Meal Planning for Homeschoolers

There are a variety of ways to plan meals.  Some base their menus on whatever foods are on sale at the grocery store that week. Others assign a day of the week to each family member and let the assigned person choose the menu for that day. I'm amazed by my super mom friends who make and store 30 meals at a time in the freezer for once-a-month cooking.  Some super organized friends of mine have gorgeously decorated menu notebooks that guide them through a wide variety of healthy meal plans, which of course include Aunt Bertha's award winning secret recipes, for an entire year.

Then there are the non-planners (yours truly) who will open the refrigerator and freezer sometime between 6-7pm and pull out whatever can be thawed and cooked in less than 30 minutes.  This approach usually involves throwing an odd assortment of seasonings, meat, and vegetables into a pan and cooking the bizarre concoction until the house smells of charred food or until the "cook" is too hungry to wait any longer, so she dumps it all into the microwave and nukes until the food is rubbery but done.

Homeschooling mothers, however, sometimes plan their meals based on what their students are studying in science that week.  For example, our kids studied the major bones that comprise the human skeleton last week.   They also learned about tendons, cartilage, and bone marrow.  I made sure to include roasted ham shank and rotissoire chicken into our meal plans for that week so that our students could take their science exams during dinner.

Question #1:  Name that bone

The shin bone's connected to the knee (Patella) bone...

Ham bone, ham bone, where you been?

Round the world and back again!

Our daughter thought this science lesson was rather disgusting, but at least she learned some hand jive songs.

Question #2:  Name that tendon. 

Chicken bone:  Everybody make a wish!

Question #3:  What are the different types of bone marrow?

Question #4:  What is the function of each type?

Red Bone Marrow

This week, the kids have been learning about muscle, so I cooked a beef roast for dinner.  The children used a toothpick to separate the cow's muscle fibers and then examined how they are bound.