By Lynn, on January 2nd, 2011%
It’s been awhile, but while I’m working on lesson plans, it’s time to post what we did for the past few weeks. Math’s getting better. 
Week #12
11/1 – 11/5/2010
Watched The Donuts on YouTube to go with Homer Price
Math Sheet
Math Challenge 11, 12
Listen to CD for Violin
Practice Violin
Cursive week 9 #1-5
Copywork #15-18
Spelling Week 9 #1-5
HBJ Language Arts pp 176-177
Experiment Observation (From Science Activity Bags)
Take care of bunnies
Homer Price chapter 4
Work on United States worksheets all week. Fill in as much as you can by memory every day until all 50 are learned
Watched The Case of the Cosmic Comic on YouTube for Homer Price
Week 13
11/8 – 11/12/2010
Work all week on learning location of all US states
Prepare for Clown of God family event with FIAR group
FIAR Co-op. Lessons: warming up for acting, enunciation, Latin, making your own instruments, brief history of instruments
Take care of bunnies
Read The Clown of God and talk about it for family event
11/13 Annual Family Event
Copywork 19
Cursive week 10 #1-5
Week 14
11/15 – 11/19/2010
Homer Price read chapter 5
Place items on timelines
Watch Medieval Lives, The Peasant, The Monk, and The Damsel
Drew picture of peasant
Drew picture of medieval church alter
Violin Practice
Spelling Review weeks 1-10
Watch PBS The Medici Empire
US States Review
Take care of bunnies
Compost experiement
Violin lesson
Cursive week 11 #1-5
Week 15
11/22 – 11/24/2010
Saxon test
Music lesson at home and then special class with music teacher: Bach
Place Bach on timeline
Violin Practive
Violin lesson
Take care of bunnies
Listening to Harry Potter on Tape
Reading This Land is Your Land
Spelling week #11 begin
Cursive week 12 #1-5
Thanksgiving Break
Week #16
11/29 – 12/3/2010
practice violin
Started Apologia Biology
12/2 Service Project Co-op — making fleece blankets
Homer Price read chapter 6
Saxon 49
Violin lesson
Complete compost experiment
State study
12/3 Help at Farmer’s Market Christmas Show
US State study
Week #17
12/6 – 12/10/2010
Math worksheets
Work on FIAR ornaments
Practice violin
Homer Price Co-op
Week #18
12/13 – 12/17/2010
Michaela recovering from stomach flu
Read Eric Saves The Schoolhouse from “The Road to Safety”
Read The Guard Who Was Late and answer questions, from “The Road to Safety” (a fun old reader)
Holiday fun and light work
12/17 last day before Christmas break!
Christmas Break
By Lynn, on December 7th, 2010%
I was prompted by an e-mail — a very nice e-mail, to get my Hard Times Unit Study polished up. It’s been a long time since we used it and I never finished posting it all.
http://www.thehealthyhomeschool.com/hardtimes.html
Do you have any favorite Charles Dickens resources you’d like to share?
By Lynn, on November 7th, 2010%
I was recently at a Mom’s Meeting where everyone was invited to bring and share their favorite books. Here are just some of the books shared there.
S is for Story
Anne of Green Gables
Katie and the Mustang
I Love Dirt
History Kid Heroes
5 Conversations You Must Have With Your Daughter
Beyond Survival
The Out-Of-Sync Child Has Fun
The Spell of Words
Charlotte Mason Companion
YouAre Special
Oxford’s A Guide to the Elements
My Many Colored Days (and you thought you’d see all of Dr. Suess’s books!)
Barn Dance
Redeeming Love
I just love the meetings that we are able to have as homeschooling moms. We do a lot of lauging and sharing, besides the talking we do about the actual topic we’re there for.
Regarding the books, many of these I do not have and have never read. I’m looking forward to looking into some of these more closely.
By Lynn, on November 1st, 2010%
If I were a fairy, I’d live in a mushroom grove. I’d hide beneath the moon-like tops and count the grooves beneath. I’d dance around in my pointed pink shoes, twirling my rose petal dress to as full as it would go. My best fairy friends would share the mushroom grove with me and we’d have fresh mushroom soup for supper.
My mushrooms make me happy. There’s a little fairy ring of them on my desk even now. Do mushrooms with faces make you happy?
