Birthday Budget.

My daughter's birthday is coming up this week, so what better time to talk about kids' birthdays on tiny budgets? ;) We follow a system where each year, one of the children gets a "big" party and one gets a small/family party, then we switch the next year. Last year my daughter had 15 girls attend a ceramic-painting, pizza-eating, raise-the-roof blow-out, while for my son we simply went bowling in the early afternoon when games are just $1 per game. So this year it's my daughter's turn for the "small" party. (More in full post.)

I guess there might be some people who think we are short-changing our kids this way, but we set up this system many years ago and the kids have never once complained. And thinking back on my own childhood, there were years I had big parties - like a dozen girls at a slumber party when I turned 9, and years when there weren't so many; like when I and two friends went to play mini-golf for my 12th birthday. I suspect this is actually true for most people if they stop to consider it.

For my daughter's birthday this year, she elected to just stay home with the family. She chose a movie from the library - The Princess Bride (Which? Hee. My husband and I both started quoting it as soon as she brought it to us. She and my son have never seen it, so we thought it was a great choice.) On her birthday, we'll be having chocolate chip pancakes and bacon for breakfast. Potato Soup and biscuits for lunch. And tacos, Spanish Rice, and refried beans for dinner. All her favorites. We'll also be having chocolate cake. After dinner, we'll watch the movie in the den with popcorn* and some limeade.

Her big gift this year is a digital camera. She's been asking for one for awhile, and we've decided she's demonstrated she's responsible enough to have one. (On a side note - this is a girl who taught herself how to use a Paint program to manipulate graphics and images, how to set up simple webpages, and she even has created her own animation videos online. It is not at all surprising that she wants a digital camera!) I put out word to all our family members and friends that we were looking for a used digital camera if anyone was selling one, and I was contacted by a friend of a friend who sold us a nice Sony camera for $10. My daughter has no idea about this, so I can't wait to see her face when she opens it.

She's also been asking about a sewing machine, so I sent out word about that as well, and wonder of wonders, one turned up that someone was selling. In fact, I was going to give her that as her birthday present, until we were called about the camera. So now I'm keeping the sewing machine to be a Christmas gift.

I made her some new headbands for herself and her Our Generation Doll** (a sorta American Girl doll, but doesn't cost more than our monthly utility bills!), USING THIS REALLY SIMPLE PATTERN.

Last week, my husband took her to a local used bookstore that sells used CDs and let her pick out 4 of her favorite Christian bands/artists. (At a total of just over $7.) We recently got the free iPod through wowio.com for her and now she's able to convert and play the CDs on it.

We were able to get free tickets to the Orlando Opera's youth performance of The Pirates of Penzance, so we'll be going to that at the end of next week as her final birthday gift.

(Note - she's received some gifts in the mail from relatives, but as we haven't opened them yet, I don't know what they are.)

The food costs are negligible - we'd be eating anyway, obviously, and nothing in the meals is anything different/more expensive than something we'd usually eat - and the addition of the cake isn't much. I use a master mix for that and I make the frosting, as well. The cakes I make only cost around $1.50 at most, even if I add sprinkles.

Her gifts cost less than $20. The headbands were made from yarn remnants from other projects, so at most that was $1. To be fair, I should also factor in the gas costs to drive to the opera, so I'll say this birthday is costing us $21.

One other note: We do decorate for birthdays. We have a "Happy Birthday!" banner that we purchased years ago. We blow up a few balloons and tie them to the chair of the birthday person. We have a "Celebrate" plate from Pampered Chef that the birthday person eats on all day. (Um, LOL! I do wash it between meals! I don't mean someone walks around with the plate all day, eating off it.) Ours is an older version I bought at a garage sale a long time ago. It's blue and white. They have a more colorful one now, so maybe I'll stumble across it at a garage sale, too, sometime. :) We also have a special tablecloth that we bring out. I made it when my oldest turned 2. I bought a couple of yards of green fabric, hemmed it all around, and appliqued circles of yellow, red, and blue on it and embroidered black "strings" to make balloons.


*I'm not typically a fan of extra kitchen gadgets. I don't often buy things that serve only one purpose, but I do have one of those hand-crank popcorn pots. It produces MUCH better popcorn than what you get out of a microwave, and we won't even talk about the cardboard-tasting horrors that come out of air-poppers! Also, even with some salt and butter added, a really big bowl of popcorn costs less than .20 cents when you pop it yourself and it hardly takes that much more time than the microwave - about 5 minutes. I've seen them selling new as low as $20 and you can probably find them for less on auction sites (Though watch the shipping costs!). If your family eats popcorn at least once a week, it wouldn't take very long for you to pay off that upfront cost in savings from not buying the microwave version. Plus you can avoid the questions that have recently arisen concerning the possible toxicity of microwave popcorn.

