The Head Girl's Room

Hello,

My name is Lynne, and I'm Head Girl at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Some of you may not know that the Head Girl and Head Boy at Hogwarts get to have their own dormitory rooms with a small private bath as one of our perks.  After a long day of keeping first years out of trouble and reporting Peeves to Headmistress McGonagall, it's nice to be able to relax in my own space.

The decor changes based on the house of each Head Boy and Head Girl.  The prior Head Girl was in Slytherin House, but the castle had no trouble changing over the room once I received my letter with my Head Girl badge.  I will give you a peek into my room, so that you will know what to expect if you are chosen as Head Girl someday.

As you know, the Fat Lady's portrait guards the entrance to the Gryffindor Tower.  She also keeps a small portrait of herself on my door, which she likes to visit occasionally.  Professor Flitwick applied a charm to it so that even if she's not in her portrait, she will hear the password when I pronounce it at the door to my room, and she will let me in.

I truly love the Gryffindor common room, so I'm glad that the castle gave me some of the same tapestries for my room. My room has the same cozy feel as curling up in a soft armchair in front of the fire in the common room.

My family is an old wizarding family, and we are direct descendants of Godric Gryffindor, so it was no surprise that I was placed in Gryffindor, even though my mother was a Hufflepuff, and my father attended Durmstrang.  Most of my family members have been sorted into Gryffindor, thus our family crest contains elements which demonstrate that.

I have a portrait of Headmaster Dumbledore in my room, too.  He was a great man, and his time at Hogwarts was probably the most important period of history for the school.  He is mostly quiet, but he does sometimes keep me awake at night with his mumbling to himself.

You may also have heard of a legendary House Elf named Dobby.  He helped the Auror Harry Potter escape from a cruel Death Eater and lost his life in the battle.  I admire this elf, and I'm a member of S. P. E. W., so I have a memorial art piece to him in my room as well.  Dobby was lovingly handcrafted by Apryl Hopkirk, whose mother Mafalda works for the Ministry. If you've wondered, sculptures can move about like portraits do, such as turning their heads and moving their arms and legs, but they can't leave the spot into which they were placed.  My Dobby sculpture likes to make me laugh in the mornings with his silly poses.

I have quite a bit of stuff in my room, such as the Skiving Snack Box and the Decoy Detonator I confiscated from a rowdy fourth year last week.  At least I got to him before Filch could.

Here's my pet brown owl, Merriweather.  He's taking a nap.

I have potions ingredients, as well.

Some school books, and an extra quill and ink.

My Hogwarts trunk.

My nightstand.

I hang my robes and scarf on the back of my door for easy access.  You never know when a late night emergency may have the professors calling for assistance.

I'm an avid Quidditch fan.  I support our Gryffindor house team, of course, but I also adore the Chudley Cannons!  I just know they will win the League Cup this year!  I don't play Quidditch because I'm a rubbish flyer, but I love the excitement of the games.














I'm studying wandlore and wandmaking for my upcoming NEWT tests.  Here are some unfinished wands I've been working on.  I hope to open my own wand shop in Diagon Alley some day.  Ever since poor Mr. Ollivander passed on, the quality of wands available has been dismal, unless you want to travel to another country to get one.










I love this shelf next to my bed.  I keep a bunch of junk there, such as my set of keys to the wandmaking lab, my favorite Chocolate Frog cards, and a piece of mirror that was passed down to me from Harry Potter, himself (Harry is a distant relative of mine, as both of our families lived in Godric's Hollow for generations.).  He thought I could use it to let Aberforth know when the prefects and I were coming for a special mug of butterbeer after a long day of study.

Here is my time turner.  It was issued to me under extremely special circumstances.  Not since the famous Hermione Granger has a student been allowed to use one to attend more than the regular number of classes.  But, I really wanted to continue with potions and wandmaking in NEWT level, and the class times conflicted, so they made a super special exception for me.  None of the other students know, so please don't spread this around.  Thank you.  You can also see my snitch watch and the medal I earned for running in a race sponsored by the Ministry of Magic.

As you know, we have quite a few Muggle-born students at Hogwarts.  I was able to spend the Christmas holidays with one of them, my friend Alice Penningsworth.  She and her mum got me hooked on a Muggle hobby called scrapbooking.  I fell in love, and I started doing this hobby in all my spare time.  I asked the room to make a space for all my scrapbooking supplies, and it installed these shelves for me to keep all my paper, scissors, stamps, and other accessories.  So, whenever I feel like scrapbooking, I conjure up a table and chair, and open the curtains, and I'm ready to go.  It's amazing.  Sometimes I ask Alice if she'll print me some photos at one of those Muggle shops.  I enjoy seeing the people in them just standing so still.  It's funny.