Today has been a rather good day, considering yesterday. And yesterday was mostly fine, being a beautiful Sunday, and truly all Sundays are special, but I was a bit down last night. I can’t say why except that maybe things I don’t like to do are constantly pushing things I do like to do to the bottom of my list.
I woke up this morning though and dug around in my mind for the face labeled “happy” and I got up and started the day. A phone conversation with my mother and a cup of hot coffee helped me put one foot in front of the other without growling at anyone. (I don’t really growl, but sometimes I feel like it.)
I looked over the last three weeks of school lessons and wondered where to start. With John’s broken arm, and then surgery, and all the appointments and playing catch-up, I have not really logged all that we’ve done in our homeschool. We also didn’t even get to all the things I wanted to do. I debated posting those weeks here, but the truth is the truth, so I’m gonna post them because I want to do that all year.
I started our school day feeling a bit deflated. Then Michaela started her lesson from Math Challenge, pages 11 and 12. She was really excited about math! After having read about mathematics changing astronomy last week, today she applied the formula for determing circumference to the earth and the sun. Then as a challenge question, she was asked to determine the circumference of travel if a spaceship was traveling so many miles above the earth. After some thought, she figured out that you’d need to add the spaceship’s altitude x2 to the diameter and then multiply by pi. She got the answer!
In some ways we are behind in math, but we are behind in a book that was a grade ahead to start with. Does that make sense? So we are just not as far ahead as I wanted us to be right now. Also, I am enjoying this interlude of just talking about applied math, real life math, and looking for ways to love math. After all, if she’s going to be a veterinarian, she needs to love math, and science!
As the day wore on, I actually enjoyed my work because I’m doing something new that I totally love! It calls for new forms and a different thought process. (Sometimes you just need change.) I enjoyed watching Michaela move through her day, being thankful for all she has at home right now: her friendships, her independence, her interest in Little House on the Prairie, her pets, and my just being able to put my arms around her and have a talk at any time of the day!
I’ll quit rambling and post the lessons. Don’t laugh. But also don’t cry. Please.
Well, here goes, almost literally, nothing.
Week 9
( 10/11 – 10/15/2010)
Read chapters 1 and 2 of Homer Price
Cursive week 8 #3, 4, 5
Spent a night in the ER.
Finished spider poster.
Worked on Sarah Awswell blog.
American Revolution coloring sheets with historical information (from Dover).
Learned about bones, x-rays, anesthesia and hospital germs by default.
Violin Practice.
Violin Lesson.
Week 10
(10/18 – 10/22/2010)
Had yet another orthopedic clinic visit.
Spent a full day attending brother John’s surgery appointment, then I spent the evening settling us in and filling prescriptions. (All of this medical stuff was a learning experience in and of itself!)
Fraction worksheet.
Visited the state fair and milked a cow (and ate, rode rides and spent too much money).
More American Revolution coloring sheets.
Wrote about the fair.
Week 11
10/25 – 10/29/2010
Read pages 5-10 of Math Challenge.
Set up science experiment about composting.
Worked on blog storyline with friend.
Homer Price read chapter #3
On 10/28/2010, BYFIAR co-op for Homer Price chapters 3 and 4. Topics were ways to help others, market economy, supply and demand, mystery yarn, and then we had a pot luck including fried chicken! It was a lot of fun!
Read about prewriting and wrote a story from a “cluster plan.”
Read about puffball mushrooms.
Practice violin.
Violin lesson.
So there you have it.
By Lynn, on October 26th, 2010%
How I love finding something exciting for school! You know how we struggle in math around here. It’s not that we cannot do math. It’s just that we tend to be artsy and spontaneous and math seems like a big scary monster that one must approach with black robes and thick glasses and a very serious demeanor. We hide from it. Put it off. Worry about it. Wonder about the magic of math that seems hidden behind a veil that we can’t seem to get through.
I sat on the floor in Barnes and Noble over the weekend, looking at math workbooks. I’d pick one up, look through it, read a bit and not feel very happy about it. Over and over again. I knew that when the right book was in my hand, I’d just know.
It turned out to be Challenge Math by Edward Zaccaro. (You can search for the book at Barnes and Noble — my affiliate link, in case you’re interested.) 
