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What we eat for lunch + all about my childhood homeschooling

Hi Kristen!

I just read your latest five frugal things and you had leftovers for lunch–I always try to make sure there are leftovers for lunch but I’d love it if you wrote a post on what you have for lunch when you don’t. I really enjoy your cooking posts and style–you feed your family as well as you can for a reasonable price.

grilled cheese sandwiches

A lot of lunch ideas seem really complicated and no one has time for that!

Thanks,
Mary

I am so with you there.   I always feel like I’m doing well to cook a meal at dinner each day, so the idea of doing anything fancy at lunch is totally not appealing to me.

If there are leftovers, then yep, we try to make a point of eating those so as to avoid food waste.

If there aren’t leftovers, then here are some things we eat:

-sandwiches
homemade yogurt with fruit
-fried eggs
-ramen (if we have some in the house! I buy it for making Japanese Ramen soup, and Sonia loves to eat the extra packages for lunch)
-fresh fruit
-bananas with peanut butter
-a green salad (sometimes I make a salad topped with leftovers, like roasted veggies, cooked protein, ends of a cheese block, etc.)
-smoothie
-microwaved sweet potato, topped with butter and salt
-cucumbers, sliced and sprinkled with salt

Of course, we tend to be home for lunch because we homeschool.   So, not everything we eat needs to be packable and we have the freedom to heat or cook things in the microwave/stove/oven.

Mr. FG mostly eats leftovers or salads packed in his lunchbox.   And when Joshua and Lisey need to eat lunch at college/tutorial, they generally pack a sandwich, with fruit or maybe crackers & cheese.

Hello Kristen-
I am a total wannabe homeschooler. I like our public school (in fact, I am our PTO’s president) but I don’t love the lack of individualized education that my kiddos get. I found it fascinating that you were homeschooled growing up. Can you share more of your experience growing up as a homeschooled kid?

-Dana

Sure! My mom started homeschooling my siblings and me back in 1984, when I was in first grade and when homeschooling was very unusual.   This makes my experience super different from my own kids’ experience.

my kindergarten school picture

For instance, in 1984, homeschooling wasn’t illegal, exactly, but it also wasn’t exactly legal either. Now we’ve got laws on the books explicitly stating that it’s legal to homeschool, which is nice.

me, my cousin, and my sister

Also, when I was growing up, I didn’t have a lot of homeschooled peers.   There just weren’t that many people homeschooling! Now there are so many more homeschooling families, and most people have at least heard of homeschooling.   It’s not quite as fringe as it used to be.

Another big difference now is that there are far more options for homeschoolers.   When I was a kid, there were just a few curricula to choose from and now there are almost too many! Plus now there are a lot of homeschool classes available for extra-curriculars, and there are also plenty of tutorial options for families that want to do more of a hybrid kind of schooling.

7-year-old me. and someone’s legs.

I’d say that I was a happy homeschooled kid. I’ve always been kind of a homebody, so I didn’t mind staying home.

And I liked being in charge of my time.

When you’re homeschooled, if you work more efficiently, you can get done earlier and have more free time to do whatever you want.

me with a neighbor that I frequently babysat

So, that motivated me to work hard, and I had lots of free hours to play with my sister and with my neighbors, play at the park, practice piano, babysit, cook and bake (favorite hobbies of mine), ride my bike, rollerblade, and read.

my sister and me with my twin cousins

My mom did some school subjects with us when we were younger, but as we got older, we did most of our work on our own, which is typical of homeschooled kids.   Mom is there to answer questions and correct work, but she’s not right by your side every moment of your school day.

me at 16 with a baby cousin. you know you want my jeans.

I feel like my homeschool life prepared me really well for adult life. I did very well on my SATs and when I got into college, I didn’t have any trouble integrating into the classroom, and I maintained a 4.0.

I’ve always done just fine at socializing with people (though I’ve been asked the, “What about socialization?” question approximately 1123291813759 times. Ha.), I’ve held down a traditional job, and I’ve also had several successful self-employed jobs.

this was taken around the time I graduated from high school

Basically, I think I’m pretty normal. 😉

(Oh, and since everyone wonders about prom: there were no homeschool proms in my day, but I did get asked to a private school prom by a guy who played in a piano concerto competition with me.)

I know not everyone has as positive a homeschooling experience as mine, but I really have no complaints about my experience, and I’m grateful my parents chose homeschooling.   Had I grown up in a super strict, super conservative homeschool environment, I might feel differently.   But I think one reason my experience was positive is that my parents weren’t really homeschooling my siblings and me in order to keep us in a bubble or to prevent us from getting sullied by “the world”.

