Lots of chit-chat; Instant Pot yogurt method; setting reasonable goals this homeschool year!
What do we think of those shades on my chandelier?
This week I did a lot of just ordinary, daily-rhythm sorts of things. As I get older, I find it a bit harder to push myself through tasks that I used to do quickly on my way to doing other things.
My washing machine got repaired, at last. Took a week due to the repairman dropping his phone in water, along with the info for ordering the part… The laundry (comprising many towels, sheets, and our own things from the previous week that included a long weekend with six grandchildren) took up a good bit of my energy.
It probably amounted to the equivalent of one busy laundry day for you or from the time when I had everyone here, playing sports and doing what they did, getting all the things dirty.
I wrote a piece for my other blog; Phil and I did our podcast; I did some harvesting of tomatoes (which I just popped into the freezer for another day) and we harvested honey, inviting friends for dinner and extracting it all together, since it's boring to do it by ourselves, and fun to have friends over.
We put the yellow cloth on the bench so we (I) wouldn't smash into it the next morning — the back stairs door is right there on the left and I would surely come down in a fog and send everything flying!
It was so nice to be able to do this job over in the new area of the kitchen. The other side, my work side, had all the elements of dinner, and I could just clean up while the men spun the extractor, and they could rinse their hands and put lids around without getting in my way. It was glorious!
Later today I will get some gallon jars out of the garage and pack this honey up. Phil reckons we have another hive to harvest in a few weeks, so I'm hoping for a good amount for the year.
If you want to see our process, I have a highlight on my Instagram page!
I made bagels enough for the week and more. As I said last week, a dozen bagels wouldn't get you very far in a busy young family, but for us, they last and are worth the effort for sure.
I was thinking, as I do with everything I make — a habit I have from long experience — of how to scale bagels and English muffins for a crowd large family.
I think if you made the dough (recipe doubled, of course) the day before, keeping it in the fridge (your second fridge of course), you'd be able to do the finicky part of it on the second day (boiling for bagels, skillet baking for English muffins). If you did it pretty early in the morning, you might not mind the disruption of it. A handy child could be trained to help you for sure.
You would certainly save a lot of money, not to mention the superior quality. The downside as with all home-baked goods is that it's just that superiority that makes it go so much faster.
The Homemade Paradox.
And this morning I took the bulk of the gallon of milk I bought when the kids were here (so much left over — we will not drink it before it goes bad) and put a half gallon of yogurt in the Instant Pot, in pint wide-mouth jars.
If I had a huge demand, I would use quart jars, making a gallon at a time. I think half-gallon jars would fit in the IP — off the top of my head.
Rosie says her kids turn their noses up just a bit at store-bought, citing “Habibti's home-made” as their standard, which of course makes me so proud.
The key is to buy one container of the exact kind of yogurt you really prefer. For me, it's Siggi's whole milk plain skyr. It's not billed as Greek yogurt but it's very thick and just the right amount of tanginess with excellent flavor. Some brands are too sour for me, some too bland!
I get the milk up past 190°F in the first step, and I do this on the stovetop, setting a timer so I don't boil it over. I find that using the IP yogurt setting doesn't get the milk hot enough and doing it twice complicates things. I prefer to just do it on the stove in a covered pot.
It takes about 13 minutes for me — you have to stand there and watch it to know when to set your timer next time. I use an instant-read thermometer so I'm not guessing, but there will be bubbles all around the sides and into the center, without the milk bubbling up and out.
Then I let it cool for about 1 hour and 10 minutes, depending on the ambient temperature. I use the thermometer (and timer) again. The milk should be between 100° and 110°F.
I add the yogurt (either the one I've bought or a bit from the previous batch of homemade). About 1/4 cup or even less for a 1/2 gallon of milk.
Use a whisk but stir very gently. You don't want to disturb the protein molecules very much — those are what are going to give you the thickness.
