Month: October 2017

Like every other household in the world, we have a hard time fitting things in. One that we have found particularly difficult to put into the schedule is time to study the scriptures together. As our kids get older and as work gets more hectic, we no longer are all home after dinner every day. Jon leaves for work early quite often, and he isn’t home by the time the boys and I sit down for a council meeting. We read the Bible as part of that most days.

Jon and I were talking while we were gone to Kansas City a couple of weeks ago, and we realized that we will only have all of these boys under our roof for two and a half more years. We decided to look for a Bible reading plan for our family that will insure that Micah has read and heard the full council of Scripture at least twice more before he leaves this house. We settled on the Bible Project’s Read Scripture app for daily reading assignments, though we are aware that we won’t be successful every day. We’ll try hard, and Jon might miss some of it.

On Sunday morning, we are all home and committed to a slow morning after Saturday night church. Once everyone is up, Breakfast Man make the pancakes and bacon, and we feast on maple syrup and scripture. It isn’t fancy, and it isn’t a perfect plan, but perhaps we can build a daily habit of systematic scripture reading into these boys before they leave us.

Breakfast Man’s Pancakes

Normal-Sized Recipe:

Beat together:

• 6 eggs
• 4 c. milk
• 3 T. butter, melted
• 6 T sugar
• 1 t vanilla

Combine in a bigger bowl

• 4 c. flour (ours is gluten free)
• 2 heaping T baking powder
• ½ t. salt

Get your griddle or skillet ready. Pour wet ingredients over dry ingredients and mix together.

Make pancakes. Add blueberries or chocolate chips if you want.

We make the super-sized version of this, and it makes enough for one big breakfast and six extra cups of batter. Those six cups are divided between two quart mason jars and stuck in the fridge for mid-week waffles. When it is time to make waffles, we add two tablespoons of avocado oil to one of the jars, and whisk it up.

Super Size Version:

Beat together:

• 8 eggs
• 5 c. milk
• 5 T. butter, melted
• 8 T sugar
• 2 t vanilla

Combine in a bigger bowl

• 5 c. flour (ours is gluten free)
• 3 heaping T baking powder
• 1 t. salt

Proceed as directed above.

One thing that we do to simplify our mornings is to cycle through the same breakfasts every week.  These boys like to eat, and we tend to not buy much processed food. My challenge was to find things we all didn’t mind eating over and over again that were easy to make, gluten free, eaten by everyone and low prep on the morning we were going to eat them.

Each Sunday, we eat pancakes or waffles and bacon for lunch and leave two mason jars of leftover pancake batter in the refrigerator. On Sunday afternoon, we will stir up Breakfast Cookie dough and press it into two pans.

On the mornings we need to leave the house quickly, we will bake and eat the breakfast cookie bars that we prepped on Sunday. They have to bake for a while, but the prep is completely hands off.  On mornings we aren’t running out the door, we’ll add a little oil to the leftover pancake batter and make waffles. Those waffles are either eaten with ham, cheese, and eggs or with peanut butter and jelly. The fifth morning is either toast and sausage or frozen potato cakes and sausage.

On Saturday and Sunday, we leave people to fend for themselves until lunchtime. They can choose from cereal, omelets, yogurt, oatmeal or eggs. But everyone is responsible for his own food and for his own mess.

Oatmeal and More Breakfast Cookies

Makes 2 9×9 pans of bar cookies

Cream together:

• ¾ cup sugar
• ¼ c butter, softened (or coconut oil)

Mix in until combined:

• 1 cup nut butter that makes you happy (We use peanut or almond depending on what’s in the pantry)
• 2 eggs

Mix in until combined:

• 1 ½ tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp chia seeds
• 2 scoops protein powder (We’ve used several with success. I’ve also left it out and added an extra ½ cup of oats)

Stir in:

• 3 c quick oats (We use gluten free oats here, but if you don’t, it shouldn’t change things)
• 1 cup craisins, raisins, nuts, chocolate chips or a combination thereof

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Spray or butter or oil two 9×9 or 8×8 pans.  Divide the dough between the pans. Press it out somewhat, but don’t stress over getting it flat. Bake until done – about 20 minutes, I think.

What can you think of that you can do ahead of time so that you and your family start the day well?

It is suddenly October, and I haven’t written the wrap up post for September.

We had a good September learning about Igor Stravinsky, Thomas Moran, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, George Washington, Abigail Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Carl Linneaus and Thomas Jefferson. We explored the people and places of American history up to the War of 1812, and we are on track with science experiments and reading. Micah finished his work for Challenge 2 for the month. I am mostly caught up in tutoring duties for my Challenge 3 class. We did some work for The Little Light House, and we participated in a jog-a-thon to raise money for that organization.

I am constantly doing the next thing, but I am never finished.  In this odd season that I am in, where most of the homeschooling work is to direct children back to their assignments when they are distracted and only a little is hands-on teaching, I have snippets of time to learn things that I will need to know in a little while (like Chemistry and Calculus), and I have snippets of time to tutor my mom-friends in Latin and math as needed.  It seems like I should have more time to do other things than I actually do. I wish I didn’t need quiet in order to write. I’d get a lot more written if that were the case.

Books finished by Micah: Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin, and  “A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift. He also read snippets of other books that he will read a little at a time over the year and did some internet reading of research for a large project.

Books Josiah finished:  The Witch of Blackbird Pond (which he was surprised to learn isn’t about a witch at all) and The Horse and His Boy, bits and pieces of other books that he will finish over time. He also read most of the Ranger’s Apprentice series.

Books Gideon finished: The Witch of Blackbird Pond, The Horse and His Boy, Prince Caspian,  bits and pieces of other books that he will finish over time. He feel in love with Narnia, and he read most of the Ranger’s Apprentice series too.

Books I finished: Reading People by Anne Bogel,  The Millennials, Hamlet, Of Mess and Moxie by Jen Hatmaker, Jane of Lantern Hill, and some articles and parts of books about education and teaching, like Stratford Caldecott’s Beauty for Truth’s Sake.

(Links in this post are Amazon affiliate links. Any funds earned through them go to support our homeschool.)

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