Posts Tagged ‘baking’

Homemaking for Teens

Thursday, May 27th, 2021

homemaking-for-teens

Are you looking to teach your homeschooled kids how to run a home? Today I’m going to show you some of the homemaking materials that we used in our homeschool.

My daughter has been learning more advanced homemaking skills for the past year, as she is more involved in the management of the home. One of the electives for high school is home economics, which includes cooking, baking, sewing, cleaning, and taking care of children. When I was gone for several weeks last month, my daughter managed the home perfectly, cooking meals from scratch, keeping up with the laundry, and tidying up the house. I was impressed.

My three sons also learned the basic skills of cooking, cleaning, and doing laundry before going to college, so that they would not squander their money by eating out every meal. They learned a lot of these skills through Cub Scouts when they were younger, including basic sewing skills. So home economics is good for anyone to learn.

We also did Dave Ramsey’s Foundations in Personal Finance: High School Edition for Homeschool. This personal finance course is a one semester high school course that has DVD’s and a workbook, where you learn all the basic financial skills to manage money well, including staying out of debt and budgeting. It goes really well with a homemaking course, since it includes skills needed to run a home.

stuffed-bell-peppers

One of the homemaking materials we loved was The Homemaker’s Journal: Practical Instruction for the Keeper at Home. It’s an online PDF, which we printed and had spiral bound. It’s a simple e-book that has information on how to maintain a home. It’s not curriculum, though. But if it was the only book you had, along with teaching the practical skills beside you, that would be enough for a home economics course. Not everything has to have written tests. PE doesn’t, for example. Most practical skills are learned best through hands-on learning.

However, there is something charming about a proper curriculum for home economics that has vocabulary, instruction, and quizzes and tests on the information. I found that in the Home Economics high school elective from Christian Light Education. There are 10 workbooks that teach all the skills for maintaining a home. We did not do all the workbooks, but instead, we did whatever we wanted. We spent 2-3 hours a day on homemaking this year, and we used a lot of materials, not just this set. So we flipped through the workbooks and did whichever ones we needed. For example, we did not do the health workbook because I had already done a full year of high school health from Apologia several years ago.

We loved the Introduction to the Kitchen workbook from this set. I flip through some of the pages in this video, so that you can see why we liked it:

There are many black and white sketches and illustrations to show hazards in the kitchen, for example. When my daughter tried to pick out the hazards, we were both laughing hysterically because some of the things, she would never have done instinctively, but other things, she was learning for the first time. We had many conversations we would not have had if we had never gone through these homemaking materials.

We also used another e-book called The Kitchen Primer: A First Textbook on Cooking & Keeping a Proper Kitchen by Martha Greene. We liked it a lot, but it is much more expensive than The Homemaker’s Journal, and most of it is recipes. So in the video, I show this, and I explain how you can use a basic Betty Crocker Cookbook as a textbook for cooking and baking.

We also went through a mother-daughter devotional called Beyond Beautiful Girlhood Plus Companion Guide, where we answered the questions aloud instead of writing it down. It took us a full year to get through the book, even though it only has 7 chapters. We did a little bit most mornings before doing anything else. I loved how the questions were often a springboard for deep conversations with my daughter that deepened our mother-daughter bond. And it had to do with homemaking.

I don’t know if I mentioned the fact that we didn’t write in any of the books or workbooks, but that we went through them together. I love the fact that my daughter now knows how to run a home way more effectively than I ever did at her age! My husband snapped a picture of my daughter’s stuffed bell peppers she made from scratch while I was gone on a two-week road trip. I was delighted to come home to a clean house with laundry all caught up and put away. Home economics is definitely worth teaching your teens!

Unique Box of Holiday Treats

Thursday, December 6th, 2018

box-of-holiday-treats

My daughter sent a unique box of holiday treats to her aunt last Christmas because she wanted her aunt to feel special. We bought an inexpensive box that looked like a book, and we painted it. (It looks brown like a cardboard box before it is painted.) You can get a box like this at any craft supply store.

