Frugal Gift-giving

Shopping at home for a gift? Yep. I did it. I "shopped" for a birthday gift at my own house. What can you do if you don't have the money to go out and purchase something? We could've made something, but we're talking about giving a birthday gift to a 7 year old boy. Now, I'm sure our friend would've loved anything we gave him, b/c he's just like that, but we really ran out of time for that kind of activity. So I started looking around our home for some items that we haven't used yet. If we haven't used these things by now, chances are, we aren't going to.

What did we gave away?  I'm so glad you asked.  :-D

        

 

A long time ago, over a year at least, I bought several pads of drawing paper that was on sale for a super good deal at a teacher store here in town. We had one last pad that we hadn't used yet, so we put that into a gift bag.

We had a huge box of colored pencils that I had bought at the beginning of the school year that hasn't been touched, so placed that into the gift bag also.  Our little friend enjoys drawing/coloring and creating pictures. So we knew he'd like those things.

I always enjoy giving books to kids as a way of encouraging them to read. Reading can open up a whole world of adventures and learning, but that is a post for another time. I looked on our bookshelf for a book or two to give away.  

We had two copies of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. One was a very old copy (I love those) and another was a newer copy that was in great condition. I thought that would be a good read aloud for our friends to read together, so we packed that one up.

We also found another good book that we decided to pass on.

We already owned the birthday bag b/c I crazy save all gift bags we receive that are in good condition as well as the tissue paper - if it doesn't get too crinkly. The children made their birthday cards also.

I was really amazed that my children didn't ask why we were giving away our stuff. Hopefully that means they aren't attached to all of the things we have lying around our house. We don't really need all this stuff anyway.

Great gifts don't always have to be bought from a store. It's always a win as long as your gifts are in great condition and are given from the heart.

Wordless Wednesday: Happy Birthday SugarBear!

Then

Now

Linking up with:

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday ~ Family Devotions

                          

                          

                                 

                     

Linking up with:

Wordless Wednesday

and 

Fellowship Fridays

Garage Sale Math

We had a garage sale over the weekend, Friday and Saturday. We had a LOT of stuff to sell. We did pretty well too! And I thought the yard sale signs I made wouldn't work, but they did, and to my surprise! Anyway. This was our very first garage sale. It is a ton of work! I knew it was going to be some work, but I didn't realize just how much went into it, but it was well worth it.

Whew!   :-D

The children had a lemonade/snack stand while we were selling everything else, so they were adding up money amounts (quarters) all day Friday and all Saturday morning.... Well, you know, when customers wanted to purchase snacks. You know what I mean, I think. 

We were exhausted by the time Saturday evening came. No energy left to count anymore. We placed the money we made in a bag and hid it away until we were able to count it. The time to count didn't arrive until this morning in our math lesson. I threw out the today's curriculum math lesson and we focused completely on counting the garage sale profit. 

The first thing we did was sort out all the coins and bills. They made dollar stacks of quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies while I sorted the bills. After everything was sorted, we started counting. I had them make a list of each coin and bill.

We counted the coins first.  After we counted each coin group and counted it again, they listed the amount for each coin.

Then we counted the bills, twice, and listed those amounts. This was especially fun for them as they have only handled coins up to now. 


At this point, Jonathan was done. He was just done. So I let him run off some energy out in the back yard while Adelle then added up each amount together. 

First she wrote down the 20's amount, lined up the 10's amount under that and added them. Took that total and wrote the 5's under that and added again. We followed that pattern until we got all the way down to pennies. 

This was a fun way to practice adding skills and reviewing place value while learning how to write dollar and cent amounts together. And I just now stumbled onto a website that has posted a Yard Sale Board Game. We might have to make and play this one through the summer. It looks like fun!

I won't announce publicly exactly how well we did, but, to the glory of God, we raised enough money to begin ordering curriculum for next school year! 

The Homeschool Mother's Journal ~ April 17, 2015

In our homeschool this week -

We haven't gotten very far in the curriculum we're using and we left the arithmetic as Adelle was having a difficult time with it. So we started to use Easy Peasy free online lesson plans for a while, but this week we came back to our curriculum arithmetic. We went to a materials display. I asked questions and received a few ideas from the representative on how to help Adelle excel in this area. So far, she is doing great.

My favorite thing this week was -

Adelle actually enjoying the math facts flashcards game we played.

My children's favorite thing this week was -

Adelle - Taking a tour around Whole Foods Market. Her favorite part about that field trip is having control of the camera. She took some still-shots as well as video. I'll have to give her some photo-taking basics. 

Jonathan - Getting ungrounded. We are working very hard on his unacceptable behavior. Fit-throwing  (at 6 years old) and flat out ignoring me is not ok. Grounding him to his room with no toys or books seems to work for him.

I am inspired by -

The Bible. 

Seriously. 

It is so rich and full of God's truths. Every time I read it, no matter how few or many chapters/verses,  my spirit and soul are fed. God's Word uplifts, encourages, teaches and also corrects & reproofs, all for training in righteousness. Painful as it is, I do welcome the Lord's reproof. It is my desire to be made conformed in the image of Christ, giving God all the glory, which is the chief end of man indeed.   

