Notebooking Nook

Five Week Menu Plan

{ 08:34, Thursday, July 12, 2007 }

I attended the UHEA conference this year and went to a class that inspired me to want to make a 5 week menu. The gal who taught the class made up this type of a menu for her family. She has the same things for breakfast and lunch every week. Monday is always the same, etc. I will probably add it to my website down the road, when I do updates next. For now, here is a copy of what I came up with.

I'm now working on a master shopping list. By the time the 5 weeks are up, if we enjoyed these meals we can just start over again. Basically, this might be all we'll ever need. I think it is a great idea!
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Work ~ School ~ Play!

{ 11:47, Friday, June 1, 2007 }

Our summer has official begun and the kids were so excited... that is until we sat them all down yesterday and laid out their summer schedule. We run three businesses from home and have two other businesses outside the home, so we are EXTREMELY busy! Things have really started getting out of control and we needed to enroll the kids help. So here's the plan...

Up at 5am (everyone has their own alarm clock and responsible for themselves)
Outside with dad by 5:15
Family works together outside until 6:30 (we live in the Mohave Desert and we have to work outside early before the heat takes over)
Mom and dd 15 make breakfast for family from 6-6:30.
Breakfast / Devotional / Family Prayer from 6:30-7
Finish outside chores if needed and do all inside chores. Everyone must do chores until 9am

This is the "Work" portion of our day. We accomplished so much this morning... pruned some trees and bushes, mowed the lawn, we did our usual "dog thing". For those of you unaware we own a commercial dog kennel and have over 150 dogs. We cleaned the carpets in 4 rooms and then we did all our "normal" chores, bedrooms, dishes, etc.

We are being quite strict with the kids because they have become a bit lazy while we were busy running all these businesses. If we catch them not working, if they are outside later than 5:15 or if they are not asking what they can do next, we add an additional hour of work after school and also don't allow them to be with friends that day. So far so good, they all want to see their friends so they are being very careful not to mess up! It's great!

Once the work is done the kids get a 30 minute break to have a snack, be on the computer or whatever it is they want to do.

We are still going to be doing some school over the summer... reading, writing, math and science. Of course, I'm always looking for teaching moments and run with those when they come up. But here's the plan for school....

9:30-9:45 ~ Devotional
9:45~10:15 ~ Math
10:15-11:00 ~ Reading
11:00~11:30 ~ Science
11:30-12:00 ~ Writing (either about science lesson or reading assignment)

After all this is finished, they are free for the rest of the day. However, they have to be home from friends by 6pm for dinner, night-time chores done by 8pm and in their rooms by 9pm. I have 4 teenagers and they thought this was very unreasonable, however, we are not going to be completely unreasonable. We will allow them to go out with their friends if something comes up and they have a church youth group on Thursday nights which means they won't be home until after 9pm. But, this is the plan. I really hope we can stick to it, we really need to get things flowing more smoothly around here.

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Discount on North American Birds Notebooking Pages

{ 10:59, Thursday, May 31, 2007 }

I've just posted a brand new set of notebooking pages on my website... Nature Study of North American Birds Notebooking Pages.

If you use the promotion code SPRINGSALE07 you will receive $3.00 off until June 8th!

You will find in this set the following pages....

7 template choices
52 species of birds
primary-lined pages
basic lined pages
range pages in both primary and basic lines for each bird
fact sheet for each bird
a page to diagram a bird
a page to illustrate and define types of beaks
title page
additional templates for further study

Click here to see a list of the birds included in this packet. Click here to see samples.

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Bird Copywork / Narration Pages

{ 09:45, Sunday, May 20, 2007 }

My two youngest kids (11 dd and 8 ds) are just beginning a study of birds using Jeannie Fulbright's Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day. I made up copywork / narration notebooking pages to go along with this study and added them to my website. There are 48 pages of both basic and primary lined pages.

We have been enjoying our study so much! We have found three birds nests in our yard this year, which I believe is a record. We also have a roadrunner living nearby and he visits the our back yard often. The kids are using the pages not only for copywork and narration but also to write about what we see in our own back yard.
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Owl Study Notebooking Pages

{ 10:24, Tuesday, May 8, 2007 }

I added notebooking pages to my website yesterday for a nature study of owls. Someone on my Notebooking Nook Yahoo! group was looking for owl pages and couldn't find any, so I put together a packet. I added this packet to my "Dollar Menu", which is a select list of my products that sell for only $1.

Included in this packet are 26 pages with some of the following...

title page
fact sheets
range sheets
basic lines
primary lines
coloring

You can see a full product sample of all my "Dollar Menu" items before purchasing.
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Our Straw Bail House ~ A Bit More

{ 05:02, Tuesday, May 1, 2007 }

I plan on posting pictures of the progress we made while building the house. We were building in '99-'00, so I'm going to have to look through my hard drive for them. I will get them up as soon as possible along with tips and resources. I'm heading out of town and hopefully will have them up by early next week.

I will say though that we don't live in what most people would consider a traditional straw bail house with the plastered walls and rustic look. I wish we had gone that direction, maybe someday we'll change the look. At that time in my life I was wanting a more classical, traditional look to our home.

Anyway, I should have pics up next week.
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Our Straw Bail House

{ 01:53, Tuesday, May 1, 2007 }

When we were planning to build our house several years ago my husband mentioned perhaps building a house out of straw bails. We had read about this in Mother Earth News many years prior and had put it in the back of our minds. When we spoke to our draftsman about it, he thought we were crazy, of course, but was open minded enough to help us out. We drew up plans and he made it work. We live in a beautiful home that stays cool most of the year. We live in the Mohave Desert, so AC is a must after about mid-June.

I'm not sure we saved money by doing it the way we did with all the extras, but it's fun to say we live in a straw bail house. Our windows are all deep set, about 2 feet. We have yet to put in a "proof window", but maybe someday. If I had to do over again, we would still build a straw bail house, however, I would go with a more simple floor plan and rustic features. We moved in May of 200 and overall we are all very happy with our home.
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Notebooking Pages

{ 08:40, Wednesday, February 28, 2007 }

I'm in the process of putting together several different notebooking pages for a new business I'm starting. I'm hoping to have my website up and running by April 1 or so. I've had several problems with this but I'm getting them figured out! Finally...

In the meantime, you can find my free notebooking pages at my Notebooking Nook yahoo group.

I have free pages for the following subjects...

Ancient History notebooking pages

Nature notebooking pages

Science notebooking pages

Literature notebooking pages

Journal notebooking pages

Holiday notebooking pages

IEW Writing Prompts

Planning forms

and more!!!

My pages will definitely be affordable. I want them to be available to all who are interested in them.

If you have a request for a special notebooking page, please don't hesitate to ask.
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