Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year.  I get to enjoy a cozy fire and hot cocoa, yummy foods, gathering of family, and warm feelings of being richly blessed.  During this time of year, thankfulness seems to flow much more easily.  It is our time to look about us and count those blessings bestowed throughout the year and praise God for every good thing we have, no matter how little it may be.  We are READY and expecting to give thanks.

All good things come from the Lord and He rightly deserves all thanksgiving.  But are we filled with the same thankfulness in early August or run of the mill late January?  And how does our gratitude express itself in our daily lives and interactions with one another?  Thankfulness is more than a feeling, it is an attitude and a character trait that we must work to develop and retain beyond the warm coziness of late Fall.  It should translate into our lives as kindness, hospitality, selfless giving, and contentment (that’s a hard one!).

Our children are not born thankful creatures.  They are selfish little beings (as we were also) and must learn to humble themselves into gratitude.  We are in a special circumstance as homeschooling parents to consistently work on the development of thankfulness in our children.  We must point them always toward God as the originator of all good things.  But, we must also teach them to show this grateful attitude in little kindnesses to each other every day.

Attempting to teach gratitude to my own children, we have made it a habit to consistently write cards and thank-you notes.  A note of thanks, no matter how simple, will in turn reward the giver and the receiver.  It is giving a gift back to the person who has given to you.  It also develops in you the wonderful habit of giving thanks.  And giving thanks is so much MORE than just feeling thankful.  It is developing the character traits of kindness, thoughtfulness, and gratitude all at once.  Of course, we don’t receive gifts everyday.  So, our thank-you notes are for more than just gift giving.  We express thanks for a kind deed, friendship, hospitality, help given, a playdate, a shared treat, and much more.

We have successfully entwined the habit of writing thank-you notes into our overall writing curriculum.  As a double-fold bonus, it also helps the children with recognizing when thanksgiving is due and expressing that gratitude in writing.  To aid you in adding thank-you notes to your lessons, Michael and I have put together a package on how to simply write a thank-you letter along with some beautiful stationary for various occasions.  You will find Thank You Letters in our brand-new HMHS Store.  We hope they will aid you in adding this habit in your own home and begin to develop a grateful attitude in your children.

To discuss gratitude, writing, or any other homeschooling topic, please visit our HMHS Discussion Forum.

We are completely absorbed in the story of The Lord of the Rings.  Being very creative children, mine feel the need to be constantly dressed as their favorite characters.  We have the Hobbit clothes and weapons down pat.  We have an axe for Gimli, and swords for Aragorn, Eowyn, Eomer, Faramir, and Boromir.  However, for Legolas, we were lacking a quiver.  My son already had a play bow and set of arrows, but, alas, had nowhere to keep them handy while battling Orcs!  My inventive Mommy juice got flowing and I made him a quiver myself (VERY simply and for free!).  Since there are many boys out there enjoying play arrows, I thought I would share my creation.

What you need:

• 2 empty Pringles chips cans
• Construction paper
• Black electrical tape
• Stapler

How to assemble:

I cut the bottom off of one Pringles can and taped it to the open end of the second can.  Next, I attached a strip of tape long enough to sling across the chest of my boy and attached another strip of tape to the first, sticky sides together.  This is the strap of the quiver.  Then I covered the cans in brown construction paper and stapled in place.  I covered the staples and edges of the cans with more tape, giving it a finished look.  Drop in the arrows, sling the quiver, and off he goes to the battle!

Finished Quiver

To share crafts or talk about homeschooling, please visit the HMHS Discussion Forum.

What an honor it is to have been nominated for “Best New Homeschool Blog” on the Homeschool Blog Awards site! There are many categories, and bunches of great websites listed; we encourage you all to spend some time there discovering the wonderful web-creations of folks dedicated to taking control of educating their own children, and investing time and energy into the future through homeschooling!

We sure would appreciate it if you would take a few seconds to vote for Homemade Homeschoolers. There are prizes to be won, but honestly we haven’t looked at what those might be; the important thing is the exposure that the Homemade Homeschoolers (HMHS) Community website has already had thanks to the fine people at the Homeschool Blog Awards. We, like any other website are seeking to share our resources with as many internet users as possible in order to build up the homeschooling community in any way we can. So, if you would please visit the post called “Let the voting begin“, scroll down to the “Best New Homeschool Blog” category (the second from the bottom), and cast your vote for us! Maybe even tell your friends about it too.

Voting ends at Midnight, November 21st.

Thanking you in advance,

Michael & Shelly

Homemade Homeschoolers is now on Twitter.

Twitter is an Internet multimedia form known as “Micro-Blogging” where users are able to post interesting (or, in some cases not) updates in 140 words or less. Twitter has grown by an amazing rate recently and is used by some of the worlds largest businesses and news outlets, as well as common people such as you and I. Signing up for a Twitter page takes all of about 30 seconds and you are able to modify your profile theme to make it all your own. It is actually really fun to see what people can say in 140 characters or less! A wonderful use for Twitter is posting links to things that you find important and would like to share with your friends. Extra long URL links are automatically shortened by Twitter into a “tiny URL” so that they will fit into your allotted character field and have room to spare for some extra text. If you use the “Share/Save” option at the bottom of each post on Homemade Homeschoolers you will notice an option for sharing a favorite post on Twitter. Just click the Twitter button and it will post to your account so that your friends can find it too. Once you start using those options you’ll find yourself sharing all sorts of neat things with your friends.

Sign up and follow Homemade Homeschoolers on Twitter and keep up on all the latest news. It’s fun! We’ve included a video called “Twitter in Plain English” by those same, easy to understand guys that produced the “Podcasting in Plain English” video posted here a while back.

