I just this week explained the Easter Bunny to Wee Girl, after discovering that she had worked out her own elaborate theology involving the Resurrection story, the Trinity, and the Paschal Rabbit. I thought it was best to step in before Father asked her any questions in advance of her First Communion, which might turn out to have surprising answers.

Freshman year of college. When her friends are around.

Reading: All 3 girls learned to read well with "Reader Rabbit 1" and "Reader Rabbit's Interactive Reading Journey," which were wildly successful but not apparently used by any other homeschooler I've ever met. I don't even know if one can buy them anymore. Catholic National Readers (like McGuffey's) for later reading and spelling practice. Handwriting: Handwriting Without Tears for printing. For the one with infinite patience and excellent motor control, cursive with Peterson Directed Handwriting. Composition: 2 of the 3 have done very well with LLATL for K-3, used one or even two books ahead of purported reading level. Middle Girl has successfully used Galore Park's Junior English for grades 2-4. And I've mined Primary and Intermediate Language Lessons for useful writing material.

My family lived briefly in Glasgow around the time of the Falklands war, and I do recall being amused that the one brief reference in our history text was something like "Cotton imports became an important part of the Glaswegian economy at the end of the eighteenth century as tobacco importation from the American colonies abruptly stopped."

We have a couple of versions, but Wee Girl loves Mitsumasa Anno's version best. http://www.amazon.com/Annos-Aesop-Book-Fables-Mr/dp/0531057747 There is a secondary story "around" the fables, in which Mr. Fox reads the book to his son, Freddie. Mr. Fox, not wanting to disappoint his son, pretends to be able to read English and makes up his own stories for the pictures (in which the foxes come out much more sympathetically). Wee Girl makes me read the fables first, then re-read the book with Mr. Fox's version. It sounds gimmicky, but it's very well done, and would be worth the price just for the Aesop stories and Anno's wonderful illustrations.

At dh's suggestion, I checked out Wardhaugh's Understanding English Grammar: A Linguistic Approach. It's really helped me both understand English grammar more clearly and teach it to Middle Girl more effectively. http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-English-Grammar-Linguistic-Instructors/dp/0631232923 She and I just started discussing adverbs, and for the first time I really feel that I'm understanding how they work, and what is and isn't an adverb.

Re: spiral notebooks I went through my whole school and college career just flipping them over, writing my name and subject on the back cover, and taking notes in them from back to front. Very convenient. I disagree with forcing lefties not to hook their hands. I have very neat hooked-hand writing; but one teacher made most of fourth grade language arts hell by forcing me always to write (awkwardly, slowly, and crudely) with my hand in the "proper" position, until my mom complained to the principal.

I'm so sorry. Thank you for letting us know.

Finished volume 1 of John Henry Newman's Historical Sketches (1872). The first section, on the history of the Turks, was frankly dull, and the essay's raison d'être - the laying out of the Turkish history and national character as grounds for speculation about the future of the Ottoman Empire - was painfully undermined by the spectacular wrongness of Newman's predictions. The essay on Cicero struck me as nothing special. But the essays on Apollonius of Tyana and Primitive Christianity were much more engaging reading. I note with resignation (man, you read enough Newman, you start talking like him) that I paid $20 in the pre-internet age for this battered 140-year-old volume - I had previously bought volumes two and three as a broken set for less than that, but wanted to complete the set - and now that I finally get to reading them, they are of course free on-line. Google Books, Project Gutenberg, or newmanreader.org. But there's still something satisfying about the heft, the ridiculously thick pages with jagged edges where the first owner had to cut them, the visible indentations where the type printed the letters. I like real books. So far: 5. Newman, Historical Sketches, vol. 1 4. Thirteen Stories by Eudora Welty 3. Fielding, Tom Jones 2. Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, vol. 2 1. Balzac, Père Goriot One old friend, one dusty, and a few chunksters - what was the page count that qualified? Currently reading Henry James' Portrait of a Lady. So much more interesting than when I read it as a callow youth.

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Just popping in to update my list. i'm finishing book 5 right now, which will put me squarely into the book-every-other-week club; I learned in 2012 that that's the most realistic pace I can manage. Onward, through the fog! Currently reading 5. John Cardinal Newman, Historical Sketches vol. 1. Just finished 4. Welty, Thirteen Stories by Eudora Welty From "The Wide Net": In the grove it was so quiet that once William Wallace gave a jump, as if he could almost hear a sound of himself wondering where she had gone. A descent of energy came down on him in the thick of the woods and he ran at a rabbit and caught it in his hands. "Rabbit ... Rabbit ..." He acted as if he wanted to take it off to himself and hold it up and talk to it. He laid a palm against its pushing heart. "Now ... There now ..." "Let her go, William Wallace, let her go." Virgil, chewing on an elderberry whistle he had just made, stood at his shoulder: "What do you want with a live rabbit?" William Wallace squatted down and set the rabbit on the ground but held it under his hand. It was a little, old, brown rabbit. It did not try to move. "See there?" "Let her go." "She can go if she wants to, but she don't want to." Gently he lifted his hand. The round eye was shining at him sideways in the green gloom. "Anybody can freeze a rabbit, that wants to," said Virgil. Suddenly he gave a far-reaching blast on the whistle, and the rabbit went in a streak. "Was you out catching cotton-tails, or was you out catching your wife?" he said, taking the turn to the open fields. "I come along to keep you on the track."

