• A monthly calendar, which I have already created—two pages per month, with a column for notes. It’s very similar to the Day Runner calendar, which I really like and which, if you can afford it, is a better quality calendar than what I make. (Day Runner’s comes on better pages, and each month is tabbed.)
• Event/meal planning pages. These are the pages I mentioned above. Each page will cover two weeks’ worth of event/meals. The pages have three columns: One for the date, one for “events” (the normal stuff that’s going on in our lives, which I also record in slightly more detail in the monthly calendar), and one for meals. I usually only list dinner, since it’s the big meal; however, I will include lunch if I have to plan for co-op, or if we happen to eat out. I’ll probably only print these single-sided and use the back of the page for grocery lists or other notes.
  Most recently, my meal planning pages covered just a week at a time, which was great—I could see each week’s worth of everything in one glance. However, I’m not sure I really need that. On the other hand, I’ve also tried meal planning pages that cover four weeks at a time, but it doesn’t leave enough room for me to write. Two weeks should work okay. I really like being able to look back and see what we ate in the past few weeks, in order to add a little variety to our meals. (I’m afraid I’m not terribly creative with food choices, however. I may work on that this year.)
• A to-do list. This is a two-column list, which will be somewhat freeform. Ideally, it would be great to figure out how to organize my list by type (for example: homeschool, co-op, work, and home/personal), but every time I try to do that, I end up running out of room.
• Homeschool planning pages. I’m not sure what I’ll do with this in the coming year. Son will begin high school in the fall, and I really need to get more organized with his schooling and records and the like. So… back to the drawing board as far as lesson plans go.

Here’s a picture of the event/meal planning pages.

Event/Menu Planning Pages

Oh, and I’m using those removable sticky tabs to indicate the current page for each. Well, I’ll probably use a “real” tab to separate the homeschooling info, but I’ll still use a sticky tab to mark the current page(s).

My, I do go on about my planners… I’ll try to blog about something else next time.

For anyone who cares, here’s a picture of the planner. You can click the picture to get a better look.

My current planner

It is as I described it in my previous post, and it has served me well for almost 8 months now. I think this is actually the third iteration of these planner pages—the first didn’t have the horizontal lines in the daily boxes. And then I added the letters under the days on the left—those are daily reminders to do certain things.

I print these pages back-to-back, punch the holes, and the facing pages are shown in the picture. This spread gives me a pretty good idea of what my week looks like, but I must admit that I don’t consult it quite as often as I should.

I’ve thought about changing things up a bit for the new year—maybe trying to figure out how to do only one page per week—but I’m not quite sure what to change. Perhaps it’s time to do some experimenting…

Unfortunately, we haven’t been very good about taking things out of the dryer and putting them away once they’re dry…

Now I need to finish creating the “laundry chart” (well, that’s what I’m calling it, since I don’t really know what else to call it). This will be a list of the different types of loads of laundry and how to wash them. For example, Normal wash, Hot/Cold temp, 2nd Rinse, etc.

I’ve also begun to put together a schedule for doing laundry, but I’m not so great at actually following the schedule. The kids might be better at it than I am, though.

We visited Popeyes for the very first time yesterday. The mashed potatoes and gravy were so yummy! Being the webaholic that I am, I just had to try to find the recipe online. Here it is! Gotta try it one of these days…

By the way, here’s a recipe for their biscuits.

And speaking of biscuits, I found some other biscuit recipes (most notably one for Red Lobster cheesy biscuits)!

Yum!

The Tool:

I was going to title this section “The Hardware,” but two of my possible tool options are software and I thought it might be rather confusing for me to use a computer term. Anyway, my criteria are that it be easy to use and portable. Here are three possibilities that I’m playing with right now:

• A Circa notebook. I purchased some inexpensive Circa notebooks on clearance a while back. I was thinking of using one of them for my prayer notebook. The pages are 4.25 x 5.5 (half of an 8.5 x 11 sheet). The beauty of Circa is that pages are easily removed, replaced, and movable. I can design my own pages. Tabbed dividers are a bit expensive, but I could alternately just get some stick-on tabs and use different colored cardstock.
• Microsoft OneNote. My upgrade to Microsoft Office 2007 provided me with OneNote and although I’ve played with it, I have yet to really use it, so I’m not quite sure whether it will work well for me (you know, because I’m still rather resistant to change). However, this software is a real contender for my prayer notebook, especially since I’m at the computer so much and I type much faster than I write. It also allows me to just cut and paste prayer requests that come in e-mail. Any type of computer-based prayer list isn’t in-the-pocket portable, but my computer is at least somewhat portable. And private.
• Microsoft Excel. I could have separate tabs for each person. It’s really similar to the OneNote option. Hmm… come to think of it, OneNote would probably be much easier to use… IF I go the software route.

