Many of these are based on older methods of teaching. Dictation is still commonly used in some parts of the world, sometimes in the form of a prepared dictation where the child studies and maybe writes out the paragraph beforehand, then writes it from dictation

It's not really "safe" to plant cold sensitive stuff here yet, the standard wisdom is to wait until after Mother's Day. The weather forecast for the next week is looking good though and I figure I can cover stuff if we do get a cold be snap. I should try spring onions, I'm always hungry for something fresh early in the spring. I've been trying to get a decent asparagus patch going but it will take a few years too really be established.

Mine are in part shade but that's because they can tolerate it, not that they don't like sun. They're pretty tolerant of different conditions but might need more water in full sun. I'm not sure how hot would be too hot for them. I kind of use a variation on raised beds as well, our natural soil is heavy clay and I can't keep up with weeding it in the summer--it's hard to get weeds out of clay soil.

I've been planting today--corn, pumpkins, squash, cucumbers, watermelon, peas, chives, tomatoes, tomatillos. I've got more to go but it feels good to have those in the ground. I'd love to hear what others have going in their gardens.

I remember things feeling REALLY BIG when I was young--every experience was more intense because I didn't have a large store of experiences to put things in perspective. I've thought about that often with regards to the current situation. It feels big enough and disruptive enough and scary enough to mature adults, I imagine those feelings are many times magnified for many adolescents and young adults.

Just for fun, how about Asterix in German translation? Those are fun in any language. One of my favorite ways to improve in any language is to read books I'm already familiar with in English in the language I'm studying. In German, I've done books by Susan Cooper as well as C.S. Lewis and Tolkien (I do struggle with Tolkien...my German is not good. But I love Tolkien and almost have his books memorized in English so that helps).

Ooh, didn't know this was out! We've read the others.

Not similar really, but books my kids have enjoyed at that just taking off stage include the Kingdom of Wrenly and Dragon Masters series--short, easy chapter books with lots of nice illustrations.

I've used the individual workbooks, but haven't tried them in a group setting. We don't do written work for family learning time, just oral stuff. What are your goals for geography? I think if I were trying to do something in a group I would lean towards reading about different countries and identifying them on a map.

I will look into those, thanks.

The goal I am hearing in my state is flatten the curve--a truly flat curve meaning that on average every person infected with covid-19 transmits it to only one other person (there's some epidemiological way to express this rate of transmission but I don't remember it). I'm in a more rural state without super high infection levels, our hospitals are not overwhelmed. I would imagine a place like New York City would need to see actual falling rates of infection for a sustained period before even a steady rate of infection is sustainable. In practice, I think we need to see falling rates of infection even here before we can loosen up restrictions, because if fairly tight restrictions can't bring us below a one-to-one transmission rate looser restrictions will definitely push us above that. Any time the rate of transmission is higher than 1 we fall back into exponential spread.

It may be primarily used in areas like ours--the ACT has historically been the standard in the center of the country, where colleges are generally few and far between and most students aren't applying to lots of different schools. I'd estimate that 90+% of college bound seniors locally only apply to the local state college and maybe one or two others in-state, all with relatively low tuition and high admission rates. There are at least two state universities that are essentially open enrollment, in addition to a handful of two year colleges. With these schools I'm not even sure that commitment is a big deal--they have rolling admissions up until 60 days before the semester start date.

I've been hoping more summer programs will move online. I'm especially looking for foreign language programs.

My almost ten year old is a questioner--constantly thinking about the how's and why's of everything, especially in science and engineering fields. What books can you recommend for a kid like this? We have The Way Things Work, which is great. I need books that explain things like particle physics and plate tectonics and details of human vision processing and...all the other questions he asks that constantly stymie me. We can of course google stuff but I need offline alternatives as well.

She does seem to have a major bias against homeschoolers. Also against religious conservatives. This kind of bias creates serious perceptual holes.