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As you may recall from my post last week, we had an unseasonably early snowfall two Mondays ago.  Then last Monday, we had a beautiful, warm fall day.  Here’s what the front yard looked like that day:

Here’s the front yard today, one week later:

And then after we did some raking:

Fall color has arrived in all its beauty, at least in our yard!

We’re having an “eat from the pantry/freezer” week this week.  Sort of.  I’m still buying milk, fresh produce, coffee and perhaps one or two other items.  And we have a short week of dinners this week too, so it’s not a full pantry/freezer week. But everything for my dinner menu comes from what we have on hand.

There’s a bit of a back-story to this.  October is the first month in a long time that we have carefully tracked our spending in various categories.  It’s something we use to do diligently, but fell away from in the past  year or so.   Since that’s a terrible habit to be in, we’re now using Mint to track our finances.   Most transactions are categorized automatically, so it only takes a bit of work to keep up with it. (And yes, we have tried the “envelope” or cash system — it caused a lot of stress for us, so we’re not particularly excited about trying it again).    Anyhow, we set a reasonable but somewhat arbitrary amount for our grocery budget at the beginning of October, and have already gone $11 over that.  While this has been a good month for us financially and we have money in the bank we could spend on groceries, I’m trying to stick as close to that original amount as possible while not sacrificing too much on nutrition (or caffeine, hence the coffee purchase).

So, here’s what’s on the menu this week:

Monday: Hearty Bean and Rice Casserole (with Ground Turkey — recipe below) and a veggie or salad

Tuesday: Chicken and Dumplings (held over from this past week, so you can look back to that post for the recipe link — we had friends’ kids over at dinner on Sunday and decided to make some home made pizza for dinner instead)

Wednesday: Broccoli Cheese Soup and ham sandwiches

Thursday: Enchiladas with ground beef, corn and beans (something like this, but more like an enchilada than a stack-up.  I was going to make the pie version, but I don’t have a good size of tortilla for it, and I’m trying to use what I have).

Friday: eat at church retreat

Saturday: lunch will be at the church retreat. We’ll eat dinner at a potluck Halloween party (not sure what I’m bringing to this yet — maybe a dessert or some bread).

Sunday: spaghetti for lunch, and we’ll eat dinner at a birthday party (I’m bringing corn bread).

Hearty Beans and Rice Casserole (source unknown – a recipe from mom)

1 lb. ground beef or ground turkey
½ cup chopped onion (optional)
1 16oz. can baked beans
1 16oz. can light red kidney beans
2 cups cooked rice
¼ cup brown sugar
½ cup ketchup
1 tbsp. vinegar
1 tbsp. mustard

In a large skillet, brown ground beef or tukey and onion; drain. Add all remaining ingredients and mix well. Pour into casserole dish and cover. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes or until bubbly. Some people like to put hot sauce on it when it is done.

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If I was doing a full pantry/freezer meal week, for the other three dinners I would consider other things I have in the freezer like pork chops and/or chicken, a breakfast-for-dinner meal, or one of a couple of frozen meals my mom recently brought me.

If you are looking for more menu inspiration, head over to orgjunkie.com for the weekly Menu Plan Monday link-up.

~Erik is 31 Months Old~

Erik turned 31 months old today, though I guess he was still 30 months for all of Tot School this week.    We had a bit of a light week of tot school since we were away from home two mornings this week instead of our usual habit of just being gone one morning per week.

Erik enjoyed working alongside Madeline quite a bit this week, and often chose to take his Tot School activities and sit right next to her:

We did a lot of our typical recurring Tot School activities this week like puzzles, board games, lauri foam puzzles and stacking pegs, coloring sheets, busy bugs, and so on.  I tried a couple activity bags, but the ones I picked were flops with Erik — they will probably more interesting to him as he gets older.

My one really great idea this week was to get our our Cheerios Activity Book and Sunmaid Raisins Activity Book, and give him those two books along with the matching snacks in one of his tot baskets.  He loved it…though he didn’t do much of the raisin book…those mostly just went in his mouth.  But he did most of the pages of activities with the  Cheerios.

I think this will become a regular part of our Tot School activity line up!

Erik seemed to really enjoy our field trip to the Mill City Museum.  I think one of his favorite parts was the big old train car:

To see what other families are doing for Tot School, visit the weekly Tot School roundup at 1+1+1=1.

We had a bit of an out-of-the-ordinary week this week. For one thing, we had two school days where we spent a good portion of the day away from home.  Typically we have one “out of the house” day, which alternates between our co-op and a field trip or other fun activity.  This week in addition to our co-op, we took advantage of my mom coming to visit on Thursday and headed to the Mill City Museum (after doing about an hour or so of regular school work in the morning before we left for the museum). Here’s Madeline and Grandma Karen playing in the Water Lab at the museum:

We also did a couple of mini unit studies this week, which I’ll describe in more detail below.

