(the bread pictured here is Challah)

Next Wednesday, I’ll post a recipe (Whole Wheat Dinner rolls, if you’re impatient to know!), but today I thought I’d take a stab at helping those of you who have written me about your yeast baking troubles.

My bread didn’t rise at all!

If your bread dough didn’t change in size at all during the rising period, this probably means that your yeast is dead. There are several reasons this could happen.

• Your liquids were too hot, so they killed the yeast.  For recipes where you add the liquid directly to the yeast, 110 degrees F is about right, and for recipes which combine the flour and the yeast before the liquid is added, 120-125 is right.  I use a digital instant-read thermometer to test the temperature of my liquids, though a non-digital one works fine too.
• Your yeast is old.  If you’ve kept your yeast at room temperature for a really long time, it might have lost it’s potency.  Keeping yeast in the refrigerator or freezer will prolong its shelf life greatly.  I keep mine in a screw-top lid in the freezer just to be safe.  I could probably keep it in my cabinet, though, given how fast I go through a two-pound bag of yeast!

My bread rose, but not enough.

Again, there are a couple of causes for this.

• Your yeast is old. Sometimes old yeast does work a little bit, but not enough to lift a batch of dough correctly.  Make sure you have new yeast, and store it in the fridge or freezer if you don’t bake a lot.
• Your dough was too stiff. Generally speaking, when I’ve helped people learn to make bread, they’ve been surprised at how soft the dough should be.  Most novice bakers err on the side of adding too much flour, so if your bread isn’t rising properly, this is the most likely cause.  Yeast raises dough by producing air bubbles, which in turn lift the dough.  If the dough is very stiff, the yeasty air bubbles won’t be strong enough to lift the dough.  The dough should be soft and fairly pliable…like the recipe books say, it should feel kind of like a baby’s bottom!
• You didn’t knead properly/sufficiently. As I explained in my post about gluten, kneading stretches and develops the gluten in the flour.  Proper kneading produces stretchy gluten strands that are strong enough to hold and enclose the yeasty air bubbles.  I wrote a post on kneading that might be helpful to you, and there’s also a little bit of video of me kneading in the CBN TV spot…one of my readers played it in slow-motion so she could see better.
• Your house is too cold. My house is actually a little too cold for bread rising in the wintertime.  To combat this difficulty, I turn my oven on to 350 for 1 minute (I set a timer so I don’t inadvertently leave the oven on) and then put the dough inside the oven to rise.  This provides just enough heat for the yeast to do its work.  (incidentally, your bread dough will eventually rise in a cold house…it just will take longer for the dough to double in size.)  Just don’t forget to remove the dough before heating your oven!

My bread is crumbly.

This is probably caused by insufficient kneading.  Properly kneaded dough is stretchy and produces bread that is more chewy then crumbly.  See above for solutions to this problem, and also check out my post on kneading and gluten.

My bread was undercooked/doughy inside.

Obviously, this is sometimes caused by simply not baking the dough long enough, but there are a couple of less obvious things that contribute to this problem.

• Your dough didn’t rise enough. Dough that hasn’t risen properly tends to be on the dense end of things, and thus takes much longer to bake than properly risen dough does.  See above for solutions to rising difficulties.
• You didn’t preheat your oven. Bread that starts out in a cold oven will obviously take longer to bake than bread that starts out in a hot oven.  You might also be surprised to know that starting with a cold oven will also produce bread that is not as light and fluffy.  The initial blast of heat from a preheated oven gives the bread a little bit of a last-minute rise (bakers call this “oven spring”).  I always, always preheat my oven before I bake bread.  To help me remember to do this, I set a timer to go off about 10 minutes before the dough will be ready to bake.
• Your oven temperature sensor is not calibrated properly. This is a fairly uncommon cause of underbaked bread, but if you’re still having difficulties after fixing the previous two problems, you might want to get an oven-safe thermometer and check to make sure that your oven really is 350 degrees when you’ve set it to 350 degrees.

If you’d like a concrete way of testing your bread for doneness (I don’t think that’s a word, really!), you can insert an instant-read thermometer into the side of a loaf.  Most breads are done when they reach 190 degrees.  I rarely do this myself, but you might find it to be helpful if you’re new at baking.

If you’ve never tried yeast baking before, you might feel very overwhelmed by reading this list!  Yeast baking is really not as scary as it seems, though, and many of my readers will attest to that.  If you want to give it a try, here are a few recipes that are fairly simple.