That’s a topic too huge to explore here, though!

I hope I addressed the things you were curious about, Dana.   If I missed something, let me know in the comments and I’ll answer there.

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Colleen

Tuesday 14th of February 2017

I am sure most home-schooled kids do very well. Unfortunately working in the public school system I saw the problems with the failures.. Kids performing 2 or more grade levels below where they should be. It takes a lot of hard work for these students to catch up & most of the parents could not be bothered.

Kristen

Tuesday 14th of February 2017

Oh yes, I'm not surprised that in your position, you see all the people who were not doing a good job. On the upside, I guess it's good they realized it and are now sending their kids in to be properly educated.

I promise we're not all like that, though! Most of us aren't. :)

Katie

Tuesday 14th of February 2017

I dunno, Kristen, I think your 90's jeans might be so uncool they're cool again! Check out Malia Obama: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4181386/Malia-Obama-heads-work-internship.html

I've come to terms with the fact that the flared jeans I like are the new mom jeans. I AM a mom, so there. :)

Kristen

Tuesday 14th of February 2017

Oh man! I almost think I like my jeans better than those. Ha.

priskill

Monday 13th of February 2017

Quick addendum -- must shout out to all the excellent & hardworking teachers I know personally in my fine district and beyond, who manage to get the highest scores in the Valley, etc.. No slights intended! But -- some of the big, failing urban systems need triage. The same-old is not working . . . thanks

Amy

Tuesday 14th of February 2017

My children attended and my husband and I volunteered in what would probably be considered a challenged "urban" district, the issue is rarely quality of teachers. They had Awesome ones, but instead the social and economic issues affecting many students' families. The district had one of the highest transiency rates in our area. It is really difficult for a child to keep up when they are frequently moving or have other instabilities in their home life. Students who stayed in the district were successful. This is where the whole growth v proficiency comes to play. Also, it is not a teacher's job to solve social and economic problems.

priskill

Monday 13th of February 2017

As always, eye-opening and thoughtful -- truly not defensive at all. As a public school special ed teacher, I had a lot of misconceptions re: homeschooling but the calm, factual explanations here have always made sense and I'm thankful to challenge my knee-jerk assumptions. And the history lesson is spot on. So odd to think it was not exactly legal even in your very recent youth. ;)

And frankly, too many public school students are failed by the system -- not acceptable! We do need to broach these issues head-on and ensure that all school systems do their job and that there truly IS a choice for all America students. I am nervous about some of the current political appointments and do hope that we respect this triumvirate of home, private, and public schooling, and provide the required supports for each.

Quick note -- again, I am in severe special ed-- and was humbled (and kind of thrilled) to meet a home-schooling mom who, after raising up her "typical" birth-children, adopted and fostered 4 children with severe special needs. All under the age of 10, I believe, including 2 beautiful boys with Down syndrome, and 2 slightly older girls. This amazing person pulled one of the boys out of another special day class and home-schooled him. Guess what? She taught him to read, to speak, to share, to play -- he's a great kid! Although she loved his pre-school, she didn't feel that he was getting the individualized attention he needed.

Spec. ed teachers spend a lot of time training to handle kids with special needs, but this amazing mom just stepped up and made it work better for her son -- I'm not sure we could have met her standards for individualized attention in a 10 student class. So, yes, I have great respect for (and can learn from) home-schooling families. Thanks for letting me yammer on!

Oh, loved all the pix :)

Amanda

Monday 13th of February 2017

I'd love to homeschool my child when she gets a bit older. I'm not as much worried about her socialization as I am my own . . will I miss spending hours a day in the company of adults? My maternity leave wasn't really long enough for me to miss it, but considering years at home is more difficult to imagine. And I think I remember you mentioning that your husband works or worked unusual hours; how did you fit in schoolwork (and the everyday volume of children at home) without waking him?

Kristen

Monday 13th of February 2017

Mercifully, he never had to work a true overnight shift, so he's never needed to do a lot of sleeping during the day. Mostly his odd shifts involved going to bed really early and getting up really early, or working a late late shift.

So, it wasn't crazy challenging to work our school schedule around his work schedule. Probably the hardest thing was when he worked 2pm-10pm. We at our big meal of the day at noon, so in the mornings I would spend some time making our "dinner", and then after lunch, he left for work and then we started in on our school. That made our school day feel like it was going really late because it started so late!

Right now, he has flex hours, so things are easier than they've been in years.

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