Why We Homeschool

It's amazing to me how many people have asked if I was sending my kids back to public school this year. Some of the comments and questions I've heard lately: Don't you get sick of them, don't you want your free time, are you sure they are learning what they need to, don't you want them to be around other people? You have more patience than I do, I would/could never do that, etc.

I've found that after a year, I'm even more convinced that it's the right thing for our family. When we first started, I thought that it was because of large class sizes. I had always been in PTA- loved most of our teachers, and sent Lexii all the way through, from kindergarten on. What I soon realized was that I used the class size as an excuse to pull them out. I had really wanted to have my kids home with me from day 1. When Lex went off to school I really had no choice, I was working 60+ hours a week. A few years later I became a stay-at-home mom and found that the only place I wanted to be was at the school with her. I volunteered everyday and was on the PTA board. I loved knowing what was going on and voicing my opinion. Lexii was a great student and her teachers always loved her. When Nate started school I was the same way. I was at the school as much as possible and was in almost daily contact with his teachers. Nate is a great student but has many challenges due to him having Asperger's. When he started 1st grade it was horrible. I made the decision to pull him out of school, but then chickened out. I didn't know there was help and resources out there for homeschoolers. I returned the supplies I had bought and sent him back to school. We were both completely miserable. As the time approached to send Mason to school, I kept having a nagging feeling not to send them. I had gained some confidence from being in a preschool group for a couple of years and Mason was ready to start reading so I knew he would be completely bored. Nate was struggling with socialization and was completely miserable. He was acting out and very disobedient at home. We went and looked at the class lists on the school door a few days before school was scheduled to start. We turned around and went home. I called Steve at work and said I wasn't sending them. He replied, "I knew you weren't going to". We prayed for confirmation and felt a great peace. We had never had that about our children's education before. I love having my kids home! I love teaching them and watching them learn. I love it when they get something for the first time and are so proud of themselves. I love that we can pray in our little school room and read scriptures and learn about the Gospel along with the other subjects. Most importantly, I love that we get to decide what's important to learn and not someone sitting in an office somewhere writing standard curriculum for thousands of students. One size does not fit all when it comes to an education. In our family we place a high value not only on education, but also on a love for learning. I always want my kids to be inspired to learn about Heavenly Father and the world around them.

An End To A Challenge

Well, we are ready to wrap up this challenge. We are not quite past the 4 week mark, but we've had a couple of cheat days (lunch with grandma and dinner out after Dave's wedding) so now it's hard to keep the momentum going. I think we have done awesome! There hasn't been any complaining and we've figured a few things out:
1. Powdered eggs are very necessary.
2. Cheese is a pain, learn to live without or do cheese sauce. A #10 can is pretty inexpensive but I always wonder what to do with it all once it's open. Ragu does make a small jar- I'm just a cheap skate. I hate to pay a $1 a jar. None of this solves my problem for pizza though. I guess I'll keep experimenting or we'll learn to do without mozzarella.
3. 1 mylar bag of hard red wheat from the cannery makes 10 loaves of bread using my favorite recipe. I'm lazy so I usually just buy my wheat flour already ground and keep my wheat in storage. Yeah, not going to do that anymore. We ran out a few days ago and so we had to grind. We don't have an electric grinder so we got out the manual one. The kids had a blast taking turns and Steve helped a lot too. The bread tasted so much better than usual and I'm sure had more nutrients than the processed flour. Anyway, it was nice to have a gauge on how much we could make with 1 bag. It gave me an idea of how much wheat we really need for what we make.
4. We need lots more powdered milk. I was surprised that we are going through about a can if not more a week. I only had a couple of months worth on the shelf so I will definitely be stalking up. It's pretty cheap at the cannery right now ($7 something a can) so it's a good investment and has a long shelf life.
5. Every food storage needs Cap'n Crunch and Cool Ranch Doritos. I always thought these were just luxury items, but when you have a crisis or a big change it's nice to have something familiar and something you enjoy, especially for your kids who may not understand what's going on.
6. A garden is a life saver. I don't know what we would have done without fresh veggies. I just wish we would have kept lettuce growing in pots in the shade. We really missed our daily green salad with dinner.
7. Eating from your food storage is a lot of work. We loved trying new recipes but it took so much time to prepare everything. It took me all day to make 10 loaves of bread! I am so grateful for my modern appliances. Even though it took all day to make bread, I used my Kitchenaid, nice bread pans, and oven. I can't even imagine all that kneading!

Anyway, I could probably go on and on all day with what we've learned. Most importantly we learned that we can do it and that we can do it cheerfully. Now I'm off to the store to buy some lettuce for the BIGGEST salad ever!

Convenience

I can totally see why we go for convenience when it comes to food preparation. I had to make rolls and a salad for Relief Society activity. Normally, I would have ran into the store and bought a package of rolls and bought a bunch of fresh veggies to go in my spaghetti salad. The whole deal would probably have taken about 30 minutes, start to finish. In keeping with the no shopping rule I decided I better start from scratch. I started the rolls at 10:30 a.m. I took them out of the oven at 2:15. It is amazing how much time you need when you have to knead the dough and let it rise 2 different times! I was able to make my salad during that time, but it was a little difficult finding stuff to put in it. I always use yummy fresh veggies and this time I had to scour the shelves for something that would work. I ended up with 2 cans diced tomatoes, 1 can of mushrooms, a can of olives, and a zucchini from the garden. It was OK, but nothing like it usually is.

