Catholic Homeschool Support

At the beginning of the school year, I realized that we were in a serious crisis regarding meal time – specifically supper. I was spending double the amount on groceries; I dreaded making supper; many of my picky kids wouldn’t eat what I made; I was burned out. So, my local group offered some great suggestions, and I will share what I found. Please note though, that these are just my opinions. Others will find various menu planning services just perfect for them.

First up, EzMeals is the menu plan program suggested by Dave Ramsey. For $15 every three months, you receive a weekly menu plan with 7 recipes and a grocery list. What is unique is that the meals are planned around your particular store’s sales items. So, when you sign up, you select the store that you shop at the most. I imagine this is a cost effective option.

Upsides… Cost effective – of course it comes recommended by Dave Ramsey. It offers menus for couples and families, gluten free, low fat, point watchers from stores like Publix, Krogers, Walmart and Aldi to name a few. Here is a sample menu from Kroger’s for a family – weekly menu. I ended up not going with it because I found a few too many prepared items like canned spaghetti sauce. And, there were too many meals that were just not to my taste like Dorito Pie. Meals were scaled to serve 4  – 6 people (family option).

Then I tried Living Cookbook (free trial download). I tried it because not only was it menu planning software (meaning that I could create my weekly menus), but it also generated a shopping list. The problem I encountered is that there were not enough recipes included in the software. Of course, I could input my favorite recipes and (this feature is disabled in the trial software) you can even import recipes from online recipe sites. But, since I was unable to try this feature, I was reluctant to shell out $34.95 to see how well that feature worked. But, if you have a lot of your own favorite recipes that you just want menu planning software to work with them, this might be your solution.

Next I tried Dinner Solution software. My mistake was in buying the software without a trial. I assumed there would be an easy way to import recipes, but as of yet, you must take your recipe and enter each ingredient individually. After this, it will generate a shopping list for you. But, I simply do not have time to input recipes in this manner. I am working with the store owner to obtain either a refund or upgrade. Supposedly, the software is to be upgraded shortly to allow users to easily import recipes. My ultimate plan is to use software like this along with a low cost weekly subscription to get me out of my recipe rut. Getting back to the software, it was easy to use. The user interface was nicely designed. You click on the Plan Your Meals on the Calendar, and the screen returns a weekly calendar. You click on a day, and the next screen that is returned has various drop down boxes to select your recipes including main dish, two vegetable side dishes, starch, bread and desert sides. Of course you do not need to enter all these items. But, this all depends on you having input all your recipes to choose from. Out of all the software trials I used, this was my favorite interface … except for inputting recipes.

Next up, Menus 4 Moms. The link I supplied is to the archives. I suppose you could simply just use the archives to come up with weekly menu plans, but they do offer a monthly subscription plan. It costs a penny for two weeks, and then $7.95. What is unique with this service is that you cook from leftovers in order to save time. So, this past week, one day I was instructed to cook a chicken (for me that was 2 chickens) in the crockpot. We had that meal, and then the left over chicken was used later in the week to make a chicken salad. Another day was beef and black bean enchiladas. The beef from frozen from a previous meal and you cooked black beans from scratch to use in this meal and to freeze for other meals. I did find that it made it easy to have some quick, homemade meals easily available (without it actually being totally leftovers). Other services include menu plans for freezer cooking, and Angelfood ministry meals. I liked the menus well enough, but in the end it was still not exactly what I was looking for.

I am interested in the following service, Recipes for Kids. The cost is only $14.95 for 13 weeks of “kid approved meals” along with shopping lists. I would like to come up with some other kid friendly meals to intersperse with the more grown up menu I am looking for. To be honest, I enjoy cooking when it is more grown / easy gourmet food including ethnic choices. Unfortunately, my boys do not seem as open to those meals.

Finally, this is the recipe planner that I chose - Relish, Relish. The downside potentially may be that it is on online application. If you do not have a fast internet connection, this may not be easy to use. But, I am totally in love with all the recipe available. There are 15 available recipes each week – that gets you to change up what you offer. You can keep your favorite, go to recipes in your Favorites list. And, you can scale the recipes to serve from 2 to 8.

Some of the recipes offered this week include Grilled Peppers Stuffed with Goat Cheese (ok, some of the kids will be eating pb&j), Honey Mustard Pork Tenderloin, and Skillet Tamale Pie. So, I get some of my ethnic, grown up flavors. But, they also offer a number of other areas to select recipes from including a kid friendly menu. So, I selected Cheeseburger in Paradise for them. Finally, they have an extensive Freezer Recipe selection (think of getting ready to have a baby and stocking up with these kind of recipes – Baked Shells with Garlic and Spinach, Italian Stuffed Chicken Breasts, and Veggie Chickpea soup). I also included a crock pot meal for the week (orchestra starts up this week) – Slow Cooker Beef Brisket. But, next week, I think I’ll choose the Mu Shu Chicken Wrap crockpot meal.