We’ll see you there.

Kids Can cook – A “Girl Scout” Dinner

Sometimes it’s hard to get kid’s to eat their vegetables, but if they are involved in helping cook, it’s surprising how much better the food tastes!  The “Girl Scout” dinner, a favorite from Girl Scout campouts, is an easy way to do it, because your child can choose which vegetables to include in their meal packet.   A variety of vegetables (all cut to equal size) and a small piece of meat are placed on a square of heavy duty foil.  This is folded into a drugstore wrap, allowing space for steam to expand, and either placed on the grill or baked on a cookie sheet in the oven at 350 degrees until cooked through (usually 30 to 45 minutes.)  Turn the packets at least once.  Carefully open the packet because it will be filled with steam.  Each child can enjoy their own creation.

"Drug store folded" Packet

Choice of Ingredients:

Potatoes (I like the small red potatoes)

Onions, white and/or green

Green or red pepper

Squash, either zucchini and/or butternut

Celery

Mushrooms

Carrots

Tomatoes

Any other vegetable you have on hand

Meat can be chicken breast or thigh, a small pork chop, or fish

Seasoning, such as salt and pepper, seasoned salt or other choices

Enjoy!

To discuss recipes or any homeschooling topic, please visit our HMHS Discussion Forum.

Well, the election is over but our family’s study of the presidents, the election process, and the government will continue a couple more weeks.  I have been roughly following The Elections Unit Study by Amanda Bennett.  The kids have been greatly enjoying it.  They can rattle off all kinds of information about past presidents and the government.  And I must say, one of the great joys of homeschooling for me is that I get to learn (or re-learn?) so much cool stuff!  I have never known as much about the founding fathers as I do now.  I love it!

We have always involved the kids when we actually go to vote.  However, this year they had a particular interest.  Although they can both vaguely remember the last presidential election, they had a fervor of interest this time.  During this election, we were deep into learning about the process of electing a president, we were following the campaign, discussing the issues important to our family, and learning the biographies of the candidates.  Knowing so much about each candidate and why we select one over the other gave them a vested interest in who would become President Elect.  Before we went to vote, I had the kids fill out a paper ballot with our selections.  We then drove to the polling place and each child was able to check the boxes, choosing their candidates, and finally push that big red button to cast their vote!  They felt great!

After voting, we drove to Grammy and Poppy’s house to have dinner and watch election coverage (we have no TV).  It felt like an election party and the kids watched with interest (as long as they could).  After dinner they made up questions to poll everyone in their own mock election.  They teamed up to count the votes from the secret ballots, tally the results, and announce the totals.  There were some very silly outcomes!  We continued to watch the coverage late into the night.

No matter the outcome, this is an election that the kids will remember.  They are anxious to learn about more presidents and about the upcoming inauguration.  Overall, it has been a wonderful current issue study.

To discuss the elections or other homeschooling topics, please visit the HMHS Discussion Forum.

Hello fellow homeschoolers and friends.

Here’s a hodge-podge of things we wanted to share with you about what is going on at Homemade Homeschoolers:

We want to thank all those who have downloaded the free Mr. Skeleton craft. There have been a surprising number of downloads! We’ll keep that up for the next couple days for those who haven’t downloaded it yet. Please post pictures of your Mr. Skeleton on the HMHS Refrigerator, and share your family’s creation with other homeschoolers. When you register for the photo gallery you can post pictures and leave comments on others; it’s fun!

Next thing is the HMHS Community Forum. We’re scouring the internet for items of interest to the homeschooling community, such as news articles and press releases. You can expect postings of local area regulations and such as well as information on upcoming homeschool conferences and conventions. We ask that you would help out with the same. Feel free to post links that would be beneficial to the community at large, add information on items posted, and just general chit-chat. Admittedly, it is hard to get a forum “really going” when folks are checking the forum at different times of day, but check it often and contribute in anyway that you can. Tell your friends about it, and we promise that it will grow.

The HMHS Podcast Network its ramping up for release! We have several families that are working on Video podcasts; and from the sound of them they are going to be really fun. We at Homemade Homeschoolers Headquarters are also working on an audio podcast which will be a little variety show with news and views, music, comedy, recipes, unit study ideas, and a whole lot more. The neat thing about the HMHS Podcast Network will be the variety of information and entertainment by homeschoolers just like you! If you would like to join us please let us know. Our HMHS Contact Form is the simplest way.

The HMHS Store is almost ready. We are hand-crafting downloadable Notebooking Pages, Unit Studies, and more to aide you in home-educating your precious children. But, we will have more than those things available; homemade arts and crafts will be added too. Eventually we will have a general store where others can offer their own homemade products as well. Watch this site for more information.

Finally, the last few months have shown an over 60 percent increase in visitors each month! That is an exponential growth that isn’t necessarily expected to continue (it would be nice, though); a new site should have large growth numbers at the start. We do appreciate all the visitors to Homemade Homeschoolers, and hope that you will continue to return.  The “share” options at the bottom of each post are very easy and handy for sharing favorite posts with friends. Please hover over the “Share/Save” button under this post and see all the options that are just a click away! The easiest, of course is the “Email This” option. Also, use the subscribe options in the side bar.

One last thing: We are now affiliates with both Christianbooks.com and Amazon.com. If you use either of those sites to make purchases would you consider using the search boxes on our site in the side bar? Those purchases will help us pay for this website by providing us with referral fees. We sure would appreciate it.

Well, that’s it for now. Thank you so much for being a part of the Homemade Homeschoolers Community!