Linda @ Linda’s Lunacy

Our Homeschool Week in Review

June 22, 2013 by Linda @ Linda's Lunacy

So many exciting things happening here. We’re planning a double graduation for Sunday. I’m not sure if having a double graduation versus two separate graduations is a time saver or not. True, I only have to do all the work once. However, I have spent quite a bit of time negotiating with the graduates to make sure that they both have what they want at their graduation.

Hannah has been busy making herself a new dress for graduation. It’s coming along quickly, and will come out great, I’m sure. 🙂

I’m busy planning the decorations, the food, the diplomas etc. These little guys are part of our decorations. The Smiley Face talks, too. lol

Abby has finished all her work except Write with World. When she finishes that, she’ll be on summer break except for any review items that come up. After summer break, she’ll be ready for high school!

Zach has almost finished his geography course. He’s been using Memoria Press Geography 1, linked to my review. When he’s finished with that, all he has left is math. He will be doing math all summer, and any review items that come up that I need him for.

It’s been very quiet this week. With Calen and Hannah finished with their school work, Abby down to one subject and Zach down to two subjects.

I didn’t know what to do with all that free time. Oh yes, I cleaned house! lol Guess it wasn’t free time after all! lol

Next week, I’ll have graduation pictures!!

To see more homeschooling posts, visit Weekly Wrap Up.

Homemade French Salad Dressing Recipe

June 19, 2013 by Linda @ Linda's Lunacy

I love making homemade salad dressings. Store bought salad dressings are not only expensive, but contain many ingredients that we are trying to avoid. Making salad dressing is really easy, and it only takes a couple of minutes to put together.

So far, I’ve made Italian Salad Dressing Mix and Homemade Ranch Dressing. I recently came up with this recipe for Homemade French Salad Dressing.

French is one of my daughters favorite salad dressing. This recipe passes her taste test. 🙂 In fact, my whole family loves it. All the ingredients are staples in my kitchen, so I can quickly whip up a batch whenever we want salad.

We plan on trying it with honey in place of the sugar. I think that will make the dressing even better.

Homemade French Salad Dressing

2/3 cup tomato sauce
1 cup oil
1/2 cup vinegar
1 cup sugar
2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
dash paprika
dash onion powder

Combine all ingredients in jar or blender. Shake or blend until well combined.
Store leftovers in fridge.

Here’s a printer friendly version.

Homemade French Salad Dressing

Recipe Type: Condiment

Author: Linda @ Linda’s Lunacy

Ingredients

2/3 cup tomato sauce
1 cup oil
1/2 cup vinegar
1 cup sugar
2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
dash paprika
dash onion powder

Instructions

Combine all ingredients in jar or blender. Shake or blend until well combined.
Store leftovers in fridge.

Notes

http://lindaslunacy.com

Now, to decide what to make next!

In the Kitchen with Linda – Dinner Menu

June 17, 2013 by Linda @ Linda's Lunacy

I didn’t do anything major in the kitchen this week. Really, All I did was cook our meals, and wash dishes. A was rather boring in the kitchen with Linda this week. Tomorrow should be a little exciting. I’m making lasagna with homemade meat sauce and homemade ricotta that my daughter is making. I’m having a birthday dinner for my mother tomorrow, so I’m also making chocolate cupcakes.

Chocolate cupcakes are always exciting. 🙂

Now…. to answer the question that I get asked about a hundred times a day……….

What’s For Dinner?

Dinner Menu:

Saturday – Sabbath- Make ahead meals- Leftovers!

Sunday – soup & sandwich day – Chicken sandwiches for lunch, dinner out for Father’s Day

Monday – chicken – BBQ Chicken with homemade barbacue sauce, oven fried potatoes, peas

Tuesday – pizza/pasta – Lasagna made with homemade ricotta & homemade meat sauce, broccoli

Wednesday – beef – Tacos with all the fixings

Thursday – chicken – Chicken Pasta Salad

Friday – Sabbath Dinner – Meatloaf, rice, corn

For more ideas, visit Menu Plan Monday

Memoria Press Geography 1 Review

June 17, 2013 by Linda @ Linda's Lunacy

As part of The Schoolhouse Review Crew, I received Geography I from Memoria Press to review.

Disclosure: I received no other compensation for this review. My opinions are my own.

Memoria Press is a family run publishing company that has been producing classical education materials since 1994. I had never used anything from Memoria Press before, so I was excited to try this Geography 1 course.

Geography 1 is written for grades 4th thru 8th. Included in the set are:

Geography I Text
Geography I Workbook
Geography I Teacher Guide
United States Review Student
United States Review Key, Quizes, and Tests

You can see samples of the Table of Contents, a text sample, and a workbook sample on the website. Geography 1 covers the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe, the area that constituted the ancient Roman Empire. Each country has a two page spread. The reading text and country information on the left, with a “History Headlines” section, and a “Tour of Today” section. A large map takes up the whole page on the right. In the Student Workbook, each country has one page with questions & fill in the blank answers on the top, and a map on the lower half of the page. There are also review pages through out the student workbook.

This Geography 1 set also includes The United States review books. These books don’t contain any lessons, just lists of info, maps to fill out, and questions to answer. What you would expect in a review book. It is very thorough, though, and can be used before or after the Geography 1 books.

Memoria Press Geography 1 Review

I used Geography 1 with my 12 year old son that is going into the 7th grade. He used both books at the same time, usually on the same days. Zach averaged 4 days a week with both books. He really loved these books, and would often do more than the one lesson a day that I required of him. On his own. Without my asking him to. Many days, he would go back later in the afternoon and get the books out again to do some more. I lost track of how many times he called out, “Mom! Did you know….?” or “This says……I didn’t know that!” He only has one page left to do in The United States Book, States and Capitals, which is 25 pages long. He is over halfway through the Geography 1 book, he has completed page 50 of the 90 back student workbook. He really liked the way the information was presented in this course, and if he continues to do well with the rest of the book like I think he will, I will get him the Geography 2 course next. We have other geography resources here, but he has done so well with this first book, I think he will benefit greatly from doing Geography 2.