Other recipe groupings include Brunch and Lunch, Low Calorie, Easy Gourmet, Quick, Vegetarian and Grilling. I am actually excited about cooking this week.

Michael Lambert from Circle Media just sent me this offer to share:

We have two publications National Catholic Register and Faith and Family Magazine that we would like to offer your families. We will give each family a 3 issue trial subscription to the Register and a free 1 issue trial subscription to Faith and Family Magazine. Both publications are ideal resources for information seen through the eyes of the Magisterium. (see ncregister.com and faithandfamilylive.com)If families choose not to subscribe, there is no obligation.
God bless,
Michael Lambert
Circle Media, Inc.

I received this product in June  to review. From the website, ArmaDei:

I posted this message on the MODGFamilies yahoo list, but thought I’d share it with you. I have a fairly large family and trying to get time with each child is difficult. You can take what you think is useful and disregard the rest.

I have a schedule that my consultant helped me to create so that I have time to get to each child – it’s only 30 minutes per child (I have 7 I’m schooling – 2 10th, 1 8th, 1 6th, 1 4th, 1 1st and 1 k along w/ 2 more little ones). She suggested that I have each older child take a turn at taking care of the little ones. I know that there will be more time in the day, but this gives me a meeting time – face to face time – with each child. Of course I will be there answering questions as the day progresses.

I plan for each older child to do some of the drill work, 30 minutes with a younger sibling, and then the older child will later have another 30 minute period where they play with the little ones. I am making a list of what activities they need to drill the younger student on, but it includes Latin vocabulary, Baltimore Catechism questions, Writing Road to Reading phonograms, poetry, and math drills. My thoughts behind it are that some of my older ones were not exposed to this memory work, so they get a chance to soak a bit of it up.

The activities for the little ones include taking them outside to play, playing a game, doing a craft, doing a ziplock bag activity, painting, play dough, puzzles, peg board, mosaic board, coloring, and reading books. Please feel free to post in the comments additional activities to keep the little ones busy and happy.

On Sundays, I’m going to gather the activities that the older child can pick from to do with the little ones. My consultant said that it is critical that I get everyone to help because I have 3 kids with dyslexic tendencies – one of which I need to teach to read, as well as two who have speech impediment issues. I have great programs to address these issues, I just need time to work with them.

Additionally, on their schedules I assigned someone to make lunch and someone else to clean up. And, I have a period after lunch for “zone cleaning”. I made up a zone cleaning sheet that has 5 things to do in each room each day, and then 10 things to do in the room once a week. When I print out their weekly assignments, I will include the daily zone and bedroom clean up. A child will have the zone to take are of for a week, and then he rotates to the next zone.

I also just finished all the copying that we will need for the year so that things will go smoother (no bottlenecks like a printer that’s down! – ask me how many times that happened last year). I also made copies for myself of all the poems and memory work so I have it in one place. Copies included quizzes, maps, Latin drill forms, and poetry.

I created a folder for each child that contains most of what we’ll do for our 30 minutes of family school – daily Bible readings, religious song (we are going to use Alan Jemison’s 36 Traditional Roman Catholic Hymns), Pledge of Allegiance, patriotic song, art study, music, Baltimore Catechism questions and answers from Gutenburg.org, Latin prayers, states and capitals (we all need to learn them), Friendly Defender cards and Memorize the Faith! . We can’t do all the activities every day, I’ll need to use a timer, but I hope the rotation will help us get some memory work completed. I also included an IEW check sheet and their zone cleaning sheets (I used that site to help create my own personalized charts). I will probably add a punctuation / capitalization cheat sheet and a few other cheat sheets.

I know I’m going to fail many times – but, my hope is that each day is a new start, so if the schedule goes out the window, I can start fresh the next day. We’ll see how much tweaking I have to do, but it took me nearly the entire summer trying to figure this out. I finally just had to sit down and do it since it had worried me so much.

Here is a copy of my schedule in a .doc format so you can edit it: 2010 Schedule

http://www.saintmichaelthearchangelorganization.org/ is organizing two prayer events. There is less than 10 weeks away from the start of the Sept. 29th – Oct. 7th PRO-LIFE NOVENA FOR UNBORN BABIES.  This Novena consists of the 10,000 Masses for Unborn Babies Novena and the 10,000 Rosary Novenas for Unborn Babies.

Please visit the site and register your masses and novenas.

