I love to inspire others- Not just to new heights
spiritually, but in everyday living, in parenting, in homeschooling, whatever
it may be… I love to pass on ideas and tidbits that I’ve gleaned over time. So
here is a multi-subjected blog post, meant to inspire you—
ON FOOD CREATIVITY-
A few months ago, we were given lots of
groceries from a food distribution group called “Blessings of Hope”. Some of
the items were real “gems”… foods I use on a regular basis and they were very
useful. Other items needed some creativity to get them used up. For instance,
boxes (and I mean lots of them) of Choco Rice Krispy cereal. While my two
little girls actually like these for breakfast, my other kids do not. And I’m
not a huge fan of starting out the morning with that type of breakfast, SOOO
how could I make use of these boxes of cereal?? Two ways- Crunch Bars and Granola
Bars… both recipes call for Rice Krispys and choc. chip. So we omitted the
chocolate chips and used the Choco Rice Krispys instead. It worked great and
saved me the step of melting the chocolate chips! Pretty cool.
Another item was Philadelphia cream cheese.
But it was not regular cream cheese, it was “brown sugar and cinnamon” or
something along that line. You can use a certain amount of that on bagels, etc.
but after bit you need to get creative to use the last few tubs of it. I
decided to make the “Cheese Danish” that calls for Pillsbury Crescent Rolls,
cream cheese and a few other ingredients. The recipe calls for original cream
cheese, but we used the “brown sugar and something” brand instead. It was
actually really good, in fact, I might choose to make it that way every time.
The last item that called for creativity was-
“Pillsbury BLUEBERRY Buttermilk Biscuits”. Again you can eat a certain amount
of these as biscuits to compliment some foods, but when you have as many as we
had, you’d better think of other ways to use them. We chose to make “donuts”
out of them. Pop them open, cut each biscuit in pieces (we cut them in 6ths),
and fry them in hot oil (I actually used olive oil for this, but vegetable
works too). They are good to eat just like this, BUT to take this over the top…
toss them in some powdered sugar. YUM!!
ON HOMESCHOOLING-
I am probably one of the most laid back
homeschool moms!! By this I mean, I don’t grade every paper or test, I don’t do
everything by the book, and I don’t have everything organizedJ. Don’t get me wrong, we start school
every day by 8:00, take a break at 10:00, eat lunch at 12:00 and wrap
everything up (most days) by 1:30. We have a structure, BUT we try to keep it
simple and have fun. If my kids are getting the concept, and understanding the
principle being taught I am satisfied.
Here’s a fun idea for spelling tests once in a
while… you can purchase a kind of crayon that’s made to write on glass. If you
have a glass patio door or a nice big window in your house that your kids can
write on, allow them to do their spelling test on that instead of writing it on
paper!! Keep it fun. Keep it simple.
ON CHILD TRAINING-
I don’t have this one figured out yet, but
thought I’d share a couple creative training moments that took place recently…
Madison will tell you he’s
not a “people person”. Don’t make him answer a knock on the door or the ringing
phone, instead he’ll just go find mom. Phone calls sometimes get missed because
he doesn’t get to mom on time and people are left knocking on the door because
mom is nowhere to be found at the moment. So in an effort to “train” Matt in
these areas, we got creative. I told him that we were going to do an “answer
the door” drill- I knocked on the schoolroom door and wanted him to stop his
school DVD, take off his headphones, and come to the door. I asked him to open
it and ask me what he could do for me. Well, Matt’s stubbornness (wonder where
he gets that??) (his dad of course;)) kicked in!! He attempted several times to
follow the action steps I had laid out, but he would half drag himself to the
door and mumble when he opened it. We went over this several times, until he
got it right. The funny part is- older sister was standing in the other doorway
watching this go down. She was smirking. And brother was not happy about it.
Her being there watching did not help brother’s attitude or stubbornness. I
could have made her go away, but instead I told Madison to stop worrying about
her, complete this exercise, and I would deal with Shay later. And that’s what
we did… Madison finally came to the door the way I had asked, opened it and in
his most grown up voice asked,- “What can I do for you?”. Bravo! And as for Shay... She stayed to watch…
but THEN Shay HAD to stay LONGER!! Yep, I told her since she liked to stand in
that doorway smiling so much, she could just hang out there for a while until I
came back and told her she could go. Well, the first time I came back,
(probably 5 minutes later or so), I asked if she was still having fun?? She
said smartly, “YEP”!! I said, “OK wonderful, I’ll be back later”. She groaned
realizing I was out to make her regret her smart reply. I left her there a
while longer, and let’s just say that when I came back the next time, she
readily agreed that standing in the doorway isn’t everything its cracked up to
be:) and she was ready to do something
better with her time. Both Shay and Matt had a training session that they
wouldn’t soon forget:).
Now I don’t always do those kinds of things,
but some times when I want to make a point in a creative way, I come up with a
creative idea. Another area we had to drill Madison recently was to answer the
phone. It was his habit to bring me the ringing phone… and right when he got to
me, he’d push the answer button and hold it to my ear instead of just answering
and telling the person he’d get his mom or dad. Let’s just say we missed a few
phone calls this way, and then we’d have to call people back (which isn’t
terrible, but slightly annoying). So the last time (notice I said last time,
because he doesn’t do it anymore) he did this, I made him return the phone
call. We have caller ID so I knew who had called. I told him to call the
person, tell them that we missed the call because he wouldn’t answer it, and
that he would get whoever it was that they were calling to talk to. Again Matt
got stubborn!! No way! He was NOT going to call them back. Guess what, mom can
get stubborn too. I told him he wasn’t doing anything the rest of the evening
until the phone call was made. About 60 min. later, when he finally decided to
make the call, he got the person’s answering machine, he said- “Hi Dave, this
is Madison. I’m sorry we missed your call because….” And he proceeded to tell
why we missed the call, and that his dad was indeed home if he wanted to call
back. Lesson learned. Guess who answers our phone without hesitation now??
Madison. :)
You can say I’m mean or crazy, but like Dr.
James Dobson says, “Parenting isn’t for cowards”!!
Be blessed.