Here's a link to a wizard scrapbook that I made.  I love using Muggle computers, too.  Maybe I should ask McGonagall if I can add a NEWT in Muggle Studies, too. Hmm.  I don't think she'll let me use the time turner for yet another class.


Another friend of mine, Kim Weasley, has really learned how to knit well from her Granny Molly.  She made me this tribute to Hedwig, the most famous owl to ever live.  We mostly learn about witches and wizards in History of Magic, so once you hear the story of Hedwig, you know just how important she was.

Check out this dragon painting.  One of my favorite wizard artists, Mad McQuill, made it.  It startles me when it lets out a fiery breath.  It's so cool.  I keep it above my miniature dragons that are replicas of the dragons used in the first task of the last Triwizard Tournament to be held at Hogwarts.  That was a sad tournament, which my Hufflepuff mother still tears up over.

My young cousin Lexie Longbottom (Yes, she is related to Professor Neville Longbottom) made this portrait of some of our family members.  

My bed is so comfy.  I have a stuffed dog whom I've named Padfoot, after Sirius Black, the notorious Animagus who died in the great battle at the Ministry.

One of the best things about being Head Girl is my own loo!  I have a lovely shower in there, and a sink with a dragon head faucet.  Moaning Myrtle comes to visit occasionally, but she prefers to float about in the bathroom for the other prefects. The mermaid from the prefects' bathroom comes to her portrait here now and again, too.

I hope you have enjoyed the little look about of my room.  Don't forget to look for my wand shop in Diagon Alley in a year or so!

Lynne

Head Girl 2015-2016 school year

Back on track

Getting back into the fresh food prep.  Looking forward to the start of the CSA season in 3 weeks!

The first three are from the Eat to Live Cookbook:

Super Slaw with cabbage, apples, and beets among other things

3 Bean Mango Salad over greens

Veggie lasagna with sliced zucchini instead of noodles

This one is from the Crazy, Sexy Cancer Cookbook, and it is my favorite of the day:

Asian Stir Raw- also good over greens

And finally, my sister's favorite- the You Are What You Eat Cookbook's Shepherdess Pie in the making:

Weaving!

So, in my last post, I shared how the kids learned about weaving to better understand an English assignment.

Today, we went to the library for a homeschool music class, and when we walked into the meeting room, the walls were covered with fantastic woven art.  This was a fabulous chance to start a review  discussion of looms and weavings.

There was also a woven basket with slips of paper and pencils and a sign asking visitors to vote for their favorite pieces.  It was interesting to watch the boys make their selections.  We all had a hard time choosing.  Everything was really beautiful.

You don't know this?

Seriously, why don't you know this, Child?

I think we homeschooling parents are often shocked by what we consider to be gaps in our kids' educations, and we have no one to blame but ourselves.  I'm saying this tongue in cheek, here, but there is an element of truth to it.  All kids have gaps in their educations because it's physically impossible to teach someone every aspect of human knowledge.  Darn kids.  Why can't they just absorb ALL the information by osmosis?

So, we were diligently working on our Writing & Rhetoric book, and discussing the story of Arachne and Athena, where Athena gets angry at Arachnes's depiction of the Greek gods acting like jackasses, and smashes Arachne's loom with the shuttle.  It didn't take much discussion to realize that my boys had no basic knowledge of how a loom worked, let alone the components of a loom.  Therefore, they didn't have as deep an understanding of the story as they should have.

As we often do, we took a pause from the writing program, and took a little tangent to learn about looms and weaving.  We watched a couple videos of people working looms, we looked at diagrams of loom parts and we talked about what kinds of things were made on looms.  Then, I had the kids do some weaving of paper strips, so that they would understand how threads can be interwoven to make fabric.  This was a time consuming project for them, but they enjoyed seeing the progression of their work. With a little help, Andrew even turned his weaving into an Easter basket.

One very good reason why I like homeschooling so much better than sending my kids to public school:

Math.

Math is a huge reason that I prefer homeschooling over public school.

From the very early days, when my Kindergarten son would bring home random worksheets that didn't seem to be related to anything at all, and we were expected to do them for homework, I've been perplexed with what passes for math.

This article appeared in my Facebook feed this week, and led to some discussion of math instruction in various groups.

Why do Americans Stink at Math?

I thought this article was well written, and it emphasized the need for math teachers to receive better instruction in math itself, and in how to actually teach math.

One thing I did not entirely agree upon in the article is that the traditional way of teaching math has no value.

