Monthly Archives: June 2014

Over the course of our life, I have purchased numerous homeschool materials from textbooks to workbooks, video series to DVD’s.  After doing a multitude of things, I realized that I don’t particularly care for any certain one.  We usually start out strong on something and then after awhile quickly bore of it.  After spending hundreds of dollars on curriculum, I figured there has to be another way.  Then I realized that the internet is FULL of many FREE resources for you to be able to school your children, you just have to know where to look and find the TIME to do it.  Sometimes those two are hard to come by.

At plainandnotsoplain we want you to be able to homeschool your child for FREE .  That is why we are listing our families schooling curriculum on here FREE for you to download.

This is my high school daughters grammar course that we will be using:

It is from Daily Grammar, it is FREE online to use.  Click here for the lesson plans.

This one was easy, someone else did all the work:)

Well, I had to make it work with a schedule for us, so I wrote my own schedule as well as downloaded the tests for my daughter to take and then I can view her progress.

Click here for the tests in a PDF printable format from the Daily Grammar website:

Here is the yearly lesson plans broken into a school year:

We like to have a ministry for teenagers at our home and we call it Open Mic.  Once a month we open our home to whoever wants to come and listen to some good Christian music.  Sometimes we get a bunch of teens to get up there and sing, sometimes they just sit and listen.   I  amazed at the talented youth that we have.  I would NEVER get up there and do that, thank goodness my children have Daddy’s musical gene:)  You can click here to view my daughters 16th birthday party and see how we typically held them in our basement.

Now that it is warmer out, we like to hold these outdoors.  But how can you set up a band on your grass?  With free pallets.  We went and made endless trips to our local stores and got pine pallets.  We then screwed ply wood to the top of it.  Wallah!!! We have a stage.

Here my son is doing his sound checks.  He typically plays Manic Drive, Thousand Foot Crutch, Switchfoot, Hawk Nelson, Hillsong United, Plumb,  and Kutless.  I am sure there are more, those are just ones that stuck out in my head:)

Here Lauren and Collin are playing Holy is our King.  They do an amazing version of this song.  

Sometimes we just sit around the fire and sing.  It doesn’t matter, we just try and actively include the teenagers, no matter who they are or where they come from.

Music is such a powerful influence in our lives, especially in teenagers. It can affect our moods, our actions, and our brains.   If we can show them that there is an alternative that sounds like the same type of music that they listen to but with a positive message, then we have done a good job.

Now what is a party without snacks?  We always provide yummy snacks for open mic. Sometimes it is a Mexican bar, sometimes hot dogs, and sometimes snacks.  This time we made some rice krispy treats with the help of little brother Jentzen.  Since we had a bomb fire we did Smores with cookies and graham crackers,  double chocolate crumble and brownie and fruit skewers.

It is much easier to get all of the foods done, if you enlist with some of the teenage help:) Thanks Molly and Lauren for helping make these.  Afterwards they were great to just throw the sticks into the fire.  I will definitely be making these again, they were very tasty like chocolate covered strawberries.

This is my daughter’s last  year of school, I wanted to make sure that I covered everything that I “think” she should know.

For her writing I have come up with some copywork and some journaling for her to do each week. I purchased a college ruled composition notebook.  It has 100 pages so I had to come up with a way to split it up for her to do something each of the 40 weeks of school.

The first part of the book has her penmanship lessons.  You can download it here for FREE. It includes lesson for 40 weeks.  I generally gave her 7-9 lines to copy in cursive.  I will have her copy the verse or quote 3 or 4 times depending upon how long each verse is.

After you print off your stack of quotes, by the way these are all perfect bible verse, famous quotes, encouraging statements for a young person to memorize as they are copying, you are going to have to cut them apart to fit in your book.  I pasted them on the opposite page that she is to write on.  I got this idea from Donna Young  The fonts are sized to fit perfectly on the lines, this way my daughter will know exactly how big to  make each letter.

Okay, that took 40 pages, I figured I would have her write on Monday.  Then on Tuesday  and Wednesday each week, I had her do journaling.  I found some great writing prompts that really challenge our young adults to think about things and then write them out.  You can download them here for FREE.

I put each weeks lesson on two pages facing each other, that way I only used 40 more pages of the book.  I originally started by using Scotch tape to put these down, then later realized that a glue stick works much better.