Attention Homeschooling Parents and Students

Music-Based Evangelization Opportunities For Young, Catholic Musicians

Proclaiming the faith through beautiful music

Do you like to sing or can you play an instrument well?

Do you enjoy sharing your Catholic faith with others?

Can you be a good role model for today’s young people?

As faithful Catholics, we are all called to take up the challenge of Pope John Paul II’s call for a “New Evangelization”.  Saint Cecilia Classical Productions was founded in response to that call. We are a music-based, Catholic, evangelization apostolate whose principle focus is the advancement of the Culture of Life by the promotion of authentic Catholic family values to today’s young people. As an orthodox, lay organization, we profess complete fidelity to the Magisterium.

We are searching for traditional Catholic young women who wish to use their musical talents and knowledge of the faith in the service of Our Lord and Our Lady, so as to make a difference in the lives of young people. We are looking for young ladies with above average music ability in the areas of classical voice, string or wind instruments. While not a requirement, acting, music theater, choir or public speaking experience would be an additional plus. Some knowledge of Latin would also be helpful.

We are especially interested in individuals who were homeschooled or were raised in the Tridentine Mass tradition. High school seniors, college age women or recent graduates, especially those with degrees in music, are encouraged to apply. This is a great opportunity to learn more about one’s own faith, while evangelizing our young people, and bringing them the pro-life message. At the same time, you will also be working with other young Catholic musicians who share the same traditional values.

For more information about our work and requirements, please visit our websites at:

www.theladiesofcecilia.com

www.saintceciliaclassicalproductions.org

Interested young ladies may mail or e-mail (preferred) their résumé with repertoire to:

Mrs. Julie Baltrinic: Assistant Director

St. Cecilia Classical Productions Inc.

P.O. Box 129, Green, Ohio 44232

info@saintceciliaclassicalproductions.org

Saint Cecilia Classical Productions is a non-profit, 501 (c) (3) public charity.  We were organized exclusively for religious, educational and charitable purposes.

http://www.mycatholicfaithdelivered.com/Home.aspx

I have not had time to go through the sample lessons, but they are offering Faith and Life and Didache via an online interface. This text is from the  Leon Suprenant:

For over a decade I worked for Catholics United for the Faith (CUF), which authored the Faith and Life series published by Ignatius Press.

During my time with CUF I was so edified by all the amazing endorsements we received. I also saw that Faith and Life was a particular favorite of many homeschooling families. Our family has used it all along.

This brings me to why I’m writing. I now work for an online Catholic learning center called My Catholic Faith Delivered (www.mycatholicfaithdelivered.com). We strive to combine the finest catechetical courses/programs with state-of-the-art, interactive technology, as Pope Benedict has encouraged us to do in his recent World Communications Days addresses.

We now offer for this fall the Faith and Life series in an online format. It has everything that the book version has, but so much more to engage the children! We also have three years of the Didache high school series ready as well.

Here’s something I posted on our blog last week about Faith and Life:

http://blog.mycatholicfaithdelivered.com/post/Faith-and-Life-Is-Now-Online!.aspx

Sincerely in Christ,

Leon Suprenant

My Catholic Faith Delivered

I am all about saving money and usually buy used syllabi and books for school. I was unable to find a used syllabus for 10th grade religion this year for Mother of Divine Grace. So, I picked up a copy at the Atlanta homeschool conference.

I was in for quite a pleasant surprise – the new syllabus has an Assignment Overviews section. I just received a new copy of the 10th grade Ancient History, and I”m so pleased with this new section. For each paper assignment, there is nearly a half a page describing the method and content for the assignment.  The first assignment is a Summary of the Life of Daniel. There is an explanation of what a summary is – that there should be a theme to the summary and that what is included should bear out the theme (of course this is a very brief explanation). In the Content section, there is a explanation of what Daniel shows us so it’s like a very mini set of Cliff notes.

These notes are so helpful for parents who are trying to help their students and well worth the additional cost of buy new syllabi. You can always call Emmanuel Books. Their helpful staff is very familiar with Mother of Divine Grace and will be happy to see if the new syllabi have this section (not all have been updated and I’m not sure if all the grade levels have these kind of notes).

One further note is the the Henle 1A and 1B were extensively revised last year to include great fill in the blank charts to help students cement verb conjugation and noun  declension. I was happy to have updated these  syllabi last year.

And, since I mentioned Emmanuel Books, I thought I would publicly praise them for their awesome customer support. I placed an order just before Easter this year for a gift that I was going to give my priest. Somehow, I ended up sending it to the wrong address. They tracked my package down and had it redirected to the correct address so that I received it in time for Easter. Thank you for helping to correct my blunder.

