What’s Wrong With a High Sugar Diet?

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What's Wrong With a High Sugar Diet?

As someone who has an ongoing battle with hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) and candida (an overgrowth of the candida fungus in the digestive system), I have a strong opinion about sugar. I have seen so many health benefits from eliminating sugar as much as possible from my diet, and while I understand that it affects some more than others, cutting back on sugar can only have a beneficial effect on health. My husband often teases me as I scour food labels, but the fact of the matter is, when I eat well I feel great and when I don’t I feel absolutely terrible. Most of the time when I’m feeling terrible it is because I’ve allowed too much refined sugar to creep back into my [...] Read more »

Thoughts on how to Teach Reading to my Kids

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Thoughts on how to Teach Reading to my Kids

Before I’ve even started homeschooling, I’ve completely changed my thinking about the best way to move forward in teaching literacy skills to my daughters. Somehow I think I’m going to learn as much or more through homeschooling as the littles. I knew we would start working on letter recognition this year, and in formulating my curriculum plan for age three, I realized that would include learning letter sounds. I figured we would start with A and work our way through to Z, and I thought we’d start with uppercase letters and move onto lowercase letters later. I wasn’t so sure how to go about teaching letter sounds, so I started doing some online research. What I’ve found out is that there are a number of [...] Read more »

Preschool Homeschool: Plan for a Free DIY Curriculum, Age 3

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Preschool Homeschool Curriculum - Mud Hut Mama

I’ve been spending a lot of time trying to figure out the best way to get started with our preschool homeschool – age three to four. I’ve been reading preschool blogs, homeschool blogs, and packaged curriculum websites. I’ve talked with my mother who worked in a preschool for twenty years, my cousin who owns a preschool, and my sister-in-law who has a child in preschool. Based on this, I’ve complied the following list of skills and activities that will be the basis of our free preschool homeschool curriculum. It might look like a long list at first but there is a lot of overlap and things that we already do naturally (like reading, counting, and nature walks) or Boo does completely on her own (imaginative [...] Read more »

Joyce Banda, The First Woman President in Southern Africa

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Joyce Banda, First Woman President in Southern Africa

Malawi’s president, Bingu wa Mutharika, died of a heart attack on Thursday and his vice-president, Joyce Hilda Mtila Banda, was sworn in yesterday. This makes Banda the first woman president in southern Africa. The only other African country that has had a woman president is Liberia. It will be interesting to see how it all pans out. Early in Mutharika’s presidential term, he kicked Banda out of the party because of disagreements they were having and so she started her own party and became one of his strongest critics. Mutharika tried to relieve Banda from her post as vice-president but was unsuccessful. In light of this, there has been talk that Mutharika’s party would try to put Mutharika’s brother in office instead of Banda. I [...] Read more »

Great Idea for Decorating Brown Easter Eggs

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Great Idea for Decorating Brown Easter Eggs

In Malawi we can only buy eggs with brown shells and that is never a problem except at this time of year when I want to decorate eggs for Easter. I loved dyeing eggs when I was growing up and I want to continue the tradition with my children. There was something exciting about turning food into art and it was satisfying to watch the white canvas of an egg be transformed into brilliantly colored designs and patterns.     I attempted to recreate this for Boo’s first Easter with a traditional vinegar and food color dye. I was dismally disappointed. The colors came out really murky on the brown shell, the eggs were colored but there was nothing brilliant about them. Last year was [...] Read more »

How to Start Homeschooling Your Child: Purchased Curriculum or DIY

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How to Start Homeschooling your Child

My oldest daughter will be three in April and, since we live in the middle of a wildlife reserve, homeschooling has been on my mind.  In fact it has become a bit of an obsession as I search website after website and try to sort out what makes sense for her and for us as a family.  When we made this lifestyle choice we knew that homeschooling would become a part of it but then it was way off in the future and now I’m realizing that if we were still in the States Boo might be starting preschool soon. I say might because of course preschool is optional in the States, so I am viewing age three and four as guinea pig years.  I’m [...] Read more »