Jessica Inman

Homeschooling a reluctant student (How to have a better week)

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica Inman) — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 00:26:00 +0000

Need some help with your reluctant student? You know the kind, the one who is not a self-starter. Stares at their work. Doesn’t ever seem to get anything done. At the end of the week, you are grounding them for not getting all their schoolwork finished.

Here are a few strategies for how to have a better week, or even a better tomorrow, as the case may be. Many of these strategies are directly from the Charlotte Mason Method. I have another article on this topic here.

Look at the workload

Is your son or daughter studying 6 or 7 subjects each day? Are they spending a long time on one subject? Your student may be burned out. For a young child, a lesson should not take more than 20 minutes. For an older student, you should be aiming for 30-45 minutes spent on each subject. Set a timer so they know they are through when the timer sounds.

Look at the actual subject and see if you’ve assigned too much. If they are doing Saxon Math, assign 15 problems instead of 30, that means they will do all the odd problems and leave the even ones undone.

Alternate Days for different subjects

Don’t do every subject every day. Alternate days for different subjects. Math and Literature, and Science are Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Spanish, History, and Geography are Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Yes, they can learn enough in that time. Look at your timetable and have an extra subject added on various days to even out the workload. Think of it as having 4 subjects per day. Add an extra Spanish on a Monday, and an extra Math on a Tuesday, etc. Check out the timetables on the Charlotte Mason Poetry website for more ideas.

An Early Start

For young students, getting an early start on schoolwork can take advantage of when the mind is most alert and active. You may have fewer attitude problems by starting at seven thirty or eight o'clock instead of waiting until 9 in the morning, and if you're waiting until the afternoon, you are really hurting yourself.

Give your student more autonomy

Let your child pick some of the subjects they will be studying. Do they want to study South American history? Zoology? Which foreign language do they want? Don’t just force Spanish because you think that it will be more useful. Encourage curiosity. Learning any language will help the mind develop and make learning future foreign languages easier for your student.

Your child will be much happier focusing on a subject they want rather than just going with what you think is best for their future resume. There are plenty of students out there who studied Spanish and never used it.

Check out the environment

Look around and make sure your student’s workspace is a good learning environment. Do you have a tablet, laptop, phone, or Xbox sitting around close by distracting your student? Sure, some of their school work might be on that tablet or laptop, but they shouldn’t have it all the time. Clean their workspace or even send them outside to study on a patio. Let them be distracted by nature, and allow them to doodle and write and draw what they see.

Be flexible

One of the best things about homeschooling is the ability to be flexible. A young child will study better in the morning. They can get everything done in a couple of hours. A teenager may need to work in the afternoon instead. That weekend lock-in at the youth group or the late-night concert or trip messed up their sleep for a few days. Now they are groggy and can’t focus until later in the day. Shifting some work into the afternoon is fine. Don’t be a slave to your schedule.

Give plenty of breaks throughout the day. It is OK if takes more time than you think it should as long as the work gets done. Give your child and yourself some grace. Take a summer break or take quarterly breaks. Just because you are homeschooling does not mean you need to work year-round.

Mix things up

Make things fun with educational games. The younger your child is the more likely a curriculum will have this built into the material, but even as an older student, this can be very helpful. The Good and the Beautiful does have some of this in their curriculums even for older students.

Enroll your child in an Enrichment program

Have your student take a few classes from someone else to give them more accountability and a chance to make friends. I took a speech class and a few literature classes and loved them as a high school student. Some of my siblings took some science and Spanish classes. It helped keep them on track.

Finally, always give yourself and your child the rest you need, and the grace you need. Not every day or even every season is going to be easy, but it can be very rewarding.

Lavender smells better than rotten meat

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica Inman) — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 00:17:00 +0000

Earlier this week I went to Walmart and bought among other things, some ground turkey which promptly rolled under the backseat in the van to be left undisturbed for four days. Since I am not going much of anywhere nowadays I didn't even check until I had to go out again.

It was raining and I had to buckle three kids into their car seats, and we were all flummoxed by the smell that hit our noses as soon as I opened the van doors.

"What is that smell?" my four-year-old asked. "It is like bad eggs." I wondered briefly when he had smelled "bad eggs", but mainly I was looking for the source of the odor too. Aiden, however, persisted in his commentary on the bad smell. "I don't like smells!"

By this point, I had located the offending smell and so had Aiden. "It is sausage!" he said.

I didn't bother to tell him that it was ground turkey. I simply dumped it in our outside trashcan before attempting air freshener spray in the van. Then I phoned my husband about the situation, bemoaning the fact that I could not roll down the van windows because it was raining.

After that, I sprinkled baking soda and left a bowl of vinegar and essential oils in the backseat of the van in hopes of helping remove the odor, and I called a couple of my sisters for advice.

Melissa told me coffee grounds could work. Alas, coffee hater, that I am I had no coffee on hand to help get rid of the smell. Still, it did quit raining and I rolled down the windows to let out the odor. The smell was so bad that it wafted out into the carport just from having the windows partially open.

Bethany told me bleach was the only thing that removed the odor of rotting meat from her basement when her deep freezer quit working. I didn't use bleach for fear of ruining the carpet.

After searching in my cabinets I did find some lavender-scented febreze that my mom left when she came over to help clean the house. I don't use that stuff because I don't like the smell of lavender. However, I do think lavender smells nicer than rotten meat. So I sprayed the back seat down with it.

I know this won't win any marketing campaigns. "Customer says Lavender smells better than rotten meat!" I hoped it would remove the odor but by the next morning, the odor of rotten ground turkey still met me when I opened the doors.

I worked to clean out the van, but I had too much help. Cleaning out a vehicle with a 4-year-old, an almost 3-year-old, and a baby is not advised.

"No, don't pick that up it belongs in the trash!"

"Yes, trash is stinky," Aiden said.

"And poop is stinky too," Seraphina added.

I had to wait until Daniel got home to get real help cleaning out the van. He used the LA’s Awesome Cleaner that he borrowed from his mom to get clean it up. This stuff may not have ammonia or bleach in it, but it does have a strong chemical smell to it. My husband should have worn his Covid mask when he was using it.

Daniel said it was pretty difficult to breathe while cleaning with it. He listened to his Pandora station, and they started playing The Chemical Worker's Song by Great Big Sea, while he was using the LA Awesome Cleaner. Such great timing Pandora. At least the van got cleaned. Now we had two competing odor's a cleaner and rotten meat.

In the end, I finally got some coffee grounds and put them in the back of the van. Now low and behold the van smelled like a coffee shop instead of rotting meat and LA’s Awesome Cleaner.

Now if you ever need this information I made a list for you.

Things that did not work to remove rotting meat odor:

Vinegar
Baking Soda
essential oils
Lavender scented Febreze

What did work:
LA’s Awesome Cleaner (available at the Dollar Tree)
and Coffee Grounds (Thanks Melissa!)

Here is the song Daniel was listening too while cleaning the van.

Chicken Wellness Soup (Gluten-Free Noodles)

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica Inman) — Sat, 14 Jun 2025 03:49:00 +0000

I came up with this recipe as a way to help protect against illness. I wanted something that included the good enzymes from chicken and also had the powerful antibiotic properties of garlic and ginger.

I used apple cider vinegar with the mother in it because that helps break down the enzymes in the chicken bones. I do the same thing with my Chicken and Dumplings recipe, but lime can be substituted for apple cider vinegar in this recipe.

I used rice noodles, carrots, and radishes because they went well with the ginger and are full of antioxidants. All in all, this is a nourishing soup.

Things to note:

It is better to add the garlic and ginger at the last moment right before serving because this will keep the garlic from overcooking.

You want the alison properties in the garlic to be present because that is what has the antibiotic properties. These properties decrease after about five minutes of cooking time.

Ingredients:

5 lbs of chicken thighs

8 cups of water

1 teaspoon of kosher salt plus more to taste

1 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar or lime juice

1 or 2 serrano peppers, deseeded and chopped

4 carrots, sliced

1 cup of radishes, sliced

1 tablespoon garlic, chopped

1 tablespoon ginger, chopped

1 tablespoon of honey

1 tablespoon cilantro, chopped

7 oz. rice noodles

Directions

Put chicken in your instant pot or pressure cooker and fill water to the max fill line (about 8 cups of water). Add salt and apple cider vinegar. Put lid on and lock in place. Set your instant pot to the pressure cooker setting cook chicken for 25 minutes. If using an actual pressure cooker it should only take about 20 minutes once it comes up to pressure.

Once cooked remove chicken from pot and remove the chicken from the bones. Add the carrots, rice noodles, more salt, and serrano peppers, and allow to cook until carrots and noodles are tender. Add chicken back into soup, and add a tablespoon of honey. Add radishes and cook a little longer, and ginger, garlic, and cilantro last. Taste to see if more salt is needed. Serve immediately.

Chicken and Dumplings

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica Inman) — Sat, 14 Jun 2025 03:48:00 +0000

This is my version of my Mamaw Shaw's recipe for flat or rolled chicken and dumplings. She never wrote her recipe down, so her children and grandchildren and great grandchildren had to watch what she did in order to copy it. No one can make it quite as good as she did. When company was over and she felt like there was not enough to go around, she'd poach eggs in the broth too.

Being a woman who lived through the great depression, she never used milk or butter in her dumplings as this was too expensive. I don't miss the milk either. I once made them with milk after watching an Alton Brown special on Chicken and Dumplings, but it didn't taste any better than the ones I grew up making so I returned to my original recipe. If it ain't broke don't fix it.

Serves 6 Calories 400 per serving

Prep time 15 minutes Cook time 45 minutes

INGREDIENTS

For the broth

4 to 5 lbs of whole chicken thighs
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
7 to 9 cups of water
1 tablespoon of apple cider vinegar optional
Black pepper to taste

For the dumplings

2 cups of unbleached all purpose flour
1 teaspoons kosher salt
6 tablespoons of lard or shortening or chicken fat
1/2 to 3/4 cup of hot water

INSTRUCTIONS

Sift the flour, and 1 1/2 teaspoons of the salt together in a medium mixing bowl. Mix the lard or shortening into the flour mixture with your fingers or a fork until it resembles coarse crumbs. I use home rendered chicken fat but store-bought shortening is faster. Add the hot water and stir together, kneading a little bit until you have a pliable ball of dough, but do not overwork.
Divide the dough into 4 equal pieces. Roll out each piece of dough, using a floured rolling pin, to a sheet about 1/16-inch thick, on a floured piece of waxed paper or parchment paper.
Put the chicken thighs, water, and 2 teaspoons of salt, and 1 tablespoon of vinegar in a pot to boil for about an hour. My Mamaw Shaw did not add vinegar to my knowledge. I add it because it is supposed to help extract more nutrients and enzymes from the chicken.
Alternatively, put chicken thighs, water, vinegar, and salt in an 8-quart instant pot. Do not fill above the cooker's "maximum fill" line, or two-thirds full. Cover and lock the lid. Set timer to 25 minutes. You can use the quick-release according to the manufacturer's instructions.
Remove the chicken thighs from the broth and set aside to cool. The meat should be tender and falling away from the bone. Once the thighs are cool enough to handle, pull the meat from the bones in small pieces, cover, and set aside. Throw away the skin and bones.
Cut the dough into 1/2-inch wide strips, and drop into the boiling broth. When all the dough has been used, gently stir and submerge dumplings in broth. Cook the dumplings until they are cooked through, but not falling apart, about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally so nothing sticks to the bottom. Then add the meat and freshly ground black pepper. Turn off the heat or turn your instant pot to keep warm so the dumplings won't sink to the bottom and burn. Serve hot. Makes 6-8 servings.

Blueberry Lemon Lactation Muffins

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica Inman) — Sat, 14 Jun 2025 03:43:00 +0000

I was nursing my first child and pregnant with my second when I first bought some brewer's yeast and started putting in baked goods to help build up my milk supply. Turns out that even brewer's yeast didn't help with lactation when my milk supply was dwindling because of pregnancy hormones. Whoops!

I've used it since then and have found it to be helpful for lactation, but it is not the only helpful ingredient for breastfeeding. Stuff like oatmeal, quinoa, flaxseed, and nut butters can all help increase milk supply. So if you don't have brewer's yeast on hand, you can still make this recipe and help boost your supply.

Tips:

Treat brewer's yeast like flour. If you are adding it to a recipe, decrease the flour by a few tablespoons so your baked goods are not too dry.
Go by taste. Brewer's yeast is a little strong, so I put less brewer's yeast in my baked goods, but if you don't mind, the flavor add more.
This recipe calls for flaxseed but no eggs. I have a child allergic to eggs so I leave them out. Flaxseed can be used instead of an egg, but if you are not allergic to eggs, you can add an egg here. Just keep the flax in too because it helps give your milk supply a boost.

Prep Time: 20 minutes Cook Time 20

Makes: 12 136 Calories each

INGREDIENTS

Dry Ingredients

1 cup rolled oats, ground up
⅔ cup white whole wheat flour
2 to 4 tbsp brewer's yeast
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp kosher salt

Wet Ingredients

zest of a whole lemon
1 5 oz lemon yogurt or vanilla yogurt alternative
½ cup unsweetened applesauce
¼ cup canola oil, or melted margarine
⅓ cup sugar or honey
1 tbsp ground flaxseed mixed with 3 tbsp water
1 cup fresh blueberries

INSTRUCTIONS

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grind Old-fashioned oats in a food processor or clean coffee grinder to make your oat flour. Then add to a bowl with the rest of the dry ingredients, and whisk to combine.
Grind whole flaxseeds in the coffee grinder and add it to the bowl with the wet ingredients. Stir all ingredients together and spoon into muffin tins lined with parchment paper muffin liners.
Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
You could at this point add a lemon glaze made with powdered sugar and some of the juice from the lemon that was zested for the muffins, but this is optional.

The Easy Way to do Charlotte Mason Narration

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica Inman) — Sat, 14 Jun 2025 03:36:00 +0000

Narration is reading a passage and then immediately recalling what you read and saying it in your own words. So your student is paraphrasing what they just read without the benefit of reading it twice. This helps them with focus, recall, and even critical thinking skills.

I've seen a few bloggers complain about how much their child hates narration and how difficult it is to get through a lesson. I believe they are doing it the hard way. Reading should be fun. Telling someone else about a story you just read should also be fun.

When we read to our kids and then ask them to tell us what we just read, the child then thinks, "what's the point?" "You know what we just read. You were the one reading it."

Take out a sheet of paper and tell them that you need to write it down for their file. Then have them paraphrase a little at a time for you until they have it all down.

In the early years don't do narration a lot. Definitely not every day. You just want to introduce them to the concept, and teach them how it's done.

Then when they are good readers and reading things for themselves, you can do it every time they read something. Just ask, "What did you read?" Tell me about it." You can do this while prepping supper and folding laundry just like my mom did with me. It wasn't hard, it was just as natural as having a conversation.

If your child is the sort that summarizes things too quickly and sums up the whole book in a few sentences, then ask questions to draw them out.

"Then what happened?"
"What happened next?"
"I think you skipped something. What happened at this point?"
"When did this happen?"
"How did it happen?"
"Who had the hardest time?" (A good one for history narration, or literature.)
"What was your favorite part?"
"What was your least favorite part?"

Drawing out that quiet person in your life is a good life skill for you too. If you can do this with narration, you can do this in other areas of their life. You can help them open up about their thoughts and feelings when life gets hard, as long as you do it with kindness and grace.

The purpose in a man’s heart is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out. Proverbs 20:5

The bottom line when it comes to narration is to make it fun and natural. Don't require too much of your young learners. Just work on it enough, in the beginning, to help them learn the basics. Then, when they are older and reading for themselves, they will know how to narrate.

A Beginners guide to Charlotte Mason

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica Inman) — Sat, 14 Jun 2025 03:30:00 +0000

I learned of the Charlotte Mason Homeschooling method through my mom. I was homeschooled through high school, and my mom used the Charlotte Mason method.