**OUR GENERATION DOLLS - We purchased one of these awhile back, using a gift certificate someone gave me. It's held up just fine with her playing and taking it with her to her Keepers at Home club meetings where they read and discuss American Girl books. My mother has made the doll some very cute outfits, and made matching sundresses for my daughter and the doll.

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Free Mad Math Minutes

If your child could use some math drills practice, THIS SITE allows you to generate on-line math worksheets that are self-grading. You can use addition, subtraction, multiplication and/or division and set the upper limit of number to be used (As in no higher than 20 - goes up to 100.), and choose how many problems and whether or not decimals or negatives can be included.

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How I shop, Part 3.

I mentioned in THE PART 2 SHOPPING POST that I do some of my meal planning while standing in the store. I know this is contradictory to what most "budget advisers" usually recommend. I do this, though, because I don't know until I get there just what meat I'll be buying. (More in full post.)

It's not until after I've decided on my meat purchases that I can figure out exactly what we'll be eating. Generally, this is actually a simple process, despite how it might sound. I cook using a combination of basic staples and HOMEMADE MIXES. So after I know what meat I'm buying, usually there are only some "special" ingredients I need to pick up, as well as restocking any staples that are low. I keep a piece of paper stuck to the fridge and another on the inside of the pantry door. All week I write down things I realize are running low so that I know to purchase them while shopping. This usually isn't that much, since I also stock up on things when on sale, but occasionally I'll go a stretch of time where I don't find something on sale, like perhaps olive oil or rice, and I'll need to pick some up because we're running out of it.

"Special" ingredients just means something like zucchini or dried kidney beans; something I don't keep on hand but would need to complete the meals, not anything very expensive or "gourmet".

I will start checking for the special ingredients and the staples in the first store we visit and if the prices are good there, I go ahead and buy them; otherwise I wait to see the other stores.

A few weeks ago, I purchased a frozen turkey breast for $2.50. I cooked it in the gravy it came with and that night I served hot open-faced sandwiches (turkey slices on bread slices with caramelized onions and the gravy), oven fries, steamed carrots, and peaches. A couple of days later, at lunch, we had a spinach salad with diced turkey, a bit of bacon, some homemade croutons, and sliced carrots, served with some garlic biscuits. We also had a night where dinner was turkey pot pie and apple slices. By deciding in the store that these were the meals I would make with my turkey, I knew I needed to pick up fresh spinach, peaches, bacon, and some frozen peas (for the pot pie.) I already had other ingredients/foods, like the apples. I always buy potatoes, onions and carrots if I'm low - I consider these staples. And because I was buying the bacon and spinach, I knew I'd need to come up with something else to make with it, so we had a mock-quiche* that week, too. Because I decided to make the quiche, I had to pick up some swiss cheese. This was too expensive at store number one, but at a good price at store 2. Because I was buying swiss cheese, I also decided to make a two-cheese (also used cheddar, which I keep on hand) scalloped potatoes dish and I served that with some sausage, which also happened to be on sale that week. I'd already figured I'd serve some sort of potato dish with the sausage, so once I decided upon the quiche, I knew just what potato dish I'd want to make.

Note - the turkey pot pie required a sauce and crust, and the scalloped potatoes had a sauce, all of which were made from some of the mixes I keep on hand, so I didn't need to buy anything extra for that.

I have a feeling this sounds utterly insane! But I hope this is making at least some sense. The point is, I first determine the meat. Then I figure out what we'll be eating with that meat, then I make sure whatever I buy for the meat can be used up - that I'm not buying something I'll never use again. Sometimes it may be that I freeze something for use later, but I will definitely use it.

I think you can see that my meals are pretty simple. We don't eat the exact same thing every week - there's no Meatloaf Monday or Spaghetti Thursday - and I do make a variety of casseroles and soups to use up ingredients, but what I don't do is cook anything hugely fancy or costly or full of one-time-use only ingredients.

I'm assuming this will be more understandable if I really break down an entire shopping trip and all the ingredients, so that will be my next shopping post.

(Also - I mentioned shopping in only one store before, and I haven't forgotten that. I will get to it soon.)

