Change

I've moved! and changed our name. Here is the new blog address.

www.justusjacksons.blogspot.com

No promises as to how much blogging time I'll have. But I'll give it another shot! :)

What We are Studying

If I have time later, I might go into a little more detail about how I came to my decision about curriculum, but for now I'll give a little explanation as to what we are using this year. We decided to go with Heart of Dakota Publishing this year. You can read more about them on their website, but I'll share a few of the high points for us. First of all, it is a Christ-centered curriculum, which I love. They don't actually write their own material, but instead select high quality books and streamline and schedule lesson plans for those books. The books they selected are many that we are already using or have considered using, and in some areas, they leave the option open for you to make your own choices.

Heart of Dakota carries levels for each age group, and while for this program it isn't ideal to combine different ages, for our family it works! I have the girls combined into a level called Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory. This level covers Language Arts, Math, History, Science, Bible, Geography, Poetry, Art and Reading. For Kaylie, we are just using the teacher's guide as written. For Abby, I have her doing math, grammar, spelling and reading on a 3rd grade level as well as some additional independent work.

One of the best things about this program for me is how streamlined it is. For instance, part of your language lesson might be incorporated into your history lesson one day...killing two birds with one stone. The lessons are short, doable, including hands on activities using things you'd find around the house. It takes minimal planning from me. It is very thorough and fun at the same time! Best of all, the Bible is an integral part of the whole thing!

In a later post, I'll give more details on specific books we are using and some of the projects we are working on. But until then I wanted to give a huge plug for this curriculum. We are finishing up the second full week of lessons and so far, so good!

School is in Session!

Well, the past few months since I was last blogging regularly have passed in a blur for me. For various reasons, life got really intense for us! But right now it has been super hot outside, and we have tended to stay put in the air conditioning. I decided that now would be a great time to get started in school! That way, we could take a big break when the weather got nicer and we felt like spending more time outside! So even though we finished our last school year in June, we started back on Monday of this week!

For awhile, I think this will morph into a homeschooling blog because it helps me to organize my thoughts about what all we are implementing and keep track of what all we are accomplishing.

There have been many changes to the Jackson Academy this year, but the first one I'll mention is our new curriculum!

It will take a longer post to explain the reasons why we have switched, so I will save that for another time. But we are really excited about it! For now, let me just say our first week is going well! a few bugs to work out, but that's normal around here! I'll be back later to continue sharing about our new year!

The reason I haven't been able to blog as much lately...............

I figure that's a pretty good reason. Hope to be back soon.

Easter

Well.....

I didn't mean to be gone so long. I can't explain why exactly....I just didn't blog for awhile. Despite my natural wellness post, we got pretty sick starting in February, and it took us quite awhile to bounce back. After that, I just got out of the habit.

Anyway, hopefully I will get back into the habit again. We've had birthdays, homeschooling changes, crazy Josh and Annabeth happenings, Easter.....all sorts of stuff. So I'll try to get caught up little by little on all the riveting details of our life....ha! But no promises! Life gets away from me often these days!

It goes without saying that we are praying for our community right now after all of the devastation of the past few days and the long road ahead to recover.

Big Hit Recipe: Crock-pot Ziti

A "big hit" recipe at our house has 3 things going for it:

1. It's yummy

2. It's healthy

3. It's easy!

"Baked Ziti" in the crock-pot is one of those recipes at our house. Now to be honest, Jeff and I are the biggest fans. Josh is a close second, and the girls are coming around. But seriously, it's one of the best things I've ever eaten.

First, you need a crock-pot. LOVE my crock-pot...well, crock-pots...I have two!

Then the following ingredients:

Uncooked, whole wheat ziti pasta (or similar pasta)

Jar of spaghetti sauce

Cottage cheese

Mozarella cheese

I didn't include amounts because that depends on how saucy or cheesy you like your pasta dishes to be. All you do is layer the ingredients from the bottom up in the following order:

1/4 of the sauce

Single layer of pasta

cottage cheese

mozarella cheese

Then repeat the layers and end with one more layer of pasta topped with sauce and mozarella. You can decide if you want to add ground beef to the sauce, which we have done in the past. And if you mix the layers up a little according to your preference, I don't think it will make much difference.

Then, turn the crock-pot on low and cook for 3 1/2 to 4 hours. You really can't go wrong!

We're having it again tonight after having it a few days ago! I like mine sprinkled generously with parmesan cheese.

So there you go....one of our family's Big Hit Recipes.