I totally understand! I went through the same process when I was deciding whether to use FIAR. I really had to read and absorb the actual FIAR manual to understand that it wasn't just a matter of enjoying the books and understanding them on a plot level. I hope you have a lot of fun with B4FIAR! I didn't do it with my older child, but I'm planning to use it for my little guy coming up.

I am an ex-Christian Unitarian-Universalist. 1. Who is God? The one thing I'm sure of is that there isn't an interventionist God who acts on the world by handing out rewards and punishments, or granting certain prayers. But not others, is the part that usually gets left unspoken, and that's the part I have trouble with. God answered your prayers and cured your kid's cancer, great. Did the mother of the kid in the next bed not pray hard enough, then? Pursuing that line of reasoning doesn't lead anywhere good; if God really did work that way, such a God should be opposed rather than worshiped. I do, however, believe in a force that is larger than the knowable. (This is where my articulateness breaks down.) The way I think of it is that out of all the vast uncountable forms of life, and the connections between them, and the connections between life and other forms of matter - the part where our bodies and everything around us are made of tiny bits of long-exploded stars - that out of all of those connections and interweavings there emerges something larger. Not outside the material universe, but arising from it, and shaped by everything in it. For lack of a better name, I call that thing "God." My sense of this force is that it isn't personal, not a being with awareness or consciousness who, you know, notices me and knows who I am. But I am aware of myself as part of it, and I find value in practices which help me feel aware of and connected to the larger force: mindfulness exercises, meditation, prayer. I see God manifest as well in the things people do to connect themselves to each other and to the world: in kindness, compassion, courage, usefulness. 2. How did the world begin? About four and a half billion years ago, the earth and the other planets in our solar system were formed via the accretion of particles within the solar nebula which eventually became our sun, and were shaped by gravitational forces. Astronomers and geologists are still working out the exact details of planetary formation; you'd be better off asking them instead of a research psychologist like me. ;-) 3. What is your purpose on earth? I believe that the only purpose to our existence is that which we create ourselves. I don't think that I am intrinsically here "for" something; I exist physically because of natural biological processes and I have a mind, a self, because consciousness is a property that arises from the immense complexity of the human brain. That said, I have personal opinions about what it would mean to have a satisfying and worthwhile life. I hope that when I die, I will know that there is more love and more knowledge in the world than there would have been if I had never existed. 4. What will happen to you after you die? I don't think much about it. To me it seems... irrelevant, I guess. Ultimately, what happens after death is unknowable. But if pressed, I'd say that when we die, our bodies return to the earth. Eventually, our component elements become part of other forms of life. So we remain within the great chain of existence, even if in unrecognizable form. As for our selves, I think they live on in the effects we've had on the world and the people in it. For better or for worse, the world is a different place than it would have been if we never existed. We live on in the things we have done, the ideas we've shared, the memories we leave in people who know us, and perhaps our biological descendants. That's enough immortality for me.

I'm doing FIAR with my bright 5.5yo. We are doing lessons like: - Learning to identify similes when they appear in a text, and generating new examples of similes. - Understanding how the different parts of a castle contributed to its defense and what weapons attackers used against castles. - Doing experiments to understand the properties of sound waves. - Studying how artists can use color to communicate mood. FIAR is really not a preschool curriculum. While some of the books are delightfully appropriate for a three-year-old (Madeline, Mike Mulligan, Make Way for Ducklings), others are long and complex, or include mature themes more suited to a 6- or 7- year old (Grandfather's Journey, Warm as Wool, The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere). I think even a very bright three-year-old would only be able to skim the surface of the FIAR lessons. Even at 5.5, we have lessons that we're skipping because they would be over my child's head. You'll get so much more out of FIAR if you wait.

You can use yeast to inflate a balloon. Put warm water, sugar, and yeast in an empty water or soda bottle and stretch a balloon over the mouth. It is so cool to see it inflate!

Happy Coming Out Day!! :party:

Oh, good grief. How could anyone possibly interpret that affidavit with points 2-6 and 8-11 blacked out? Presumably the blacked-out points include specific charges related to the child's safety and the family's open CPS case. Also, the claim that CPS is selling children to transnational corporations for use as sex slaves... yeah. That pretty much destroys any last shreds of credibility to their argument.

There's no real point to this post except to say that my little guy is so cute, I can barely stand it. :001_wub: He's 20 months old. When it's time for his 5yo sister to do math, he races to the dining room table. "Colin math! Colin math!" I hand him his own MEP worksheet, taken from early pages of 1a that she skipped over. He stands on a chair and gets happily to work. He used to color on his math sheet with crayons, but he must have noticed that she uses a pencil, because now nothing will do but for him to have one too. He marks away industriously on the sheet. Sometimes he calls out numbers. Today he started something new: "What equals? What equals?" He looks up at us and beams, so happy to be doing math! "What equals? What equals?" I love how excited he is, and how easy it makes doing lessons with her. He keeps himself occupied for the whole time that we're working on math.

I really like the Let's Read And Find Out Science series. Level 2 books are appropriate for a 1st grader, and that level includes experiments - either described in the text, or in the end pages. I find that it works really well for us to read the book and do the experiment. My child seems to get more out of the experiment with the supportive context of the text. Also, the books are usually well-written and hold a child's interest.

:iagree: We just got their complete girl's costume for my daughter, and I am thrilled with the appearance and quality.

