I have heard of many things that you can put into your garden to add nutrients and help improve the soil and one of the things people say is to crush up eggshells and sprinkle them in. Okay. I tried that. The problem is not in the eggshells themselves so much as the membrane that remains stuck to them and refuses to let the eggshell completely break apart.
My wonderful mother-in-law taught me the trick to this problem. I gather my eggshells in an oven safe bowl and after I bake something that I am making anyway (like zuchini bread from the 12 cups of zuchini that I pureed yesterday), I turn off the oven and stick the eggshells and bowl right on the rack. The eggshells "bake" which makes them MUCH easier to crush. I put them in a plastic baggie and let the kids go at them with one of their plastic toy hammers. They have a blast (though too vigorous pounding can poke a hole in the baggie and then you have another mess to take care of.) I sprinkle them in the garden around my plants and I have also found that the sharp little pieces of eggshell are a great deterent to slugs. They seem to leave the plants alone where I have applied the crushed shells.
Friday, September 2, 2011
Friday!
Well, we started homeschool one week earlier than the homeschool Charter School we are enrolled in because I really wanted to get a jump on this year. This year Josh is in 3rd grade and Joe is starting Kindergarten. I want our special theme this year to be service and for us to find ways to help in our own community as well as areas of the world that need special help.
I am really excited about this year and hope that it all goes well, though I am a little nervous since I haven't taught two at a time before. Luckily we get to ease into it with Kindergarten...when I took Joe in to the Charter School for his pre-school assessment, the teacher said he was already ahead of most Kindergarteners and she thought we could basically skip Kindergarten and go straight into first grade. I, however, feel that Joe is just not ready for a full day experience - he is still so wiggly. So I am going to make sure he stays challenged and we are starting him on basically 1st grade math and I am just going to continue the reading/phonics program that we did in preschool but I am going to try and remember that he is in Kindergarten and not to push him too hard.
I need to focus a little more attention on activities to keep Sam and Elise entertained while we school. I tried to let Elise color in her highchair but she is not there yet and kept trying to eat the crayons. I don't want any multicolored diapers, thanks anyway. She likes to sit on my lap and play with a toy, but that only lasts so long. Sam is able to start basic preschool worksheets and feel like he is "schooling" too. He is also big enough to play with blocks or look at books or do "art" sometimes. But I would like to come up with some more quiet activities for the two of them.
I am really excited about this year and hope that it all goes well, though I am a little nervous since I haven't taught two at a time before. Luckily we get to ease into it with Kindergarten...when I took Joe in to the Charter School for his pre-school assessment, the teacher said he was already ahead of most Kindergarteners and she thought we could basically skip Kindergarten and go straight into first grade. I, however, feel that Joe is just not ready for a full day experience - he is still so wiggly. So I am going to make sure he stays challenged and we are starting him on basically 1st grade math and I am just going to continue the reading/phonics program that we did in preschool but I am going to try and remember that he is in Kindergarten and not to push him too hard.
I need to focus a little more attention on activities to keep Sam and Elise entertained while we school. I tried to let Elise color in her highchair but she is not there yet and kept trying to eat the crayons. I don't want any multicolored diapers, thanks anyway. She likes to sit on my lap and play with a toy, but that only lasts so long. Sam is able to start basic preschool worksheets and feel like he is "schooling" too. He is also big enough to play with blocks or look at books or do "art" sometimes. But I would like to come up with some more quiet activities for the two of them.
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