Now I really have heard it all. (Or have I?) :glare:

Make sure that she gets enough good fats so she doesn't rely too much on carbs. Also I wouldn't hit the panic button if she's just pudgy in the middle, comes from a slim family, and is 9 years old. Some kids get a little chubby before puberty and then grow into the height.

I found a black widow crawling on DS when he was 2! It was just walking around. I was about 20 feet away from him in the yard. :scared: I really have a huge fear of spiders but I will say that it's probably true they don't bite unless cornered. This spider was content to hang out on DS's arm for awhile, as my mom and I heard him say, "Look, bug!" a few times before we came over. Sigh.

It's an amazing and wonderful oil. A book I would recommend is The Coconut Oil Miracle by Bruce Fife. I use coconut oil in soups, chili, for frying, and I add a spoonful to my tea to help my thyroid. If you add to tea, try something fruity and herbal as it tastes terrible with black tea. Also, beware that the oil on top of the cup can burn you, so let the tea cool a bit and also stir well before drinking. I buy different brands in bulk so I'm not much help there.

I can see both sides so I'm not disagreeing with the gist of what you're saying and I did read the vereloqui blog before I even saw your post. We ought to note that the teacher did say, "And I’m remembering how just last week I cried again, selfishly, when I allowed myself to consider all the horrible things people were probably saying about me and my “pornographic†literature and what it did to their precious test scores and how YA is nothing but fluff and has no place in a college-bound curriculum." So maybe she could have been more explicit about the nature of the class but I'm not sure in her emotional rant she was necessarily trying to hide anything, either.

We're just geeks and we set one up for each of the kids. We run our own mail servers so it was just a matter of giving them accounts. OK, prepare yourself for ridiculous Silicon Valley geekiness: :tongue_smilie: We also gave them web pages. Because we wanted to post nice pictures and such? No, that would be too normal. The reason for the web pages is that search engines such as Google have very complex proprietary algorithms in order to determine the placements of search results. Often they give better placement to sites that have been in place longer (to downgrade junk spam sites) and that have more items linked to them (to demonstrate better content). My DH, who's a journalist and completes for Google placement on certain topics, and is even geekier than I am, figured we could give the kids a head start on whatever they wanted to publish later by giving them a history with the search engines. And he got his friends to link to their sites to increase their "juice". Yes, this is a true story. You don't know what I live with. :D

Either outfit would be fine. Wear whichever one makes you FEEL better. When you feel good about what you're wearing, it shows. As for hubby, if you decide to wear the dress, put him in the khakis. If you wear the denim, he can wear jeans. Have fun!

I've never been asked for my SSN ahead of a doctor's appointment. OTOH, I'm more likely to give out info if I've initiated the call. I won;t give out any info if the call comes in. In this case I wouldn't have given it because if I changed my mind about going for any reason, they would have my number anyway.

What happened after the tax did not pass? We're going through the same thing here. The tax did not pass this summer and now they're going through a list of closures/consolidations and administrative cuts for next fall, but because they're putting a modified tax proposal on the ballot again in June I can't tell if this is a real plan or an attempt to shock people into passing it next summer in time to "save" everything. If they were planning to throw up the exact same proposal next summer I would say they are obviously using shock tactics, but they are modifying it so it's hard to tell. (The proposal only lost by fewer than 200 votes, so the new proposal isn't that different, just tweaked.)

"Letter to mother-in-law. Never sent." :tongue_smilie:

Not only would I not send the letter, I would seriously limit MIL's time with the kids if she couldn't keep her mouth shut. You just know she's going to undermine your work and affect your kids' confidence by making snarky remarks when you're out of earshot. And in general outside of this topic, she just sounds toxic and you should protect your kids from her. And whatever you do, don't homeschool around her. It's not worth it for you or for the kids. How will they feel when they hear her snotty remarks or snorting? She doesn't even have the insight to realize that the kids may not realize her remarks are meant for you and not for them and their work. Pitiful, really.