My apologies - I'm trying to stay off the boards during the week this Lent, and already the hour approaches to go back to real life until next Sunday. God bless and be well. :)

Puerile and off-topic literary humor: One of the awesome books I salvaged from our library discard store was the chunkster novel The Eustace Diamonds, which became separated from its fellows in the van. Great Girl was looking for a book of hers this evening, and when I found it in the front seat and brought it in to her, she asked where it had been. And I managed to say offhandedly, "It was in the van, right where you left it, under a fat Trollope." Ho, ho.

Jane in NC, "Luminous Crotch tribe" destroys me. I'm stealing that one. You've just said everything I would have said about Tom Jones, so: yes, that. Adding that Great Girl's experience as a math major in her English Lit courses has been very similar to yours. I think I'm probably going to take a nonfiction break and do some of my Newman reading for Lent. Loved co-reading Tom Jones, especially your ability to pick out exactly those passages I thought should be posted to this thread. (On the Hamlet chapter - reading it this time, I felt Fielding may not have been just making fun of Partridge, but also offering a comment on the David Garrick-led transition from the bombastic style of acting to a more naturalistic style, in a way that echoed some of Fielding's own commentary on novel-writing.)

If descriptivism annoys you, look away.... The reason "It is he" sounds strange, and must be drilled into native English speakers, is because nominative (subject) pronouns (I, he, she, we, they) in object positions are ungrammatical in English. No native speaker says "It is we" or "That would be I" unless they've drunk the hyperprescriptivism Kool-aid. YMMV. But I don't even know what it would mean to say that a grammatical construction that is universal among native speakers of a language is somehow "grammatically wrong." (Edited for a bit of clarity)

Almost. Catholics have fasted and abstained from meat on Fridays (often Wednesdays and Saturdays also - this survives in the observance of Ember Days) since the beginning, as we see in the Didache. Fish not being considered meat we inherited from Judaism. The story that Some Pope started the custom of fish on Friday to help a nephew in the fishing industry (this is the version I usually hear) is a jumbled version of "Cecil's Fast." The English Reformation ended the practices of fast and abstinence, which hurt the fishing industry, which was hurting the Navy (which was closely linked to fishing) and was contributing to unemployment and piracy. Sir William Cecil, one of Elizabeth's advisors, introduced and got passed an act to ban meat on Fridays, Wednesdays, Saturdays, and throughout Lent. This was very controversial at the time as being (to some) the reintroduction of evil popish practices; but today it's remembered only as a confused urban myth about Why Catholics Eat Fish.

Threadgill's on Riverside. The Salt Lick (barbecue). Hyde Park Bar and Grill (what will be on the giant fork?) Amy's Ice Cream - any of them, though the best was the one in the Arboretum, on account of the stone cows. Anything sold out of a trailer. Really.

I've always been ravenous while nursing, but that may partly be from small me + giant babies. I would have gnawed dh's arm off* if I'd tried to fast. *Not, of course, on a Friday.

Careful, Freckles73; we don't want to persuade anyone else to move here. Just come and spend tourist money.

Women "in delicate condition" were always, always dispensed. Eat healthy foods you don't like instead. ;)

Half Price is the mega-used book store. The main store is the one on North Lamar. Excellent suggestions so far. The freefuninaustin.com website has local cheap or free family events. If you go to Mt. Bonnell (note: actually a hill with steps going up it), pay a visit to nearby Mayfield Park and see the peacocks, and/or the Laguna Gloria grounds. Zilker is indeed awesome, with a huge playscape, fun botanical gardens (including a prehistoric section), the Nature Science Center, and canoe rental, all right there. Pay to park on weekends, but very cheap. Also free is the Texas Memorial Museum on the UT campus, full of natural science wonders and heaps of fossils, including the Shoal Creek Plesiosaur (found by a young boy fossil-hunting with his dad). Parking is easy and free on weekends, but impossible during the week. If your crew likes hiking, see the Greenbelt.

A gentle suggestion, take it or leave it, to anyone still trying to figure out what to do for Lent. Until very recently, adult Catholics didn't wonder what to do during Lent. They gave up food. That is, they observed the (much less strict than medieval times) fast, which was quite moderate by the mid-20th century: one meal a day, with leeway for two smaller meals as necessary to maintain strength. Even with this greatly moderated fast, manual laborers and those with health conditions making it too difficult were easily dispensed. Now the fast is devotional; but it's still the 2000-year-old Catholic tradition to fast every day in Lent. It was also traditional to figure out how much money you were saving on food and give that amount to the poor. That was it. Nobody had to figure out a customized penance; the rich ate as little as the poor (usually less in fact, as they were less likely to be doing manual labor). It was a source of unity among Catholics, socioeconomically, geographically and temporally, and between the Christian west and east. YMM totally V. But I just thought I'd mention it.

When I was a kid growing up in Texas, the Catholic Church was a dangerous cult. Now only parts of it are. I suppose that's progress.

You could get this: http://www.amazon.com/Catholic-picture-dictionary-Pfeiffer-illustrations/dp/B0007I5FE6 Very popular with my girls.

I was about to say, no, the zucchetto is the skullcap-y thing that goes under a biretta (or miter). Looks like we thought she was referring to different headgear. Speaking of, I say bring back the galero!