Homeschool Systems: Lunches, etc.

For me the difficulty in home educating is not so much in the choosing of courses of study. That's the fun part. I enjoy deciding what we will study, finding the resources that we will use, and laying out a map of how we will cover the material. 

The real challenge lies in balancing the rest of life. Between the all the books and the learning there is so much more. Laundry, all that eating these people do, all the clean-up from the eating/playing/studying, the parenting, the nursing, etc, etc. You get it. There's a lot more than just learning.  The juggling is what gets you. Plus, one has got to rest sometime too. Still haven't figured out that one yet. 

Anyhow, the homeschool systems. If I ever need advice or new ways to innovate, it isn't so much fancy curriculum that I'm looking for but how to make it all work together. Homeschool routines/systems .. . whatever you call it. Rubber meets the road.

I might share some of what has worked for us along the way. . .  what's working for us now. This stage, this moment.  Different routines work for different seasons. 

Food. Meals. I've mentioned this challenge before. Homeschool breakfasts and even more challenging . . . LUNCHES! I brought up this topic in a homeschool group on facebook and it was quite the active thread.

This year I have finally have hit on a AHA! DUH! revelation. Ready for it?? The more organized and prepared I am, the smoother things run.  Wow. Just amazing, huh? I stun myself with my brilliance. *eyeroll* Really. I know its a no-brainer but I supposed I felt like I organized enough and needed to wing SOMETHING.  Nope, nope, nope. There is enough in life that is fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants. Parenting brings plenty of spontaneity. If there is anything I can organize and plan now, DO IT. Do it now. Squeeze it in. 

I found a few more things that I could *try* and organize beforehand and even though it doesn't work all the time, it is helping. Less brain energy exerted later when the rubber is hitting the road hard. 

One thing I've done is more meal planning. Time consuming and nit picky but boy, is it helping. I always have planned our dinners but now I'm planning breakfasts and lunches as well. Super duper helpful. Maybe I can do snacks someday too. 

And kid involvement in those meals. I'm starting slowly. The boys are cooking breakfast one day a week.  And one kid is choosing a meal to make one day a week. We alternate weeks. Nutmeg cooked lunch the first week. Sage is cooking lunch this week. I've got Basil looking at cookbooks for next weeks. (he just wants to make nachos=lame!!)

Here are a few lunches that have worked well for us so far. 

Today:

Baked Potato Bar

The kids said this was the best idea EVER! I loved the fact that this basically

cleaned out the leftovers from the fridge. I cooked up the potatoes and then pretty much 

all our leftovers complemented the potatoes well. Insta-toppings! Score!

Five different ways:

Basil
(this is beef stew on the bottom, chicken on top: Mr. EverHungry)

Mace

Sage

Myself

A couple lunches from last week:

Nutmeg wanted to take a picture of her lunch on Make-Your-Own-Taco-Salad Day. 

This is a super simplified version of the cheese platters we like to make for
holidays. The kids loved this one. We'll have to repeat it. In the bowl is homemade baba ghanoush. 

Another newish homeschool system for us:  Fridge Organizing Central

We don't really have a name for this. I just made that up. This started at Christmas last year. I wrapped the fridge up like a Christmas gift and taped peoples' Christmas cards onto it. Then maybe you remember that we liked it so much that we sorta used that as a central place for our Lenten activities. We couldn't get enough of it, so we used it this summer for bucket list and calendars. We continue to love it, so here we are for the beginning-of-another-year/autumn theme. (Sage helped; he digs this!)

The paper is "home project paper" from JoAnn's. The top thingy a little white board from Walmart. We write our breakfast and lunch menu on there. The next three squares are our activity calendars for October-November. The next three are daily schedules. That's new this year too. Everyone has a schedule so they know exactly what they are supposed to be doing. Even me. I asked myself today, "what am I supposed to be doing after lunch?" The bottom is labeled "Autumn Memories." This is like a "finished" bucket list for autumn. We've got one or two that we already need to write down.

And finally Nutmeg wanted to take pictures of her table arrangement.