Piney Woods Homeschool

This recipe is an amalgam of several from different sources.  When I make it, I am not precise about most of the quantities and amounts. ==================================== Ingredients: 2 Tbl butter, melted 1/4 Cup water, warmed 6 8-ounce boneless pork chops (I usually put about 4 in because of our family size) 1 medium onions, cut in rings 1/4 Cup brown sugar, not packed ketchup Garlic Powder (equal To 1 Clove garlic) Paprika, To Taste 2 To 3 Tablespoons Lemon Juice 1/4 Teaspoon Marjoram Salt, To Taste Pepper, To Taste ==================================== To freeze, place the pork chops into a freezer bag.  Add all the ingredients except the melted butter and the warm water.   On the freezer bag, write the following: Add 2 tablespoons melted butter and 1/4 cup warm water.  Cook 3-4 hours on low.  You only have to thaw this just enough to get it out of the bag before putting it in the slow cooker.  If it’s still frozen, ...

Reading lessons should not begin until the child knows his letters thoroughly and ideally until some beginning word building work has been done: Volume 1, p. 202 Word-making. The first exercises in the making of words will be just as pleasant to the child. Exercises treated as a game, which yet teach the powers of the letters, will be better to begin with than actual sentences. Take up two of his letters and make the syllable ‘at’: tell him it is the word we use when we say ‘at home,’ ‘at school.’ Then put b to ‘at’– bat; c to ‘at’–cat; fat, hat, mat, sat, rat, and so on. First, let the child say what the word becomes with each initial consonant to ‘at,’ in order to make hat, pat, cat. Let the syllables all be actual words which he knows. Set the words in a row, and let him read them off. Do this with the short vowel sounds in combination with each of the consonants, and the child will learn to read off dozens of words of three letters, and will master the short-vowe...

From CM Volume 1, Preface: This adjunct of the will is familiar to us as diversion, whose office is to ease us for a time from will effort, that we may ‘will’ again with added power. The use of suggestion–even self suggestion–as an aid to the will, is to be deprecated, as tending to stultify and stereotype character. It would seem that spontaneity is a condition of development, and that human nature needs the discipline of failure as well as of success. Diversion, giving ourselves something else to think about for a little while, is ok. Suggestion, which according to Wikipedia means to "guide the thoughts, feelings or behaviour", either of oneself or of someone else, is not ok. Trying to manipulate the child, or get the child to manipulate himself, out of the undesired behavior into the desired behavior is not recommended because it does nothing to train and strengthen the will. Instead, we must work with diversion, which requires us to be creative in coming u...

Here are some thoughts I had while reading. But we have no unifying principle, no definite aim; in fact, no philosophy of education. As a stream can rise no higher than its source, so it is probable that no educational effort can rise above the whole scheme of thought which gives it birth; and perhaps this is the reason of all the fallings from us, vanishings, failures, and disappointments which mark our educational records. This is true of many homeschoolers as well. I try to emphasize to new homeschoolers the importance of settling on a philosophy first, before choosing a curriculum and starting school, but they usually look at me like I’m crazy. But your philosophy determines the assumptions from which you are working and the priorities you will have. Different assumptions and priorities will lead to different choices about what to do, when, and how. And the path indicated by the law is continuous and progressive, with no transition stage from the cradle to the gra...