Menu Plan Monday

Years ago, when I first had a blog, I found I'm an Organized Junkie and Menu Plan Monday. I was hooked. I had never planned meals before and found myself with 2 kids and a stressed military life. I got right to work with this and had some success with it.  Now I have 3 kids and a military life and planned meals is my lifeline.

 

I recently found a menu planning template at The Nourishing Home that I love. My favorite part is the "Do Ahead" section. This allows me to jot down things like boil eggs a day or two ahead of when I need them or cook extra chicken to make chicken salad sandwiches.  I print this out each week and store in my home binder. I check it each morning to see what my day looks like. 

Stress-saver!!!

 

Sunday:  Pizza

Monday: Fried Potatoes & Eggs

Tuesday: Baked Chicken, Green Beans, Potatoes

Wednesday: Meatballs, corn on the cob

Thursday:  Ham, Macaroni & Cheese

Friday: Dinner Out

Saturday: ??

I also plan out breakfast and lunch. We are all about making meal time easy during this deployment. I buy more easy to make meals and cook much less from scratch. It was so hard for me to break myself from the way I was cooking, but I was so stressed. Right now, in this moment of our lives, you will find more frozen pizzas and chicken pot pies that I have ever bought before.

Preschool Time - Sensory Bin Overview

 I took some inspiration from Carisa at 1+1+1=1 and made some sensory bins for Scarlett. She sits at the table and can work on these and I can see her from the living room or the kitchen. 

The clear bin is a shoe box bin from Big Lots. It does have a lid. 

The yellow bin is from Dollar Tree.  

All the little accessories are pulled from the kitchen, toy box, or under the beds - totally not kidding!  

 

This bin has multi-colored rice and some fun blue accessories. We are not necessarily doing a color-of-the-week thing, but we do things like this to emphasize colors. 

Cotton balls, foam shapes, and rocks make up our other sensory boxes.  Scarlett loves the rocks most of all. I think we will add 2 more bins just so there are some variety. 

Lastly, I have 2 of the yellow containers that my husband brought home at some time. These just have some fun things to keep a little one busy. I keep this on the table next to her sensory bin. Scarlett will bring us a book or yell at ask us to play with her.

These bins are not more of our preschool curriculum. They are just fun. More on these later.

I am linking up with Homeschool Creations Preschool and Kindergarten Community. 

Such an abundance of great ideas.