Garlic Breadsticks-These are so small, it’s easy to get them to rise and bake all the way through.

Glazed Honey Pan Rolls-This dough rises very easily, which is why I included it here.  You can leave off the glaze if you prefer to keep things simpler.

Easy French Bread-These loaves are not as tall as regular loaves of bread, which means that it is not as difficult to get them to rise and bake properly.  And the loaves are so handy for panini sandwiches, garlic bread, Beef au Jus sandwiches, and the like.

Thin-Crust Pizza -This dough is almost entirely kneaded in the food processor, which makes it almost fool-proof.  I just use my normal food processor and my normal blade…nothing special is required. You’ll need a pizza stone for optimum baking results, though.

English Muffin Bread-This is a batter bread, which means it uses a very soft dough that is just mixed in a stand mixer…no kneading necessary!

And if you are one of those people who is just not interested in messing with yeast, you’ll be pleased to know that there are a number of no-yeast baking recipes in the Wednesday Baking archives.  There’s even a recipe for no-yeast sandwich bread.
________________________

I hope that this helps to solve some of your yeast-baking problems.  I’m sure some of my readers who are experienced bakers will be by to share some of their solutions as well. And of course, you can always email me if you have a problem I didn’t address here. Happy Baking!

Every Monday, I answer a few of the questions that my readers send me. If you have a question you’d like me to answer in a future Q&A post, just leave me a comment here or email me (thefrugalgirl [at] gmail [dot] com) and put Q&A in the subject line. I look forward to hearing from you!

I have a baking question: How do you know when something is “doubled”? I don’t have one of those super nice buckets that a lot of bakers use so I’m having a hard time knowing when things look doubled.  Especially once I’ve rolled it out and put it on (or in) the pan and have waited the length of time, I can’t tell if it’s doubled or not. Any advice or suggestions on how you tell?

-Elizabeth

This is a very not-exact science, if it makes you feel better! I don’t think my loaves and rolls are precisely doubled in size when I put them into the oven…I just kind of eyeball it, honestly.

I think that as with many other aspects of yeast baking, practice makes perfect. If you make some rolls and discover the end product wasn’t quite as risen as you’d prefer, you’ll know that you should let them get a little puffier next time. And if you let some loaves rise until they’re very puffy and they spill over the top of the pans while they bake, you’ll know you shouldn’t let bread dough get that high in your pan.

Just keep at it…as you gain more baking experience, you’ll have a better idea of what works and what doesn’t, and you’ll be better able to spot a perfectly risen loaf of bread.

______________________________________________

How do you save on your children’s clothing? Hand-me-downs worked great for a while but daughter is developing some curves :O) and is harder to fit now. Unfortunately I never learned to sew. How do you do it with 4?

-Tracy

First, let me assure you that sewing your own clothes is often not a money-saving proposition. By the time you buy fabric and notions, it’s easy to spend just as much as you would in a store, so don’t fret about that, ok? There are plenty of ways to save on clothes without sewing them yourself. I don’t think I have sewn a single item of clothing for my children, even though I do know how to sew!

My oldest kiddo is 10.5, so I haven’t had any personal experience with clothing a teenager. However, I do manage to clothe myself pretty cheaply, and the strategies that work for me will probably work for your daughter as well. Here are my best suggestions:

• Buy second hand clothes. You can see a few of my Goodwill finds in previous posts…my Charlotte Russe dress, my polka-dotted dress, my $.75 Old Navy skirt, my Mossimo jeans and t-shirt, and you can also see a Mossimo skirt and camisole in the picture on my About Me page. Buying second hand clothes does take patience (often I stop at Goodwill and find nothing), but there’s some good stuff to be had, especially in the juniors section, which is probably where your daughter’s sizes will be anyways.

• Shop clearances. Doing this does usually mean shopping a bit off-season, but since stores offer the next season’s clothing ridiculously early, it’s not as off-season as you might expect. For instance, you can usually get great deals on winter clothing in January and February, and summer clothes are deeply discounted in August. I’ve found my best clothing clearance deals at Target, Kohl’s, and Old Navy, though those are certainly not your only options.

• Keep an eye out on Freecycle. Though I’m not really in the market for teenage girl clothes, I’ve noticed several offers for bags full of junior size girl clothes.

• Watch for sales. This won’t save you as much as the tips above, but if you have to buy something in a retail store, looking for sales when you shop will help to stretch your dollars.

