited to have it out for both my Faith Formation class and my kids at home!

Love it too? Well, just click on the links below and you can print them out for personal use! I made 3 different pages. Yes...I'm just that nice. ;)

Lenten Deeds Page 1
Lenten Deeds Page 2
Lenten Deeds Page 3

Approaching Lent and Preparing Activities.

So last year, we did a Lent lapbook. It was fun, educational, and the kids loved it. But for the life of me, I can't find it!!! I can't even find a picture!! So sorry to all who have been asking if I could post something. I'll keep looking!

But in keeping with making things education and fun, we'll be working on another Lent Lapbook using Lapbooks for Catholics, Lent: A Journey Towards Easter. You can click on the title and it will take you to the webpage where you can purchase the whole thing for only $10!!

Other things that we are getting ready is our "Walk the Lenten Path" countdown to Easter. Last year we used this cute one from Catholic Icing and the kids loved keeping track of the days. Here is a picture of the ones the kids colored last year. They loved them!



This year, however, I actually made my own to use with my Faith Formation 5th grade class. I'm going to be letting my own kids choose which one they want to print out and color too, and so far they like the look of the new one!! I made one in black and white for my older kids to color and I also made one with the pictures already colored in to make it easier for my 3 year old. (You can see my color one below).

To countdown the days, they just put a sticker on each square every morning. But you can leave your squares blank and have your kids color them instead...my kids just love stickers, so I went that route. If you want to download a copy for yourself here are the links!!! Just click on "File" on the left side and then print.

Color Lenten Path Countdown
B&W Lenten Path Countdown

Also in the pipeline are some Stations of the Cross booklets for the kids to color and use on Friday's when we do the stations together. A picture posting of that once we get them printed and colored!!

So in the mean time, I hope these ideas get you started on your own Lent preparations! I also apologize for all the emails and messages in regards to my Lent lapbook from last year. Once I find it, I will be sure to take some pictures and post them ASAP!!