If you have never been over to Lynn's Kitchen Adventures, you gotta check it out. She has a lot of great recipes over there including all the baked oatmeals I love to make- Peanut Butter, Pumpkin and now Coconut.
I made adjustments to her recipe and came up with the following. I make a lot of changes because I don't want it to taste like straight oatmeal but I still am guessing it's better for you than Cookie Crisp cereal. :)
Coconut Baked Oatmeal
3 cups quick oatmeal
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 cup milk
2 TB melted butter (Lynn's recipe calls for coconut oil which I couldn't find)
2 eggs
2 tsps baking powder
1 tsp salt
3/4 cup yogurt - plain or vanilla - I used vanilla Greek yogurt
3/4 cup coconut (I used sweetened)
3/4 cups to 1 cup chocolate chips (I used semi sweet)
1/2 cup brown sugar (optional topping - gives it a crispier top)
Combine all ingredients from oatmeal to coconut. Then mix in chocolate chips. Pour into greased 9x13 pan. Sprinkle brown sugar on top. Bake in 350 oven for 20-25 minutes.
My kids and I will eat through a 9x13 pan of this and any of the other baked oatmeals in no time flat and I even have one kid who won't touch traditional oatmeal but likes this.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Next year's school decisions
I know that people will continue to ask me why I am leaving Georgia Cyber Academy which we have done for 2 years so I figured I would write a blog post. Now in Kindergarten, I wrote a similar blog post and then we ended up doing it in 1st Grade. I feel more confident that my decision is going to stick this time but don't hold me to it. :)
Pros of GCA - I like their Math and their Language Arts (sort of). And their History tied into what we were doing with Story of the World. Andrew really likes all of it. He likes the online math lessons, the reading room with audios. He didn't like phonics or grammar but he wouldn't like that with any curriculum. It's free.
Cons of GCA - teacher conferences, quarterly portfolios, remembering to enter attendance, health and PE hours, dealing with public school stuff, phonics. And for us, we were doing 2 curriculums since we were also doing classical education stuff and we also did Timothy Ministry on Fridays. So it was a lot for us.
What we are moving to..
Language Arts - Sonlight Grade 3 reading schedule and companion guide. Going to get most of the books from the library. Shurley Grammar - I like grammar but this is going to be a lot of work! No more phonics. Haven't decided on a Spelling program or whether or not to do Worldly Wise. Continue to read independently and suggested literature from Well Trained Mind. This by far is the MOST overwhelming subject because there are so many parts of it!
Science - Elemental Science - will be studying Earth Science and Astronomy. Excited about family membership to the Tellus Museum! This fits into the Well Trained Mind classical schedule.
History - Story of the World - Book 2 - Rome and Medieval times - Part of WTM classical schedule.
Math - Going to compare Saxon 3 with Horizons Math 3 and see which one I like better. Looked at online curriculums and not sure I liked anything except my kids are in love with Dreambox.com so we might use that as supplemental. Thought about k12.com since Andrew likes GCA math but it's not the same as what we are doing and repeats entire units in 3rd grade that we already did this year. Plus I don't want to spend $300 on a curriculum each year that I can't use on the next kid. So it's out.
Andrew will continue in Timothy Ministry and Peter will join him in the pre-K program. If there are any more curriculum decisions that I have to make, it's going to have to wait because my head is spinning right now!!
Pros of GCA - I like their Math and their Language Arts (sort of). And their History tied into what we were doing with Story of the World. Andrew really likes all of it. He likes the online math lessons, the reading room with audios. He didn't like phonics or grammar but he wouldn't like that with any curriculum. It's free.
Cons of GCA - teacher conferences, quarterly portfolios, remembering to enter attendance, health and PE hours, dealing with public school stuff, phonics. And for us, we were doing 2 curriculums since we were also doing classical education stuff and we also did Timothy Ministry on Fridays. So it was a lot for us.
What we are moving to..
Language Arts - Sonlight Grade 3 reading schedule and companion guide. Going to get most of the books from the library. Shurley Grammar - I like grammar but this is going to be a lot of work! No more phonics. Haven't decided on a Spelling program or whether or not to do Worldly Wise. Continue to read independently and suggested literature from Well Trained Mind. This by far is the MOST overwhelming subject because there are so many parts of it!