• Give your daughter a budget. I currently bear the responsibility for buying clothes for my kids, but as they get older, my husband and I intend to give them a monthly clothing budget to spend as they wish. Hopefully this will inspire them to shop clearances, sales, and thrift stores so that they can get more for their money. If your daughter is resistant to these shopping techniques, giving her a personal clothing budget just might help to motivate her (as long as you don’t bail her out if she makes a unwise choice like spending all the money on a single pair of shoes).

• Don’t buy too many clothes. I’d offer up that we often think we need more clothes than we really do. All six of us here at Chez Frugal Girl get by with smaller wardrobes than the average American (except for maybe Sonia, whose drawer is bursting with hand-me-downs!), and we are all surviving and thriving. And people in generations past managed with a very minimal wardrobe. So, don’t feel as though you must buy your child tons of dress clothes, school clothes, and play clothes. If you could put off laundry for two weeks before your children start running out of clothes, you might have too many.

As I said at the outset, I’m not speaking from personal experience here, so if any of you readers who do have teenagers would like to chime in, feel free!

Yesterday, the kids and I baked cookies (with cookie cutters that were bought for pennies in Januarys past).

This was always one of my favorite Christmas activities when I was young, and my kids are like me in that regard.

They enjoy the whole process from cutting the cookies out….

to decorating.

They’re all quite fond of liberally using sprinkles (which were, naturally, purchased post Christmas on deep discount).

We always end up with a table full of very colorful cookies.

And a LOT of mess.

Oddly enough, the mess is conspicuously absent from my childhood memories of cookie baking.  

(Joshua was there with us…he just managed to stay out of almost all the pictures!)

This year, I used a Christmas Cookie recipe from the Girl Talk blog (I omitted the nutmeg and added a teaspoon of vanilla, though) because the one my family traditionally uses calls for a small amount of Crisco, and I had none.  I did, however, use our traditional frosting recipe, because I think all good frostings should include butter.

I usually make 1.5 times the frosting recipe for one recipe’s worth of cookies because some of my children are fairly,  um, generous when they spread the frosting.

Christmas Cookie Frosting

1/4 cup softened butter
2 cups powdered sugar
2 tablespoons milk or cream
1 teaspoon vanilla

Whip the butter until soft and fluffy. Mix in half the powdered sugar, the milk, and the vanilla. Add remaining cup of powdered sugar and beat until smooth, adding more milk if necessary.

______________________________

If you have kids of your own or if other people’s kids are in your life (our neighbor’s daughter joined us yesterday), I highly recommend baking cookies with them. Though it requires an investment of time (and a lot of cleaning up!), kids take such delight in being allowed to participate in the baking and decorating process. I think you’ll find yourself thinking, even in the midst of the sweeping and wiping, that it was an awfully good use of your time.

Happy Baking!

(Apologies for my blog’s disappearance yesterday.  For a couple of hours, my server was offline because of a network outage.  I did publish a Q&A post before it went out, though, so if you missed it yesterday, just scroll down.)

Last week, on a rainy, rainy day, I was just about to start making the dough for some buns when our electricity went out. Bummer.

This meant that I couldn’t use my stand mixer, but that was ok with me…I’m quite capable of mixing and kneading bread dough by hand. I do it every Sunday when I make bread for communion, actually.

No, the main problem was that I needed to melt some butter and heat some milk, and with no stove and no microwave, I was sort of low on options.

I was planning to make a grilled chicken Caesar salad for dinner that night, so I decided to grill the chicken breasts, since (yay!) the grill operates off of a propane tank.

Then it occurred to me that maybe I could use the heat from the grill to help me heat the milk…

and the butter.

The milk didn’t get quite as warm as it would have on the stove or in the microwave, but it worked just fine, and we had a lovely pan of rolls to go with our salad at dinner (the power came back on before I had to bake them, thankfully. I don’t think my grill would work too well for baking rolls!).

I was actually trying to replicate the buns they serve at Fuddruckers, using a recipe from the internet. The buns were lovely, but they weren’t at all the size or shape of the Fuddruckers buns (not for reasons having anything to do with my unusual heating method!), so I will try again. When I figure it out, I’ll share with you.

A lot of you have been wondering lately how I store my flour.  Someone else asked that a while back, and I answered in a Monday Q&A post.

I don’t do anything fancy, because I’ve never had problems with bugs and weevils, but if you still want to see my method, go check out my answer.

