Homeschool Budget Helper: Worksheet Savers

When ds was in kindergarten and first grade, we used homemade worksheet savers. His curriculum was much more worksheet oriented than it is now. I purchased an inexpensive pack of three ring binder transparent plastic sleeves. I took the pages out of the workbooks and slipped them into the plastic sleeve, one at a time. Then we worked the sheets writing on the plastic, wiping them off with a damp sponge when we were done.

At first we used dry-erase pens, but they dried out quickly and were relatively expensive. With a little experimenting, I found a large pack of children's multi-colored felt tip pens which wrote well on the plastic sleeves. The large pack of felt tip pens was a no-name brand purchased at Family Dollar for about $2.00, and they lasted a very long time.

Using the sleeve has made it possible for me to reuse these sheets with my next child.

Another way to use the plastic sleeves is to cut two sides and slide it onto a workbook page. This way you don't have to rip the sheets out, or cut the spine away. We secured the sleeve on top with a paper clip, and when ds was done, we had a clean unworked workbook. A few of these unworked books we were able to sell, and some I kept for my daughter.

It's a good way to sample curriculum, and still be able to sell it if it doesn't work out. It's also a good way to stretch your budget if you want to use the curriculum for more than one child.

It was fun looking back over all the sheets we did four years ago, and I even saved our free online printables, and there were quite a few. It's nice to know I don't have to reprint all these, or do the research over again once my daughter begins school.

Free Music Sheets and Songs for Early Childhood

Click here.







To see sample, click on image to enlarge.

Freezer Biscuits

My freezer biscuits - recipe from fellow frugal blogger, Retrofoods. These are going to be frozen on this rack before I put them in a food saver. It keeps them from sticking together.

Tips for the perfect biscuit. Mine were just a wee bit heavy, and I found out why at this link. Don't mix or knead the biscuit dough too much. The more you knead, the heavier the biscuit.

BTW, Retrofood's Chicken with Sherry recipe was good as well.

Free Printables: Worksheets for Math Word Problems

"Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust." ~ Oliver W. Holmes

We used these sheets for fourth grade word problems. They also have worksheets for other grades and subjects. This site in particular had more than others, and some of them were fun.

This site has seasonal word problems which were not as challenging, but still a good review.

ABC Teach had a few as well.

I'll add more as we work through these. If I have time, I'll make some of my own sheets, referencing his fourth grade math book. He's finished with it; we begin fifth grade math in October. We are brushing up on word problems before he launches into fifth grade math.

And if you have an older child or math whiz, here is a very tricky math problems book from the turn of the century. It also involves converting British currency. The transcriber has kindly added a conversion chart to the beginning of this public domain text. The quote and picture above is from this text.

Hint: An easy way to use the text is to copy, paste and print select problems, along with the conversion chart, into a word processor. That way you don't have to print out the entire book.

Free Math worksheets with some word problems.

More here.

Fourth Grade Reading and Penmanship Lessons/Free Printables

Week II




Click and print:

Smiles

The Good Son

Tomorrow

Week II Vocabulary List

Selections from Revised Fourth Grade McGuffey's Reader(1920 edit.), free and in public domain.

I'll post other weeks as we complete these lessons.

We are also using these penmanship lessons this week:

Free printables for Proverbs and George Washington's Rules of Civility.

See Week I here.

19th Century Cut-Out Dolls: Busy Sheets

Boy's playground, higher resolution for printing here.



Girl's playground, higher resolution for printing here.

Printing hint: Click on the pictures at the link in order to enlarge.

Images are from the Library of Congress and are in public domain.

Easy No-Fail Roast Beef Recipe

Using this recipe at Allrecipes.com: Restaurant-Style Prime Rib Roast , I made a really delicious Sunday roast. I made it from a roast I had in the freezer, that was probably not a prime rib roast as I usually buy whatever is reduced in price. It still came out well.

I think the trick is making sure you cook it at the correct temperature for the correct amount of time, 20 minutes per pound at 425 degrees for medium rare. The recipe has other directions for medium and well done. Also leaving it covered for a while after you take it out of the oven makes it more juicy. I used a oval casserole dish for my three pound roast, and instead of foil, I covered the casserole with the lid after I took it out of the oven. I let it sit on top of the stove for about 45 minutes, and it was still warm when we cut into it.

Such a simple recipe, and yet it made all the difference between a dry roast and a really juicy one. I did tweak the recipe a little by adding steak seasoning instead of pepper.

I served this roast with some rice, peas and carrots. One cup of rice, two cups water, bring to a boil with a little oil and salt, add half a bag of frozen mixed peas and cubed carrots. Cover and cook on low for about 30 minutes. Easy! Instead of salt I use Adobo seasoning that is basically garlic salt with tumeric.

See more tips at Shannon's.

50 Things to Do with Ramen Noodles

Click on title.

Free Copywork and Notebooking Pages, General and by Subject

Click on title.

Make Cheese Out of Yogurt

Click on title.

101 Frugal Entertainment Ideas for the Family

Click on title.

Make Your Own Onion Soup Mix

I am making Coca-cola pork roast in the crock pot tonight, and needed onion soup mix. I didn't have any of that, but thankfully this easy DIY recipe should do the trick.

Free Printable Paper Dolls

I love paper dolls, and even though my daughter is not yet two years old, I've been printing, coloring and pasting these on cardboard for her...okay, for me. I'll post some finished ones later.

