Menu Planning

I had gotten into the habit of making out a weekly menu including lunches and dinners and their ensuing grocery lists.  This worked out great, and as I got into the habit of it I found I didn't necessarily need to write it down each week.  Well, then and there began the downward spiral into chaos!  Its' been a few months now since I've used my handy "menu planner template", and boy do I feel it.  I've gotten so low that I've actually had to *gasp* ask my husband what he would like for dinner!  We all know the answer to that question.... yep, it wasn't pretty.

So I printed out a few sheets of this menu planner and since it's Friday, it's THE day for menu planning. Why?  Because we do our grocery getting over the weekend.  Costco, grocery, and halal meats.  Three stops.  It pays to be organized.  This morning I sat my kids down in front of me at the kitchen table and had them go through my stack of 'authorized family dinner meals' to pick what sounded good for the week.  We made the lists, and off we went to the grocery store and to the halal meat store!  All that's left now is Costco which is usually saved for my dear husband because he just loves going there (for real).

What is an 'authorized family dinner meal' you also wonder?  Well, some time last year I got this idea from the blog Litte Nanny Goat to make our 30 meal plan.  I now keep those 30 cards in the front of my recipe card box (yes, I'm old fashioned and have a card box), and when it's time to meal plan I can grab that stash and browse the meals I know are winners.  In theory, this is fabulous, however, as the kids change, so does their taste in food. Hmmph.

Without further ado, here is next week's plan. (I've skipped breakfast b/c in our house it is either cold cereal,  hot oatmeal, or eggs.  Also, everyone can get their own breakfast, so I don't really need to plan that out!)

Monday: Lunch: Tacos; Dinner: Chicken Paprika
Tuesday: Lunch: Pimiento cheese sandwiches and pasta for kids; Dinner: Chili w/ fixings
Wednesday: Lunch: Mexican Chicken Skillet; Dinner: Leftovers
Thursday: Lunch: Mujaddara (rice and lentils w/ caramelized onions); Dinner: Chicken Stew
Friday: Lunch: leftovers; Dinner: Memaw's Casserole

Menu Planner Template can be found here along with dozens of other goodies.

Read, Read, Read

Oh the guilt.  I've been reading The Well Trained Mind the past few days to figure out what I want to do next year.  I use this book as my guide for method and curriculum.  It is a guide to classical education, and it is very thorough and rigorous.  And full of READING.  Not just the kids reading, no, parents reading TO the kids.  And now I feel so delinquint!!!  Do you know people actually read to their children for like a long time each day! An hour or two or three???  It's true; I read daily entries from fellow homeschoolers reassuring me that they spend some good chunk of time (45 minutes up to 3 hours) reading to their children.  I mean, with all the things we have to get done in any given day, how  how how do we sit down and read each day? 

After giving it some thought, I realized it's just like any one of the those other things we do actually in any given day.  We make time for it.  If it is important enough, we fit it in.  No matter what.  And I think I need to do that.  I need to evaluate where some of my time is spent (or wasted) and rearrange a thing or two to ensure my little ones (all of them) get a read-aloud from me.  The benefits are immeasurable, apparently, and according to older children it is a highly cherished memory.  I like to spend some time finishing the kitchen in the evening. It's a hectic time, but what if I just make sure that I'm all done by a certain time and go up to the littlest ones bedroom and read for 20 minutes.  Or maybe after lunch?  All I know is that it won't happen unless I free myself up and do it.  I have done it off and on over the past school year, and they've loved it so much when I have read.  I pick books they normally wouldn't read on their own, some types of classics usually, and they really like it.  Insha'Allah, I can get on board with this and put it on the calendar to read out loud.  These are my musings this evening, and I do hope I can get into this new habit.

Babylon and the Hanging Gardens

Assalamu alaikom

Studying Ancient History has been so much fun for my two older childen (ages 10, 8) this year!  The stories about the leaders, the nomads, the pyramids, and the wonders of the world have easily piqued their curiousity and sparked some creativity. 

When we read about King Nebuchadnessar of Babylon and how he gathered plants, bushes, and flowers from all his land to make a beautful garden for his wife, we immediately thought of an art project.  I pulled out two empty shoe boxes, and the two older kids instantly went to work depicting the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.  I was really amazed at the initiative they took.  I'd never seen this type of enthusiasm before, and I was even further amazed when I saw them race upstaris to the school room after dinner that night!  The ideas kept rolling in until they finally felt like they had done enough to make the gardens.  Here are the finished projects, masha'Allah:

Happy March Everyone!!

Assalamu alaikom wa rahmatullah!

Phew, February is ALL GONE!!! Not that it was so horrible, alhamdulilaah, but it's nice to have that last stretch of the winter months behind us! 

I'm looking forward to an active March. 

I've started with telling my kingdergartener about the saying about March "In Like a Lion, Out Like A Lamb".   This old saying refers to the weather in March, so I made a small little poster (without using a normal poster board rather I used a large piece of construction paper 12*18").  I used templates from DLTK's site to make the board and chart to track the weather daily.  This site has lots of nice coloring pages and other printables.  They're organized by month, by topic, or season, and by holiday!  Cute stuff.

This is a picture of what ours looks like.  I don't have room for a large bulletin board, and that's why I made mine small.  Even if you don't homeschool, this could be a fun on-going project for March that you and your children can do.

We're taking one week off towards the end of March to receive some old friends who will be visiting.  Looking forward to some fun outings with them, too.  Hope you have some fun things planned for the beginning of Spring and the growing season!  I'm also thinking to start some bean seeds in little cups of pots to show them kids up front a personal how they sprout.  My kids aren't new to gardening, as I've been doing it as long as they've been around, but it's still nice to see the bean sprout!  So InshaAllah I'll get on that and make a post about it.