It might be a good idea to write down for him one sentence about the reading. As for the nature notebooking, I would forget it with the ages of the kids you have and just try and get through the day! You can always start in a couple of years if you want to.

Hi all, I know this is off-topic, but if anyone wanted to head over to this thread: http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=215502 and make suggestions, that would be great. It's a thread requesting resources for a week of time spent on Islamic history. Thanks.

Are you thinking of Islam: Empire of Faith? http://www.pbs.org/empires/islam/ That's an excellent documentary. I'm not sure how much money you want to spend, but here's an 8-CD set that would be really good: http://www.sandalaproductions.com/Products/89-vision-of-islam.aspx I'll try and dig up a few others today and I'll post this thread on another thread you might be interested in: http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=187337

Wow. I knew colleges had remediation because I was a math tutor for that type of program at my university. But at the time (around 1990) the remediation was definitely a special program for kids who had a lot of promise and potential (high IQ) but who had been in crappy inner-city schools and had been recruited to the university. It wasn't for your average high school student. This is depressing.

I don't think it's been verified but several other teachers (and students!) have chimed in to say they are not surprised and/or they have had similar experiences. Some participants are urging the OP to go to the media and if he does we may be able to get verification that way. Wow, that whole situation is crazy-making. It makes me scared for the future of our nation. :mad: And what about those kids who make it to college? What's going to happen to them when they find out how unprepared they are? :crying: (Or will they just dumb the colleges down to accommodate the new reality?

This link was in another thread I can't find now: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/07/health/views/07mind.html It seems relevant to the discussion so I thought I'd post it. (We always do schoolwork in the same place. It would drive me crazy to have the books, pencils, crayons, etc on the couch anyway, but DS likes the table and it's easier with all the writing work. And I think it's become ingrained. The article does make me wonder if we should change, though.)

Thanks everyone! I'm glad to hear the materials are authentically Singaporean. I was worried they were just branded as such. Now I have to decide between Singapore Science and BFSU but I'm sure there are lots of threads to help.

Thanks to all who sent the Everyday Math posts. I spent a bunch of time today reading about a form of math education we'll never use.:tongue_smilie: But it was instructive, plus I found out it's the math program being used in our school district, so I'm even happier to be homeschooling now.

We've been using Singapore Math and it has worked quite well for my son. One of the things that attracted me to it in the first place was that it was similar to the curriculum approved by the Singapore Ministry of Education (according to Rainbow, anyway.) I'm now looking at science programs and am wondering if the science materials are also based on actual programs in Singapore, or if they are a similar style to Singapore Math but not linked to the country of Singapore's science standards. (IOW, is it just branding?) It's funny because Rainbow doesn't say anything about any actual connection to Singapore. Anyone know?

Hmmm...maybe this is my chance to ask about Everyday Math. We do Singapore and we love it, and I've never seen Everyday Math or even heard of it except on WTM. There is an assumption on on WTM forums that everyone knows what Everyday Math is and why it's so terrible. Can someone fill me in? What makes it so bad? (I want to be able to catch on with threads like this!) :D

As far as curriculum choices, my husband leaves it all up to me, including the research and spending. As far as teaching... For K last year, he had some idea of what we were doing but mostly stayed out of it except reading aloud. This year I am going to definitely have him more involved, as I've developed this fear that if something were to happen to me both he and the kids would be completely lost about where this is all going and bad things would happen as a result. So I'm putting the lesson plans online and giving him the password. I'm also going to go over all the materials and how they work and why they were chosen. We'll review at the end of the month, else I'll get a blog going. I'm going to have him do more reading aloud, mostly because I have a thyroid problem which makes my throat really tired and sore if I read aloud for too long, but also because while I love to read, I really don't enjoy reading to other people. I'm also going to have him do the science materials on weekends. We're both science majors, but he has more tolerance for messes and he enjoys weekend projects. Shhhh...I have a secret plan to have him do Latin when we get to it. :tongue_smilie: He really only has one rule and that's that the kids don't use computers. He's a geek (actually we both are) and he strongly believes peoples' relationships with computers would be much improved if they understood how they worked and controlled them before using them. So in a couple of years he and DS will build a Linux box from scratch and we'll go from there. That will be mostly up to him.