We are still doing our Saxon 7/6, but I wanted math to feel more familiar, more fun. This book is the type of book that you can read, much of it with little side notes and a couple of little cartoony figures that talk to each other throughout the book. The book tells you something, then asks you a challenging question, and then tells you how to get to the answer.
We read the first few pages together, Michaela and I, yesterday, and we learned about how math changed astronomy. How trigonometry was used to calculate the distance from the earth to the sun. It made trigonometry not seem so scary.
Anyway, it’s just one of the tools we’ll be using to make math a better subject this year. This book feels Charlotte Mason-y to me in that we are talking so much about math and talking about how to use it in real life to solve problems.
By the way, the box you see is Michaela’s portable sort-of desk, made from a sturdy grape box picked up free at Sam’s, with another sturdy little box hot-glued inside that holds pencils and a large eraser and a pencil sharpener. Fun!
The other new tool is this amazing xylophone I found at Goodwill for 20.00! It went into our little music nook right away, and it has been played almost constantly by someone in the house since it came home! It is so much fun. You know, it was one of those instruments when I was in school that you barely got to touch, but always wanted to be let loose on!
No problem. I now have my own. And mallets? So what that it came with zero mallets. We made some with tinker toys and they work great!
Enjoy this day! Look for the fun in math and in music!
By Lynn, on October 25th, 2010%
I took a walk this morning before work started. It was middle of the morning, comfortable, overcast. I always, always enjoy a walk through the neighborhood, looking at the houses and the gardens, especially this time of year when the leaves are blowing around.
Then, in what should my wandering eyes appear, but a new graveyard, with, gasp…
a vacancy!!! Thank goodness it’s only pretend! At first, though, it looked quite real.
I saw a beautiful mushroom on my walk.
I crossed through the woods to walk by the railroad tracks, where I picked up a basketful of pinecones for some autumn-y front porch decorations. (Nothing more beautiful than real nature to decorate with.)
I found a treasure trove of small rosehips to pick for winter tea and potpourri.
Now it’s pouring down rain and I am snug inside, working and drinking hot tea. Michaela is playing the xylophone. We started in a new math book this morning (in addition to what she’s already doing.) We are enjoying Homer Price. We have a new science experiement started.
Enjoy this day.
By Lynn, on October 23rd, 2010%
Do you remember being young enough to do this?
Do you remember being young enough to WANT to do this?
We visited the North Carolina State Fair this week. It was fun. Personally, I enjoy the exhibits and the food. The children enjoy the rides and the food, in that order.
It’s a work day today. The farmer’s market this morning was perfect. The weather was cool, but it was bright and sunny! We sipped on hot mochas and talked. And talked. And talked.
Enjoy this day.
By Lynn, on October 14th, 2010%
So, yeah, I’m running on fumes today. I was going to be so good and post last night, but at about 5:30 p.m. my third son was on a bike that decided to lose the chain and send him flying onto his wrist. Sometimes you wonder, “Is it broken?” But when the arm is deformed, you know it. It’s broken.
It was broken. Very broken. I’ve always wondered what an “obvious deformity” looked like after typing it all these years, but I can honestly say I did not want to see it on any of my children. Actually, I didn’t want to see it IRL on anyone, but I now know what it looks like.
It’s been a wet, rainy morning, which suits the mood around here. We got home at about 3:00 this morning, slips of paper in hand to remind us to schedule upcoming appointments. He may need surgery. He broke his radius and his ulna (both bones in the forearm), and even after heavy sedation and lots of pulling to try and set the bones, the bones don’t want to line up just right. They keep slipping.
It could have been worse. He could have landed on his head.
I do have updates I wanted to share, but it was only fitting to start with what’s been most pressing here for the last 24 hours. I have a picture of his arm on my phone, but I have no idea how to get it to here. If and when I figure that out I’ll be sure and share it (with a warning for the squeamish, of course).
Update#1 would be that The Adventures of Sarah Awswell has a bit of a change in its URL.
So here’s Quinn Ferrell popping in to remind you to update your link (hopefully this will be the only time you have to do this) so that you can follow the stories of these Orchard Elementary School kids. The link above is the current one.
Now, let’s talk about school.
Homeschool, that is. I owe you weeks worth of honest updates about what we have actually gotten done. Here goes.