If you DO have problems with bugs, there are a couple of things you can do.   I’ve heard that putting your flour into the freezer for 24 hours before storing it will kill any bugs.  Another option, if you have space, is to simply store your flour in the freezer.  You can also store the bags in a large bin, like a Rubbermaid tub.

As I said, though, I have no personal experience with bug prevention.  I’m sure some of you have, though, so if you’ve got some anti-bug tricks, please share them in the comments!

Could you please have a flour sale soon? Because this is the very last Gold Medal flour bag from my Christmas and Easter stock-ups at your store, and my flour stash is in desperate need of replenishing.

I was thinking something along the lines of the $.99/5 lb sale you had last year would be good.

Thank you.

This recipe is from a newer Fleischmann’s Yeast cookbook that I got for free somehow a number of years ago. Actually, it was a lot of years ago, as I know I had this for a while before I got married (I was the sort of weird teenager who sends away for yeast baking freebies!), and it’s been 12 years since I tied the knot (or, more appropriately, since we tied the knot).

Anyways.

It’s a basic bread dough that can be used in a number of different ways, and over the course of the next few Wednesday Baking posts, I hope to show you the other things you can do with the dough.

Today’s post is about the most common way I use this dough, and that is to make braided loaves of bread. A braided loaf looks really lovely and impressive but is not at all hard to make.

Here’s how you can be the proud owner of some gorgeous braided loaves.

First, mix the dry ingredients together.

Then heat the milk, water, and butter together to 120 degrees.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, beat for a few minutes, and add enough flour to make a soft dough. Turn it out onto a floured surface….

and knead until it’s smooth and elastic.

After letting it rise for an hour, punch the dough down and divide it into 6 equal portions.

Roll three portions out into 12-16 inch ropes.

To braid them, you can either start at one end and work to the other, or you can start in the middle, work to one end, and then start in the middle and work to the other end (if you have trouble handling the long strips of dough, this is a good way to go).  Repeat with the other three portions of dough and lift the finished braids onto a greased baking sheet.

Cover the loaves with a wet tea towel and let them rise for about 35 minutes. The length of time necessary for the rising period will vary depending on how hot or cold your house is, so use a visual check in addition to a timer. They should be puffy and about double in size, like this:

To give the crust a nice shiny finish, you’ll need to mix up an egg wash.  This is not at all necessary, but it does make an enormous difference in the appearance of the loaves.  I always do an egg wash if I’m giving loaves away or bringing them to someone else’s house.   When I make these for just the six of us, I usually only make an egg wash if I have cheap eggs around as I’m not really interested in using a pricey farm fresh egg to make my bread shiny.

To make an egg wash you just beat an egg with a tablespoon of water, and then use a pastry brush to gently brush it onto the risen loaves.

A thin layer of egg wash is sufficient. The loaves should just look kind of shiny when you’re done.

Bake the loaves in a preheated 350 degree oven for 25 minutes, or until lightly browned.

Let cool on a wire rack before slicing. Happily, these cool off fairly quickly, so you shouldn’t have to wait long before enjoying a slice, preferably a warm one, so that the butter will melt into it. (Really, as long as you are not opposed to dairy, you ought to use real butter on your homemade bread. Margarine is not the same. Not even close. I’m just sayin’.).

Braided Loaves

6-6 1/2 cups unbleached all purpose flour
3 tablespoons sugar
4 1/2 teaspoons (2 pkg.) yeast
2 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 cups water
1/2 cup milk
2 tablespoons butter

Mix 3 cups flour, the sugar, yeast, and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer. Combine water, milk, and butter and heat to 120 degrees.

Gradually add warm mixture to the dry ingredients, and beat for 2 minutes. Mix in enough additional flour to make a soft dough. Turn out onto a floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic, about 5-8 minutes.

Cover with wet tea towel and let rise in a warm place for 1 hour. Turn dough out onto a floured surface and divide into 6 portions. Roll each portion into a 12-16 inch rope. Braid three ropes together; pinch ends to seal. Repeat with remaining dough, and transfer braids to a greased baking sheet.

Cover and let rise 35 minutes. Beat 1 egg with 1 tablespoon water and brush over risen braids. Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 25 minutes, or until nicely brown. Cool on a wire rack.

…is that every Sunday after church, there is an extra loaf of fresh bread for lunch.

(Well, you can bake pizza without these items, but they’ve made my pizza-baking efforts easier and have improved the end product immeasurably.)