*mock-quiche: I brought this up once before, but mock-quiche for us is some variation of what Bisquick calls IMPOSSIBLY EASY PIES. I vary the ingredients by what I have on hand and use my own "master biscuit mix" to make these.

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Friday Five for Free (2)

This is a little unusual. It's a 5 volume set of cooking textbooks, published in 1921 (and so now public domain.) Some of the information and recipes contained within will probably make you want to never set foot in your kitchen again! :) Still there is a surprising amount of stuff you can learn from these books, and a lot of it involves cooking from scratch, the budget-minded way to go. Okay, so I can promise you I'm never going to cook up a batch of hominy and then take that and use it in a hominy and cheese souffle, but still, the simple, basic recipes are worth knowing. And, as these are actual textbooks, there are even exam questions included. (More in full post.)

BOOK 1
BOOK 2
BOOK 3
BOOK 4
BOOK 5


Just to note - keeping in mind how long ago these books were written, if you decide to try out any of the recipes, make sure that you're not doing something we've come to learn is not as safe as once believed. (For instance, we now know not to make eggnog with raw eggs unless they have been specially pasteurized.)

If you're the kind of person who finds something like this interesting the way I do, you might also be interested in: SCHOOL AND HOME COOKING - This is another cooking school text. Something in particular that strikes me, as I have noticed it in some of the older cookbooks I've inherited, is the inclusion of a section on feeding someone who is sick. I never seem to come across that in modern cookbooks, and I wonder why we seem to think that doesn't merit special attention any more.

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How I create my "free" curriculum, Part 2.

Now, that I explained a little bit about how I build my curriculum, I wanted to give a more detailed example. (More in full post)

Yesterday, I came up with a 50 States geography curriculum, that I'm not even sure I'll ever use, LOL!

While poking around on the Stickers and Charts website, I found THESE US STATE STICKERS - second set HERE. I thought, "Oh, wouldn't those be cute in some sort of 'passport' notebook, where the kids get a sticker for each state studied?" So then I went on a google search and eventually came up with this plan:

Print an outline copy of the US - FROM HERE - and put it in the front of a notebook. Print several copies of THIS STATES QUICK FACTS PAGE to be filled out using information from these sources - THE INTERNET LIBRARY and AMERICA'S STORY. (Two notes - the Quick Facts form only needs page 1 printed. Page 2 is blank. Also, on the internet library, if you click on the individual state name, it will take you to a page with more info and lots of links directly related to that state.)

States could be studied in alphabetical order or, IN THE ORDER IN WHICH THEY JOINED THE UNION. (THIS PAGE allows you to sign up for a 25 week e-mail program that directs you to study 2 states a week - by order into the union - it could help keep you on track.)

You can also print BLANK OUTLINE MAPS OF THE INDIVIDUAL STATES and COMPARISON CHARTS FOR THE STATES.

Here is how I would pull all that together:

I'd start on Monday with a certain state (using order into the union). We'd read about the state at the internet library and follow some of the links. We'd color the state on the US map and label it, with its capitol. We would also write out some interesting facts we learned about the state, just using notebook paper.

On Tuesday, we'd fill out the Quick Facts form and the comparison chart, and also visit the America's Story website. We'd print the state outline map, color it, and label it with major cities and natural features - rivers, mountains, etc. We'd finish the state by using one of those cool stickers - sticking it to the Quick Facts page, as a mark in our "passports" that we'd "visited" said state.

We'd repeat this for a new state on Wednesday and Thursday.

On Friday, we'd do something fun, like cook a meal known to that region, or read/watch a book or movie relating to a state we'd studied.

As I said, since we're working on World Geography, I'm not sure if or when we'd actually even use this plan, but I wanted to use it as an example of how you can take multiple sources to come up with one finished plan.

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How I "create" my free curriculum, Part 1.

One of the purposes of this blog was my hopes to demonstrate to others how you can use free resources to make your own curriculum. It is, admittedly, quite time-consuming; however, there are nice rewards for your hard work. (More in full post.)

If you build your own curriculum from many sources, you can truly tailor it to your children. If you look at my Language Arts plans in my "Totally Free Curriculum" links, you'll see that my daughter is reading The Secret Garden, while my son is reading Tom Sawyer. I chose those - out of the numerous classics books available - because I knew they would enjoy them. My daughter this year will also be reading The Prince and the Pauper, because she watched a library Barbie DVD based on the plot and I thought it might be interesting for her to read it, and then Treasure Island, because pirates are so big right now - especially here in Orlando!