When I started homeschooling my children, I decided I needed to study Charlotte Mason for myself and I found I love the teachings of Charlotte Mason. Looking back, I can see how they shaped so much of my life and worldview.

Here I will share some basic principles of Charlotte Mason's method of education. I will brief how they differ from classical education and modern education practices.

Born on January 1st, 1842, Charlotte Mason was an educator in England. She developed her philosophy of education while teaching at Davidson School in Worthing, England. She later wrote many books on the subject of educating children, and co-founded the Parents Education Union, later called the Parents National Education Union (PNEU) to help parents teach their children at home.

The Child is a Person

I will try to keep direct quotes to a minimum, but this section is vital to everything that Charlotte Mason believed, so I will quote directly here.

Charlotte taught what she felt was obvious that "the child is a person with all the possibilities and powers included in personality." She advocated a liberal education, as opposed to a utilitarian education.

In this way, she believed the same thing that many classical educators believe. Only teaching subjects that will prepare a child for work as an adult harms the child in the long run. We need varied instruction for our children to help them develop their minds. "The child's mind is no mere sac to hold ideas. . . but is a spiritual organism with an appetite for all knowledge."

She goes on to further add, "But, believing that the normal child has powers of mind that fit him to deal with all knowledge proper to him, we must give him a full and generous curriculum; taking care, only, that the knowledge offered to him is vital—that is, that facts are not presented without their informing ideas."

An emphasis on Living books (and ideas)

She believed in letting a child read good books instead of just excerpts of books in a textbook. They should read the whole work themselves or have it read to them by a parent. While reading to their child, a parent could omit unsuitable content. This differs from the classical method that has a grammar period where a child reads selections from textbooks.

Nature Study

Charlotte believed a child should spend a lot of time outside exploring nature. This living atmosphere helps them thrive. As they grow older, they can start a formal nature study with a nature journal. Still, little children should be encouraged to explore and learn from the living world and living ideas around them.

Narration

Students will recall what they read immediately after reading it. They can tell a parent all about the content. This will help them pay attention to detail and think about what they read. The classical approach requires a lot of memorization instead of narration. Mason did believe in memorizing scripture, songs, and poetry, but nothing else.

No Evening School Work (or homework)

The typical school day was to start after breakfast and end right before lunch. Most children are at their best during these hours. Each subject ends before the child is tired. Afternoons were for handiwork and other occupations, like music lessons, swimming lessons, etc.

She did not believe in doing school work in the evenings because the student could be overstimulated and not rest as well at night. It is best to start the day refreshed instead of overworked.

Alternating Days for different subjects

Monday, Wednesday, Friday, a child studies the Old Testament. On Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday they study the New Testament. Arithmetic on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, history on alternate days, etc. This way you can cover a lot of subjects in less time. The Charlotte Mason Poetry website has a timetable from the PEU that gives more examples.

Focusing on Surroundings, and Habits

A good education begins with a good environment. Think about a child's surroundings and how that can help with exploration and learning. Don't isolate a child in an environment designed just for his or her age, but value a natural home atmosphere. Let your little one live freely in proper conditions.

Developing good habits helps with the discipline of education. Getting in that daily routine of reading, and spending time outside, and working and playing. These things help establish a good mind.

A review of The Writing Road to Reading by Romalda Spalding

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica Inman) — Sun, 01 Jun 2025 02:42:00 +0000

The Writing Road to Reading was written by Romalda Spalding to help parents teach their dyslexic children how to read.

Spalding studied Samuel Orton’s techniques. He is the neuropsychologist and pathologist who studied children with language processing difficulties. He worked with Anna Gillingham to develop a method for teaching dyslexic children to read and write.

Spaldings book The Writing Road to Reading is based on his research and techniques.

The Good things about this book:

The book promotes multi-sensory methods and a better breakdown of the English language. In it, you will find why writing letters can also help with learning letters and learning reading. It gives a breakdown of all 70 sounds in the English language, that are derived from 26 letters.

