Homemaking lesson

The boys did their math etc. yesterday and then we did a bunch of hands on homemaking kind of school! They have been begging for weeks, and since I have a hard time cooking with little people, but they put their little checked plastic aprons on and P. scrubbed the floor, wiped the counters, vacuumed the living room and then I let them make a cake. I cheated here a little bit because I let them use a cake mix that I got for .59 after the holidays, but I was amazed I was letting them do that much! = )

Then for dinner we made homemade chicken nuggets and potato wedges. I cut up 3 chicken breasts that I got on sale awhile back for .99 a pound, into chunks. Then the boys dipped them into a mixture of egg and milk and rolled in crushed cornflakes, flour, and spices and put them on a baking sheet. Meanwhile, L. and I tossed red potato wedges with some oil and spices and baked them. We served this with vegetables (carrot sticks and cucumbers) and dip!

It was a finger food meal and brought back memories of my first cooking experiences, making oven fried chicken and “boats” as we called them! I took a picture of their happy faces (which someday will try to post) and was glad that we did it, but I was so tired! They were happy even to wash up the bowls and try to sweep up spilled flour.

I have been discouraged about parenting, cleaning and many different things and today I got a phone call where a few cheerful words just brought new strength to keep going even though it is hard. Never underestimate what a couple words of encouragement can do for someone… It may seem like nothing for you, but it means alot to someone who is discouraged!

Today we learned about Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. We are going to keep studying and learn about other people like Sojurner Truth, Abraham Lincoln, Harriet Tubman, and others all month even though Black History month is next month, MLKJr. birthday is next week. We made a time line of his life and played a game about segegation. We divided into 2 groups for our craft and one group got regular scissors and nice crayons, while the other group got broken crayons and tiny scissors that did not work well. It brought the point across of how that felt like. In the end the group with the nice crayons decided to be kind and help the group with the not nice stuff and we talked about what happened when that happened back then.

I was surprised about how short of a time ago it was that there are laws about voting, water fountains, bathrooms etc. I was reading a book about the women who had to work inthe factories during World War 2 and some of the things they faced and this was one of them. I tend to think of that as not very long ago as my grandpa fought in WW2. Anyhow, it was interesting! Oh, we found out too that MLK had been arrested for drunk driving once also! You can learn all kinds of things sometimes!!