Have a great day!

Our Painted Lady Guests

Assalamu alaikom wa rahmatullah,

About a month ago I bought a package for raising butterflies.  The plastic, netted little butterfly house comes in the mail along with a certificate you redeem when you're ready to receive brand new little butteryfly larva in the mail.  Ours came around January 20, just cute teeny tiny little larva, or caterpillars.  We estimated they hatched about 2 or 3 days before getting to our house. 

They spent the next ten days eating and GROWING!!! They lived in the container they were sent in because all their food was in there, as well as the fact that we didn't want to introduce our bacteria into their habitat.

We observed their growth, and documented how many days they remained caterpillars before climbing to the top of the container to make cocoons.  Oh how delighted the kids were when suddenly, one morning, one caterpillar was hanging from the top! Within hours all 4 were hanging and making cocoons.  They stayed there another ten days or so until out came four beautiful Painted Lady butterflies.

They've been living in that big plastic butterfly garden that came with the original order.  I put a fresh slice of orange for them to eat from every few days.  They're so pretty to look at and fun to observe.  Since the outside temps are too cold to release them, they'll live out their life cycle in our house.  If we wanted to, we could have put nettle or thistle leaves to make a favorable environment for their eggs to hatch and continue the life cycle.  I'm not really up for that, so we'll just let them live out their lives and call it at that.  Our science curriculum had a great set of lab pages for this unit, so my kids got to observe and record all stages. 

 in the picture above you can see the four cocoons

 in the picture above the adult butterflies are having some orange juice

in the picture above, an aerial shot of the Painted Ladies

 

It's a great learning tool for the whole family! I highly recommend it.

I ordered ours from Insect Lore

Notebook Page for Studying the Prophets

Assalamu alaikom and peace!

During our studies of ancient history (Story of the World I), we came across the story of Prophet Musa (Moses) peace be upon him.  Thanks to the fabulous blogger over at Talibiddeen Jr, I found this awesome page that we can takes notes on and save for a future book on the prophets.  We can use this template for future studies of any prophet, and I'll have the kids file them in their Islamic Studies Notebook.
Here's the template: http://talibiddeenjr.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/isprophetsprophetfactfileorig.pdf

New path for my blog

Assalamu alaikom and peace to everyone!

After much thought, I've decided not only to keep blogging, but to improve it.  Insha'Allah, God willing, I want to continue with the home and garden blogs, and I want to add homeschooling to it, too.  I started blogging in order to log my own thoughts and journeys through life.  Since I don't want to start a new blog or commit to only one subject matter, I decided to make labels and categorize my entries so that you (and I ) can easily find entries of interest in the future.

I hope you enjoy reading as we move forward, and insha'Allah you'll get some benefit out of this!  I especially am excited to share my 'finds' for homeschooling.  After all, that's one way I got the courage and the materials to start my own homeschool :)  Please follow or subscribe!

Peace and LOVE!

Zein

follow up to 'new warm drink'

Alright, if the smell of vinegar has you running for the hills, then skip the 'tea'.
Just mix two tsps vinegar in a little hot water. Sweeten with a bit of honey.
Chug.
The end.

Or get the caplets of apple cider vinegar.

:)

new warm drink

Ok, so if ditching your beloved shampoo routine doesn't sound appealing to you, I'll give you something else to think about :) 

Apple cider vinegar has been used for ages for its health benefits.  After a quick search on Mr. Google,  I was so anxious to start chugging it by the gallon! 

Well, for now, I'm putting 2tsps of Organic undiluted apple cider vinegar in a mug of hot water with a bit of local honey.  It's quite refreshing and somehow filling.  My kids even had some and liked it!!

Give it a shot.  I plan on having this at least once day.  Maybe twice.  I read it was good to drink this half an hour before eating, but I am not that organized so I'll stick to having it in the evening after the kidlets have gone to bed.

Here are just a few health benefits of consuming apple cider vinegar courtesy of webmd.com:
reducing cholesterol
reducing weight
heart health
reduce some cancer risks
lower blood pressure
clear up acne
alleviate arthritis
... and more!

green topic: baking soda and hair

I've blogged about this before; I talked about not using shampoo to try to get healthier hair and reduce toxins being absorbed in the body.  I quit cold turkey at one time and washed my hair using a baking soda rinse followed by an apple cider vinegar rinse.  It was really hard at first.  My hair never felt clean.  It stayed oily.  I continued for a couple of months, and then I just had enough and felt like my scalp needed a good shampoo.

Several months later I, once again, was dissatisfied with shampoo.  My hair was falling out like crazy, moreso after a wash.  Tons and tons of hair.  And it was getting oily and thin feeling.  I decided to take another break from shampoo and got the baking soda out again.  Well, this time I did something right b/c I'm getting much better results!  One tablespoon to about 8oz water.  I pour it carefully on my scalp then rub and massage my head to be sure it got all in there :)  Of course this is followed by a good rinsing out.  Sometimes I put the apple cider vinegar rinse, but recently I've tried finishing off with a bottled conditioner.  I do that b/c my main complaint about using the soda wash is having dry hair.  So putting conditioner has been a good compromise.

At first I decided to use my organic shampoo once a week and use the baking soda on other days when I needed washing.  I did that for almost two months, and now I haven't used the shampoo in a couple of weeks. It's working out much better this time 'round so I'll be sticking with it.  My hair is coming out in normal amounts, and the conditioner is keeping it soft.

Using the soda has also made me aware of how many products one could use on a baby.  Considering our skin is our biggest organ and absorbs everything on it, I was motivated to clean the kids' heads/hair with soda as well.  There is absolutely no need for harsh shampoos for little ones.. they don't have as much oil production and hormone issues as grown ups do!  Give it a shot :)