I do agree that the newer methods of teaching math can probably create a greater understanding of the concepts behind math problems, and that the variety of ways there are to solve problems can appeal to the variety of ways children learn.  What I disagree with is the emphasis on concepts over actual performance.  It's terrific if you understand that multiplication is basically skip counting to a certain number, but if you can't quickly round up and estimate the cost of 3 cans of beans at the grocery store by multiplying the price of one can, it doesn't matter if you understand the concept.

I even understand the theory behind teaching different methods.  Take multiplication again.  I see that using the lattice method or extending out each place value can really make clear to a kid what exactly is happening when you multiply large numbers together.  The problem with these methods, though, is that they are more complex, with more steps in which to make errors.  So, yes, demonstrate with these methods, but teach the traditional algorithm, too, so that the kid understands what they are doing, but can do it quickly.

Another problem, is that I'm not sure how the research was done to evaluate the age/grade level appropriateness of some of these concepts. It seems that kids are being asked to explain how they arrived at answers when they don't even have the language skills yet to do so.

Math at our house

Now, back to this past fall, when my kids were briefly re-enrolled in our local public schools.  Every night, there would be detached workbook pages in the homework folder.  Invariably, the kids would have no idea what they were supposed to be doing on the math homework.  I would ask, "Well, didn't you cover this in class? Isn't this just practicing something your teacher showed you?"  And, invariably, the responses would be, "I don't know." or "Maybe."or "I'm not sure."

My husband and I are well educated, literate, intelligent human beings.  I know that we've never been instructed in some of the new methods for solving math problems, but we never even got that far with the homework.  We couldn't even understand what half of the questions were asking.  The language and new math terminology were so convoluted that it took excess brain power to even figure out what  information was being requested by the questions.

So, being an old-fashioned kind of mom, I'd say, "Well where is your math book?  Don't you have a math book that explains what you're supposed to be doing?"  Again with the "I don't know.", "Maybe.", and "I'm not sure."  I'd get frustrated at this point and demand to know why my children didn't know whether or not they had math books.

So, I emailed the teachers.  Oh- there are math books.  They're online.  You can search for the tiny link on the teacher's website and voilà, the math book will be on your computer.  So, if you're a dinosaur like me, and you need to reference the math book, math homework can only be done in the location of the desktop computer.  I didn't have a laptop or tablet at that time.  I do have a tablet now, but I was just flabbergasted at the limitations that we encountered while trying to help our kids with math homework.  It wouldn't have been so bad if my kids had actually come home with an understanding of what they were supposed to be doing on this homework, but they didn't.  We, the parents, were left with the onus of trying to figure out how to help them.  And, we certainly weren't able to instruct them in these unfamiliar methods.

So, I'm glad to be back to homeschooling.  It's so much more convenient.  If we don't understand a math concept, we have many different ways of finding out what we need to learn.  We have internet, DVD, and actual books that we can take with us.  The curriculum I've chosen is self explanatory and logical and easily reviewed.  And the kids test well in math, so I'm not going to worry about trying to meet some new standards that I don't understand.  If my kids leave my house able to balance a checkbook, pay their bills, read their bank statements, estimate their expenses, and calculate percentages and understand compounding interest, I'll be happy.  If they can find the sine, cosine, and tangent of a right triangle, I'll be ecstatic.

Summer goodness

Saturdays in the summer are splendid.  I simply adore seeing what is in my CSA box, and this week was a great share.  Blueberries, snap peas, new potatoes were among my favorite items in this box.

I had a rough week and hadn't used up the veggies from last week's share, so my mom and I spent today prepping a lot of veggies and cooking up some delicious food.  My mom has been a huge help to me this summer, since I'm having some health issues.  I couldn't have done any of this without her.

We sliced zucchini, yellow squash, and tomatoes, and layered them in a baking dish that had sautéed onions on the bottom.  We stuck fresh basil in between the veggies.  We baked this in the oven for a while then added a topping of ground almonds and nutritional yeast, and put it back in the oven until the topping browned.  Tasty, mediterranean type dish.  I forgot to take an "after" picture of this one.

Next, we made a cole slaw that used raw cashews as the base for the dressing, with raw ACV, water, onions, and honey mixed in.  This cole slaw is fantastic.  I've eaten several bowls already.

I get two dozen free range eggs every week, and we had 4 dozen in the fridge, so I thought some quiches were in order.  We made a bacon and cheddar quiche, and then two bacon, cheddar, broccoli, and onion quiches- one with a crust and one without.  I don't know if I was just starving today or what, but I had a couple pieces of quiche, too, and I'm contemplating another.

I have more bacon and more cabbage, so tomorrow I plan on making bacon wrapped cabbage in foil. Then I will attempt to make beet chips for the first time.  Good eating weekend!