In my life this week -   

With the Bible being my inspiration, which isn't only for a single week, I have been doing some soul searching lately. I have finally learned that God's love and salvation isn't a gift to be earned, which is something I have been doing all my life. When we understand the enormity of our sin and the amazing thing Christ did for us, taking His Father's wrath upon Himself, we would then be amazingly thankful, giving our lives over to Him; yoking ourselves to Christ, obeying His commandments because we love Him. 

With all that being said, and with God's Word as my inspiration, I am constantly examining myself. I am questioning my motives often. It seems that I still have the mind-set of trying to earn salvation rather than just accepting that free gift and then letting the Holy Spirit teach and sanctify me.  That tells me that I haven't totally surrendered myself. 

I could go on and on about this subject, but the bottom line is this: Am I truly in the faith? Am I truly following Him? 

Scripture of the week -

1 Corinthians 10:31 - Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. 

Let's Catch Up

There is a big gap between the last post before I stopped blogging and the first post when I started up again. I thought it'd be nice to catch up on what we've been doing during that time. 

 Back in December, we went to a local nursery where we learned about poinsettias. That was pretty interesting. Being this trip took place a few months ago, remembering the information we received is a little difficult. LOL

We also traveled back to my hometown for a funeral. It was a bittersweet visit, but the kids had the privilege to experience the Country Club Plaza at Christmas time.  

Adelle got her hair cut off just before Christmas.  Training this girl to take care of her hair has been a challenge. I had been threatening to cut her hair off for months. I finally decided it was time to follow through. She cried at first, but by the end of the first day, she liked it very much! Now she wants to keep it short. 

     

We participated in 2 Valentine's parties this year. That's pretty cool, right?  The children made play dough to hand out as their Valentine and I made these bulletin boards to use for decorations. 

 Jonathan turned 6 years old! I can't believe he is such a big boy already.  Why does the time have to fly so fast?

 It's always tons of fun and excitement when our cousins visit from Wisconsin.  

In spite of the challenges, we've had a pretty fun-filled school year. 

I've Managed to Stay Organized!

Usually homeschool bloggers talk about their organized school storage towards the beginning of the school year. I took pictures of my homeschool shelf back in August, but never got around to blogging about it. 

So.. I'm a little late.  What can I say?

Perhaps it is a good thing that this post is insanely late, because now I can brag that I haven't had to reorganize this little space mid-year like I've had to do in the past. 

That's HUGE for me! 

I'm no organizer, as we've been in our new house almost 2 years now and I'm still trying to figure out how in the world to get everything in its place, but I guess the trick is finding a system that works for you. 

Well, this system has worked well for me. I am proud to say that I have had an easy time to keep my shelves organized.

Are you ready for it? 

This is how it looked in August. 

These are deep shelves that are normally used in the garage. It's not very pretty, but it has tons of space so it does the job well, especially since I have so much stuff.  I attached a shower curtain to the top with some yarn to make it a little more attractive.

In case you're interested, here's how I organized everything. 

The first shelf is where I keep all the lesson plan and work books. They are kept in magazine boxes that I already had from a couple of years ago when I was trying to organize all our reading books. Behind those boxes are extra supplies that though they are "out-of-sight", they aren't "out-of-mind".

The left side of the 2nd shelf is organized by "subject" where I keep all of our visuals and manipulatives in baskets. Behind those baskets are extra manipulatives that wouldn't fit in the baskets. Again, they haven't been "out-of-mind". I've reached back there plenty of times to pull out what we need and then place them right back. 

The right side of the same shelf is our writing/coloring supplies. Last year, the kids had their own school box with all of their supplies in that. I was replacing supplies before the year was over. I did not want to do that again. This year, I thought I'd try to keep all the supplies together in their own boxes and we'd just pull out the particular box we needed for the day. This has worked very well. The only problem hiccup is reminding the kids to put the box back on the shelf when they are done with it. 

{That's not really a big deal though.} 

The 3rd shelf contains a stack of paper trays on the left and my supplies to the right of that. My "office", if you will. {smile}

The bottom paper tray is a stack of scrap paper the kids are allowed to use for drawing, writing, coloring or just cutting up. 

The next tray up holds all our construction paper. 

The next one up is Jonathan's tray. All of his paper work is placed in his tray when he's completed a worksheet, or whatever paper work he has done. 

The top tray belongs to Adelle. Her tray also contains all the paper work she's done this year. When we're done with this school year, I will go through both trays and keep the "important" papers, the one's that show progress, tests and anything I find too cute to toss. 

The very bottom shelf holds puzzles, play dough and learning games and a big box of future curriculum. I had no where else to store that. {shrug}

I have a small wooden shelf turned sideways that sits up against the main shelf. The wooden shelf holds all of our arts and crafts supplies. I must admit that I don't have that shelf organized very well. I don't have the energy to try to make it work smoothly, but we are consistent in returning the supplies back to that shelf, even if it isn't right back where we picked it up from. 

Here is what it looks like today. Not very different.    

{BIG SMILE}