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The one thing I despeartely need is some cafeteria ladies to take care of making lunch. Ahhh... what luxury... Anyway, I find that if I plan out my menu for the week I'm not so frantic when it is 4pm and I have NO idea what in the world to fix for dinner. I really hate that feeling. This form helps me get my act together.Before I discovered Handy Shopper, I developed this spreadsheet because I was tired of making three laps around Kroger while I remembered all the items I'd forgotten. It is laid out according to my Kroger but should give you an idea of a format that might work for you. I've posted it as both a pdf file and an excel file. There are few things that I can definitavely point to and say, "This changed my routine". But the free Handy Shopper program did indeed change my grocery experience. Santa brought me an I-Pac for Christmas and I downloaded Handy Shopper soon afterwards. Now I always have my shopping list. I can shuffle it according to store or type of item. I can enter the sale prices so that I'll always know if a price is truly a bargain. I LOVE this program! It takes a bit of time to program it for your needs but is worth it. 
I got tired of getting up every two minutes to get my kids a snack. I wanted a way to encourage healthy choices and turn the responsibility of making their own snacks over to them. At 4 years old I made our job/snack chart. There are two tickets for the different food groups. The rule is, you want a snack? Do you have a ticket? As long as they have a ticket and dinner is at least one hour away, they can have a snack. Here are the varieties of snacks according to type. (I keep these in individual sized baggies in our snack drawer)Grain: Graham Crackers, Cheese-its, Goldfish, wheat thins, animal crackers, rice cakes, vanilla wafers, etc.Fruit: Applesauce cups, grapes, strawberries, banana, etc.Dairy: String Cheese, yogurt, pudding, milk, etc.
I rotate their chores weekly and add to them as they get older. Even young children can use a Swifter or sort the clean forks and spoons. At first it will mean more work for you as you train them but pretty soon they'll be cleaning the potties! That's worth the extra effort, right? These Job Tickets go into the Snack/Job chart which hangs on the frig. A picture of which you can see.I used a piece of poster board and glued envelopes on it to hold their tickets. Jobs get rotated Sunday morning. The morning chores are Pet Assistant, Dishwasher (empty dishwasher from last night), Duster. The other chores are completed after dinner. Each child has 3 chores tickets to answer for each day. When they are done they put them into the "Done It" envelope.
This is one of those books I open three times a year. In the back she has a list of all the chores/skills a child should be capable of according to age. It gives me great ideas on what life skills I shouldn't forget to teach them and what chores are age appropriate. Click on the picture to read more.This book also lists bible verses that go along with each character trait. 
This book is a collectioin of wonderful stories and poems which focus on good manners and character traits. I used this wonderful book as a spine to my original character education curriculum which I'll be posting on this site soon. 
Traditional schools have cafeteria ladies, janitors and teacher's aides (not to mention the principle's office). You always knew being a mom would mean you'd have to wear many hats but when you homeschool suddenly you start wishing for a staff to help! Menu planning, chore charts and delegation will make your homeschool function more easily. Look for ways to empower your kids in taking charge of their home as a partner with you. Consider it their "Home Ec" curriculum! Have you thought of other ways to do this? E-mail me and I'll post the responses here. 
