So I promised that I would post my homemade tomato sauce recipe once I perfected it. When all three of my differently palleted family members tasted this sauce, they deemed it “the BEST sauce ever!” I’m calling that good!! 😉 The tomatoes that I used were straight out of my garden – mostly Roma tomatoes but a few other types thrown in because I had them. I had picked 2 small buckets full, quartered them, cooked them, and run them through my food mill with the salse screen. I canned 7 pints but still had about 5 left in the pot. I didn’t have time to can any more that day so I figured that I would make the rest into pasta sauce for dinner the next day. I ended up with 1 pint that didn’t seal so that got thrown back into the pot giving me about 3 quarts (6 pints) of tomatoes. If you can’t start with fresh tomatoes, then use about 6 or 7 15oz cans of petite diced tomatoes instead. To smooth it out a little, you might want to throw it in the blender or use an emersion blender to lightly break up some of the tomatoes. My salsa screen breaks the tomatoes up into chunks about 1/2 the size of most petite diced tomatoes. This sauce is great on its own, but feel free to cook and drain some sausage or hamburger or to throw some of my meatballs in.
Ingredients:
Approximately 3 quarts of cooked tomatoes, run through the salsa screen of a food mill (or roughly chopped to your desired chunkiness).
1 1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp ground red pepper
3/4 tsp paprika
1 tsp chopped fresh oregano. You can use dried but start at about 1/4 tsp and gradually add more tasting as you go. (Dried herbs tend to be more potent than fresh.)
So here is a recipe that I came up with for vegetable soup one day when it occurred to me at lunch that I had completely forgotten to thaw soup for dinner. I had vegetable soup on the menu so that’s what I made (but trust me that doesn’t always happen.) This would also make an easy and healthy weeknight dinner. since you can get it on the table in under 45 min.
Ingredients:
1 quart of my homemade chicken stock – if you don’t have any homemade stock you can use store-bought cans but homemade is so much better
1 28 oz can of petite diced tomatoes
1 32 oz bag of frozen mixed vegetables (corn, peas, green beans, and carrots)
1 can of cannellini beans (This is just what I grabbed. You could use any kind of beans you want.) Also, feel free to use dried if you can plan ahead and prep them the night before. I would suggest 1 cup of dried navy beans as a substitute for 1 can of cannellini beans. **Update – since first posting this, I have made this soup with 1 cup dried kidney beans, prepped the night before, and it was great!
1 cup of dried lentils
3/4 TBSP sea salt – if you use chicken stock from the store, start with 1/2 tsp salt and add to taste. I don’t salt my stock when I make it, since I prefer to salt the dishes themselves when I make them.
1 tsp garlic powder
Freshly ground pepper to taste
Directions:
Rinse lentils well and then place them and 4 cups of cold water into a small pot and cover. Do not salt the water.
Turn heat to medium-low and set a timer for 30 min. Once the water starts to boil reduce heat to low
While the lentils are cooking, add the other ingredients to a large pot or dutch oven and turn heat to medium. Once boiling, turn heat to low and simmer until the lentils are done.
Once the lentils are done, drain and rinse them. Then add them to the rest of the soup.
Stir the soup to incorporate the lentils well.
Serve warm with fresh bread and enjoy!
It’s a tasty dinner that you can feel good about when you come back for seconds (or thirds).
The kids and I covered more than I would have ever thought possible – and they remember a lot of it! I had 3 main goals when we started – get them both reading well, and writing well, and teach them math. I knew that if I could teach them to read phonetically and write legibly then things would get so much easier on me, and I wanted to encourage them to understand the language of math right from the start. (Yes I love math!) Once they were reading on their own, they could start to work more independently. There were days when I just had to remind myself of that. DH heard me on more than one occasion telling myself things like “Just get them reading.” or “Reading, writing, and math, that’s all.”
DS was starting to read phonetically when we started Kindergarten last fall. DD was still in preschool but wanted to do real school like her big brother. For a week or two, I tried some of the ideas that I read on various blogs for keeping younger ones occupied (special school time activities, etc.), but she insisted on doing more. So she just did what we did. I started teaching her basic phonics, and she was starting to read in about 3 months. (For more info, click here to see my post on teaching her to read.)
I actually feel like I can keep doing this. Yes, it is still overwhelming at times, but I feel like I can do it.
There were hard days, and I am sure that there will be plenty more in the future. What is working now, may not work in a week, a month, or tomorrow, but I am learning how to adjust. I am also learning that if it’s working now, keep doing it until it stops.