Now I put it in the Instant Pot. I put about an inch of very warm water on the bottom up to the rack. Place the covered jars (4 pint for 1/2 gallon, 4 quart for a gallon) and set it to 11 1/2 hours. For me, the texture and flavor of what results is just right. No straining required. Doing it directly in the jars, in the Instant Pot, and not having to strain it takes away all the annoying work of making yogurt without buying a piece of specialized equipment.
And yes, you could certainly use a big cooler. This link is to me using a little cooler!
Like everything else, you have to experiment, look up other people's methods, fiddle, and see how it turns out for you. If you have a toddler whose itchy fingers can't stay away from buttons, turn your pot's panel to the back! Ask me how I know to do this… let me say that if it's not set when you open it up, suspect those little fingers and start again!
Every summer my heart dies a little when I see moms declaring that they will have to do school all summer since their kids didn't get through what they were supposed to during the school year.
{If you live somewhere where summers are oppressive, just apply the appropriate filter to what I am saying here. No need to tell me that “we take off in October, we live in Arizona” or what have you. What I'm saying still goes, relative to whatever your situation.}The first thing that strikes me is robbing children of the one absolute joy they have (as regards school) — the joy that comes on that last day when you turn your books in and burst out of pris the building, knowing you will have not one burden on your shoulders until the distant day they imprison you agai start the new school year.
Homeschooling doesn't have, or shouldn't have, this same binary effect on the child. In theory, it's all joy and wonder in the bosom of home, but let's admit that we all, by sometime in late April, have a sense of wishing it all to go away, at least the schedule/curriculum/checklist part of it — and we're the grownups.
The children are desperate.
Stop torturing them.
Let them go.
The second thing is this:
The idea of a certain amount of material needing to be covered by everyone at the same rate in order to keep up with a standard set by people who have demonstrated their ignorance of the proper development of the child let alone the true nature of education is an idea we need to be wary of adopting.
I'm sure you're making your curriculum plans now. Good for you!
Might I suggest something?
Spend an hour or two looking at and setting concrete goals for each child.
Don't make the goal “Getting through this material.”
Instead, in the section in your binder for that child, make a goal for each of the studies you would like to undertake — studies tailored to that child, not “all second graders.” In general, they will coincide somewhat, but if you have a child who already reads but is left cold and staring out the window at the idea of addition and subtraction, your plan for that child is — and ought to be — different from the one for the child who has built a working water mill but can't read.
I really do recommend getting a pen and a piece of paper, one for each subject. Write down, under “John, Second Grade,” thinking about where you were last year with this child who regarded being asked to do his workbooks for 1/2 an hour as the most exquisite torment every devised by woman (the parts between asterisks are my notes to you, not to be written down):
Language Arts Goal: Read an Easy Reader book. Read signs on the road. Memorize a short poem each quarter, or nursery rhyme. Write a thank you note of three lines. Write a grocery store list for me as I dictate. *this is so helpful to you* Write our daily dinner menu *also helpful since you know you will be asked approximately 100 times a day “what's for dinner?” — let John write it out and read it to them if necessary*.Math Goal: Complete fluency with basic addition and subtraction. *This may seem to fall very short of accepted standards, but you will never get anywhere until this fluency is mastered, so buckle down and make it the goal, or you'll be doing it in 5th grade*Religion Goal: Memorize the 10 Commandments. Learn basic prayers by heart. Lead a decade of the Rosary.Science Goal: Learn about the seasons. Begin a nature journal (record date and temperature, draw). Learn to measure various things (weight, length, height, etc).History Goal: Learn the history of your state *but in a fun way by going on field trips and reading plaques on the side of the road*.Art Goal: Learn to draw leaf shapes (and other things to be recorded in nature journal) and have a personal notebook with whatever drawings he would like to do. Learn about one artist a quarter. Learn to make [whatever craft interests you or him].Music Goal: Learn a hymn and a folk song every quarter; learn and memorize two pieces on the chosen instrument; learn basic music theory (rhythm, time signature, scales).And so on… these goals then inform your curriculum choices. No point in getting a math book with multiplication drills if he really needs to know the addends of 10 and 100.