Science - Elemental Science - will be studying Earth Science and Astronomy. Excited about family membership to the Tellus Museum! This fits into the Well Trained Mind classical schedule.
History - Story of the World - Book 2 - Rome and Medieval times - Part of WTM classical schedule.
Math - Going to compare Saxon 3 with Horizons Math 3 and see which one I like better. Looked at online curriculums and not sure I liked anything except my kids are in love with Dreambox.com so we might use that as supplemental. Thought about k12.com since Andrew likes GCA math but it's not the same as what we are doing and repeats entire units in 3rd grade that we already did this year. Plus I don't want to spend $300 on a curriculum each year that I can't use on the next kid. So it's out.
Andrew will continue in Timothy Ministry and Peter will join him in the pre-K program. If there are any more curriculum decisions that I have to make, it's going to have to wait because my head is spinning right now!!
Friday, December 2, 2011
Truth in the Tinsel Day 2
Truth in the Tinsel Day 2
My idea of starting in advance didn't really work out (laziness) so I got on track with the normal schedule today. It being December 2nd - we did Day 2 which was Kingdom. The magnets on the fridge give clues and the clue for day 2 is "crown" so Andrew was beyond overjoyed that we were going to be making paper crowns and kept waiting for the day 2 craft to come. But surprise! The day 2 craft is making a crown ornament not a crown for your head. Ohhhh. But lest you think I am a mean mommy, we made both. :)
The passage again today was Isaiah 9:2-7 with the focus being on verses 6-7
6 For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
7 Of the greatness of his government and peace, there will be no end. He will reign on David's throne and over his kingdom, establishing it and upholding it with justice and righteousnesss
from that time on and forever.
In our short devotion, we talked about how God spoke to the prophet Isaiah hundreds of years before Jesus was even born and how it describes Him as being the King who will rule forever. Jesus didn't come to just to be a baby. He came to be rule and reign in our lives forever.
Here is a picture of Josh painting his crown. That's about all he painted before he gave up. What can I say? He's 3. We do most of the crafts when he is in bed.
And here are Peter and Andrew with the completed crown ornaments and their jeweled crowns for their heads. My prayer for all my children tonight is that they will grow up and worship Christ as their King in their lives.
My idea of starting in advance didn't really work out (laziness) so I got on track with the normal schedule today. It being December 2nd - we did Day 2 which was Kingdom. The magnets on the fridge give clues and the clue for day 2 is "crown" so Andrew was beyond overjoyed that we were going to be making paper crowns and kept waiting for the day 2 craft to come. But surprise! The day 2 craft is making a crown ornament not a crown for your head. Ohhhh. But lest you think I am a mean mommy, we made both. :)
The passage again today was Isaiah 9:2-7 with the focus being on verses 6-7
6 For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
7 Of the greatness of his government and peace, there will be no end. He will reign on David's throne and over his kingdom, establishing it and upholding it with justice and righteousnesss
from that time on and forever.
In our short devotion, we talked about how God spoke to the prophet Isaiah hundreds of years before Jesus was even born and how it describes Him as being the King who will rule forever. Jesus didn't come to just to be a baby. He came to be rule and reign in our lives forever.
Here is a picture of Josh painting his crown. That's about all he painted before he gave up. What can I say? He's 3. We do most of the crafts when he is in bed.
And here are Peter and Andrew with the completed crown ornaments and their jeweled crowns for their heads. My prayer for all my children tonight is that they will grow up and worship Christ as their King in their lives.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Truth in the Tinsel Day 1
As we all know, I am not the greatest blogger so this may be my one and only post on this. Ha! My friend Tina posted on FB about an advent book called Truth in the Tinsel. I got it on Black Friday for $2.99 but to me, it is totally worth the list price of $4.99. It has a scripture verse, little lesson and craft for 24 days. It includes the templates, list of supplies (most of which were basic), strips for a paper chain and little squares with the day and topic if you wanted to make an advent calendar out of it.
Day 1 - Candle.
First I took the little squares and added magnet tape on the back. I love magnet tape. I had the kids put them all on the fridge. At first I thought it would be fun just to put them all over the fridge and make it sort of like a scavenger hunt to find the correct day. But my beaverish 7 year old had other ideas...