Let’s Talk About Schedules
I spent a lot of time this past year tweaking our schedule. I would read about this method or that routine and feel like a “Bad Mama” for not incorporating it. Finally, about 2 months ago, I realized that my family and our life are vastly different than anyone else’s, and I should just do what works for us. Living on a farm gives the kids so many learning opportunities, but it also means that we have a lot of work to do on top of everything else. I have had to figure out what will work for us in this season of our lives. Extra activities like morning time (which is a great idea and I would love to incorporate it) just are not an option when you have a farm full of animals to take care of, a large garden to tend, and 7 acres to keep mowed.
We have sort of worked our way into a year-round schedule. We work for about 4-5 week terms then take a week off. That “break” week helps me get caught up around the house, around the farm, plan for the next school term, batch cook, and rest a bit. I like this because the kids don’t have the backward slides of longer breaks. We do take off from Thanksgiving week through Christmas week and just enjoy the season of Christ’s birth without having to stress over getting school done too. I also plan on 2 weeks off and a lighter schedule in late April/early May so I can get the garden in and keep up with the rapidly growing spring grass (and weeds). This gives us about 38 weeks of scheduled school, so we have a couple of extra weeks just in case. (You know, someone gets sick, or we have a major fam or house project that just can’t wait, or we’re all just having an off week and need a change of pace.)
As far as the nitty-gritty getting thing done schedules, this is what I do. During our break week, I type up a list of what we need to get done for school each week during the coming term. At the end of the list several fun activities that we can do throughout the week if we are making decent progress. I only print off 1 week at a time, because life happens. Some weeks, the kids are really into history or science and we read 6, 8, or 10 extra pages or the entire book. One of them might have a sudden desire to research something, and we go down a rabbit hole. We might have an animal who needs extra care. The weather might suddenly decide to be really nice (or horrible), and we have to adjust a bit.
A sample list might look like this: (I don’t have Bible on here because we read a Bible Story and devotion in the morning at breakfast.)
DS
Math lessons 95, 96, 97, & 98
LA (Language Arts) – Week 10
Read daily
Practice Spelling x4
DD
Math lessons 101, 102, 103, 104
LA – Week 10
Read daily
Read Alouds
Science text pages 106, 108, 110. 110. & 112
History text pages – 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, & 30
Current Chapter Book x4
German book #1
German book #2
German book #3
Some form of poetry (Dr. Suess, Mother Goose, other kids poetry)
Fun Activities
Kiwi Crate
Cooking Class – lesson 5
Learning Games – Ticket to Ride Jr and Scrabble Jr
Add timeline figures to the timeline book
Do workbooks 4 times – yes my kids love workbooks!
Monday to Thursday, I try to do LA, Spelling, Math, Workbooks, and about 30-45 min of reading aloud. My kids like to start with LA and Spelling, then move into Math. They alternate on these 2 subjects and on who goes first each day. This works out well, because it gives them each a chance to have a couple of breaks throughout the morning. We usually get through these by lunch, then do the others in the afternoon. This usually takes us about 4-5 hours (including breaks for snacks, lunch, and moving around to get the wiggles out) depending on how focused we all are and how many interruptions happen. We usually get through most of the top 3 sections by Thursday afternoon along with 3 or 4 workbook sessions and have mostly fun activities left on Friday. If we are having a really good day (or sometimes a not so good day and need a change of pace), I might throw in a fun activity on a normal day too.
Resources
So these are the things that we used this past year. Although I am sure that this list will not include every book we read because we read a WHOLE lot this year.
For Science, we primarily used Sonlight‘s Science A program. We went down a few rabbit holes when my kids’ interests were peaked. (We studied volcanoes for a month.) I mainly got this because I wanted to get the feel of a Sonlight program without having to buy the entire curriculum. The more I used it, the more I loved it; and we will be gradually moving into using the entire program over the next few years.
For History, we read a lot of the DK Findout! History books. These are amazing, and we found that we could 4-6 pages during every read-aloud session without getting information overload. The books are about 60 pages long, so we usually got about a month of study out of each. We read about the Stone Age, Castles, Pirates, Vikings, Ancient Egypt, Rome, and the Maya, Inca, and Aztecs.
For math, we started using Saxon K. About 3 months in, DS was bored to tears, and I bumped him up to Saxon 1 while DD continued in K. I love Saxon math! I used it myself in high school. I love the way to presents new concepts in small bites and keeps repeating them, so the basics are mastered. My kids are math lovers like their Mama so we spend a lot of time making up math problems around the table and just as part of life. (See my post on Eggy Math.) DS still found Math 1 easy. There were some things he had not yet mastered, so I didn’t want to bump him up to 2. We ended up doing 2 lessons most days and powering through almost the entire text in about 6 months.