You can use tempera paint or acrylic paint, whatever you have on hand. First my daughter drew the design with pencil on the box. Then she painted it. She had to paint the back of the box on a different day so that the paint on the front would be dry.

Since it was Christmastime, she decided to draw a cute snowman standing in the snow. She used white for the snow and light blue for the sky, highlighting the words and accessories with red paint.

box-treat-craft

After the box was finished, we made some marble fudge (with white and dark chocolate swirled together) and decorated a gingerbread man. Lastly, we added a bag of candy, including chocolate gold coins, Hershey kisses, and mini chocolate bars.

Christmas-treats

When the package arrived at her aunt’s house, she was pleasantly surprised, and she most definitely felt loved!

Old-Fashioned Movie Birthday

Wednesday, November 2nd, 2016

old-fashioned-movie-cake

If you want to throw an old-fashioned movie birthday party, you have come to the right place! I will show you how to make a cake in the shape of an old movie camera. I will also tell you about some activities you can do for a movie party, besides watching a movie!

How to make an old-fashioned movie camera cake:

Let’s start with the cake. You will need to bake three cakes; the first two will be rectangle cakes, and the third will be divided between two circle pans. You will assemble the pieces this way:

movie-camera-cake-2

I trimmed the sides of the first rectangle cake for the center section of the cake. I cut the bottom and side trapezoids from the other rectangle cake. (You can eat the cake leftovers while you work!)

I wanted the circles on the top of the cake to be smaller than a cake pan, so I used a round plastic container as a cookie cutter.

cake-circle

The finished cake is at the top of this post. I found some large letter stickers at a hobby supply store, and I stuck them down on white card stock paper and taped them to toothpicks before stabbing them into the cake.

Decorations for a movie party:

home-movie-screen

You can tape curtains to the sides of your television. We used the curtains from our puppet theater, but you can just hang some cloth and tie the sides. No sewing is required. I found a movie gadget that opens and closes for the scenes being filmed. I bought it at a party supply store. We used it for the skits described in the activity below.

movie-party-decorations

I also found some Hollywood decorations at a party supply store, which I hung from the chandelier, but you could just cut out a silver star out of card stock paper. I had silver star confetti and silver streamers. I placed a black bed sheet on the table, and the silver streamers ran down the sides. A camera was placed in the middle of the table on top of the confetti.

Movie party activities:

dress-up-box

Grab a basket or dress-up box and place different hats, scarves, glasses, and other accessories into it. (We found some stick-on moustaches at a costume shop!) The kids can break into teams and practice a fun skit with the materials in the basket. Then they can present it to the audience. You can film the skits.

outdoor-movie

During the second half of the party, we watched an outdoor movie. If you don’t have a projector, you can watch the movie indoors on your television. We hung a sheet outside and used the projector from my speaking engagements, and we watched “The Princess Bride” outside. We had a great time at our old fashioned movie birthday party!

Calculator Cake

Wednesday, October 26th, 2016

calculator-cake

This calculator cake is super easy to make and is perfect for a nerd, a math teacher, or anyone who enjoys math. All you do is bake a rectangular cake in whatever flavor you want. We placed the cake on a piece of cardboard lined with foil and taped at the back. Then we frosted the cake with chocolate frosting.

We used white icing for the top rectangle, which is where numbers show up on the screen of the calculator. If you’re clever, you can put some numbers into that rectangle. (For example, 4+4 or something along those lines.) You can find candy numbers in the baking aisle of a grocery store or in the cake supply aisle of a craft store.

I left the screen blank because the calculator is off. We used Sweet Tarts for the buttons of the calculator, but you could use any round candy that is about the same size.

Now your calculator cake is complete. Give it so someone you love and stand back and watch the amazement in their eyes as you present them with an edible calculator!

math-cake

If you enjoyed making this calculator cake, you will probably also like these hands-on math activities: