I'm been busy....

I apologize for not blogging in several weeks.  We've been rather busy over here. Out countdown is on....only 2 more months until we pack up and move 1000 miles away for the Pater Familias to begin studying law.   Lot's of preparations have been going on lately!

In the meantime, I've been choosing and buying curriculum for next year.  You might remember a previous post I made about choosing curriculum.  Well, forget about all that...I've changed my mind on just about everything.. (Isn't that what always happens).  I'll be using Math-U-See (as usual)...Primer for the Fairy-Princess and Gamma for the Social Butterfly. However, in other changes, I'll be attempting the FREE lesson plans on LessonPathways for History, Science and Language Arts.  ( Level K for Fairy Princess and Level 3 for Social Butterfly).    Social Butterfly will be doing Shurley Grammar (Homeschooling..Level 3).  We'll be continuing with Maps, Charts and Graphs for the Social Butterfly.    However, for the Fairy-Princess I'll be trying Phonics Pathways, and Alpha-Phonics for reading instruction.  For Religion, we'll continue with the Faith and Life Series.

Much of this, I've been able to buy USED on homeschooclassifieds.com.  LOVE saving money and it makes it easier to just buy what we need.  For example, with Math-U-See, we only use the DVD, I don't even read the teacher's manual, so it's nice to just get the DVD used, and not spend lots of money on a book which isn't used.

I'm super excited to try All About Spelling for phonics/spelling for both Social Butterfly and the Fairy Princess.  I'm thinking All About Spelling might even help me too...can always use a good review of phonics and spelling rules.  I'm afraid, I've gotten a bit lazy and overly dependent on spell-checker.

Stay tuned for future reviews on how this new curriculum works.  We school year-round...so we should be starting our "new" year by July!  (Aren't my kids LUCKY!!  If they complain, I remind them of all the 2 and 3 days weeks they get during the year.

On the real foods front., I've been reading up on soaking grains to make them more digestible. The Passionate Homemaker has a wonderful blog post, explaining in very simple terms how to soak flours and other grains to make them more digestible. Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon also has instructions.

The purpose of soaking grains is to break down phylates and make them more digestible. Phylates are not digestible to humans, and sometimes are called an "anti-nutrient" since they prevent the absorption of other nutrients.  The idea, is that phylates need to be broken down to achieve maximum nutrient absorption.

Yesterday, I soaked my rice for 7 hours before cooking (used yogurt as the 'acid medium') and it came out very tasty.  I also added lemon juice to my soaking beans, and our beans and rice last night was very digestible!

Today, I started soaking my white whole wheat flour to make break.  Stay-tuned until tomorrow to see how that works!