Here’s what Madeline studied this week:

Bible/Character: Following our usual pattern, we did three days of Leading Little Ones to God, and one day of our Fruit of the Spirit study, focusing on the fruit of Goodness.

Math: We worked on skip counting by both 5’s and 2’s this week.  I had originally planned on just working on the 5’s, but Madeline showed interest in the 2’s as well, so I went with it.  She definitely doesn’t have it mastered, but we made some good progress and it’s probably a topic we can keep touching on occasionally for practice as we move on to other topics.  Here’s Madeline having fun with cheerios for counters as she practices her counting by 2’s:

Reading/Phonics: We spent most of the week working on the three word families we had already introduced in Alphabet Island (-at, -ad, and -an), and briefly introduced the -ap family at the end of the week.   We practiced with our Alphabet Island letter cards as well as the word flash cards, playing games like trying to make silly sentences with the words she knows. We also spent a while one day working on the Alphabet Island songs, something we’ve been neglecting for a while. I’m working on putting together a phonics flip chart for Madeline, and I’m hoping that will be a helpful tool, especially as we are learning more word families.

Handwriting: We just did handwriting practice a couple of times this week –  One day using the dollar store dry-erase activity we used for the first time last week, and one day writing out a lot of the flash card words she has been practicing in Alphabet Island.

Read-aloud: We continued reading more Rainbow Fairy chapter books as our “marshmallow creme fluff” reading that Madeline picked out.    I think we read three of them this week.  Or maybe two, but we read one twice.  They all kind of run together. We continued with The Voyages of Dr. Doolittle for our “meaty” read aloud.  Madeline really enjoys that too, but it’s still usually something I pick out (and then she wants me to read on, and on, and on!)

Autumn Unit Study: We combined our science, social studies and art this week in doing parts of a unit study on Autumn. Madeline went out in the yard on Monday to draw pictures and observe what fall looks, sounds, and smells like.    We read about the changing seasons in our science book, and in a couple other science reference book.  We also read about why the leaves change color.  For the social studies component we read about Johnny Appleseed.   And of course we drank lots of apple cider and made apple butter.    We’ll continue the unit study a bit this week with more fall-themed art and hopefully a science experiment or two.

Music Unit Study: We read several books from the library this week about the instruments of the orchestra and discussed the instrument families.  We also listened to Peter and the Wolf (Madeline said she didn’t like it because there was too much talking!) and The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra.   This was all in preparation for attending an orchestra performance for kids on Saturday.  It turned out to be just a brass quintet (I knew the focus of the concert was the Brass family, but I thought the whole orchestra would be involved), but it was still a good time and a great chance for Madeline to be up close and watch the musicians perform.

(I meant to post this on Monday, but didn’t get to it…it’s still a lot of fun!)

Here was the scene out my front door last Monday (October 12th):

And here’s the kids having a snowball fight that afternoon in the back yard (pics look a bit funny since I took them through the screen door):

One week later…we were back to beautiful Fall weather.  Here’s the kids playing baseball in the backyard this past Sunday:

And here’s Kai enjoying the warm, sunny fall weather on the deck:

And on Monday (exactly one week after the snow), Madeline had some time outside in the afternoon to draw (and play) while the boys were sleeping:

~Erik is 30 Months old~

As I mentioned in my Kindergarten week-in-review post for this past week, each of the kids got a stamping set from the dollar store.  Here’s Erik using his Cars stamp set.  He created little pictures with it several times this week (I love how Kai is leaning out from behind Erik to see what’s going on.  He was doing that in each of the handful of shots I took of Erik stamping):

We tried some Preschool Activity Bags again this week.  Erik liked this fishing activity quite a bit.  This was another great activity for Madeline to help Erik. He could do it somewhat on his own, but Madeline was great at giving him hints on how to match up the numbers and letters he caught with his fishing pole:

Puzzles are always a hit with Erik.  Kai (8 months old) is a tot school wanna be with the puzzles too:

Erik absolutely loves board games.  Even if he doesn’t understand all the rules, he still loves to play with the pieces.  Many times when Madeline and I are playing a game, Erik will join in too to the best of his ability (or with me doing most of the “playing” and he moves pieces around or whatever).  I have discovered that some of our board games make really great tot school activities for Erik to do more as learning activities than as an actual game.   Here is Erik using our “Brown Bear, Panda Bear” game as a matching activity:

Lots of pretend play happens at our house every week.  Since our science topic was astronomy, Madeline was very interested in playing scenarios related to space.  Erik had been listening in on some of our reading too, and he quickly caught on to the game play.  Here’s the kids in a “rocket ship”:

They told me they were on their way to visit the moon and pluto.  But of course, they would be home in time for dinner. 

