Back to School Savings
Tuition fees and books cost increased, so we tried to save as much as we could on other school expenses by recycling and reusing. I'm thankful also that both of my gradeschoolers were given P4,000 discount on tuition fees for being honor students.I wrote a post before on How to Save on School Expenses. For this school year, these are what we did:
- We bought their books and notebooks (recycled some old ones also) and covered them with plastic.
How to Recycle Notebooks?
Do you know how? Here are two ways how you can do it:For spiral notebooks:
For non-spiral notebooks, you can do something like this. I really haven't done this. But what I do is just neatly cut the pages with writing on them (if only a few pages have writings on them). Maybe I'd do it this way this time (I still have a week to do it).
And for those pages that you are about to throw away, you can still use them to make handmade paper. Kristel made some this summer again. Check out this tutorial of how my kids made handmade paper.
- We did not buy their school supplies kit in school. We just got the list and bought most of the supplies. We reused some supplies from last year like the plastic envelopes, water color, oil pastel, scissor and shoe cover.
- We washed their old school bags and lunch bags. They're still good to use for another school year. I just mended some tear on the straps.
- I did some repairs on their school uniforms - adjusted the lengths of pants/skirts, waistline of skirts and sew the name patches on their polo.
In a week or two, life will be busier for the kids again as they go back to school, while the house will be quieter for me during the day, so I can take some more online jobs again.
Looking Back the Past Two Months
I could say that we were not able to do everything we wanted to do this summer, but that's how life is. We wanted to go to Baguio, but it did not push through. Then we hoped that we could go to Bicol, but it did not push through again. The only out-of-town getaway we had was our outing to Southwinds Resort, Pansol Laguna.Nevertheless, we still spent a lot of time together. We went to the mall on some days. The girls were able to spend more time with their cousins. The boys joined the barangay's basketball tournament and had more playing days with their friends. And we were able to stay at their lolo's house for a few days as well.
It's not all relaxation and just doing nothing type of vacation. I could say that it had been productive, too.
- I tutored a 5-year old girl and her 9-year old sister for a few weeks to learn to read and math (multiplication), respectively.
- All of the family helped re-paint a little property that we rented out.
- I was able to spend some days doing vacation Bible school with children living in Quezon Avenue. My 2 boys were my assistants. I'm happy and thankful they joined me when I went there.
- The kids helped around the house doing chores. Summer is the perfect time to train them to do chores.
Before, they just do the washing of dishes, cleaning, hanging wet laundry and folding dry laundry. This time, I assigned them on days when I taught them how to cook.
They were all happy to do it, but I was surprised that the 2 boys were really glad to do the cooking when they were on schedule. I taught them to cook adobo, sinigang, nilaga, tinola and breaded chicken fillet. This is a life skill that they need to learn so they could be more independent when they go on their own.
Angel, my 8-year old (and her sister also) loved baking brownies. She can actually make better-tasting brownies than me. I'm so happy that she can make it on her own from measuring the ingredients to mixing them. I just help her put the baking pan with batter in the oven.
I wish I could have accomplished more this summer vacation. I wanted to do some sewing projects and I wanted to do a major home decluttering. Hopefully, I can do more of that while the kids' school progresses.
How about you? How productive or fun was your summer vacation?
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