Uncategorized

Having a large family has made me encounter things that probably don’t bother most people, but become bothersome when serving food for large amounts of people.

One big issue, was drinks.  Getting drinks for 6 little ones takes up extra time.  We solved that by getting every child and adult their own water bottle.  Each child get’s their own before meals and that solves that issue.

Another thing that slows down my time, is getting out silverware from the drawer for every meal.  Now that may not seem like a big deal for most, but when you are scooping out plates and getting out silverware for at least 6-8 children three times every day, it can become more work.

I used to have a nice heavy crock container that fit all of my spoons and forks into it and that set out on my server window in our old home.  It was a great fix for getting out extra silverware but unfortunately it did not make the move in one piece.  Since we moved here, I just put the spoons and forks into the drawers like most people do.  But I have noticed that it has become an issue again, so I decided to do something about it.

I took some cans and pounded down the inside where the metal sticks up from tearing open the can.  I then covered the inner ring with some electrical tape to make sure no one would cut their fingers.  I spray painted them different colors and then hot glued them together.  Don’t be frugal with the glue, coat it nice and thick to hold it tight.  There you go a DIY silverware holder.  Simple and easy.  When meal time rolls around, this sits next to my scooping out area and I just grab what is needed for meals.  Easy—simplified.

Need a good, easy, and most of all FREE bible study curriculum for your elementary aged student?  We have it.  Plus we have an animal study that ties into the bible learning–so you get two classes in one!

For our bible study for the elementary aged children, we are using the Illustrated Family Bible from DK as our main source.  It is easy to read and I felt it covered the main stories we wanted to learn.  We read a new story 4 times per week.  After each story, we have bible trivia on the stories we have already learned.  Each week, we memorize a bible verse that the child practices writing each day.

We also are using Character Sketches books from Institute in Basic Life Principles.  These well made books have a vast wealth of information.  The books take an animal and give you an in depth account of how it functions in nature.  It then goes on to relate it to a character trait of a person in the bible.  Very neat.  We enjoy these books for teaching animals study as well as biblical study.    I chose 2 animals from the books each week.  Usually it pertains to what we are learning in the bible that week.

I then did a search for my own printable images of each of the animals—I included a list at the end for you to do a search yourself for and printed them off for each child.  As I am reading about the animal, the child will copy down some interesting facts about the animal as well as color the image in.  We will then put them together in a book to have an animal study.

I have also included  printable bible trivia questions from all of the lessons taught.

These are another great FREE resource for bible and animal curriculum choices this year.

You do have to purchase the following books to make it happen, but still an inexpensive route to homeschooling:

I bought the Illustrated Family Bible DK  and Character Sketches Vol 1,2,3 from Institute in Basic Life Principles.

I found these books relatively cheap online.  The character sketches are a little more, but they are big and heavy and nicely made books.  Don’t worry about getting a newer version, we use the old version and the bible and animal information is still the same—it doesn’t change.  They are a good in depth animal study as well as biblical person study, we don’t absolutely love that many books but these have stayed on my shelves for many years.

Click here for FREE printable elementary bible curriculum

Click here for FREE printable bible trivia to go with the curriculum