Raising Arrows
Large Family Homeschool Life – Week 40 of 2022
Lots of Autumn activities and outdoorsy fun for our family this week!
Read all of the Large Family Homeschool Life!
MONDAY
This morning, I made my usual breakfast (eggs, hash browns, spinach, and one slice of bacon crumbled over the top) and made a big pot of oatmeal for the kids. It is chilly this morning, but will be over 80° this afternoon.
At 10am, I called the kids to the living room to sing a few hymns and read our Bible story from Hurlbut’s Story of the Bible. From there, the kids worked on their individual school subjects.
READ >> Independent Learning – Teach Your Kids to Homeschool Themselves!
The little girls both had phonics books to read to me, and both of them struggled through today’s reading. Some Mondays are like that. We just read less on those days and then pick it up the next day.
Mondays have turned into my shopping day. Not sure how that happened, but I’m going with it for now. I did my menu planning yesterday and realized groceries would be fairly inexpensive. Aldi ended up being $120. I noticed prices have definitely gone up again – especially dairy and baking items.
However, meat seems to be stabilizing and even going down in price in some cases. I ended up buying stew meat for our favorite Hearty Winter Vegetable Oven Stew – YUM! We’ll probably have it next week when my oven FINALLY gets fixed (after more than a month of waiting on the repairman).
I had planned to do Autumn School this afternoon, but ended up needing to call my sister about some family things. I’ll just use the plans tomorrow.
READ >> Autumn Homeschooling Ideas
I took the 7 year old out to pick up her Special Night donuts. She chose raspberry-filled donuts and apple fritters.
Then, I stopped by Walmart to finish up my grocery list. I had to buy a new 4 slice toaster because ours broke last week. You know you are a homemaker when a new toaster is exciting!
We also stopped by the library for a book on hold and then grabbed a cherry limeade slush from Sonic for Aspen’s Special Night drink.
Our 16 year old son made dinner tonight – tacos, coleslaw, cream cheese corn, and grapes. After dinner, we all played outside in the front yard. Some of the neighbor kids came over to jump rope, and even I joined in!
For Special Night, Aspen wanted her face painted. I did my best with the paint I had, but ended up buying new, nice face paint that very night because I wasn’t thrilled with how it turned out.
Later in the evening, I worked on ideas for the kids’ Christmas presents. We do themed presents, so I wanted to try to come up with everyone’s theme for the year.
READ >> Themed Christmas Presents for the Large Family
I also redid my Large Family Group Christmas Presents post and the Special Night post. We have been doing Special Nights since 2013!
TUESDAY
I have had trouble falling asleep lately, so I had to drag myself out of bed this morning. I made breakfast and coffee and headed to WW. I’m not weighing in today because of hormones. Our WW group walked around the neighborhood today which was super fun, and I got to know a couple of members better.
Once back home, I helped the little girls with their school work and then mixed up some gluten free sugar free apple pumpkin muffins. I actually sextupled (is that even a word?!) the recipe so I could freeze some and take some to Bible Study tonight. The pumpkin was the last of our frozen pulp from last year’s pumpkins. I want to use some sugar pie pumpkins to put away some more this year.
I made them in my toaster oven (because I still have no real oven!). The recipe for the muffins was from the Tasty Freedom Cookbook:
For Autumn School, we talked about changing leaves and the seasons. Our Bible verse was Hebrews 13:8. We read The Reasons for Seasons, Oak Leaf, and Fletcher and the Falling Leaves (the little fox in this book is so, so cute!).
We also made leaf shaped sugar cookies! The kids had so much fun rolling out the dough and using the cookie cutters! After the cookies had a cooled a bit, we added frosting and fall-inspired sprinkles.
I went to Bible Study tonight with a friend and shortly after I got home, Ty arrived home from his hunting excursion! He came home a day early because he got his antelope on the first day!
He brought back quite a bit of meat, for which I am super thankful! And just look at that beautiful double rainbow!
WEDNESDAY
It was a slow morning here with Ty home. The kids made themselves some sausage links, and I made Mercy some toast in our new toaster!
Before school, the kids played a game they had made up that had them going all through the house, working together to solve problems. So neat to see them cooperating and having fun!
Ty has today off, so we only had the kids do independent school. Then, Ty took the kids out to the backyard to put up all of our tents, make repairs, and decide what to keep and what to get rid of.
For dinner, we had chocolate chip sourdough pancakes with cinnamon syrup and sausage. We all played Taboo afterward, and the 5 youngest kids stayed overnight in the tent since it is such a nice night.
THURSDAY
The kids did their independent school work, and then I took the 16 year old to work at the bee farm. It was a beautiful drive! The leaves are changing and the rolling hills are covered in reds, yellows, and oranges!
During the drive, I realized for the first time that my son (who is red-green color blind) does not see the red in the treetops. He said he enjoys the yellows, but can’t see the difference between the greens and the reds. That blew me away because reds are my favorites!
For Autumn School, we started a unit on apples. We read How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World, listened to an apple song, looked the Cezanne painting of apples, and made apple pie playdough – a recipe from Brighter Days Press’ A Simple Autumn lesson plans. (great recipe!)
We finished off our night with popcorn and watching the movie WALL-E as a family.
FRIDAY
We did our usual house cleaning and then I took the 16 year old to work. It is in the 50’s today. The weather just keeps going up and down around here!
I recorded a video for YouTube and also set up our Adventures in Odyssey Club membership! My kids are SOOOOOO excited! They listen to AIO every night to go to sleep and now they access to everything! (review coming soon!)
I also packed for a weekend trip to visit friends. Here are a few photos from our trip – we always have such a good time when we get together!