Thanks for the suggestions! Yes, she's reading Henry and Mudge, High Rise Private Eyes, Young Cam Jansen, etc. comfortably. I will comb our picture book shelves for likely options. She has been pretty convinced that she can only read books that say "I Can Read" (or other series designations), but it's probably time to get over that idea. I also picked up some Magic Treehouse books at the thrift store today, and she seemed to be interested in them. We'll see what happens when she actually sits down to read one. My main concern was if we should be encouraging her to move on to more challenging material. Thanks for the reminder that in kindergarten it's okay to just stop and smell the roses. :D

Any thoughts?

For reading instruction, my kindergartener reads a book aloud every day. We supplement with short phonics lessons on the whiteboard if a concept seems to need more practice. She's mostly reading I Can Read Level 3 and the equivalent, although she's also joyfully working through the Amelia Bedelia books at Level 2. In an average 50-page Level 3 book, there will be: - 3 or 4 words that she mis-reads the first time but reads when prompted to try again. These seem to be just careless mistakes. - 2 or 3 words where she needs to be briefly reminded of a phonics rule ("that c is followed by e, so...?") or given a suggestion about how to segment, and then she reads the word on her own. - 1 or 2 words that she needs signficant help with. I've seen great improvement in her fluency, stamina, and expressiveness, as well as her enjoyment of reading, over the last couple of months. She can focus on reading a book for half an hour without increasing her error rate. From the metrics I've seen posted here, these books would be considered at her "independent" reading level (less than five mistakes per 100 words). Do you think that matters? Should we be encouraging her to read more difficult books, in which her errors will be more frequent? Or is it okay to just stay here for a while, getting more and more fluent and automatic? If we should increase the difficulty, what comes next? She is intimidated by the idea of reading chapter books. I know there's an I Can Read Level 4, but I don't think our library has any of those. Any recommended titles?

When your four-year-old says lovingly, "Mom, when you die, I'm going to get some people to help me make a mummy out of you." And when you protest, "I don't want you to take my brain out through my nose!", she responds with firmness, love, and a great deal of finality: "But that's the way they do it." Case closed. Also: when your 18-month-old shouts out "Simile!" during a read-aloud. Not because he knows what it means, but because he knows that's the kind of thing people do when they're being read to.

Nothing is lost; the universe is honest. Time, like the sea, gives all back in the end, But only in its own way, on its own conditions: Empires as grains of sand, forests as coal, Mountains as pebbles. Be still, be still, I say; You were never the water, only a wave; Not substance, but a form substance assumed. - Elder Olson

I wondered about that. It seems like pretty long odds to me that they would forget two years out of twenty, and have fires both of those years. But I'm sure the fire dept will be producing payment records at some point in this process.

Man, posting from my phone makes me look like I have aphasia. I don't always notice when it "helpfully" corrects my spelling. That was supposed to say "reality is so much MESSIER than fantasy."

Welcome to the libertarian paradise. Reality is so much measure than fantasy. People want opt-in services to take the place of government, but they don't want to see firefighters stand by while a house burns down. They yell "health care is not a right," but they don't actually want to step over dead bodies in the street. I bet that county has awesome low taxes.

:eek: Don't do a Google Image search for "yeast." :ack2: We're going to be doing some experiments tomorrow to understand how yeast makes bread rise, and I thought it would be a good idea to pull up nice magnified picture of yeast organisms. And, um, yeah. Lots of pictures of infected things. Yikes.

I don't think anyone here is saying that the North was a bastion of idyllic racial equality, and that Northerners had pure spotless hearts in every respect. (I've never seen a public school textbook that said so, either.) I do think there's a weird kind of moral relativism going on here, from people that I would not normally expect to espouse that type of moral reasoning. "Well, gosh, some bad and good things were done by people on both sides, so I guess it all washes out and both sides are morally equivalent." Are you kidding me? One side was fighting for the right to own people. Yes, people in the North did bad things as well, and yes, people in the South were not all cartoon villains twirling their mustaches nefariously. But that doesn't erase the fact that slavery was a terrible and evil thing, that the South tried to destroy this country rather than give up their slaves, and that our history of slavery continues to have damaging effects on our country 150 years later. Refusing to grapple with these issues gets us nowhere.

OMG. Was this supposed to be a Sudbury school or Lord of the Flies? I'm sorry that it didn't work out to be the help you need.

:iagree: If you were already planning to pay for two American Girl dolls, it doesn't seem logical to me to say that one or both of the girls should not get her preferred doll just because of her sister's choice.

I try to update four times a week. Link in siggy.

Yep. We don't have to speculate on this topic, because the seceding states very obligingly laid out their reasons in primary source documents. http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/reasons.html Georgia: Mississippi: Texas: For some reason it seems to make Southerners feel better to maintain that the war was about "state's rights," and to insist that no one go into greater detail about which particular "rights" were in question. I understand that it must be embarrassing to be identified with people who believed that it was their right to buy, sell, and own human beings; to force them to work without wages; to keep them subjugated, terrified, and uneducated; to rape them at will; to separate children from their mothers; to whip and beat and injure these human beings with impunity if angered; and to say that all of this is rightful, proper, and indeed God's will and design. It must be mortifying. Nonetheless, facts are facts. The documents of secession are extremely clear about the preeminence of slavery among Southerner's concerns, and their conviction that slavery must be preferred. All that can really be done is to insist on euphemisms ("state's rights" "Southern culture and heritage") and to attempt misdirection by, for example, cherry-picking from Lincoln's speeches in an attempt to prove that he thought slavery was just dandy as well. The Confederate States of America were formed to preserve and protect the right of some human beings to own others. Period.

No worse from a five-year-old girl than from a five-year-old boy. I do think it's kind of unfortunate when my 20-month-old says, in beautiful clear tones, "Daddy fart! Fart, Daddy, fart!"

Hey, it's Friday afternoon. I'm sure I'm not the only one who is fantasizing about a pint right now.