I'm terrible about movie trivia too. I'm the person who says, "You know, that movie about that guy played by what's-his-name that came out in the 90s. Oh, and it had that blond woman in it, the one with the chipmunk cheeks." (Actual description of There's Something About Mary)

I think this could possibly be because people are more aware of the conflicts, debates, and vagaries of the religion/culture they are most familiar with, and are more sensitive to the ones they don't know as well. And within that, a much higher percentage of people in this country are Christian so you see the effect you're talking about. I'm Muslim and I'm not a professor. If I were a professor, and a Muslim student came to me and said I had to do X (X=dress a certain way, speak a certain way, etc.) I would know the background of some of these requests and having heard them before and decided for myself, I would probably ignore the request. Or I might try to accommodate it, but because I agreed and was grateful he had pointed it out. If a Christian, Jew, Buddhist, Hindu etc came to me and told me what I was doing was offensive, I would be more likely to accommodate them based on my lack of familiarity with their religion and frankly, because I would be embarrased. So I'm not sure if it's the "dominant" group as much as it is the "other" and there happens to be a large difference in group size. In the almost 100% Muslim country of my origin, people would be mortified if they did something offensive to a visiting Christian, but would not be that bothered is a fellow Muslim was offended by something because they would understand the ins and outs of that offense and think some people were too sensitive, or that if they made the accommodation an equal number of people would be offended the other way. In other words, they would be familiar with the "offense". IOW, if someone came up to me and said, "Wow, that's offensive to Buddhists" I would censor myself, as the alternatives are to continue to offend or to learn all the vagaries of Buddhism and decide for myself. If a Muslim came and said it was offensive I don't wear shoes I would probably roll my eyes. :tongue_smilie: ETA: I would probably choose to try and make time to find out more about the offense I had committed, but I would definitely censor first. I'm not against informing myself, just not offending people while I find the time to do it!

When working with a very sharp kitchen knife, don't put it down, wipe your wet hands with a towel, and put the towel down over the knife. Hubby will pick up the towel, causing the knife underneath to fall off the edge of the counter and fall cleanly into his foot. As a teenager, when using your mom's nice pot to make popcorn balls, do not get distracted on the phone and let the mixture harden in the pot. When your toddler keep saying, "fly, fly on my arm" while in the backyard, don't assume it's a fly. It could be a black widow spider. :scared: Don't put 2 people on a bike and try to ride up a steep hill on a busy road. Especially don't put the heaviest person on the back. Ether vapor can catch fire and blaze an 8-10 foot trail all the way back to the bottle, causing it to explode. The flame looks really cool as it goes into the bottle, until you realize what you've just seen and understand by this point it would be good to have your back turned, or better yet, be in a different building altogether. Btw, don't put said ether bottle on a lab bench next to a giant stack of paper towels. (This was done by my organic chemistry lab partner, who was so careless the rest of us had secretly drawn straws to see who had to partner with him for the semester.) On the chemistry topic, do not use your hand to try to scoop extremely hot sand out of the heater you were using to boil liquids in your round-bottom flask. As a young child, do not attempt to perform eyelid exercises by clipping an alligator clip to your upper eyelashes to see if your eyelid is strong enough to still keep your eye open. Or if you do, do not accidentally clip it to your eyelid. :crying: And don't do it in the car after your dad has just told everyone to BE QUIET. And finally, for those who appreciate Unix humor, do not forget you are logged in as root when you do the rm -r. (Remove files and directories recursively.):tongue_smilie: