Thrifty Mommy » Frugal Homeschooling

How Do You Handle Your Fall Harvest

Katelyn Thomas — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 10:01:37 +0000

As winter approaches, our gardens are producing a last burst of fruit and veggies. I’ve got raspberries and tomatoes coming out my ears, tons of annual herbs that need to be dried and the last of the potatoes and carrots getting enormous in the ground. I’m tired of canning, but I can’t waste these last delicious, organic foods. So, what to do?

I stayed up til midnight last night and hopefully solved most of my produce dilemma. I built a solar dehydrator using cardboard boxes, plastic wrap and other stuff around the house. If it works, I’ll tell you all about it. (Yes, I could have gone to the store and purchased an electronic dehydrator, but that’s not as thrifty. Plus, building your own solar equipment makes a super science lesson for homeschoolers.)

Have you tried dehydrating your excess produce? Are you strictly a canner? Maybe you prefer to give it away to your local food bank. Share your ideas. And for an added incentive…

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Thrifty Math Lessons for Homeschoolers

Katelyn Thomas — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 13:56:08 +0000

How many times have you gone through a checkout line, only to have the cashier, who is attending college classes, freak out when he or she has to figure a percentage off or do some other basic math calculation? I feel very strongly that the most important math homeschoolers can learn is consumer math and that is what I emphasized with my first homeschool kid. Once they have that mastered, they can go on to algebra, calculus and all the other higher math.

So, how do you teach these guys consumer math without going bankrupt on textbooks and manipulatives? I’m glad you asked. We cook. We shop. We balance the checkbook. We create the budget. We measure the windows for new curtains. We measure the furniture and then go measure the wall we want to move it to to see if it will fit. Anything you do on a day to day basis can become a math lesson that actually helps your kids survive in the real world.

Here’s a basic subtraction math lesson I did with my pre-K guy the other day:

We had some canned goods to put away. I grabbed a few more off the shelf so that there were ten cans and then asked him to help me. I explained I needed to know how many cans there were to be sure there was room on the shelf. He counted them and gave me the total.

Then, I asked him to take away one can and give it to me to put on the shelf. I asked how many were left. He quickly got in the swing of things and by the third can was re-counting himself to see that we now had seven cans to put away.

For kids that are a bit older, make the lesson more challenging by asking them to take away two cans at a time or by asking them to tell you how many are left without recounting the remaining cans. (You had eight cans. You just took away two cans. How many cans are left?)

Photo by Warley Rossi

Technorati Tags: homeschooling math,homeschool a preschooler,homeschooling on a budget

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Hooked On Series for Homeschoolers or Parents

Katelyn Thomas — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 21:40:30 +0000

If you like the Hooked On Phonics series, but you are on a budget, you’ve probably been drooling over them and then going home to make your own worksheets or print things off from educational sites like me. However, today I actually went completely wild and bought not one, but two of the Hooked On sets:

Hooked On Handwriting and Hooked on ABCs. I found them at a very nice price at Ollie’s Bargain Outlet. The Hooked On Handwriting set was clearanced out for $19.99 and the Hooked on ABCs set was a bit pricier at $24.99. Since most of the materials are wipe off, I can re-sell them when I’m done with them or pass them on to one of my brothers to use with their slightly younger children. (Some of the activities are not re-usable, but I’m not going to worry about that. If the next child can’t trace over the vertical strokes in My Family on a photo activity, he or she will still be able to learn to write just fine.)

The little guy was really excited to use his new workbook, although I think most of the excitement came from using the erasable marker and being able to choose stickers to put next to his best work.The materials were easy to use and I think parents that didn’t have an education background would feel confident using them to teach their children to read and write.

Ollie’s had several other Hooked On items for a nice discount off of the $69 + normal price tag. If you don’t see an Ollie’s near you, I did see comparable pricing on eBay.The other thing I noticed was a year of Christian curriculum for churches with a Veggie Tales theme. I didn’t see a price on the boxes, but it looked quite nice.

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