All nicely in order. That is sooo Andrew!
I had the boys get the 1st magnet off the fridge.. Then we did the Bible verse which was Isaiah 9:2-7 which talks about the people being in darkness and then ends with the well known message.. Unto us a child is given, a son is born and the government will be upon His shoulders.. It was over my children's heads except for all the names of God that is listed. But that's okay. I think most of the passages will be fine for them and I love that we are reading the actual Bible rather than just doing a story. We then light a candle and talked about how we have darkness in our hearts of sin and how God gave us the light of the world through his Son, Jesus.
Then I dashed off to Walgreens and Chris made these cute candle ornaments with Andrew and Peter. Peter very excitedly showed me his on the Christmas tree as soon as I got home. :)
Day 1 - Candle.
First I took the little squares and added magnet tape on the back. I love magnet tape. I had the kids put them all on the fridge. At first I thought it would be fun just to put them all over the fridge and make it sort of like a scavenger hunt to find the correct day. But my beaverish 7 year old had other ideas...
All nicely in order. That is sooo Andrew!
I had the boys get the 1st magnet off the fridge.
Then I dashed off to Walgreens and Chris made these cute candle ornaments with Andrew and Peter. Peter very excitedly showed me his on the Christmas tree as soon as I got home. :)
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Fun Calendar with the Kids
You have heard of Picture Books. Well this is my picture calendar. This combines one of my kids all time favorite crafts with one of Andrew's all time favorite things to do. Allow me to continue
Favorite craft..My kids love sitting down at the computer with me and going through Google Images and finding pictures for me to print out. I usually copy and paste them to a Word Doc and then print to my color printer. It could be anything from something themed like dinosaurs or just random things that they like. I then cut them out and they spend forever gluing them to paper. The last time we did it we laminated them and made them placemats. So for my calendar, Peter got to help me pick out photos for the calendar. Usually this ends up in watching some You Tube videos too and let me just say that some of those roller coaster videos made my stomach curl but Andrew thought they were awesome..I digress.
Andrew's all time favorite thing..well one of many..is to know what is happening on the next day. He also wants his life to be filled with fun and for the summer I am fulfilling his dream because I too want to have fun and school is around the corner.
So the blank column before Sunday is a bunch of pictures that I want to put ON the calendar somewhere and the others are the days of the week with the activities that I have planned. You should have seen Andrew's excitement last night when he checked the calendar and discovered that we were going to Play. I got a lot of blank days that need to be filled up in July. I am sure I will have no problem filling it in with all the fun things I want to do!
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Phonics Pathways review - good for one who already reads well
I sent a message out to my homeschool group about whether or not I should continue with a phonics program since Andrew already knew how to read. With more difficult texts, he is still a slow reader but he is a competent one. He can read almost anything put in front of him. He would still rather me read to him but if I make him read a chapter of the novel I am reading or one of his chapter books, he could do it with relative ease. So my main problems with phonics programs is I am always feeling like I am jumping into the middle of one and I don't know where to start. Do I start with book 1, book 2..would this program help at all?
The overwhelmingly popular response from my group was Phonics Pathways. One book and it took their kids from A to Z in phonics. I am a collector of curriculums so when my friend offered to sell it to me at a low price, I decided to go for it. She ended up giving it to me which was even more of a bonus (thanks Suzanne!).
I am very impressed. A 200 page book and the place that I started with my proficient reader was in the 50s. The reason being is that it has a high emphasis on spelling too. Spelling rules such as after a short vowel, there must be two consonants before you can add a Y so double the last consonant if there is only one. And it's a K not a C before an I or an E. I can spell "funny" and "kite" correctly but I didn't know that there was rules involved. So I was very pleased to see that I could work more on his spelling and the reason why words are spelled certain ways and this is more useful to me right now than getting him to sound out words as he seems to be able to sound out more and more 3-4 syllable words each day. This weeks words included communicating and understanding..not too shabby..hey that used the Y rule. :)
So I give Phonics Pathways an A+. I am overwhelmed with the number of subjects that I am doing right now since I am doing both GCA and 1st grade Well Trained Mind at the same time (oh..have I not mentioned that? Yeah I am..it's insane!) but I hope to add in some Spelling Workout too as that also has been highly recommended. The first book is pretty basic so I figured that it could also be used as a handwriting supplement. We will see.
