Thursday, September 1, 2011

Homeschool, Breakfast, and Snacks

How's school going for you this year? Its hard to get back in full swing, isn't it?

Everything hasn't come as easy for mine this year and they've had a LOT more questions- and they ask them in rounds!!!

You know what that sorta looks like:
"This don't make no sense." - Uh yeah, and neither do you! Double negatives. tt tt

One thing I'm doing before the tougher subjects is having them go outside and walk (or run) a few laps.
This helps them think better :-)

I'm also trying to keep breakfast and snacks from becoming too big of an issue.

The issue with breakfast:
I've discovered, that with my kids, all packaged foods are OFF. Unless---- I package them ;-)
If I feed them any form of breakfast from a box, they're starving in two hours or less. That means
school has to stop and snacks have to be prepared and this can take quite a chunk of time. I need
three to four hours from breakfast until lunch time. The best way to get this for us; eggs and/or soaked
grains. If I don't do one or the other for breakfast, I try to have boiled eggs ready for them to snack on by
mid-morning.

Issues with snacks:
Snacks aren't a bad thing, unless I don't have any fixed! Ugh! I keep few, if any, prepackaged snacks.
They're not frugal and they're not nutritious. So, my 'fix-it' for snacks is usually muffins. Yes, those
tasty little cakes that you can stuff with all kinds of good things, from whole grains to fruit and even veggies!
So, every two to three days, I try to stuff a cake plate full of muffins in the evening when everyone else is playing. Another good thing is homemade bread with homemade jelly. They're loving that. When I make
bread at mealtimes, I slice the leftovers and put them in a ziploc. They can have them anytime. Sunflower
seeds have also been a nice treat.

Menu planning is also a HUGE help! This keeps me on target, reminding me of what to layout the night before and what to get started on in the mornings. I can also stay on target with prep work in between this and that.
And this reminds me- I didn't check everyone's homework last night and they'll be needing their notebooks soon! Yikes!

Prepping- very important! ;-)

4 comments:

McKinsey said...

Menu planning is so crucial in my house. I feel more in control when I don't have to stress about meals. Mondays are very hard on everybody, it seems we are so tired from the weekend so I try to make it a lighter day and heavily rely on my preplanning (school work and menus) to get us through!

Donna said...

McKinsey,
How smart of you to make Mondays lighter! Good idea.

I do well with food planning....but not always so good with school planning...but I wing that pretty good ;-)

Pilgrim Days said...

one of our goto snacks is raw peanuts with or without raisins. Fun to crunch and holds them until the next meal.

Donna said...

Pilgrim,
Love that! Good idea.
That's a super-great snack to keep blood sugar stable :-)