For phonics, I took my lead from Sonlight’s language arts program and started using the1st grade I Can Read Itseries with DS who was already reading fairly well phonetically. After about 6 lessons, he started to have some issues with consistency, so I stepped him back to the later kindergarten books calledFun Tales. He worked through those fairly quickly, proceeded to the other series, and was reading anything he could get his hands on by the end of March. DD is following in her brother’s footsteps.
For spelling, I just sat down and made a series of lists of simple words to practice spelling. For example, Week 1 was all the 2-3 letter “at” words that I could think of. I made about 45 lists of words with similar sounds in them. This also helped DS understand rhyming since he had a little trouble remembering that rhyming words have the same ending sound not the same beginning sound.
For workbooks, We started with the Brain Quest PreK and K workbooks but those lasted about a month before the kids finished them. After that, DS used the 180 Days Kindergarten series of books. Here is a link to the math book, but there are 10 different books including problem-solving, social studies, science, language, high-frequency words, spelling, writing, geography, and reading. I really liked that we could just do 1 page in each book every day and get through them. I already plan on using this series again in the coming school year. DD worked though at least 30 different PreK workbooks over the course of the year. My kids love workbooks, so I would catch them doing them during free time a lot too.
Sonlight had a big sale in March and I ordered a bunch of materials for the coming year. This included their LA 1, 2, and 3 programs, because I had no idea where to start my kids. I figured that whatever DS didn’t use, DD would. Well, let me tell you, these language arts programs are intense and impressive. I ended up ordering K for DD and starting DS in 1. We added LA to our weekly program in April, and they have already improved so much.
For handwriting, we started using Handwriting Without Tears about halfway through the year. I had gotten this program earlier but looked at the teacher’s manual and disliked it so much that I tossed it in the resale pile. DS started having a lot of issues with writing legibly and consistently, and I grabbed the student workbook out of desperation. He loved it and, like magic, his handwriting has gotten better in leaps and bounds. Sonlight’s LA program suggests using Handwriting Without Tears as a companion product and now both kiddos are using it.
For literature, we read a ton of books – poetry, Mother Goose, Dr. Suess, Richard Scarry, Winnie the Pooh, Beatrix Potter, Curious George, and more picture books than I can count. We started out on some easy chapter books too. We read the first four Magic Tree House books, then the My Father’s Dragon trilogy (these 3 books are amazing and a great starter chapter book series for little ones), then we moved into the Little House on the Prairie series. I wasn’t sure how my kids would do with these, because they are longer and progress a bit slower than the other books we had read. At bedtime, we had enjoyed most of the Little House Picture Book series, which they loved. I figured that we would try one, and if it wasn’t holding their attention, I could always switch to something else and come back in a year or so. I was amazed at how they became enamored with the series. We finished Little House in the Big Woods, and they cried for the next “Laura and Mary” book. At the end of everyone, I have asked if they want to read something else and the answer is always the same, “we want more Laura and Mary!” We usually read about four chapters each week, unless the kids are in a really big “snuggle and listen” mood and ask for more. I usually let their attention spans dictate how long we read. Sometimes, if they are really bouncy, I will break read-aloud time up with snack or lunch, or even read while they are eating.
For geography, they have two huge interactive maps. One is the world and the other is the United States. These tell them about capitals, facts, climate, etc. They have really enjoyed these. I like that I can set a timer for 15 or 20 min while they learn, and I can get something else done.
Electives are sort of hard to account for. I was raised speaking both English and German, so I speak German to the kids a lot. We also read German storybooks quite a bit. We live on a farm and they help, so they get a lot of agricultural study time as well. For teaching them computer skills, we got the Osmo Genius and Coding Awbie sets for them for their tablets. These are well worth the investment They really help develop skills in coding, spatial reasoning, math, and spelling. We also have used Kiwi Crate subscriptions – Kiwi, Koala, and Atlas as hands-on activities for additional STEAM development. We do art in various little kid-friendly forms (paints, playdough, beading, coloring, etc.). Often when doing another activity together, we will listen to classical music and discuss the different instruments we hear and what the music makes us think of. We also worked through a cooking class this year that was amazing – Kids Cook Real Food.
That’s all that I can think of at the moment. But keep checking back. I may add more or another post about what we are doing in the 20-21 school year.
DS started kindergarten last fall. DD was still in preschool but wanted to do real school like her big brother. For a week or two, I tried some of the ideas that I read on various blogs and homeschooling sites for keeping younger ones occupied (special school time activities, etc.), but she insisted on doing more. So she just did what we did. (For more on what we did click here.)