I chose Tom Sawyer for my son after mentioning to him how I had read it in 7th grade and really liked it and he said he'd like to read it, too. Then, I figured why not read Huck Finn as well, and for his other novels, I chose Jack London books because my son loves wolves, dogs, and foxes.

Once I have general topics decided upon, I begin searching for sources. For instance, I googled "Mark Twain" to see what I could find - and there was a lot! I will bookmark sites and then, as I build the lesson plans day by day, I check my bookmarks for sources that will work for each individual lesson.

That's pretty much all there is to it. Nothing terribly complicated; it just takes some time to sift through everything out there to find something we need and can use. We also go to the library weekly, and I take a list of the topics we'll be covering the following week, like countries we'll be studying in geography or people we'll be learning about in history, and I'll find books and sometimes DVDs we can use.

As for what to teach year by year, I have a long-term goal in mind and a list of things that need to be covered by then. Here in Florida, we have the DUAL ENROLLMENT PROGRAM, where students can start attending college at 16 and graduate high school with their completed AAs, as well as their regular high school diplomas. This program is absolutely free for public schooled children and free for homeschoolers, except we have to pay for textbooks. Through our co-op, I've had the pleasure of knowing several bright, personable kids who have either already finished this program or are working through it currently. This is the goal for my own children. Two years of college for only the price of the textbooks? Sign us up! Obviously, there isn't a total guarantee that they'll both get in, but I'm still working toward that goal and believe they each stand a very good chance. :)

Because I want to take advantage of dual enrollment, I've made sure I know all the requirements to enroll. I also have a COPY OF WHAT FLORIDA PUBLIC SCHOOLS REQUIRE FOR GRADUATION, because I assume that's what colleges and universities are looking for, even with their "exceptions" for homeschooled kids. Since my children will need to take - and do well on! - the SAT or ACT in order to use the dual enrollment program, I have my eye on that particular ball as I pick and choose what we're learning now.

Another great thing about building your curriculum yourself is, not only are you getting something made just for your kids, you also have the added bonus of, if it's not working, drop it and try something else! It's a lot harder to do that when you're working from a packaged curriculum and you paid big bucks for it. I should know! After homeschooling this way for years, for our last school year I had the (someone smack me now!) crazy idea that as my son was entering middle school, he needed something more "put together" and separate from his younger sister. I saved and scrimped and asked everyone I knew for $10, or whatever they could afford, in lieu of any birthday or Christmas gifts for myself and my husband for the year and a half leading up to it, and then bought Switched-on-Schoolhouse. It started out well, and it certainly did free my time up, but then by Christmas, my children announced they *hated* it. They missed schooling together. They missed all my wacky ideas and projects. They missed spreading out on the living room floor and reading together. And so we abandoned the SOS (Okay - that's just funny when you read it.) and came back to our "free" homeschooling. Golly, did I really hate knowing how much I'd spent on it. On the up side - I was able to find "good homes" for the CDs - people who could really use them, so at least they did not go to total waste. Yes, I know I could've sold them, but as I know just how hard it was for us to come up with the money, I preferred to give them to people who otherwise would not have been able to have them for their own homeschools.

And as for anyone concerned that using a "free" program might be short-changing the children, let me offer you this reassurance. At the end of the school year, I give my kids standardized tests. I don't submit or report the scores; I just do it to monitor their progress. They always ace them. Even my daughter, who struggles with dyslexia, has no problem with these tests, though she does use up every bit of the allotted time. They both tell me the tests are "too easy" and even "stupid". Personally, I agree with them. But this does give me something concrete to show, if I need, and it will show me any gaps if we have them.

One last note: I only stumbled across AN OLD FASHIONED EDUCATION this past winter, but it has proved to be an excellent resource for my lesson plan building. I don't follow the plans there exactly because we combine some subjects and in certain cases, like geography, I prefer to use current sources as opposed to public domain books, but it is still a great place to go and start from if you are trying to build your own free curriculum.

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Science & Geography Week 3.

The week 3 lesson plans for Integrated Science and World Geography have been uploaded.

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Earn free books.

(Thanks to Amy at OFE for posting a direct link!)

Barnes and Nobel is doing their Summer Reading Program again where your child can earn a free book after reading 8 books. The 8 books are his choice and do not have to be purchased from B&N. PRINT THE REQUIRED FORM HERE. Note that it actually says your child can turn in 2 forms, not just one. Also, it lists grades 1 - 6 as eligible grades.

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Yes, I am sheltering my kids!