To see what other families are doing for Tot School visit the weekly Tot School roundup at 1+1+1=1.

I never got my Menu Plan Monday post up last week, but here’s what we’ve got on the menu this week:

Monday: Beef Roast, Baked Potatoes, fresh broccoli

Tuesday: Egg, Shrimp and Rice casserole (recipe in this post) with a veggie or salad

Wednesday: Lasagna Roll-Ups, garlic bread and a salad

Thursday: Cheeseburger Soup (I make it similar to this recipe, except without the spicy ingredients), salad or veggies, and  homemade rolls or bread if I have time to make them!

Friday: Chicken wings, french fries, salad or veggies

Saturday: Pizza for lunch, Stir Fry and egg rolls for dinner

Sunday: Cheese ravioli for lunch, Chicken and Dumplings for dinner

For many, many more menu ideas, visit the Menu Plan Monday post at orgjunkie.com!

Six weeks of school! It feels like a real accomplishment to have faithfully stuck with it and still be going strong six weeks in, since this was the point we started loosing steam with preschool the past two Falls.

The big highlight of our week was a field trip to the Como Planetarium.  I organized the trip, which was attended by close to 60 homeschoolers (parents and kids included). It turned out to be a fair amount of work for me to organize the trip (mostly answering a lot of emails and tracking payments), but I am glad we did it.

Here’s a bit about what we did in each subject area this week:

Bible/Character: We read three chapters of “Leading Little Ones to God” and spent one day talking about our “Fruit of the Spirit” character area for the week, which was kindness.

Reading/Phonics: We took it nice and easy with Alphabet Island this week, reviewing/practicing the -at and -ad word families, and only briefly introducing the -an family on Friday. Instead of practicing alphabetizing with the Alphabet Island letter cards, Madeline matched upper case to lower case and then alphabetized with this activity bag:

We also played Sight Word Bingo and an Alphabet Bingo game (a $1 spot find at Target during back-to-school time) that involved figuring out a missing letter from a word (usually beginning or ending letter), and then seeing if that letter is on the players’ bingo cards.

Handwriting: We combined handwriting practice with Alphabet Island on a couple of days, and then also used a fun Dollar Tree dry erase handwriting activity book that involves copying various easy words.

Madeline also diligently practiced writing her name, and by the end of the week was the most consistent she has ever been at writing her name all on her own with no spelling mistakes.  Go Madeline! This was a big accomplishment since she has struggled for two years to learn to write/spell her name properly.

Math: We discussed “Greater Than”, “Less Than” and “Equal to” as our primary Kindermath topic this week.   Madeline did pretty well with this, though it seemed much easier for her to figure out the problems when she had to count pictures of objects to decide if one side was “Greater than” or “less than” the other than if there was a number on each side.  We also continued our practice on counting to 100.  By late in the week she was counting out loud with out looking at her 100 chart, with only needing a few prompts to keep going.

History: We read chapters in our history textbook about the spread of the early church and about the reformation.  I also got out materials to make a history timeline poster together…and after a few minutes Madeline declared, “Mom, this isn’t school — you are doing the whole thing!”.  I think she was right — I needed to do the work of getting it started so that our lines will be straight and markings on each line will be evenly spaced.  I need to finish that part of the work up without her, and then we can add some dates and events on it together.

Science: We studied topics related to Astronomy to coincide with our visit to the planetarium.  We read about the Sun, Moon and Stars in our science textbook and also read several library books on the subject.  Madeline was pretty fascinated with it, and came up with great questions that I tried to answer as we looked at our library books together.  So much so that after the visit to the planetarium Madeline declared that she enjoyed the show but, “didn’t really learn anything new about stars.”   After further discussion she decided she did learn a few things — she learned the term “horizon” and she now knows where in the sky to look for Jupiter.  But of course that’s not “stuff about stars” now is it?    She would like to go back to the planetarium sometime soon and see another show more where she can learn more in depth info about stars in particular.

Read Alouds: We read a few shorter chapter books from the library – A “Molly” book from the American Girls series and three books about fairies from the “Rainbow Fairies” series.  These were pretty quick, light reading.  I picked “The Voyages of Dr. Doolittle” for our next challenging read aloud.  At first Madeline declared she would only listen to one chapter.   Quite a while later and seven or eight chapters in, Madeline was begging me to continue as I insisted I really needed to stop reading and go finish getting ready for dinner.  She really likes it and is excited to keep listening to the story.

Art and other Fun Stuff: Madeline selected painting with water colors as a fun afternoon activity on more than one occasion this week.  The kids each got a small stamping set at the dollar store this past weekend, and that provided well more than a dollar’s worth of fun throughout the week:

She also enjoyed a new princess paper doll book (that I had purchased a long time ago and forgotten about until recently), her big set of regular paper dolls, a beading activity bag, and the “Can You Remember Numbers” activity bag during her free time this week.