In the above picture, you can see a page from the Geography 1 Student Workbook on the left, and a page from The United States Student Workbook on the right. Both of these are a fair representation of what the rest of each book is like.

The Geography 1 set sells for $48 on the website at the time of this review. Books may also be purchased individually. Great if you are using this with more than one student & need extra books because these student workbooks are consumable with no permission to copy for family use.

Saturday on the Farm – Garden Tour

June 15, 2013 by Linda @ Linda's Lunacy

There’s a lot going on in my gardens this week. The Roses and Day Lilies are blooming in the Bible Garden

Beautiful!

We had a storm go through earlier this week that had a lot of wind. My Hisbicus didn’t care for the wind that much.

The two Hibiscus below are are between the driveway and the house, going towards the front yard. The one on the left survived the storm, the one on the right is severely leaning over. The wind didn’t break the bush, so I’ll prop them up and they will still bloom.

Now on to the vegetables! The lettuce in the raised bed behind the house didn’t appreciate the wind, either.

We finally made it out to the garden to plant the potatoes. We like to place the seed potato on top of the ground, then cover with straw. We had more straw as needed to keep the potatoes covered.

Harvesting is so easy! Pull pack the straw and there are your potatoes. No digging! This year we’re using some hay that was given to us for free. If anything starts growing from it, it is easy to pull the weeds out, as they are not in the ground, just in the hay.

I started to plant the Armenian Cucumber seeds. When I pulled back the cardboard and used my little hand shovel to make a row for the seeds, I found lots of worms.

That’s why I love using cardboard and mulch gardening. The worms love it. I never did get the cucumbers planted. I got sick from the heat and and to stop. Those will be going in the ground shortly.

Once the cucumbers are planted, we’ll have all the major veggies that we wanted planted done. We will put in two more rows of corn in another week, so that it doesn’t all ripen at the same time.

What’s growing in your garden?

[Read more…]

Our Homeschool Week in Review

June 15, 2013 by Linda @ Linda's Lunacy

This week has been spent preparing for graduation! Calen and Hannah will both be graduating. Graduation is scheduled for June 29th. They only want family at the actual graduation. Hannah wants a party, but Calen doesn’t. Trying to coordinate two graduates wants in one graduation is…..interesting. lol

Neither one of them wants to wear a robe, but they both want to wear caps. They were delivered this week. I think I was as excited about it as they were. Actually, I think I was more excited. lol

There diplomas were delivered this week, also. I bought these from HSLDA. That’s were I bought my older two diplomas at, so they all match. That’s more for me, then for them.

I also bought each of them this really fun Class of 2013 t-shirt from HSLDA. The 13 on the back takes up the whole back of the shirt, and inside the numbers are the class superlatives. Most Popular, Most Likely to Succeed, etc. Very funny, since homeschool high graduates are often a class of one.

Hannah has finished all her work, and Calen just has to finish Geometry. It looks like he will finish by the end of next week. If that’s the case, we will move up graduation. Since it will just be a few family members, it will be easy to move. Hannah will still have her party on the 29th, regardless of when graduation takes place.

Abby and Zach are still working on their schoolwork. They have to get a certain amount done before they can take a break. I’m not a big fan of summer breaks, anyway. So this doesn’t bother me at all. They won’t be getting more than four weeks off, if that much.

It’s going to feel really strange with only two students. I haven’t had only two students since Calen was born in 1998!

Our Homeschool Week in Review next week may graduation pictures!

I posted Thinking About Homeschooling? The First Five Steps this week, you might be interested in reading.

I also posted a review of two eBooks from Christianity Cove.

To see more homeschooling posts, visit Weekly Wrap Up.

Thinking About Homeschooling? The First 5 Steps

June 12, 2013 by Linda @ Linda's Lunacy

We’ve homeschooled all 6 of our children from the very beginning. We started with Kindergarten with our oldest in 1991, and finished when our youngest graduated in 2019 That’s a long time! I thought I’d share what I think to be the first steps to take when you are thinking about homeschooling.

Thinking About Homeschooling? The First 5 Steps

1. Decide why you want to homeschool and what you want out of it.

Religious reasons? Special Needs? Want your child to graduate college by 18? It is very important to decide the whys behind your wanting to homeschool because they will influence the rest of your homeschool choices.

2. Find out the homeschool laws for your state.

These are easily found online. Every state has a homeschool organization, some more than one, that you can turn to for more information.

3. Join Homeschool Legal Defense Association

We have been members since we started homeschooling. I think the membership fee is worth it. You can also find your state homeschooling laws on their website, as well as much more information. I ordered our high school diplomas from them. They sell many things in their shop, including books. Members receive a discount in the store, as well as other perks.

4. Start looking at curriculum.

Your reasons for homeschooling will help you decide on curriculum. Even with that, choosing a curriculum can be overwhelming. There are just so many choices. Start with looking at what others are using, either at a homeschool convention or with other homeschoolers. Homeschoolers are usually very friendly. If you connect with a local group, chances are some of them will use the curriculum your thinking about using and will let you come and look at it.

5. Relax

Starting to homeschool can feel so overwhelming at times. Even those that have homeschooled for years can feel very overwhelmed at times. When you start to get that suffocating feeling, remember why you started homeschooling in the first place. Then relax and have fun with your kids. Laugh with them.

If your thinking about homeschooling know that homeschooling works, and it can work for your family, too.

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