For the past few days I have come across comments from anti-homeschoolers who accuse homeschooling parents of "sheltering" their kids to the point of denying the children the opportunity to grow up. In several cases, the argument was kids need to be exposed to the sex and drugs and bullying because they're going to have to face it "someday". (More in full post.)

By this logic, I should've let my children play in the front yard as toddlers, so they could be exposed to cars driving by, because someday they were going to need to know that standing in the middle of the street could get them killed. It didn't matter that they weren't yet developed enough to understand the concept. By not letting them out there, I apparently denied them a critical opportunity to grow up properly. Bad mom! No cookie!

THIS ARTICLE, talking about a middle school after-school trip to Planned Parenthood (!), explains that someone spoke to the kids about the services offered by Planned Parenthood - including annual exams and PAP smears, testing for sexually transmitted diseases, birth control and pregnancy counseling - but that this was all okay because they didn't mention abortion.

What?!?

My son is in middle school. He is not ready to have chats about sexually transmitted diseases or birth control. And because I haven't thrown him to the wolves of public school, thankfully, he's not being exposed to this sort of thing before he's old enough and mature enough to understand it.

Yesterday, I even read a comment on a blog by someone who said 12-year-olds need to be fully educated about sex "before things become a problem." Now this wasn't talking about explaining to your child where babies come from - this was, well, this was written by someone who would clearly support field trips to Planned Parenthood.

Give me a break. Yes, I do shelter my kids. It's called PARENTING. I think quite a few people need to look that word up! Preferably before they have children themselves.

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Chores Incentive Program.

This is an interesting program. You register with the site, create/choose tasks for your children, designate a point system, and create awards goals. You and your children can log in to monitor progress and "claim" the rewards. (More in full post.)

I admit, I was quite skeptical when I stumbled across HANDIPOINTS, if for no other reason than it looks too slick to be free. Heh. But I have registered with it so that I could really check it out and I went over every point of the Terms of Service. As far as I can tell, the biggest "catch" is that as long as you use the service you cannot opt out of their mailing list and you will receive advertisements because of it.

I was also wary of the awards system. I certainly didn't want to get into some sort of situation where I'm promising my kids I'll be them a Nintendo Wii! However, when I clicked on the "most popular rewards" section, many of them turned out to be things like "1 hour of computer time" or "play a board game" type rewards. In addition, you don't have to use a listed reward - you can create your own.

My hiccup with this system is this: Obviously, this program was created with the intent to get you to purchase things. It asks that you "support" the site by purchasing your rewards through their "featured merchants". Now, this is NOT a requirement whatsoever; the service is offered for free, but it remains a personal decision on whether or not using the site without ever buying anything would be completely ethical or not.

I will give the system a try for a few weeks and let you know what I think of it.

Just one other note - the site has a referral system; however, as I am only posting this info FYI and not trying to actively promote it, I am not "referring" you with that above link. It simply directs you to the main page.

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Free printable award certificates.

If you'd like to give your child some type of award, completion, or promotion certificate, there are several sites that provide these for free.

FREE PRINTABLE CERTIFICATES - nice for older kids.

BILLY BEAR'S CERTIFICATES - customizable, for younger kids.

123 CERTIFICATES - all ages, customizable, many choices. Check out the reading certificates - there are incentive charts to record the child's reading and matching certificates for when his goal is reached. They have the same program in the "cute" awards; you could use the incentive charts for any kind of school work or chores and then reward a matching certificate when the jobs are done. Nice! :) (Also note - this site has a "sister" site with free printable incentive charts and stickers: STICKERS AND CHARTS.)

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How I shop, Side Bar.

I wanted to talk more about purchases other than meat at the grocery store, when I remembered that I only casually mentioned bread thrift stores somewhere and I thought I'd better go into a little detail about that before I continue with the rest of the shopping posts, or I'm likely to forget about it altogether. (More in full post.)

We live within about 20 minutes drive from two bread thrift stores. One of them, on Wednesdays, has .65 cents for everything in the store, including the "nice" bread - meaning the whole grains and multi-grains and breads that are *not* Wonderbread. Well, they have that, too, but we don't buy it. Once every two months, we go to the thrift store and buy 8 loaves of bread. This costs a little under five and a half dollars. Because we buy at least $5 worth, we are also allowed to select something off the "free" rack. From there we will get something like hoagie rolls (for meatball sandwiches - yum!) or tortillas or occasionally we'll choose the dinner rolls. As I've mentioned before, I bake everything else. Muffins, cakes, sweet breads, biscuits, and so on. It may very well be that I could purchase all the ingredients to bake multi-grain bread at home cheaper than the thrift store, but I'm not entirely sure where I'd work that into my schedule if I did! I decided awhile ago that spending .65 cents a week on bread would fit into our budget. We actually don't eat that many sandwiches, but bread slices are eaten frequently at snack time - toasted and served with apple butter or homemade jam and a glass of milk, or served with peanut butter, fresh fruit, and some lemonade. I will also sometimes, at the request of my children, make a batch of French toast.