I guess the thing with doing an online thing is that I get distracted when I’m on the computer. Plus, the physical act of writing really is helpful… I’ve got some things to think about.

Organization:

I figure there are several ways to organize my prayer notebook, including:

• Create a section for each group of people/categories (family, personal friends, church leaders, church friends, missionaries, the world, etc.), and then in each section, have a page for each person/category.
• Create a section for each day of the week. Some people/categories I will pray for daily; some weekly; some as the need arises.
• Create a section for each day of the month. A while back, I put together a prayer calendar that combines three “30 days of praying” types of resources that I found online: attributes of God, husband, and children. I could organize the entire prayer notebook by day, so that I pray for a different person/group of people each day of the month. I’ve read that this can actually work really well with index cards. I’m not so sure how I would translate this to a notebook, though.

Each of these methods of organizing my notebook has its pros and cons. I could use all of these methods or something else entirely.

Next time, I’ll write about the tool I’ll use.

Features:

Simply put, my notebook would, of course, include the date, the request/what I’m praying for, and space for answered prayer.

Other features that I want in my prayer notebook include:

• Portability. I’d prefer something that’s easy to carry around. I probably won’t carry it with me outside the house (private prayers, after all), but I would like to be able to take it with me to wherever I’m praying in the house.
• The ability to have tabbed sections. For example, I might have one section for my family (a page for the family as a whole, plus a separate page for each family member), one section for specific people, one section for events/broader things, etc.
• Removable pages. When a page is full of answered prayers and/or a certain age, I’d like to be able to archive them somehow. Or, if people’s statuses change (for example, a friend becomes a church leader or something like that), I’d like to have the option to be able to easily move that person to the appropriate section. In other words, I’d like to have the ability to move things around when and if I want to.
• Space for recording additional info. For example, I’d like to have enough space to include long answers to prayer requests without feeling like I’ve wasted a lot of space if there aren’t long answers. Ways people do this:
  • Vertical rule – put a line down the page so that you have space on the left for the request and space on the right for the answer. This wouldn’t work too well if I have a small notebook, though.
  • Left-side, right-side format – use one side of the facing page to write the request(s) and the other side of the page to write the answer(s). This gives me more space than the option listed immediately above.
  • Front page, back page format – similar to the option immediately above, but using the back of the page rather than one of the pages facing me.
  • Space under the request – leave several blank lines under the request. Or, leave the entire rest of the page blank.

I’ll write a little more about the organization of my prayer notebook in my next post.

I’ve collected a bunch of recipes (some from friends and relatives, but also my own) that I would like to pass down to my kids someday. The question is: What format should I keep these recipes in?

Currently, I have my main recipes in Microsoft Word, which works just fine. Word will give me a table of contents and, with a bit more work, an index. However, another possibility is to use Microsoft OneNote. I found this post about using OneNote to organize recipes. I must admit, it looks pretty good. You can even search according to ingredient. (I can do this in Word, too, but OneNote will show you a list of the recipes that contain the ingredient.)

[I really hesitate to use online recipe things where you use a host, because it’s someone else’s property and if the web site goes down, my recipes disappear with it.]

With OneNote, I’d be able to use my own software on my own computer, and if my computer crashes I lose it all (unless I do the smart thing and back up my computer on a regular basis).

So, my current dilemma is: paper-based or computer-based recipe “book”?

With paper-based, I can make a traditional hard copy–I can bind it and give it to my kids. I can make one for myself and add pages as necessary. (I currently love Circa!) It’s safe and comfortable. I can get the pages dirty or wet without being too concerned—I heard somewhere that the dirtier your recipe pages, the better.