Why You Need a Stone and a Peel

The two items I now consider to be essential are a pizza stone and a pizza peel, which really work in tandem.  For many years I used my pizza stone without a pizza peel and I have to tell you that using the pizza peel makes all the difference in the world.

To get a nicely browned crust on the bottom of your pizza, it’s best to place the dough directly onto a hot pizza stone. However, if you’re rolling the dough out directly onto the stone, it’s impossible to preheat it, and if you have preheated the stone, it’s tough to transfer the dough to the hot stone.

Enter the pizza peel, which makes the dough transfer a piece of cake (or pizza, I suppose).

Here’s my basic pizza-making routine. I preheat the stone in the oven for 15-20 minutes, to make sure it’s very hot. I then roll out my pizza dough on a lightly floured surface. I sprinkle a bit of flour onto the pizza peel, and then lift the rolled-out dough onto the peel. Since there’s a thin coat of flour on the dough and peel, the dough doesn’t stick, and so to transfer it to the hot stone, all I have to do is open the oven door, lower the peel to the level of the baking stone, and give the peel a sort of flicking motion with my arm to make the dough slide off onto the stone.

When I’m making thin-crust pizza, I put both the tomato sauce and cheese on top of the dough before sliding it into the oven, but when I’m making a pizza with a more middle-of-the-road crust, I top it with a thin layer of tomato sauce, bake it for five minutes, and then take it out to add more toppings before I finish baking it.

I also use my pizza stone when I bake deep-dish pizza (the cake pans sit on top of the stone) and when I make stromboli and calzones.

Buying a Pizza Stone and Peel

Though I think it’s often wise to invest in good kitchenware even if it’s expensive, I’m pleased to report that a pizza stone and pizza peel will not require a fistful of cash. The pizza stone and peel that I have were only $15 at Bed, Bath, and Beyond (I don’t see it on their website, but last I checked it was still available in store). Honestly, I can’t tell even the slightest difference between this stone and the Pampered Chef stone that I used to have, so I would advise against buying a really expensive stone.

Taking Care of Your Stone and Peel

When you first get your stone, it will be slightly bumpy and fairly light in color. As you use it, the surface will become smoother and darker, and will turn into a more non-stick sort of surface. Here’s what mine looks like.

Since pizza stones are porous, it’s best not to use soap on them, as they could absorb a soapy smell and flavor. I just rinse mine with water after it’s cooled off, and if something like cheese has melted on, I use a plastic spatula to scrape it off. My stone is so smooth by now, though, hardly anything sticks to it. It’s not pretty…

…but it’s thoroughly seasoned, and it works far better now than it did when it was all new and pristine.

Pizza stones are sensitive to sudden temperature changes and can break if you are not careful. When heating a stone, make sure to put it in the cold oven and let it preheat along with the oven. When your stone is hot, let it cool off completely before washing it off, to avoid giving it a cold shock.

I’ve been using my pizza peel (the one that came in the $15 set) for quite a number of years, and there’s no sign of it wearing out, save for a small crack which doesn’t affect its performance at all.

Since it hardly gets dirty, I usually just brush the excess flour off of it and store it on top of my fridge (I have a small space between the fridge and the cabinets above it). If it does get dirty, I give it a quick rinse with water and dry it off promptly. Since it’s an unfinished wood surface, I don’t use soap and I don’t let it stay wet.

If you, like me, have struggled along for years making pizza with pale, wimpy looking undersides, do yourself a favor and get a stone and a pizza peel.   For the price of a large pizza, you’ll have yourself a couple of tools that will help you make pizza that rivals the take-out variety.

All you pizza-bakers out there…what do you use to bake your pizzas?

Every Monday I answer several questions submitted by you, my readers!  If you’d like to submit a question for a future edition of Monday Q&A, leave me a comment or send me an email (the frugal girl {at} gmail {dot} com) and put “Q&A” in the subject line.  I look forward to hearing from you!
____________________________________________________________________________________________

This question was submitted by Bethany, one of my multitudinous cousins, and a faithful Frugal Girl reader.

I like your recipes. They are easy to follow and require normal ingredients with great results (even for me!). How do you keep your recipes organized? I was thinking of starting a 3 ring binder.

A binder is exactly how I organize most of my recipes! My binder is in very sad shape right now though, and needs some serious reorganization/cleaning out.

Even in its less than pristine condition, my binder still serves me quite well. I use tab inserts to divide my recipes into categories that work for me like “Pasta and Pizza”, “Yeast Breads”, “Chicken”, and so on, to make it easy to find a recipe when I’m looking for it.