Week 6
09/20 – 09/24/10
Read Betsy Ross chapters 13-16
Math – still reviewing (more to come on that)
Copywork #11, 12, 13
Spelling week 5 — #3, 4, 5
Spelling – Write all words from week 1-5
Cursive week 5 and week 6 work.
Alexander Hamilton and John Hancock bio/coloring pages to go on time line.
Watched a movie about Anne Frank (Again. A personal interest of Michaela’s.)
Daily violin practice
Violin lesson
09/23 — fieldtrip to Joel Lane House
Music lesson about Haydn and Bach to go with Revolutionary time period
State information page about Pennsylvania
Week 7*
09/27 – 10/1/2010
Read Betsy Ross chapter 17
Betsy Ross co-op on 09/30
Spelling week 6
Cursive week 7
Math — set up math center to work from.
Library trip
*I co-taught this week’s co-op and it was all about medicine in the 1700s. Our week was much taken up with that, so not much appears on the lesson plan sheet, but I feel that much was learned!
Daily violin practice
Violin lesson
Independent reading
Week 8
10/4 – 10/8/10
NC Museum of History 10/7 — Mt. Vernon exhibit
Math — Saxon 7/6 lesson 43
Created science poster using books from our home library and pictures from our large garden spider (Nature Study)
Learned about classification
Planned how our math center will work
Spelling week 7
Cursive week 8
Created creative writing blog with friend
Wrote her own “declaration”
Independent reading
So there you go. You see our weak spot, right? Does it just jump right out at you? Math. Why? Because I love to be involved in what she does with math. I want to know she got the lesson. On my work days it’s a challenge, so sometimes we dawdle around and don’t do a formal lesson. We do, however, have a white board that we go to to solve problem, review concepts and explain how real life math problems would be solved. In the past couple of weeks we have created a math center — a plastic bin with drawers full of manipulatives, books and worksheets so that some kind of math will get done every day, even if we do not do a formal lesson from the Saxon book, although it’s in the plans to do a Saxon lesson each day as well. I feel we’ve just been extremely slow getting going this year.
Annie continues to be my best friend while I work. Michaela snapped this picture of Annie curled up behind me while I was typing away. She does not look like she’d take too kindly to be picked up from here, does she? You’re right! She growls if you try to move her from this little spot. I do love that spoiled rotten, problem of a dog, Fatso Beagle Annie.
I’m off to get a nap now. I’m hoping to catch up on comments soon. I feel that life is in good order, even in spite of the broken arm situation. I’m thankful for what we are able to do.
By Lynn, on October 11th, 2010%
Nothing like a good friend and lots of ideas for an excellent writing prompt. Michaela has this amazing friend (as a plus she is grammar-savvy) and the two of them have put together the cutest blog.
The Adventures of Sarah Awswell
I think you’ll like it, so plan to follow.
By Lynn, on October 7th, 2010%
Three little males, varied shades of brown, searching intently with their large dark eyes for anything green.
I love feeding them greens. Something to love. Charlotte Mason would approve.
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About Lynn 
Approaching-50 mother of four. Thrifter. Content with lots of clothes bought for very little money. Loves retro. (That could be styles from the 40s and 50s. And sometimes stuff even older than that. And sometimes stuff from all time, all mixed up together!) Bluffs about decluttering but secretly loves STUFF. Goes through stages. Has standing and staring spells before rearranging the entire home. Just because. Tune in each day to see what new outfit comes home from G.W. Boutique next. (That's Goodwill, by the way.) Oh, and she owns a spoiled beagle named Annie. And this blog.
Grab A Button <div align="center"><a href="http://www.amothersjournal.com" title="A Mother's Journal ~ A Bit of Birdsong"><img src="http://www.innatelygray.com/images/abitofbirdsong_120_200.jpg" alt="A Mother's Journal ~ A Bit of Birdsong" style="border:none;" /></a></div> The Players
Lil Ol' Me
Son Daniel, 23
Son, Big Joe, 21
Son, John, 17
Daughter, Michaela, 13
Annie Fatso Beagle
My Symphony
To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never. In a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common. This is to be my symphony.
William Henry Channing
1810-1884
What You Do Sow a thought, reap an action.
Sow an action, reap a habit.
Sow a habit, reap a character.
Sow a character, reap a destiny.
Contact Me 
I would  for you to leave a comment, but you can also e-mail me at lynn AT thehealthyhomeschool.com
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