It took 4 hours for the rolls and now I need to make sandwich bread and laundry soap too. I am so glad I know how to do these things, but I am so grateful for the grocery store and the modern conveniences that allow me to buy a loaf of bread when things get a little crazy and I have no time.

Cheese Making

So, I decided to try out a recipe for making cheese out of powdered milk.

3 c. powdered milk
6 c. water
Heat milk to 12o degrees and turn of heat. Add 1/4 c. vinegar and let sit for 10 minutes. Pour over a cheese cloth and rinse off cheese curds.

Sounds easy, right? Well, it was pretty simple, but it really didn't curdle at first so I added probably another 1/2 c. vinegar when it was all said and done. It only produced about 2 c. of cheese but I had to use the equivalent of a gallon of powdered milk. It tasted very bland. It did actually melt pretty well though. We made pizza pockets and put that in there and it wasn't so bad. I probably won't make it again, but I will maybe try a different recipe.

Gardens

I really, really love having a garden! Yesterday we picked 5 cucumbers and tomatoes. Today we picked enough strawberries to have with lunch. I'm so glad we planted everbearing berries. They just keep producing all season long. In about another week we will have tomatoes coming out of our ears. We have been getting about 3 a day for a while now, but it looks like we are going to have a couple of bushels pretty soon. Our cucumber plants have been amazing this year- maybe all the rain and cool weather at the beginning of the season?

Anyway, this challenge has really shown me that having a garden really makes a difference. Of course we can survive on what's in the basement, but I have really enjoyed having the fresh veggies with our meals. I still have a long way to go on my gardening skills, weeding especially, but it is so nice to know we can run out back and pick something to go with dinner. It's really caused me to stop and think about how our ancestors must have felt about their gardens. If their gardens failed, they couldn't run up to Walmart and buy it. It also meant that they wouldn't have anything to can or dry to put into their storage for winter. We are so fortunate that we don't have to rely on our gardens the way they did, although you never know when we might have to. I think gardening is a skill that everyone should at least be aware of and I think I'm going to add seeds to my food storage. You just never know.

What's For Dinner

I recently found out that someone else in our neighborhood is eating their food storage also. I was so excited and we talked at length about what is motivating us to do this. Their family has been doing it for a little longer than we have and they are having great success! It was fun to visit about what is working and what is not. It's amazing how much better you feel when not everyone thinks you're crazy.

It occurred to me that I haven't been putting on here what we've actually been eating. Here's a few things: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, canned fruit and canned veggies at most meals, tomatoes, cukes, zucchini, peas, beans, strawberries (all from our garden), milk (just mixed up some more powdered tonight), burritos with dehydrated refried beans, bbq chicken sandwiches (we had some frozen chicken, but you could easily use bottled), rice and beans,soup, tuna fish, and just tonight we had spaghetti. I asked my family if they felt that we were eating differently and they said no. It's probably because we still have treats and we have chips in our storage as well.

Here is my FAVORITE food storage treat:
6 c. rice krispies
1c. sugar
1c. corn syrup
1 1/2 c. peanut butter
Mix the last 3 ingredients together and heat until bubbly. Pour over the rice krispies. Press into a greased 9x13 pan. You can add m & m's or chocolate chips. I even added about 1/4 c. cocoa powder to them and they turned out great! Not very healthy, but yummy every once in a while. If I get enough time this week, I'd like to try a cheese recipe I got. It uses powdered milk. I'll keep you posted!

Eating Out

One of the hardest parts of this challenge is not eating out. We have plenty of food here to prepare, it's just so easy to eat out when you have a busy night and you have to fit dinner in there somewhere. I didn't think it would be so bad, but the temptations are everywhere! Coupons for cheap food, TV commercials, a dozen fast food places and restaurants within a couple of miles, Yikes!!!! Today I almost caved. We had a late start to the day, which is never good when you have tons of things that need to get done. It seriously crossed my mind to eat out for lunch for the convenience. We didn't do it, though! I fed the kids before we left and just dealt with being later than I had wanted. We went to Office Max to get some supplies for school and that was a breeze- no food to be seen there. Sam's Club was a different story. Even though everyone had just had lunch, they became oh so starving once inside. Sam's is a place where I let them have lunch a little too often because it's so cheap and also because it's one of the few places that has caffeine-free diet coke. I gently reminded them that we were only there to exchange a defective product and then we were leaving. Mason, the little smartie pants, found a way to finagle some food anyway. His theory is that if it's free it shouldn't count against us- and samples are free, right? He actually had a few good points so I let them try the samples throughout the store. Lucky for them, it was a really good day for samples. Lemonade, mac'n cheese, peanuts, cheese sticks, lasagna, pizza, fresh fruit, smoked chicken and m&m cookies. Yeah, they were happy campers when they left the store. I particularly liked Mason's argument that I should buy them a DVD because it wasn't food, personal hygiene, or cleaning supply related. Ummm....good point, but no DVD.