While most of my recipes are printed out on letter-size paper, some of them are on actual recipe cards, and those I keep in a typical recipe box.  I also have a small cabinet devoted to storing my cookbooks and cooking magazines.

So, that’s my not-very-earthshaking recipe organization routine.  I hope it’s helpful to you, though!
____________________________________________________________________________________________

This one was sent in by Sharon, who writes Unfinished Mom.

Okay, so I’ve been scouring the Wednesday Baking posts and now I’ve got a few questions.

For rising… define “warm water” and “a warm place”, please.
How warm is too warm for the water? I think when I tried baking a loaf of bread I killed the yeast with water too warm.

“A warm place” … can it just sit on my counter? How warm should the house be? Is 75 too cool? 1Should I set the oven on lowest temp and put it in there?

I’m a real novice with not much luck when it comes to anything with yeast…. Help!

The temperature of the water will vary depending on the mixing method. If the recipe you’re using is the type where you dissolve the yeast in water before proceeding with the recipe, the water should be around 110 degrees. If, however, you’re using a recipe in which the yeast is mixed with flour and other dry ingredients before the liquid is added, the liquid should be 120-130 degrees.

About the temperature of your house…..bread dough will rise if you don’t put it in a warm place; it will just take longer to double in size. In the summertime, a “warm place” is just about anywhere in your house, unless you’re one of those people who keeps your AC really low. My AC is usually at 78 degrees, which is quite warm enough for bread dough to rise! 75 degrees should be warm enough, too, though, so if your bread isn’t rising at that temperature, something else is probably wrong (perhaps your yeast is not fresh, or your starting liquid was too hot).

In the wintertime, our heat is set at 65 degrees, which is a bit on the chilly side for bread dough. So, I often turn my oven on for a minute or so, turn it off, and then put my bread inside of the oven to rise. If the top of your fridge is clear, that’s another good place to let dough rise. Or, if you have a gas oven with a pilot light, you can let your bread rise inside of the oven, as the pilot light provides some warmth.

If you are a beginner yeast baker, you might want to try my no-knead English Muffin bread, easy French bread, or dinner roll recipes. These are all fairly simple to make and should turn out fairly well even if you aren’t particularly well-practiced at kneading and yeast baking. And if your first attempts don’t look quite like mine, don’t give up! Like many other skills, your breadmaking expertise will improve greatly with practice…I’ve been honing my bread-making skills for 17 years or so (my mom taught me how to make bread when I was in my early teens).

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

Jinger left this comment on my post about homeschooling a kindergartener. I’m guessing that she is not the first reader to wonder about this, so I thought I’d answer her comment here.

I am such an admirer of you in so many ways. I was a teacher for over 21 years and your methods are so sound and far better than some of the adopted programs that change yearly in schools. Just wondering if your children participate in organizations with other kids outside home.

First, thanks for the encouragement! I really appreciate your willingness to be supportive of what I’m doing in light of the fact that you were a honest-to-goodness school teacher.

My children don’t participate in any official organizations yet, for which I’m grateful. My husband and I are going to try to avoid being the type of parents who spend every evening running their children about to different activities, both because we think peaceful family time at home is really valuable, and because we’re trying to keep ourselves and our kids from being stressed out unnecessarily. For the record, we are not entirely opposed to outside activities…we just haven’t felt like they were something that would serve our children well as this point.

That said, my children certainly do spend time around other children. When I teach piano students, the moms and siblings of my students watch my children. My children think this is a fabulous arrangement because they have a lovely supply of kids to play with while I work.

My kids also play with neighborhood children (my son met his very best friend back when he lived next door to us). We’re fortunate enough to live near a lot of extended family, so my kids get to play with their cousins (and my cousins, some of whom who are not much older than my children) as well. In addition, at church there are lots of families with children, and my children enjoy chatting and playing with them.

Lastly, I should point out that since there are four children here at our house every day, my children get quite a lot of socialization experience just by living here! In the context of their sibling relationships they learn how to solve disagreements, how to put others first, how to speak patiently and kindly to others, how to work together, and how to play together. One thing I appreciate about homeschooling (although it’s also an exhausting thing about homeschooling!) is that I’m able to be here to supervise these relationships all day. I have many opportunities to teach and correct my children as they relate to each other over the course of the day, and while this job can feel overwhelming right now, I hope that I am giving them valuable tools that will serve them in future relationships.