Fr. Joseph Fessio, S.J., Launches New Catholic College-Credit Online Program | May 10, 2010 | Ignatius Insight http://insightscoop.typepad.com/2004/2010/05/fr-joseph-fessio-sj-launches-new-catholic-collegecredit-online-program.html

SAN FRANCISCO, May 10, 2010—Jesuit Father Joseph Fessio¸ founder and editor of Ignatius Press, a former student of Pope Benedict XVI, and longtime leader in Catholic higher education, is launching a  groundbreaking, international college-credit program for Catholic high school students, homeschoolers, and others.

The program, called the Ignatius-Angelicum Liberal Studies Program (www.liberalstudiesprogram.com), is a joint project of Ignatius Press and Angelicum Great Books Program, a longstanding provider of homeschooling and other liberal arts resources. Father Fessio serves as Chancellor of the new online LSP program, which begins this fall.

The Need for a Solidly Catholic Online College-Credit Program

“The Liberal Studies Program comes at the perfect time to address a rapidly growing need and desire of serious Catholic parents and students,” according to Father Fessio, whose previous academic positions include founding and serving as the first Director of the St. Ignatius Institute, University of San Francisco, and Provost of Ave Maria University in Florida.

“Many of these students attend community colleges for one or two years, and then transfer to a four-year institution. But how many truly excellent Catholic colleges are there to transfer into? And at what cost? Furthermore, it’s the first years of a good Catholic college education that are the most important: the liberal arts foundation.”

The Liberal Studies Program (LSP) curriculum combines distance education, online classes— including a theology course nearing completion for full online access—and Ignatius Critical Editions Great Books and Study Guides, to provide Catholic high school students with the ability to earn college credit, while acquiring the foundations for a Catholic liberal education and lifelong learning. Participating students are homeschoolers, students in Catholic high schools, and other serious students ages fourteen and older.??”Great Books education is central to the LSP,” notes Angelicum Academy President Patrick Carmack. “It takes its  inspiration from the philosopher and renowned educator Dr. Mortimer J. Adler, the former Editor-in-Chief of the Encyclopedia Britannica and the Great Books of the Western World. Adler called for a reform of American education, which included providing many high school students college-level education in the liberal arts.”

Fidelity to the teaching of the Catholic Church is fundamental to the LSP program. Pope John Paul II’s Apostolic Constitution on Catholic higher education, Ex Corde Ecclesiae, guides the program’s understanding of the LSP’s Catholic mission.

LSP is accepted for college-credit at Benedictine College (Atchinson, Kansas, USA); Campion College, Australia; St. Bede’s Hall, Oxford, UK; Catholic Distance University; and many other colleges and universities.

An Affordable Program

“Many good Catholic families are blessed with talented children, but the costs of four years of private college are simply beyond their means,” notes Father Fessio. “Or they don’t want their children to be burdened with tens of thousands of dollars of debt when they graduate.”

The costs of the LSP are a small fraction of the expense of traditional college education. A private, four-year college tuition and fees average $26,273 per year—over $100,000 for a four-year degree. With a coordinated course of study through LSP and its affiliates in the Universities of Western Civilization network of cooperating colleges, students can obtain a bachelor’s degree with an accredited college for as little as $26,600—about a fourth of the cost of four years on campus.

“The LSP solves many of the problems of higher education at once,” insists Father Fessio. “It’s inexpensive. It provides up to two years of college credit. It challenges talented students, introducing them to the great books of Western civilization and the Catholic intellectual tradition.  It provides the foundation necessary for any professional career. Young people have another year or two before having to decide on a major. And, not to be taken for granted: the LSP faculty is composed of talented, experienced Catholic professors, with at least one PhD in each class.”

“And this is just the beginning,” Father Fessio continues. “As the LSP grows, we intend to provide opportunities for students to complement their on-line studies with week-long, even month-long meetings with professors and other students. There are already plans for gathering at the centrally located campus of Benedictine College near Kansas City, and even at Benedictine’s campus in Florence, Italy. Because the cost of the LSP is so modest, and because students will have much more control over their schedules, many, if not all, of the students enrolled in the LSP will be able to take part.”

Getting Started

Classes for the Ignatius-Angelicum LSP begin the first week of September, 2010. To register, students should call 1-360-496-0098, text 719-930-7549, or email lspmail@aol.com. they may also learn more at www.liberalstudiesprogram.com. Students must have access to a PC and a phone line. High-speed internet is helpful but not necessary. Most students participate from home.

The Franciscan Friars and Sisters of the Renewal – you will want to visit a revamped site, Friar Suppliers. What a wonderful way to be involved in their ministry by helping to feed them. They take a vow of poverty and depend on God’s providence to supply them with their daily bread.