Piney Woods Homeschool

When we started Ambleside’s Year 1 last June (2007), I had to figure out how to take the weekly assignment list and turn it into a usable schedule.  I had seen other schedules, but none seemed to fit our way of doing things.  DD needs to feel some ownership in this process, some control over parts of it, in order not to be rebellious, so a micro-schedule with each reading assigned to a specific day would not work well for us.  Also, we had a new baby coming and two other little ones with their own needs and activities, plus the usual interruptions that life brings along.  A very specific schedule would be hard for us to stick to. I knew we would school in the afternoon during naptime when we could be relatively interruption-free and could count on being at home regularly.  That gave us approximately 2 hours each day, although once we got in the swing of things we didn’t need anywhere near that much time. In the end, I took the Ambleside wee...

This recipe is from Pillsbury.  Because of the lentils, this is another good cholesterol lowering recipe and a great way to sneak dried beans into your diet. 3 Cup Cooked Ham, Diced 2 Cup Celery, Chopped 2 Cup Carrot, Chopped 2 Cup Lentils 1 Large Onion, Chopped 2 Can Chicken Broth 4 Cup Water In 3-1/2 to 4 quart slow cooker, combine all ingredients; mix well. Cover; cook on low setting for 7 to 9 hours.

Here’s another great cholesterol-lowering recipe.  Salmon is good for cholesterol levels, and I modify this recipe to use oat bran instead of flour.  The recipe as written uses red wine, which would also be good for cholesterol, but I sub more chicken broth for the wine since we don’t like the taste.  This recipe comes from How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman . 2 Tablespoon Butter 1 Tablespoon Olive Oil 4 Ea Salmon Fillets (about 6 Ounces Each), Skinned, With Pin Bones Removed Flour (For Dredging) Salt Black Pepper, Fresh Ground 1 Medium Onion, Diced 1 Teaspoon Garlic, Minced 1 Medium Carrot, Peeled And Roughly Chopped 1/2 Cup Fresh Parsley, Minced 1/4 Cup Broth (Fish, Chicken, Or Vegetable) 1 Cup Red Wine (Dry, Full-Bodied), Optional Heat a large skillet, preferably non-stick, over medium-high heat for 2 or 3 minutes.  Add the butter and oil, turn the heat to high, and wait for the butter foam to subside.  Dredge each of the fillets in...

This is a popular recipe, available all over the internet.  Mine is slightly modified, though.  When dh had high cholesterol, the doctor recommended a particular cholesterol-lowering plan that relied primarily on increasing soluble fiber intake to help lower cholesterol.  So these muffins use oat bran instead of flour, olive oil instead of butter, brown sugar or molasses instead of white sugar–I think those are the only changes.  He was supposed to eat three muffins a day in order to get the right amount of oat bran. 2 Cups Oat Bran                                                   1/2 Cup Raisins                   ...

The early years with Charlotte Mason require a bit of a different focus than most of us are used to. Instead of academic goals, we focus on the "many relations waiting to be established; relations with places far and near, with the wide universe, with the past of history, with the social economics of the present, with the earth they live on and all its delightful progeny of beast and bird, plant and tree; with the sweet human affinities they entered into at birth; with their own country and other countries, and, above all, with that most sublime of human relationships–their relation to God." (Charlotte Mason’s Original Homeschooling Series, Volume 6, pp. 72-73) The rest will come! This may even sound like a huge task, but in reality we accomplish this through simple activities and interactions–no scope and sequence is necessary. The most important Year 0 goal, according to Charlotte Mason, is time spent outside. ". . .[T]he chief function of the child–his business in the...

This has been a wild month!  First we had a hen, unexpectedly, and then we had two hens, also unexpectedly.  Then we had a hen and a rooster, and then we just had a rooster.  It seemed unkind, and also useless, to keep the rooster by himself, so we’ve been looking for a couple of hens.  Hens are hard to come by these days, though.  The only place we could find that had hens, rather than just very young chicks, was about an hour away.  As it happens, Papaw found them not long after we did.  He agreed to pick up the hens from the poultry farm and deliver them to our house on Thursday evening, so once again we acquired new birds unexpectedly (since all this was worked out during the day Thursday).  DH called the farmer and placed his order for what we wanted.  The man only had two laying hens for sale at all, but he had lots of younger hens to choose from. Papaw arrived with five birds in a large dog carrier:  two young h...

The kids are crushed.  Natasha died early this afternoon.  Since we got her, she’s had a couple of spells where she seemed quite ill, but she’d always recovered.  This afternoon it seemed clear she was not going to get over it this time.  We’re not sure exactly what was wrong, but we think she might have had complications from some injuries she received when a dog attacked her awhile ago, before she came to live with us. We can’t leave Alexander by himself, so we need to get a couple of hens now.  Hopefully that won’t turn out to be a difficult project, and hopefully we’ll be able to introduce the hens without a lot of conflict.