Keeper of the Home – Page 69 – Pollywog's Place Blog

All-In-One Homeschool Portfolio Notebook Printable- Updates and Time Saving Hacks

Published on April 24, 2024September 5, 2026 by Susie @ Pollywog's Place Blog11 Comments

I recently shared about the way I planned out our new homeschool year and included some FREE printables to go along with it… they have made life a little neater around here! Now I will share about the Homeschool Notebooks. We did use a similar system many years ago but I couldn’t find the post where I had shared them before so I decided to make a new post with some updates and some new printables.

You do not need to print these out but you can use them as a template for putting together your own notebooks or you can print them out and use them in binders… whatever works for you. We have done both of these in the past and I will try to post some pics of what our current notebooks look like once we get them put together.

Try color-coding your kids to make homeschool life a little simpler!

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Get rid of the socks… not just the stinky ones!

Published on April 22, 2024March 29, 2024 by Susie @ Pollywog's Place Blog1 Comment

Another quick tip for helping to control that Laundry Monster and keep things neat and tidy in the kids’ rooms is to get rid of the socks! I’m not talking about just the stinky ones, the mismatched ones, or the ones that have seen better days and I’m not saying to get rid of all of them.

You may want to consider getting rid of some of them though as it has been found that some people will tend to procrastinate on doing their laundry until they are out of socks and/or undies. If you only have a set amount of socks then you would, in theory, need to wash clothes more often. If you have more socks than clothes then you may, in theory, also buy more outfits which results in more clothes that have to be dealt with.

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2024 – 2025 Homeschool Planning

Published on April 19, 2024August 14, 2026 by Susie @ Pollywog's Place Blog3 Comments

There are so many ways to go about planning out a school year but this is the easiest way I have found for me to do this as we don’t use any one site or curriculum. I am usually gathering materials and ideas throughout the year so I try to jot them down or put them in a special place until I am ready to sit down and plan out what we would like to use.

This year I used the ‘Arts of a Balanced Home Education’ List from Brightly Beaming Resources as a guide for helping me to plan… it went along well with a lot of the Charlotte Mason ideas I have been trying to implement in our routines.

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Eclipse Gardening 2024 – Picture Overload!!!

Published on April 17, 2024April 11, 2024 by Susie @ Pollywog's Place Blog2 Comments

We had a great time watching the Solar Eclipse even though we didn’t experience totality. The kiddos did their Morning Circle Routine and then watched a couple of lessons about the eclipse. Then they had a quick lunch as they were so excited to get out and watch for the eclipse.

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Keto Fried Chicken

Published on April 15, 2024April 17, 2024 by Susie @ Pollywog's Place Blog3 Comments

One of Mr. Awesome’s most talked about memories of his Granny is about her Fried Chicken and he loves it when his mom brings over Fried Chicken… on the other hand, I can take it or leave it. When we started eating healthier the idea of giving up his favorite fried foods was almost a deal-breaker until I came up with a recipe that didn’t require a ton of special ingredients and that tasted almost as good as the ‘REAL’ thing… if it’s got Mr. Awesome’s stamp of approval then you know it’s got to be GOOD!

We like to use the chicken with the skin on but this would also work with boneless skinless chicken or chicken tenders… just adjust the cooking time. This recipe is similar to the recipe that we use for the Fried Gizzards so you might want to check those out too! While I’m not particularly crazy about Fried Chicken, I can eat my weight in Fried Gizzards… no jokes!

These are the measurements that I use but sometimes I do have to make extra breading mixture up. That’s ok though because I just add a little to the bowl for the chicken and then store any leftover breading or pork rinds in the freezer which makes it easy to fry up a quick snack when we want one later on. If you don’t care for pork rinds you can just omit this step in the recipe.

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