For more ideas, go to Ambleside online, but remember — whatever you choose from there must support and not undermine with its elaborate unreality, these goals. Pick and choose.
Using your goals, take a hard look at your curriculum and schedule. Language and math should be every day (four days a week). The other things can be once or twice a week. The child left up to himself will likely do more and read about these things all the time, so don't worry about it.
If one day in February you become aware that your child just knows and can, without thinking, just say what 10 – 8 is and what 3 + 7 is and in general has a good grasp of his math facts, having played a lot of Parcheesi and Yahtzee and even Black Jack, then — you are done. It doesn't matter how many drills are left.
If he can read a Little Bear book, you've reached your goal.
If you get to early May and he still can't read, just leave it. He will. (You need to read Better Late Than Early by the Moores –maybe your library has it). Slogging through the days with phonics lessons, when he just wants to be out playing catch, will only make everything worse.
Of course, you will still be reading out loud to your children, because that's life, not schoolwork. And if you start a chapter book and find you can't finish it and just happen to leave it in the bathroom, well, who knows what will happen? If the book is exciting enough, you may find he figures it out himself. If you just happen to give him a set of dice to fiddle around with, will you be to blame if he learns his math facts?
And of course, with the child who gobbles up all the learning, setting goals is a good way not to waste his time with others' ideas of things, things he has already mastered long ago.
I write at length about all these things in my Summa Domestica.
But I just want to say, take my advice and confine your year to a reasonable, non-burdensome length and give your children a break, and yourself too. Plan on this now and don't let end-of-school-you rob you of your peace.
Who are you comparing your child to? Just help him with reasonable goals.
I won't be posting next week, as I'll be at the conference in Colorado (and then visiting Suki and baby Maria and all the others, yay!). But after that we'll talk over some other school issues. For instance, really — don't plan more than four solid school days a week… you'll actually accomplish more!
Remind me…
bits & pieces
Looking for some inspiration for yourself and for your children? I think the boys especially could benefit from hearing about Fr. Willie Doyle and it seems like these entries, prepared for the anniversary of his death but ever edifying, would be wonderful to read aloud at breakfast or any time . He is a great favorite of mine — truly heroic as a chaplain in WWI who went with his men into every battle — and very loving. I don't know which of the books these accounts come from — it would be good to have at least one of them.
“Fr. Doyle’s example worked good. His cheerfulness, his energy, his enthusiasm were infectious and inspiring. His whole conduct was marked by gentleness and a kindly thoughtfulness that gained him loyalty and affection. In the playing fields he was a tower of strength. I can still recall the admiration with which I watched him play full-back, or stump a batsman who had his toe barely off the ground. But above all he gave the impression to us boys of one who lived much in the presence of God. I know one boy, at least, who entered the Society of Jesus, partly, at any rate, because Fr. Doyle was such a splendid man and splendid Jesuit.”
Archeologists find evidence of what may have happened at the colony in Roanoke.
It has always struck me as unacceptable and really, hilarious, that feminists claim Anne of Green Gables as their own, simply because she was spunky. Just as every other heroine of every enduring story is! Who said we haven't always admired spunky girls? It's a stupid lie to claim that literature used to feature compliant, boring females — quite the contrary! Not to mention that the story is written by a woman before “women's rights” or the vote, and Anne herself finds her dreams and happiness marrying and having seven children! What nonsense. Here is an excellent essay on the subject (with a correct dismissal of the egregiously bad Anne with an E series): The Kidnapping of Anne of Green Gables by Jonathon Van Maren.
from the archives
You can take care of normal sicknesses at home. Don't let the fear-mongers get to you!
Complaining children? Here's my secret to nipping it all in the bud.
liturgical living
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