In all seriousness, does beating it like that affect the meat somehow? I mean, since it's dead, I know there is no bruising, but the video showed a serious beating going on, and I just wondered... Is it just too fresh to matter? Does it stave off rigor? Sorry, I got a little too curious!

At first, the thought scared me, and then I realized that the scary thing was the waste of technology. Why would I need this? OK, to not scratch my floors, I suppose, but still, this technology could have been applied to something better than a vacuum, Im sure. I mean, I sure hope. My other thought refers to the air hockey games and wouldn't the vacuum float off on its own accord? If you tugged too hard, would it come flying at you with no way to stop other than ram into you? :smilielol5: :smilielol5:

That just totally ruined my day. Now I need to up it to twice per day??:willy_nilly: Can I just count all the birds as one bird? Then I can skip a couple of morning vacuumings...

Hi, Im Ailaena, and Im a vacuum killer. In the last twoish years, I have forced 6 cheap ($100-150) vacuums beyond the point of repair. I have very little carpet - only stairs, a landing and two small bedrooms - but many animals, and I vacuum at least once every day. My advice to you is, if you are considering adopting a cheap vacuum, to buy a protection pan with your vacuum. I bought my original plan January of 2006 and have not paid another dime for any vacuum since (unless I upgrade to a different vacuum, then I get the money towards it). My current vacuum is a Eureka Boss Smartvac thing and it has been about six months since I have purchased it. It supposed to have a great filter system in it, but since I do not really have an allergy problem I have no idea if it really works or not! I only know it has not died yet! My biggest gripe about all of the cheap vacuums is that the tool that I LOVE (the little hand vac thing) breaks within a week or so. Of course, it could be all of the abuse I put it through... A service guy at Best Buy once told me that the best vacuum on the market was the Rainbow Vacuum because it had a water filtration system that was superior to anything else out there in terms of filtering ability. Since they didnt even sell them at Best Buy, I thought it was worth looking into, and actually went home and looked at them for about 6 seconds before I realized that it was just slightly cheaper than my last car :lol::lol::lol:

Through algebra we used spiral notebooks and skipped a page between lessons for corrections. Once we began geometry, I switched to loose-leaf paper in a binder, mostly because I wanted earlier work to be easily accessible at any time. We have both gotten to like the binder because now there is a place for all of the extra worksheets that I give her!

Oh please, please don't forget to simply step over and totally ignore the pile of cat vomit in the doorway. I simply love waking up in the morning and stepping in a freezing cold pile of squishy, partially-digested cat food. Remember, it's even better when I slip in it because the scream wakes me up much faster.:tongue_smilie:

I think you just have to admit to yourself that they are NOT cheese, and will NEVER taste like cheese, and it wont be as awful. There are also rice milk cheeses and almond-milk cheeses, and honestly, the almond-milk cheese is not at all disgusting (imho, of course).

I pm'd you :D

Dd has been taking the ITBS since Kindergarten, and I kept it up when we started homeschooling. Her science/SS has always slightly lagged behind everything else, and I never knew why. This year, we had some time conflicts with the local testing people and I decided to give the test at home (7th grade level). For the first year, I actually had a chance to look at these sections and try and figure out what the problem is. My conclusion was that there is no problem. The questions are totally random and totally basic. I will not give specific questions, obviously, but it was things like, "What is the weather like in summertime Tokyo?" And, "Which of the following things does a plant cell have that an animal cell does not?" The history questions on her form did not include any dates at all, only time references (civil war, WWII, etc). The breakdown of topics on the scoring sheet (in case that is the slightest bit helpful) were: Science: Scientific Inquiry, Life science, Earth and Space Science and Physical Science Social Studies: History, Geography, Economics and Government and Society I definitely agree with clementine, though, about not teaching to a test. Just do what you do because eventually, everyone covers the same stuff!

I dont have an M or and R name, but if I am partial to the name Tobias. It's manly sounding (isnt it?) and Toby isnt a bad shortening?

