I've been skim reading so this may have been mentioned but along with the CPR class what about a safe sitter class? This would, I would think, include cpr, heimlich, basic first aid, etc.
I was just thinking about creating a home management binder for myself last night and it occured to me it might be a good way to approach Home Ec. with my kids. My son is too young but I think I'll get my daughter a binder and have her design different categories in GIMP or Microsoft Word. Some might be: - Rules - Calendar - Budget - Home Repair - Garden - Schedules - Menu - Cleaning - Homeschool - Activities - People Contact Info - Recipes - Legal - Craft projects - Other Then as we do things she'll put them in her binder. She likes to make french toast so I'll have her type out the recipe, print it and stick it in, When she gets a little older she can research nutritional information and add that. She'll have her own budget, calener, contact info, etc. that she can keep track of. I'll do the exact same one for my son. I think home management invovles a lot of fundamental skills that he should have to, right down to meal planning and housecleaning.
At the high school level, my teen had to design and build a house .. on paper .. using pictures from magazines and samples from Home Depot ... first she had to select a job, and build a home that she could afford on that budget. It really turned out nice.
Home Ec is called Family Consumer Sciences in our county. If you do a search for that it gives you some ideas. One was called "Entertaining at Home''. I think we are going to let the girls plan a dinner party for some of their friends and let them do the whole thing. Just something fairly simple but they can decorate some and make invitations, plan the meal and cook with some help. And do all the clean up! We could make the whole process last a couple of weeks easily. I can't decide whether to do it before the holidays of in the Spring. I think they will enjoy it. I am sure I will.
Deena, If you are still looking for a placemat pattern, go to craftandfabriclinks.com and see if that is one you could use. It looks simple and is free. Beth
Beth, that looks like a really neat site! I'm not good at doing things without a pattern. Now the wood crafts (rub-ons) I'm having fun with but as far as sewing I need a pattern. My mom is really good at just stitching something together but not me!
Wow lots of fun ideas, my second half of the year will be easy with all these ideas! I have two home ec books that we are spacing out for the first semester from AOP but this is going to be cool! We are also learning to sew a quilt together. Well I know how but have not completed a quilt with pieces before, so it will be fun working together on it! I have parts of one I started more than 20 years ago! ds 10 is building a bird house from scratch with dh this weekend. They have plans and instructions to follow too.
dd built a birdhouse with dh a year ago or so. It was a kit, and they worked on all of it together. VERY cool.....dd was THRILLED to spend that time with daddy! I wouldn't mind finding something like that, though more grown up and "manly", for ds and dh to do together! You guys have such great ideas, I'm sooo glad I asked! Thankyou to ALL of you soooo much! :love:
research it online, one year the boys and I built dd a shelf that is actually a doll house, before they were in the stores! I drew up the designs and made the calculations, we all went and got the wood etc, and created it. it houses other stuff now but Barbie liked her home ! hehe There are plans for things like that all over the web, there is even pictures and directions to build your own loft bed from scratch using mostly 2by 4s! Dd wants a loft bed, my friend made one for her boys so I figured, why not check it out! Who knows maybe I will actually be able to do it when the fence is done! ( work in progress has 12 feet left out of ... lets just say a LOT of yard! heheh
I LIKE that name! I wonder if that'd work on a transcript? BETH! This is perfect! It's EXACTLY what I was looking for! I printed out the easy pattern, and saved the site to my favorites! Dd and ds picked one set of grandparents each, and will make the placemats for them for Christmas! Woo-Hoo---thankyou so much!
I like the bookshelf idea! Wow, that sounds very interesting. Do you have a site for that loft bed? Not sure dh would want something like that, but it'd be interesting to see what it involves! Thanks again for the ideas, ladies!!!
It's actually quite hard to type it up without pictures!! I feel your pain!!! Let me see if I can make this a tad clearer for you!! Yes, you can add interfacing to your placemats to make them stiff. They make a kind that's fuseable...you just iron it right onto the backside of the fabric..and assemble for a finished project. You would use this for adding a heavier, stiffer feel to your project. They also make a sew in interfacing if you would rather do it that way. The backstitching is for reinforcing your stitches. You don't want to have your project come all unravelled after so much time and effort put into it! Especially with being uber creative and coming up with your own pattern!! The method to assemble the placemat that I was referring to is an easy way to finish without messing with binding and trying to navigate turns and fold corners over. Let's say that you are making a placemat and on one side is a Thanksgiving print, and the other side is going to be a Christmas print. Once you have each block sewn up...interfaced if you choose too use this, and pretty much completed except for being sewn together. You would take your Thanksgiving side, and lay it facing <finished side> the Christmas print. This would look like you have both back sides out. If you sew around the rectangle, and leave about two inches or so <you really just need enough of a gap to successfully turn it right side out> you then can work your fabric right sides out. You will be left with a hole at the top, that after you run an iron over will fold together to allow you to close it with topstitching. I hope this makes sense to you. I've a link to share for more clarity, but I am not allowed to post links yet!! I'll be happy to try and explain it more if you need me to do so.
Thanks! Yeah, interfacing...THAT'S the word I was trying to think of! That'd be cool! I was talking to ds about the placemats, and he said, "Can I make up my own idea? Can I have one thing on the front, and one on the back?" YES! But I didn't want him to get too big of ideas until he's done it once and knows what it takes. If he wants to make his own design after that, then by all means.... I think that with the site that Beth shared, and with your explanations, it's coming together now! Thankyou so much for spending tiime trying to get it through this thick head! I'm so excited about all this now! And the neat thing is.....so is ds! And so is dd---she wants to do all this stuff as well. She already knows how to sew, so she'll help ds some, I'll help him some, and I may have to pull our neighbor lady in to help some if I get stuck! :lol: I think this is going to be a great learning experience for all of us!
This sounds like a great idea! I'm not a very organized person, and as I was telling hunychikn, "a picture is worth a thousand words" for me! If I can see it, I understand much better! If you do this, can you show me how you did it? I mean, you described it well, and I could make something out of that, but I'd love to see how you do yours!
Deena, I've neve done it so I have no clue as to how, but there is paper that you can download a picture from your computer onto the paper and transfer it to a piece of fabric. Something like that would give it a personal touch if you did pix of the kids for the relatives on something.
I was researching them today and this google search has a list of ideas and different blogs where you can find different examples. They're mostly from very conservative christian women. Not me but they have fantastic advice and who says I can't fill my binder with Star Wars quotes instead of scripture? :lol:
:lol: That's right, take the idea and run with it, with whatever would be good for YOU! Thanks, this is GREAT! Ohhhh, that's a neat idea! I'll have to look into it! That'd make a good thing to do on a pillow or something! Thanks!
http://www.instructables.com/id/loft-bed/ that is one, but its not as cute as the other one, ..... http://roswellga.ourlittle.net/LoftBeds and to read the info of the people who made them they are really not that difficult if you know your tools!
Wow, that's some work! Not sure if dh and ds would want to tackle that, but hey, it's a great project! I'm going to show these to them and see what they think. THANKS TMom!