There is information for teaching right-handed and left-handed children how to write. It advocates using the alphabet alone to teach reading, instead of using the alphabet with pictures. Illustrations can confuse children with learning disorders. Instead, Spalding believes they should be exposed to only the letter and its sound/sounds.

This book is a good reference for anyone teaching a child with dyslexia or any other learning disorder how to read, but it is not a good program for teaching your child how to read. I first read it when I was tutoring dyslexic children right after I graduated from college. I also used the letters and sounds when I taught ESL/ELL.

The Bad things about this book (and a good alternative):

I found that it is not accessible for a parent teaching a child to read. There are no lessons, no tips for daily work. No help at all is given in the actual practice of daily education. It is also extremely boring for the child. Children need to be engaged when learning anything new but particularly something as important as reading.

If you are a homeschooler or other teacher looking for a hands-on, user-friendly phonics curriculum, The Writing Road to Reading is not it, but it might still be useful as a reference in your library.

The curriculum I’d recommend is The Scaredy Cat Reading System by Joyce Herzog. She has a simple and fun approach to teaching children to read. She also gives rules and helpful tips for the different sounds that the letters make setting a child up for success as a reader, writer, and speller of the English language.

Instant Pot Jambalaya

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica Inman) — Sat, 31 May 2025 03:42:00 +0000

When I make jambalaya in the oven, it takes anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour to cook, and that does not include prep time. Now that I use my Instant Pot it takes 10 minutes for white rice or 20 for brown. This is so good when it comes to evening grumpies with my kids waiting for their supper.

I did find a skillet jambalaya recipe from America's Test Kitchen that I liked, but I ended up making a few changes and finally adapted it for the instant pot, and this little beauty was born.

I remember making a casserole dish of jambalaya and baking it in the oven, and waiting for it to cook all while a storm raged outside. My husband, the meteorologist, wanted to go storm chasing and there I was babysitting our jambalaya.

In the end, I snatched the casserole dish out of the oven and crawled under our dining room table to eat jambalaya out of a teacup while waiting for a tornado to pass overhead. The lengthy cooking time on that jambalaya probably prevented us (me!) from chasing a tornado, a real blessing. Still eating supper sooner can be a blessing too.

A few tips:

Use frozen, peeled, and deveined shrimp to save money and time. I thaw it out a few hours in advance for a quick prep time.
Saute the shrimp and remove it before proceeding, letting it cook in the instant pot for the full time will lead to rubbery shrimp.
Add any leftover chicken or pork to this meal. It is a good catch-all for leftover meat.
Use an extra cup of broth if cooking brown rice.

Serves 6 388 Calories per Serving

INGREDIENTS

1 medium onion chopped
1 bell pepper chopped
4 medium cloves of garlic minced
1/2 lb andouille sausage or kielbasa sausage halved lengthwise and sliced
1 tin smoked oysters
1 lb shrimp peeled and deveined
1 ½ tablespoons light olive oil (or oil of choice)
1 ½ cups white or brown rice. If you use brown rice this will increase your cooking time from 10 minutes to 20 minutes.
8 oz bottle clam juice
1 cup low sodium chicken broth
1 14.5 oz can diced tomatoes with juice
1 tablespoon fresh thyme or 1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon salt

INSTRUCTIONS

Season shrimp with salt and sauté shrimp until pink and remove from pressure cooker or instant pot. Set aside in a bowl to add back into the jambalaya at the end of the cooking process.
Saute onion, bell pepper, garlic, and andouille sausage in oil, then add rice, and saute some more, add oysters, tomatoes, clam juice, chicken broth, salt, and thyme to the instant pot or pressure cooker. Put the lid onto the instant pot and set your instant pot to pressure for 10 minutes if you are using white rice, and 20 minutes if you are using brown rice.
If you are using a pressure cooker simply place on the lid and allow your food to cook on high until your pressure cooker is up to temperature and sealed, then reduce or temp to low and allow it to continue to cook for about 8 minutes for white rice and 18 minutes for brown rice. Remove from heat and allow to cool so you can remove the lid.
Add cooked shrimp back into the pot once your food is done and give it a stir. Serve hot with coleslaw or a salad on the side.