I have been in a similar situation twice before. The first time, my big mouth and I just sort of went way too far... I actually did interrupt the teacher and it was not very nice of me:blushing: The second time, I felt I had learned from the first experience, and I wrote a letter that included a packet of information from various sources about the subject. The sad thing was that the teacher to whom I wrote the letter was apparently in the middle of a million things going wrong in her life, and I literally never saw her again. Now, if dd comes home from somewhere with some misguided information, I use it as an excuse to make her find out as much as possible about the topic so that she is informed!! Im so mean :lol:

Im fourthing or fifthing IKEA (I lost count). That is, if you live near one. I once knew a lady who based her relocation on whether or not there was an IKEA in the city. Im so clueless, I never even knew it existed until 3 years ago! I dont have the fancy bookcases like Karenciavo (and, yes, I am jealous of that gorgeous setup) but I have never paid more than $20 for a bookcase there! The FLÄRKE is their cheap model. It doesnt have a functional back, just a flimsy cardboard thing that I dont even use, but it makes up for it in its ability to take punishment and still be super-cheap! Not only that, but they have the scratch-n-dent section at the the end of the store where I have gotten some very sturdy bookcases. I think nearly ALL of my other ones have come from garage sales. Which is interesting, because I never even scope out garage sales when driving past, Im not sure how that happened!

Yes! However, the only one I know of is in Denver, which is of little help to you... :blush5:

I have had XM in the car since 2002 and I have absolutely NO regrets. However, I do spend a huge amount of time in the car and abhor commercials, so it's well worth it for me. I think the only con would be if you only enjoyed one style of music, then it would just be a few channels to choose from. With free internet radio channels by the hundreds, I have no need for it in the home. DirecTV has XM music channels, so if you have DirecTv and didnt know that, you can preview! They do not have all of the channels, though, just some of them.

We do exactly the same thing even to the point of occasionally doing 3 or 4 days worth of one subject on some day. It usually ends up with something being done every day.

I was attending a private school where some teachers were nuns, and I was taught: King Phillip Came Over For Good S*x :eek: Of course, I have obviously never forgotten it, either...

Cave of the Winds lantern tour! That would be a fun thing to do in the Springs, if you like that kind of thing. Elitch Gardens would still be open on the weekends in downtown Denver, its usually not crowded at all in the fall, and they have some unusual rides. The Denver Museum of Nature and Science is great, they just remodeled the Denver Art Museum and Landry's has the Downtown Aquarium (slightly overpriced imho). Now the pressure is on and I cant think of anything else! The weather should be great, cool evenings, but NORMALLY not severe. However, Im not sure where you are coming from, so it's relative! I wish I could tell you exactly where to camp, but I can only remember how to get there, not an official name :( Chatfield Dam in Littleton has camping with showers, it's in the city and they are not usually busy after summer. Sorry I couldnt help more!

:smilielol5::smilielol5::smilielol5: Oh, that just made my night! I actually said this to someone once and ended up in a room full of blank stares.:lol: OK, the ones that annoy me the most are any form of the verb got (esp. gotta), gonna and 'had tooken'. No joke, I hear the phrase 'had tooken' come out of people's mouths and it makes my head spin. But my #1 least favorite word... Frackin. One day my husband started saying it and it caused an emotion to well up in me that I had never felt before. The word literally made me angry on some visceral level, I can barely look at it, I have no idea why. He would use it in public and I would freak. He thought it was so hilarious:glare: Eventually, he stopped using it, and I found out it was from Battlestar Galactica, how they got away with swearing, but the word still bothers me. lol... foof:lol:

