First of all I want to say I am absolutely excited to open up the latest @ocd challenge and to see @homeedders has been selected in this week's community awareness drive. Special shout out to everyone in it homeedders was a life saver for me throughout lockdown.
I was new to homeschooling and was thrown into it due to COVID and had no idea what I was doing. I read mainstream blogs but I didn't find them all to helpful. Having homeeddere on Hive has provided me a way to engage, learn and share my own thoughts but my biggest help has been learning through reading others posts.
My wife wears the pants at home she's a successful nurse and an elected official who is well received in our community helping drive social and economic change in one of the state's most disadvantaged communities. She's been kicking arse for quite sometime and she's awesome. As a result I'm often the one tasked with trying to raise our children. My wife always helps and does alot too.
A core focus point I am trying to hone in on with the kiddos is life skills. I find cooking is a great base for anyone, if you have the ability to feed yourself you will go far. Home cooking goes beyond just simply putting together some ingredients there are a whole heap of things that have to occur that require a significant amount of steps before you get to this point.
For example; Money. You need to know your budget prior to going out and purchasing all the food and ingredients in the shop. You need to plan what expenses you have for this pay period, out going costs such as bills and fees as well as savings.
Then you also need to plan what dietary requirements you need for the week, this will ensure you can plan and purchase healthy nutritionous foods and not processed high in fat and sugar meats and foods. Fresh is always best!
You're also developing motor skills and using tools to make your dinner as well as chemistry. The bonding of proteins and fats enhance or detract from meals and if done right you can have wonderful home cooked meals for a qtr of the price you would normally buy.
Looking for specials and what is on discount also increases what you can purchase. I find these basic skills to be imported. I can not express the amount of times I have had friends come over for dinner and the comment on how expensive my food bill must be. This could not be further from the truth. My food expenses are probably less than there's and I not only feed myself, my children and partner but my mother inlaw and we also often have guests over. There is always food left over to take to work the next day.
I even make my own baby food to not only save money but to associate lil blokes taste pallet to what our family eats. I am also teaching lil miss this skill.
We even make our own tomatoe paste for pasta and pizza's which is something I really enjoy doing with the kids, these skills are priceless and I remember for years people telling me why do I bother because you can just go to the shop. COVID19 and lockdowns proved how valuable these life skills were. In Australia pasta, pasta sauce and alot of different foods were stripped from supermarket shelves. None of this impacted us as we made everything from scratch even pasta!
So, something I have done all my life and have been teaching my children turned out to be one of the best skills highly needed, I even had friends and neighbours asking for a bottle of pasta sauce or some home made pasta as they had nothing to eat.
Lil Miss was always happy to oblige and provide a friend with some home-made food.
Due to the cost of living in Australia which is quite high compared to other nations, getting your weekly shopping list organised and planned can help set the foundations for a great fiscal future.
I hope you all really enjoy you're time here in Homeedders it is a wonderful community with awesome members who are always ready to help and you will learn so much.
Thank you OCD for promoting this wonderful community ❤