“Coming Soon”: I’m really excited for some of the things we have coming up in the next few weeks.  Next weekend Madeline and I get to attend a free St. Paul Chamber Orchestra concert, so we’ll be reading about the instruments of the orchestra in preparation for that.     My mom will be coming to visit next week and we’re planning a field trip with her to the Mill City Museum.  We’ll also start a two-week unit study on Fall this coming week.  I’m also hoping we can find time in the next few weeks for outings to the Eagle’s Nest indoor playground (I have a 2-for-1 coupon expiring soon), and possibly hit the MN Zoo on the next Member Monday on the first Monday in November.

I’m joining in with the “Weekly Wrap Up”  homeschooling linky-thingy at “Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers this week.  You can drop by there to see what other homeschooling families have been up to this week.

We started week five of Kindergarten with something approaching a sick day.  Madeline was feeling a bit under the weather and Kai was in the throes of teething, so we did a minimal amount of school to start the day, and then it just so happened that Grandma Karen was coming to visit, so Madeline got to spend the rest of her day being read to by Grandma and then playing board games.

Bible/Character: We did two days of “Leading Little Ones to God”, including a chapter on the Trinity. We supplemented this with reading the book “3 in 1: A Picture of God“.  We also combined Bible with our History reading two days, and spent one day discussing our Fruit of the Spirit for the week, which was Patience.

History: We continued on with “History for Little Pilgrims”, reading through the sections of the book covering the New Testament and early church history.  I really wanted to start making a timeline poster this week, but we just didn’t get to it.

Phonics/Reading: We started the “-ad family” in Alphabet Island.  I quickly discovered that adding a second word family greatly increased the difficulty for Madeline.  She now had a much harder time differentiating between words when words from both families were mixed together.  We played a new sight word game called “Pig”.  Erik tried to play too! Madeline also reviewed the Alphabet Island Matching Game:

We’ll take it slow with Alphabet Island next week, doing a bit more from the “-ad” family and maybe starting the next word family.  Since things aren’t quite clicking naturally for Madeline, I think I’ll need to limit to short segments each day so as not to exasperate both of us!

Science: This was another light week of science for us.  We had our co-op this week and the topic was Rocks, so we discussed this at home too.  We reviewed the material in our science textbook and read a little bit in some of our science reference books.  I’m looking forward to our study of astronomy the next couple of weeks! Our upcoming week includes a trip to the planetarium, and then at our next co-op meeting I will be teaching the main lesson on the Sun, Moon and Stars.

Math: Madeline breezed through the lesson in Kindermath again this week — this one was on patterns.  Since we covered patterning in Saxon Math K last spring and we practice patterns during our daily calendar time, I think she has a good grasp of this already.  She also practiced counting to 100 (while looking at her 100 chart for reference each day):

Handwriting: Madeline practiced her name and small words every day.  Several days this week I got out a small “slate” or chalkboard from one of our activity bags and had her use that for her writing practice — a nice alternative to the large dry erase board.

Read Aloud: We finished up The Trumpet of the Swan in a marathon reading session (at Madeline’s request) on Tuesday afternoon.  We also read a little bit of book five in the Boxcar children series and began a new “easy chapter book” series about the Rainbow Fairies.  Since the Rainbow Fairies series is pretty much “light and fluffy” reading, we’ll probably begin a new, more challenging read-aloud this next week.

Fun Stuff: Madeline enjoyed her Tinkerbell make-a-picture book, princess dress-up paper dolls, a “make your own puzzle” activity bag, and several times of painting this week, among other things.  She also spent more time than usual playing on her own.  I think all the hard “brain exercise” of learning to read and do math makes her enjoy more creativity in play when we are done with school each day!

~Erik is 30 Months Old~

Monday of this past week was a special treat for both kids…Grandma Karen came to visit and the kids played games with Grandma for a couple hours.  Cranium Cariboo is always a favorite with Erik:

I got out a few more of the preschool activity bags to try with Erik.  The “threading beads on to pipe cleaners” activity perplexed him a little bit, but he enjoyed it more when Madeline jumped in to help and “teach” (aka do it herself and try and get Erik to watch her):

This sorting activity bag was a hit too, even if Erik didn’t always want to exactly sort things the way I suggested he sort them:

On Friday I got out a brand new sticker activity book.  Madeline couldn’t keep her hands off this one either, so the kids did it together for a while:

Besides activity bags and some of our usual tot school toys, we also worked on some Thomas the Train letter flash cards.  Erik knows the names of a lot of letters, but doesn’t always match the right name with the right letter.  I’m sure it won’t be long before he is a pro at naming the letters on the cards.

To see what other families are doing for Tot School, visit the weekly tot school round up at 1+1+1=1.