Learning on a budget

Last week we had fun with the book Dear Mr. Blueberry by Simon James. This book is a series of letters between a little girl and her teacher discussing whales. It's super cute and was already a loved and regularly looked at book.
The first day, I read the book and focused on the letter w (for whale). I gave Wyatt (3) his own letter W book. For our letter craft, we made the whales shown to side. The white base is regular printer paper. I cut out the simple whale shape from blue...

My little Wyatt (3) has decided he wants to do school stuff too, so I'm working on a literature and alphabet unit to do with the entire family, but is primarily for him. For the first week, we read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr and John Archambault...

Lunch is one of those meals that I tend to struggle with. I spend most of my effort on breakfast and dinner, so lunch leaves me wondering why my family needs to eat so often and if it is really my turn to feed them again.
When my kids were smaller, I usually had leftovers from dinner that we could eat the next day and then we'd fill in the gaps with sandwiches, so I didn't have to think about it much. These days, I still have leftovers, but not enough to feed everyone...

My news feed has exploded with pictures of children and teens finishing their school year. All those pictures have me thinking about our first school year and the not just the lessons my kids have learned, but the ones I've learned as well.
These are the big lessons I've learned from our first nine months as a homeschool family....