Then for the last 20 pages I split them up in half and gave her 2 words of the top 100 commonly misspelled words.  I figured on Thursday she could copy these words ten times each.   Of course there are 100 words and only 80 will get used if you split them up, so we added a few more in on some weeks.  You can download my list here.

Now I feel like my daughter will get sufficient practice in penmanship this year.

Want to know what I did for my pre-teen son?  Click here for his copywork

Here is what we did for our 1st or 2nd grade girls copywork and journaling

The challenge: to simply your eating habits.

These days, it seems that we usually have to choose between eating unhealthy fast or frozen foods or complicated meals that take us hours to make.  In most cases, people who are trying to lose weight go on these complicated diets, where they are spending hours counting calories, points, or buying expensive bars.  These are WAY too hard to keep up on, think that is why most DIETS fail?

Do you know that you can eliminate stress and be healthier at the same time just by simplify your diet?  By adopting a plain and simple lifestyle for food WILL help you lose weight, save money, and time.

Why make the change:

How can you go about doing all of this?  It seems way too easy.  I have a surprise….it is!  Here are some things you can consider when you go about constructing your simple diet:

• Simple.  Everything should be easy to prepare and not take too long.  We don’t want you to spend hours slaving over the stove.  It should take you less than 10 minutes of time to cook or prep the food.  Stay away from lots of ingredients.  That is not in the mix for a simple food.
• Nutritious.  Even though our American bodies love junk food, it just makes us fat.  And being fat is stressful.  We need to be getting fiber, vitamins, minerals, protein, good fats, into our diets.
• Low in calories, saturated fat, sugar, and cholesterol.

Now that we know what we want to construct our simply diet with, here are some things we want to cut out of our diet:

• Junk food.  This is the obvious.  Although it can be very tasty, it is simply not healthy for us, and it is usually high in saturated fat and sugar.  Plus a ton of other “bad things.”
• Processed food.  No fiber, low in nutrition, high in calories.  Try to get stuff in its natural state, without all the gravies, sauces, and cheeses on top.
• Fast food.  This stuff never comes to any good.  Sometimes you can get a good salad, but it is usually topped with some fried chicken or fatty dressings.
• Red meat.  We don’t need to completely avoid red meat, but it is high in saturated fat.  If you want to eat meat, eat fish, boneless skinless chicken breast, or turkey breast.  You can also opt for other forms of protein that doesn’t have all the fat: whole grains and beans.
• Fried foods. These types of foods are high in saturated fat and calories.  Look for baked or stir fried or even raw.

Now that we have built and weeded out what we can and cannot eat, what do we have left?

Just the basics—-essentials.

If we stock up on those essentials, we can create simple meals that are tasty and easy to prepare.  Then by simplifying your eating habits, you not only shorten your prep time, but you save on groceries, and added fat to our bodies which will make us lighter:)  I have heard people say that eating processed foods is cheaper, but I don’t believe that.  You can stock up on basic foods and still provide healthy, nutritious foods for your family at a cheaper price than packaged foods.

How to make the change:

So what would a simplified diet look like? It would have a lot of fresh fruits and veggies, beans, nuts, whole grains.

Here are some simple meals:

Breakfast: Whole-grain cereals (no processed or sugary cereals), fresh homemade bran muffins (use whole-grain flour), homemade granola, fresh fruits, whole-grain toast with butter, scrambled eggs.
Lunch: Sandwiches such as turkey or avocado with tomatoes and sprouts on whole wheat bread; pita filled with hummus and tomatoes and sprouts and lettuce; leftover soup or chili.
Dinner: Make a big pot of hearty soup.  You can make some of my cabbage vegetable soup ,or make a minestrone type, or a big pot of taco chili.  By making a big pot of soup it can last for days, depending upon your size of family. You can make a  hearty salad with nuts, spinach, avocados, lettuce, carrots and a light dressing.  Steamed veggies with seasoned brown rice (use sesame seed oil and soy sauce or tamari)
Snacks: Fruits, cut-up veggies, nuts, blue corn chips with  salsa.
Treats: Every now and then you need to treat yourself. If you’ve been good splurge on something.  Just don’t make it everyday.  Maybe once a week if you have eaten well.