We freeze all but one loaf of the bread when we bring it home. I keep stackable baking racks on my counter all the time. On any given day you will find (in baggies) some muffins, cookies and possibly dinner rolls on the lower rack, and on the upper rack sits the loaf of bread. When one runs out, I pull another from the freezer. They seem to thaw just fine in this way, sitting on the rack; we never have "mushy" bread.

I wanted to mention all this so that later when I've finished my actual shopping posts and then break down a shopping trip by posting everything I've bought and how much it cost, you won't be confused by the lack of bread/grains.

Oh, and because I mentioned lemonade, here's my recipe:

LEMONADE
1 1/2 cups sugar (Increase by 1/4 cup if you like more sweet, less tart.)
8 cups water
1 1/2 cups lemon juice - fresh squeezed.

In a saucepan, combine sugar and 1 cup water. Bring to boil and stir to dissolve sugar. Allow to cool to room temperature, then cover and refrigerate until chilled (about 4 hours). Remove seeds from lemon juice, but leave pulp. In pitcher, stir together chilled syrup, lemon juice, and remaining 7 cups water.

Generally, it takes me about 6 lemons to get the 1 1/2 cups juice. Every so often I'll find lemons on sale for 10 for a $1.00.

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Blog Edits.

So, I'm attempting to do some stuff that will hopefully make my blog easier to read/navigate. Now if I can just solve the archiving issue in a way that doesn't require a *lot* of time-consuming work on my part. Heh. (More in full post.)

Hmmm. Not so sure I like the fact that the "read full post" link shows up AFTER the label link and I can't seem to prevent that from happening. Now I have to decide if I want to keep this feature or not.

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American History & Bible Plans.

Week 3 of the American History lesson plan is posted, along with weeks 3 and 4 for Old Testament Bible.

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7th Grade LA Week 2.

Have posted the 7th grade Language Arts week 2 lesson plan.

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Every penny counts!

Hee. File this under "Frugal Mania."

I buy notebook paper during the back-to-school sales when a pack of 150 sheets costs 10 cents. I use it not just for school, but also for other things, including my shopping lists.

I had a sheet sitting on my desk. My husband picked it up after lunch and handed it to me. Here's the conversation that followed.

Him: Isn't this the list we used on Saturday? Why didn't you throw this away?
Me: Because I'll be using the back for this week's list.
Him: You use the backs of old lists to make new ones?
Me: Well, sure. Why waste the paper and money?
Him: (After a very long pause.) All right, I'll give it to you on the not making more trash than necessary, but just how much money do you really think you're saving?
Me: I don't know. But every penny counts!

And then we both laughed because, of course we live by that rule, but this might be taking it to the extreme. As near as I can tell, my policy of re-using my shopping lists is saving us about 3 cents a year. Woo! If I start counting now, at this rate, by the time we're 80, I'll have saved us almost a dollar and a half!

So from here on out, I'm just going to say I'm saving the trees.

Still, I must say, when you think in terms of counting every single penny, it does make a difference overall. I could go the opposite way and think, "Oh, it's just three cents." but when you do that too often, that three cents here and ten cents there and dollar-fifty elsewhere really does start to add up. I know I'm a little bit insane about money - oh, all right; I'm downright crazy - but this really is the reason why our family lives on so little and yet isn't in debt or "living beyond our means". I guess I can live with being the nutty one for that. :)

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Basic Essay Writing.

If you're looking for help with teaching the steps to essay writing, THIS SITE includes a step-by-step guide.

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Vocabulary "Keeper" Bookmark

This is neat - it's a bookmark where students can record new words as they're reading. The page recommends that you laminate the bookmark to keep using it. My only caution there would be, be careful what you write with then! I could see where the ink used on the lamination might rub off onto your book pages. Eep!

BOOKMARK.

Of course, if you want to do this really cheaply - just take the concept and use scrap paper or notebook paper cut into strips. :)

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OT Bible Copywork.

Have added 3 Bible copywork pages, plus a link to free printable handwriting pages.

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