Still loving school and my organization streak this month has carried over to lesson planning too which makes me less stressed and enjoying school more! Would love to hear from other moms on how your school year is going? :)
The overwhelmingly popular response from my group was Phonics Pathways. One book and it took their kids from A to Z in phonics. I am a collector of curriculums so when my friend offered to sell it to me at a low price, I decided to go for it. She ended up giving it to me which was even more of a bonus (thanks Suzanne!).
I am very impressed. A 200 page book and the place that I started with my proficient reader was in the 50s. The reason being is that it has a high emphasis on spelling too. Spelling rules such as after a short vowel, there must be two consonants before you can add a Y so double the last consonant if there is only one. And it's a K not a C before an I or an E. I can spell "funny" and "kite" correctly but I didn't know that there was rules involved. So I was very pleased to see that I could work more on his spelling and the reason why words are spelled certain ways and this is more useful to me right now than getting him to sound out words as he seems to be able to sound out more and more 3-4 syllable words each day. This weeks words included communicating and understanding..not too shabby..hey that used the Y rule. :)
So I give Phonics Pathways an A+. I am overwhelmed with the number of subjects that I am doing right now since I am doing both GCA and 1st grade Well Trained Mind at the same time (oh..have I not mentioned that? Yeah I am..it's insane!) but I hope to add in some Spelling Workout too as that also has been highly recommended. The first book is pretty basic so I figured that it could also be used as a handwriting supplement. We will see.
Still loving school and my organization streak this month has carried over to lesson planning too which makes me less stressed and enjoying school more! Would love to hear from other moms on how your school year is going? :)
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Day #10 Laundry Challenge - 2 days and now it's DONE!
Our laundry area is in the garage so I I have one shelf and then I just use the top of the dryer to hold stuff. It wasn't too bad but I did need to clean out the overflowing lint trash can and see what exactly was on that shelf.
For the main part of the laundry challenge, I decided that the laundry should be DONE. We have an electric blanket that is hard to wash that I think has been out there for at least two winter seasons. We also have a high chair cover and a baby car seat cover that needed to be washed and my "baby" is two. So I had some miscellaneous catch up to do in addition to all this plus 3 more baskets upstairs.
Well I discovered that the shelf had brake oil that was here from when we bought the house. Umm..ew. There was other stuff that needed to go but mostly I just put it back neatly and wiped down the shelf and the tops of the washer/dryer. I also swept the laundry area floor.. Ooo aaa I can see the floor and before mentioned electric blanket is drying. Yea!
But here is the real accomplishment. ALL laundry put away in respective drawers. New towels and sheets on the beds for everyone. I get to re-claim my beautiful blue couch. And I have NINE empty laundry baskets. Ahh the sight of empty laundry baskets...Isn't it just gorgeous??
Time to kick my feet up and relax. Glad that we are only do half school this week. Today's challenge was the freezer which I decided was not a good thing to do while trash service is canceled so that will have to wait until later. I needed the extra time to do laundry anyway. :)
For the main part of the laundry challenge, I decided that the laundry should be DONE. We have an electric blanket that is hard to wash that I think has been out there for at least two winter seasons. We also have a high chair cover and a baby car seat cover that needed to be washed and my "baby" is two. So I had some miscellaneous catch up to do in addition to all this plus 3 more baskets upstairs.
Well I discovered that the shelf had brake oil that was here from when we bought the house. Umm..ew. There was other stuff that needed to go but mostly I just put it back neatly and wiped down the shelf and the tops of the washer/dryer. I also swept the laundry area floor.. Ooo aaa I can see the floor and before mentioned electric blanket is drying. Yea!
But here is the real accomplishment. ALL laundry put away in respective drawers. New towels and sheets on the beds for everyone. I get to re-claim my beautiful blue couch. And I have NINE empty laundry baskets. Ahh the sight of empty laundry baskets...Isn't it just gorgeous??
Time to kick my feet up and relax. Glad that we are only do half school this week. Today's challenge was the freezer which I decided was not a good thing to do while trash service is canceled so that will have to wait until later. I needed the extra time to do laundry anyway. :)
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