Ah... Well, then I shall instruct you to place no eggs in a basket you do not yet have (or something really cute like that) Percentile score is the score you have to worry about the most. it ranks you according to how everyone else does that took that same test. For instance, if there are 20 problems, and the average 4th grader missed 10, then the percentile score for missing 10 problems would be 50th percentile (50%ile) and TOTALLY AVERAGE. In fact, there are different subtests in which a child is ranked, as well, that could affect overall %ile score, leading him to do poorly on some sections, but just fine overall. So I would definitely wait until you get the score report! HTH! This will explain all about the scoring much better than I just did! http://www.education.uiowa.edu/itp/itbs/itbs_interp_score.htm

Was there one or more areas within the math section in which he did do better? Like math computation? And how are you interpreting fail? 50%ile would be an average score, and in the state of Colorado (I dont know where you are) a "problem" score would be 13%ile and below. This was the first year that I gave dd the IOWA test at home, and what I noticed when looking through the math portion, was that there was LOADS of problem solving outside the one math computation area. There was even one entire section of graph interpretation. You dont have to change anything if you are comfortable with it, but since Saxon is so plug-and-chug, it couldn't hurt to supplement a little bit and see if the scores improve next year.

I must be way overprotective, b/c dd was 5th grade at least! She still (13) doesnt like to go by herself, and if she cant see the bathroom from where we are, she wont go at all! Just for the record, I would never object to a man with a small girl accompanying her into the girl's bathroom

I have also stripped down to only languages and math for a few months with no problems. Plus, I would say that learning to live in a whole new part of the world should count as some form of social studies! Have I said congratulations and how excited I am for you? :hurray:

Oops! Too late, I really need to finish something exactly when I start it, and stop wandering away... Here is what I wrote, anyways! I know Im a thread killer, but since we used something different, I wanted to share! I went with the integrated middle school science program from Glencoe for 5th, 6th and the 1st half of seventh. I thought these were quite good, but you have to make sure you have the same edition for all three years (Red, Green and Blue) because they build on each other. The labs in the book were simple and fun, yet emphasized the process of scientific thinking, and I did not ever run across a desperate need for a TE. The best part is that they were very inexpensive! Conceivably, you could stick your 10 and 11 yos together to cover all three books together! The second half of seventh, dd did what I call Earth Science, but the cc called Physical Geography, this summer we are completing conceptual physical science, then in the fall she will begin an intro-level chemistry course which by spring will go into beginning organic, medical and other fun applications of chemistry. Yay, science!:hurray: No matter what you choose, you cant really go wrong, because they are all a basic introduction!

AWESOME find, thank you!! :hurray:

The Glencoe book was the 2007 version with the zebras on the cover. I like the content and style much better than the older ones, but the free support materials are better for it, as well. The student/teacher center is here: http://glencoe.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0078695104/ Order from the publisher here: http://www.glencoe.com/catalog/index.php/program?c=1674&s=7415&p=5017&t=2 I have ordered TEs from Glencoe with no problem, I just had to call them, and I have no official teaching credentials. The study of biology has evolved so much in the last 150 years or so. What used to be separate studies of structural anatomy and physiology and cell biology and nature and microbes have all come together into huge 1000-page books that need to be covered in one year for a child to be "ready" for life after high school (or college). When I was a kid, I contemplated boarding school and I remember looking at one school that studied every subject every year, a little bit at a time but very in-depth. I thought they were insane at the time, but now, I think its a really good idea. I should probably rethink my idea of high school science, and develop a plan like that for dd, who really likes in-depth study better. But then I am afraid some university will find out and reject her and she will never forgive me:tongue_smilie: Although, isnt the very idea of homeschooling that we are non-traditional? Sorry I meandered. Two more thoughts, though... 1. Did your son that is taking the chem subject test only study HS-level chemistry first? I know a woman teaching AP chem at a high school here that makes her kids take the AP test AND the SAT-II at the end of her class. She said that it was very difficult to get a good score on the subject test after just one year of HS chem. Of course, in retrospect, she is teaching in a public school system that was ranked 49th in the country... Maybe 48th this year, I cant remember. 2. I know I once saw someone have a great HS level ornithology set, I will look for it and let you know if I come across it!