Here's a few dolls from the Dear America collection. Great for historical unit studies, or what-have-you, and best of all they are free.

A few Victorian dolls from Karen's Whimsey.

U.S. Historical Society Paper Dolls. Very neat includes Grace Kelly, Anna Pavlova, Audrey Hepburn, Florence Nightingale and more.

A very interesting journey through fashion history, Past Patterns offers authentic clothing patterns from the past, including those for wedding gowns. My favorite wedding gown is the 1939 one. Which is your favorite? They also offer a free paper doll with outfits from the Jacksonian era.

Over 20 different free printable paper dolls.

Berenstain Bears Dress-Up Dolls, fun for preschoolers.

This site has many links to vintage paper dolls.

More Vintage paper dolls here.

Historical paper dolls, includes saints.

Victorian jointed doll

How To Make Your Own Yeast

HOME-MADE YEAST

Wash four potatoes and then cut in slices, without peeling, and place in saucepan, and add three pints of water.

Cook until the potatoes are soft and then add
One-half cupful of hops. Cook slowly for one-half hour.

Rub the mixture through a fine sieve and then pour hot mixture on
One and one-half cupfuls of flour, One tablespoonful of salt,
One-quarter cupful of brown sugar.

Stir until well mixed, beating free from lumps. Cool to 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Now add One yeast cake dissolved in one cupful of water, 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Stir well to mix and then let ferment in a warm place for ten hours. Now pour into jar or crock and store in a cool place.

TO USE
Use one and one-half cups of this mixture in place of the yeast cake. Always stir well before using and take care that the mixture does not freeze. This potato ferment must be made fresh every eighteen days in winter and every twelve days in summer.

~ Mrs. Wilson's Cook Book Numerous New Recipes Based on Present Economic Conditions(1920) , download page.

Free Worksheet Generators and More

There are a good number of free worksheet sites online organized by topic and grade level, and some have worksheet generators where you can make your own custom sheets.

Kidszone - free worksheets by topic and by grade. Here is an example of their printable tracing worksheets.

Abc Teach: over 12,000 worksheets organized by grade and subject. Free tracing pages, including beginning penmanship. Here are some cute preschool/kindergarten level letter and shape tracing sheets.

Printfree.com: school printables like a teaching clock, custom graph paper, lined paper, and more.

A nice cumulative list of sources for free printables. I've used a few of these, DLTK and Enchanted Learning were my favorite when ds was younger. I'll be using them again when dd gets a little older.

Charlotte Mason manuscript copy work pages.

Worksheet generators, custom worksheets:

Personal Education Press: cards & signs, game boards, study sheets, quizzes, and flash games.

Penmanship worksheet generator(K-First)

Handwriting Worksheet Generator

Handwriting for Kids, includes left handed sheets

Free penmanship paper generator. Customize line spaces, color, paper size and line weight, very neat!


Math Fact Cafe(grade K-5), very nice worksheet generator and some premade worksheets.

Make your own penmanship worksheets by downloading fonts with and without dotted lines from Blue Vinyl. I use the Learning Curve and Print Clearly fonts. You can use these fonts in a word processor which allows you to use downloaded fonts, like your notepad or Microsoft Works. Unfortunately, Google Documents and free Jarte allow only their fonts. I've had limited success copying and pasting into these programs...still fiddling with it. I don't have Microsoft Office, and I'm still trying to download free Open Office(large download for dial up!) to see if their program is more flexible.

Discovery School's Worksheet Generator: These are great if you want to make your own multiple choice, matching, scrambles or word blank quizzes or worksheets. These can be used for anything - after a field trip, book reviews, vocabulary building, etc. There are also sheets for math, and some premade sheets. You can view samples before generating sheets.

Kitchen Tips Tuesday/Troubleshooting: Baking Bread

What happened to this bread? See this helpful troubleshooting chart for bread baking tips.

Attractive in a geode, but not in bread.

Make It From Scratch/ Homemade Hot Pockets

Meat filling:

1 pound of ground meat
1 chopped onion
A can of tomato sauce(or not)
A little garlic
Seasonings of your choice
Finely chopped cooked cabbage(optional)
A little Tabasco sauce

Cook all this in a skillet and set aside.

Crust:

2 c. warm water(not hot, or you'll kill the yeast)
2 tablespoons yeast
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 egg
1/4 cup butter
6-61/2 cups flour

Mix together all ingredients, adding the flour a little at a time. During the last cup or two of flour, you'll have to mix by hand in the bowl, kneading the flour into the dough ball. When well mixed, take the dough out, and knead for a few minutes until dough is elastic.

To knead: Push the dough out with the heels of your hands, and roll back toward you by folding the dough over. Repeat this step over and over.

Grease a bowl, place the dough in, turning once. Place towel over the top and place it somewhere warm until it doubles in size, then punch down, knead and separate into dough balls. Roll out the balls into circles, and place meat sauce in the middle, fold over and pinch sides closed. Cook for 15 minutes on a greased sheet at 350 degrees.

The crust on these was light and a little salty. It's very good crust, in fact I plan to use this crust recipe for pizza.

I didn't make this meat filling, I used leftover spaghetti sauce with meat, and threw in some leftover green beans and leftover braised cabbage. Good way to use up leftovers!