I decided that the best place to start was to teach her phonics. DS had started reading phonetically on his own at about 4. We always played alphabet games in the car – “What does the letter P say?” “Who can come up with a word that starts with that sound?” We also read a lot together. This was enough for DS to start reading simple words on his own. DD is the more energetic of the two and needed a little more one-on-one attention just to keep her mind focused. (She also tended to rely on her big brother to tell her what everything was, which didn’t help her actually learn phonics. She was just copying him.)
I started by taking 26 unlined 3×5 cards and putting the letters of the alphabet on them. I put the lower case letter on one side and the uppercase on the other. I made the consonants blue and the vowels pink. For about 10 minutes every school day, we would use the letter cards in one way or another. Sometimes we just snuggled on the couch and named the letters and said their sounds (only the short vowel sounds). Other times, we would play a game that I made up. I would lay the cards out in a random order with the uppercase letter up and say a letter sound (or name). She would have to find that letter and tell me its name (or sound). If she got it right, we would flip it over to the other side. If she had trouble, we would come back to it after a couple of other letters. Once they were all flipped we would play again with the lower case letters.
These simple pink and blue letter cards worked out better than I could have ever imagined!
There were a few letters that she had more consistent issues with, and I had to make up little visuals to help her remember. For the short U sound, I would slowly raise my hand like I was holding an umbrella trying to float away in the wind. For the short I sound, I would act like I was itching myself. For S, I would put my hands together and pretend my arms were a snake.
After about 6-8 weeks, I was able to start putting 2-3 cards together to make simple words for her. Within a month she was reading simple words like at,cat, bat,it, hit, bit, etc. and recognizing them in books. Once we go to this point, I used the same simple readers that I used for DS, a series of 26 books called Fun Tales. She would read 2 books each day. The first would be a review of the previous day’s book and the second would be the next in line. If she struggled at all, we would just repeat the same books the next day.
There were a few times when she just got stuck on a word. DD tends to shut down when she can’t figure something out right away, so I would usually have to take her away from the book completely to get her focused again. We would go back to the letter cards and then build the word, sounding out each letter. Usually, she would get it after a minute or so then go back to the book with no problems. On occasion, we would have to stop at simply sounding out the word and come back to it later in the day or the next day.
We read through the Fun Tales series twice just to be sure she was solidly reading these simple books. We then moved into the I Can Read It series. By the end of the school year, she had worked through the first book once and was going through it a second time (by her own request) to be sure she could read well enough to move into the second book.
These days, she is reading anything shorter than chapter books on her own! I expect those aren’t too far in the future either.
I don’t know about your kids, but mine LOVE spaghetti. Spaghetti night is one of the few nights when everyone eats happily with no complaining over the menu. As of now, Ragu makes a sauce called Super Chunky Mushroom that doesn’t bother my onion sensitivity. Prego also makes a Sensitive sauce that contains no onions or garlic. We all find that one too sweet for pasta, but it makes an amazing pizza sauce (no I can’t order pizza either). I am still working on perfecting my homemade sauce recipe and will post that when I finish it. That will have to wait until my tomatoes are ready in the summer though. 😉
**Update – My tomatoes came in, and I have finally come up with a great spaghetti sauce recipe. Find it here.
Sometimes we have our sauce meatless or with ground sausage, but the kids’ favorite is with meatballs. Of course, I have to make my own, because the world thinks that onions are necessary ingredients in almost everything.
Here is my super easy venison meatball recipe. This yielded about 72 golf ball-sized meatballs.
Ingredients:
4 lbs ground venison
2 lbs of raw breakfast sausage (the kind in the roll that you can usually find near bacon at the store)
I have found that Kroger’s Mild and Tennessee Pride’s Mild are both safe for me.
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350° F.
Line the bottom pan of 1-2 large baking sheets with sides with parchment paper – you need something with sides to keep the juices from running out.
Mix the 2 ground meats together until they are well mixed . I typically just use my hands.
Pull out golf ball sized pieces of the meat mixture and form into balls, placing them side by side on the tray of the baking sheet.
You can make these bigger or smaller depending on how you like your meatballs. Just be sure to adjust the cooking time.
Feel free to crowd them a bit. They will shrink a little when you cook them so you don’t have to worry about them sticking together.
This is about 54 golfball sized meatballs, right before they went into the oven.
Once the tray is full, place it in the oven.
Bake for about 12-15 min or until done. Use a meat thermometer to be sure that the middle of the meatballs reaches at least 170° F.
Allow to cool, then vacuum seal in bags. Label and freeze. Enjoy in the next 6-12 months.
I usually put about 12 in each bag.
This makes a super easy weeknight dinner. In the morning, I just dump a bag of frozen meatballs into a crockpot with 2 jars of sauce. I set it to low until lunch then turn it down to keep warm until dinner. All I have to do is cook some pasta and slice some veggies or make a salad, and dinner is done! 🙂
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