Piney Woods Homeschool

This pattern is majorly estimated, so don’t try this if you need specific, exact instructions! I just jotted some notes for the last few hats I made; this is the result. I probably almost always size my hats too small, so unless you crochet very loosely you may want to make yours bigger than specified. This pattern uses: * Worsted weight yarn * Size I crochet hook (The same principles will work for other yarn weights. For baby weight yarn, use a smaller hook and keep increasing for more rounds. For a heavier yarn, of course, use a larger hook and make fewer increasing rounds.) Chain 2. In second chain from hook, make 6 single crochets. (If you crochet over the tail, you can pull it tight at the end of the round to close up the hole.) Use a stitch marker to mark the last stitch of the round so you don’t lose your place. Move the stitch marker to the end of each round as you complete it. Make 2 single crochets in each stitch around. (12 sc) *Make 1 single crochet i...

Many years ago dh and I started observing Advent as a season of preparing for Christmas, much as Lent is a season of preparing for Easter. Every day during Advent and the twelve days of Christmas (spanning the period from Christmas to Epiphany), I read from Watch for the Light, a book of readings by various authors. Yesterday’s reading from Brennan Manning was really long, but one passage particularly struck me: The shipwrecked at the stable are captivated by joy and wonder. They have found the treasure in the field of Bethlehem. The pearl of great price is wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. Everything else is cheap, fake, painted fragments of glass. The question for all of us is what we will really aim at next Christmas. If all we are going for is a placid decency, routine prayer, well-behaved worship and comfortable compassion, then we have effectively parted company with the shipwrecked and have no fellowship with the pearl-finder. I wonder, i...

Over the last 40 or 50 years, the evangelical Christian community in America has gradually but steadily formed a separate sub-culture with its own institutions, events, services, and entertainment. I call this the Christian ghetto, a world-within-the-world where you can live your life without ever having a meaningful encounter with people outside your self-selected group. For those of us who homeschool or use a private Christian school, this isn’t just possible, it’s quite likely–about the only way to become more isolated among Christians would be to join a commune. What affect has this had on the vibrancy of the church in America and its impact on the larger culture? In his book Grace-Based Parenting , Tim Kimmel writes, "What’s ironic is that the ‘secularization’ of the non-Christian community has risen proportionately with our withdrawal from it. The more options the Christian community created for itself, the more our general cuture moved toward secular thinkin...

This year I wanted to move forward with Spanish more aggressively, and I wanted a program with a strong audio component.  In fact, since I already had a couple of books with which I was very happy, I really wanted a strictly audio program.  The first one we tried was Pimsleur ; after listening to the free sample lesson I bought the eight-lesson mini-package so we could try it out.  My third grader has been using this set for about five weeks now, on her own.  She does ten minutes of a lesson three nights a week, listening to the CD and speaking when prompted.  The lessons move slowly with lots of repetition and using few verb forms.  The speakers pronounce the words clearly and new words are pronounced one syllable at a time, starting from the final syllable and moving backwards through the word.  I would very much like to have access to a transcript of the lessons so that I could know what words and phrases have been covered without liste...

I have never come up with a name for our homeschool because nothing has ever seemed suitable and the need hasn’t really been pressing.  I have never made an effort toward creating a motto or vision statement or anything like that either.  And I’ve never been good at coming up with a "theme scripture".  Last night, though, as I was deciding on verses for my oldest to work on memorizing, I was out at the SimplyCharlotteMason website and saw Ephesians 2:8-10 listed as a verse to go along with the "I am" portion of Charlotte Mason’s school motto:  "I am, I can, I ought, I will."  Part of that passage, verse 10, is a verse that forms the basis for my training of my children and has for a long time.   (I think I actually originally began using that verse with the kids after finding a reference to it in a book called Parenting with Scripture .) "For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared ...

When my dh and I decided to homeschool, back when our oldest was 2-1/2 or 3 years old, our primary motivation was academics.  We decided we could cover more material better at home than the school could.  This conclusion was prompted by my reading the Little House series of books again and noticing how much more Laura knew than I did, even though I had been a top student through 13 years of public school and four years of college plus a couple more years getting a masters degree, and Laura didn’t even go to school regularly. Now that we’ve been formally homeschooling for three years, I have different reasons for homeschooling.  Primarily it’s about ideas.  As Charlotte Mason says, ideas are the mind’s food.  Ideas, not information, are the critical component of any education.  Each book or other resource we select must contain no ideas that are not true, noble, right, pure, lovely, and admirable.  Each year, as I read the materials my ch...

I just finshed reading Hints on Child Training by Clay Trumbull, the great-grandfather of Elisabeth Elliot.  I wanted to evaluate how closely his recommendations meshed with those of Charlotte Mason.  In many respects, the two authors come from the same perspective.  Both encourage us to respect the personhood of the child, to train rather than break the will, and to value the role of imagination in the child’s life, just to mention a few places where the two are in agreement. However, there are significant areas of disagreement as well.  Trumbull mentions habit formation but never focuses on this key Mason element.  Trumbull also assumes a level of parental control that differs from Mason–he suggests that playmates need to be carefully screened for suitability, where Mason recommends gently training the child to choose suitable playmates for himself so as not to push him toward unsuitable ones merely by forbidding them.  Similarly, Trumbu...