With computer-based, it’s new, it’s now. I can easily add recipes. I don’t have to print anything out, which would save paper, toner, and time (after the initial time investment in putting the recipes into OneNote). However, it would require that I have a computer in or near the kitchen so that I can refer to the recipes as I cook, and certain types of spillage would be bad for the computer.

Although the idea of using OneNote intrigues me, I don’t want change just for the sake of change. I guess I have to think about this some more…

Yes, that’s right. I bought a new Bible because the lettering is too small for me to read. Or, more correctly, my eyes have gotten so bad that I can no longer read the lettering. I’m old!

My old Bible was a nice, smallish, easy-to-carry size. The new one, because of its large print, is heavy! Maybe I’m on my way to becoming a buff old lady, lugging around my hurkin’ big Bible. But at least I can now read the text without having to adjust or remove my glasses. For now, at least…

Rod & Staff

• Grades used: 1 – 3, 6
• Pretty basic, traditional textbook. Student book(s) and Teacher book(s) with answers included. The teacher’s book also includes sort of a “script” for teaching the course in a classroom. I don’t use the “script,” but I do scan through it to see if there’s anything I can use when teaching my kids.
• What I like: Traditional, drills the facts. Rod & Staff also provides free samples of their graded curriculum.
• What I work around: LOTS of drills and review–I just assign fewer problems (e.g., I’ll assign even or odd, or even just a smattering of problems, depending on how well my child “gets” it).
• Where to order: I order directly from Rod & Staff (1.606.522.4348). You can also order the free samples by calling that number. There are also a couple of online stores that sell Rod & Staff curriculum, and one of them provides the samples online.
• Aside: Rod & Staff is a Mennonite company. I don’t find it to be preachy (but then, I don’t mind preachy), but if you don’t want your child solving problems about Brother So-and-so reading Bible books and the like, this may not be the curriculum for you.

Primary Mathematics (a.k.a. “Singapore Math”)

• Grades used: Pre – 4B
• This is the math program that used to be taught in Singapore, where test scores were very high. The program has now been updated in Singapore, but many homeschoolers still use Primary Mathematics, which has also been updated for U.S. audiences (to include English-based weights and measures, as well as U.S. money).
• What I like: Very inexpensive, helps the child understand concepts.
• What I work around: Lack of explanations (they use pictures and thought bubbles), lack of drills (although, if you get a home educator’s guide, it includes answers to all problems in the textbook and workbook, and it includes teaching tips, drills, and mental math).
• Where to order: I usually order through Singapore Math (they have samples online, and they also have a forum if you have questions on any of their curricula). You can also find this through Rainbow Resource Center or Sonlight.
• Aside: These books (U.S. Edition) use some Singaporean first names, as well as fruits you would find in Singapore. I think it’s cool, but I really should find a pronunciation guide for those names.

Teaching Textbooks

• Grades used: 7, Pre-Algebra (goes from grades 4 through Calculus)
• This is a computer-based course that comes with a textbook and DVDs.
• What I like: It’s almost completely self-study (I’ve only needed to help a couple of times; the solutions CD is very helpful if the student has questions), there’s self-checking, and in some levels there’s automatic grading.
• What I work around: Some people think this curriculum is below grade level. That doesn’t bother me; the benefits are worth it.
• Where to order: I order directly through Teaching Textbooks (they provide samples of both textbook and CD content, as well as placement tests). You can also find it through Timberdoodle.

Life of Fred

• Grades used: I haven’t used this one yet, but it looks intriguing. It’s aimed at grades 5-12.
• This is an unconventional, narrative-based curriculum that’s about, well, the life of Fred, a young (5-6 year-old) boy who encounters various mathematical adventures. My kids are voracious readers and I think they’ll enjoy the humor in this series.
• What I like: It’s relatively inexpensive and it uses humor to teach the subject, but it doesn’t dumb down the subject.
• What I work around: Well, as mentioned above, I haven’t actually used this yet. When our budget allows, I’m going to use it as a supplement. We’ll see how that goes.
• Where to order: I’m going to order it directly through Stanley Schmidt’s site (which also provides samples), which actually uses a separate vendor that provides free shipping. You can also find this through Rainbow Resource Center.