Special Connection Homeschool

One day while Gess and I were reading a magazine in a doctor's office waiting room (we spend lots of time there) we came across a kid's recipe for making a yogurt parfait.  It made me think, why have I never thought of doing that at home?  The recipe called for either yogurt or cottage cheese.  We love yogurt so we went with that and added to it whatever fruit was sitting in the fridge at the time.  This is a really easy recipe that kids can do themselves and it's not only delicious, it's healthy too! Layered Yogurt Cups 1.  Choose and cut your fruit  (this time we used grapes, bananas, and strawberries). 2. Place your first fruit on the bottom (Gess chose grapes to go in first). 3. Cover that layer with some yogurt (we used a strawberry yogurt but any or plain yogurt will do). 4. Place your next layer of fruit on the yogurt (now she wanted strawberries). 5. Cover that layer with yogurt. 6. Put in your last layer of fruit (banan...

I think gardening is a great hands on lesson that teaches lots of skills and covers lots of subjects.  Watching a plant grow from a seed can teach a child many things (including patience) and really give them a sense of where the food they eat comes from.  Gess really enjoys helping her daddy plant, water, weed and basically tend the garden.  It's even more fun harvesting it. (Yep, I confess.  Daddy does most of the gardening around here.) Personally I have never been big on gardening.  I always joked about having the ability to kill plants rather than grow them but I think that is more from neglect than an actual lack of skill.  Finally, after years of talking about trying to garden, we finally made our first attempt two years ago.  Yes, that's right.  I planted my very first garden at the age of 43.  That's pretty sad, isn't it? Our first garden was pretty much a disaster and very little grew except for a few radishes, green beans (I t...

I am one of those moms who has struggled with her weight most of the time.  Before Gess was born I had actually lost weight and kept it off for 5 years.  Then I got pregnant again.  It's a story many mothers are familiar with.  It took me 9 years to get the weight off, but 2 years ago I did it!   I actually blogged about my journey and shared some tips at Lori's Say on Weight Loss , but I got too busy to keep up with it. I am still in a weight loss club.  It's called TOPS which stands for Take Off Pounds Sensibly .  I think having that scale to be accountable to every week has helped me maintain the weight loss these last 2 years.  While in maintenance mode I don't always have to track what I eat, but I try to do so whenever I find myself struggling to stay withing my goal.  I also do it when we have contests or programs at TOPS that require it.  It's good to check yourself from time to time. Anyway, so what does this have to ...

In our Science curriculum we began studying nutrition so I started on my journey to find out how to emphasize nutrition in a hands on and interactive way. The Food Guide Pyramid popped into my head. Of course in searching I came across the new and supposedly improved Food Guide Pyramids. Personally I do not like them. For one, that is not how you make a pyramid! Pyramids are made with blocks built one upon the other. The Egyptians did not make a pyramid with color coded lines. To me all they did was keep the shape and threw out the visual aspect of the teaching. Since my daughter is a very visual learner I started looking for the old Food Guide Pyramid and that is what we used. Now she can not only see the foods directly on the pyramid, she can more readily see the size of each section since that corresponds to how many servings of those foods you should have. This has really been a lot of fun since we have already been exploring our senses through food. This has allowed u...

Well, I have been doing my search on how to teach my daughter about her senses. Sure, she can tell you that you use your ears to hear and your eyes to see, etc., because that is how she was taught to respond. However, when you try to use the concepts in real life she gets confused about which sense does what which shows me that while she knows the "answer" she does not yet understand the concept. After much research and many great ideas from fellow homeschoolers I have decided that using food is a great place to start. After all, food is the only thing that allows her to use all of her senses including taste. I mean, she can "see" a dog, she can "feel" it, "hear" it and even "smell" it, but I sure do not want her tasting it! So what we have started doing is making a "life skills" lesson out of meal time preparation. Each day we not only learn to cook and prepare food but we explore each one of our senses while doing i...