Search Results for: blog quick and easy cleanup at the end of the day

What’s For Dinner

Sometimes, when I get home from work, the last thing I want to do is cook. We have frequent fend for yourself nights which always leave me feeling a little guilty. I know I should do a better job of planning. I want Hailey to eat balanced meals. Since dinner is the only meal we eat together it is the only chance I have to make sure she eats actual vegetables. As hard as it is for a teenager to believe, potato chips are not a vegetable. Since it is just the two of us, sometimes cooking and cleaning up … Continue reading →

Helping Your Child Climb to Success

When a child struggles with a subject it is hard on both the child and the mom. It is hard to see your child try so hard to succeed and still have difficulty or continue to experience failure. The child begins to feel badly about herself and soon other subjects will suffer as she loses confidence. A homeschooling mom also feels like she is failing since she is the one in charge of her child’s education. The double role of mom and teacher during a time like gets confused and the mom part feels the pain while the teacher part … Continue reading →

Feeling Burned Out?

Feeling burned out can lead to a very grumpy mommy. Grumpy mommies hardly make good homeschoolers. This can cause a year to dive into failure or at best just barely getting by. Making it by the skin of your teeth, will not result in a relief that it’s over but a sense of defeat and guilt that you didn’t provide your children the best of you. Your feelings of stress will bleed over to your children and they may have a poor attitude about school. Soon you will go round and round between bad attitudes or just simply giving up … Continue reading →

Pushing Younger Kids Beyond Their Comfort Zone

When I first started home schooling my last three girls, two were in third grade and one was just starting preschool. It was a challenge wondering how I would present the lessons when there was such an obvious age gap between the older girls and the youngest. Being able to home school our kids allows us a lot of freedom though. Kids don’t have to be pushed ahead when they aren’t ready or held back when they are. What I did was to offer the same exact assignment for all of my girls, always at the age level of the … Continue reading →

Home School Blogger Intro

I started as a home schooling blogger on Families.com about a month ago. My introduction post is a little overdue, but I wanted to share with others a bit about myself and my background as a home schooling single mother. My two oldest daughters went to public school all the way through high school. A move to a rough area of Baltimore had me quickly pulling my three youngest out of school and home schooling them myself. It was a decision I wish I had made with my older girls. Live and learn though, right? For the most part I … Continue reading →

Keeping An Art Journal

Notebooks are a wonderful way to keep track of science, language arts, history, creative writing, and other assignments. It keeps things neat and tidy, and there aren’t loose papers all over the place. I quickly discovered that having one big three-ring binder filled with notebook paper and dividers just didn’t work out well. The papers often tore out and they were heavy and clumsy for my kids to use. Instead, by purchasing color-coded notebooks and writing each child’s name on the front with a big permanent ink marker, it kept things more organized. My kids didn’t feel as overwhelmed as … Continue reading →

How Dogs Can Train Each Other

In my home there are three teenage girls, three cats, a rat, and two dogs. The cats are the least amount of trouble since all they require is food, water, a clean litter box and love-on-demand. I’m not very fond of the rat, but he was about to become homeless since his owner packed up and moved out of state, so “Spock” now lives with us. The teenage girls? Well, that’s where my gray hairs and stomach ailments have come from, though for the most part our home is fun, if not slightly disorganized. This brings me to our dogs. … Continue reading →

Quick and Easy Cleanup at the End of the Day

Home schooling kids is rewarding, but it can also be messy. Having children around the house all day long rather than away at school for six or more hours means that we need to clean up several times a day rather than just once. Parents are notorious for trying to be superheroes and tend to do everything themselves. Whether it’s vacuuming, doing dishes, laundry, or cleaning the cat box, it’s often easier to just do it ourselves rather than listening to the kids moan and groan. Not to mention, we often have to prod them a thousand times before they’ll … Continue reading →

A Cleaning Credo: Should You Have One?

A cleaning philosophy is not so easy to come by as it usually evolves after years of time-consuming mistakes and many instances of waxy floor buildup. The ultimate question for any housekeeper (or philosopher for that matter) should be: “How can I make my life easier even though I have to clean?” The answer, my friends, is not blowing the wind; it lies just above the surface of your lint-free mind. Consider the following options. Conserve your energy. It’s like that old saying about not fixing something that isn’t broken. If it is already clean, then don’t clean it. Just … Continue reading →

5 Reasons Why You Need a Crock Pot

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1. With a Crock Pot, you are never too busy for homemade. You can prepare a stew the night before you need it and then just pop it in the Crock Pot in the morning for a healthy, hearty, homemade dinner. 2. Food in a Crock Pot stays warm all day. You can make a big pot of soup or stew, or even a casserole, in your Crock Pot and it will stay warm and ready all day long. This is great for those cold winter days when you don’t want to cook but really want to have something warm … Continue reading →