We just watched The Syrian Bride. It's pretty good, but left us wanting to research more. It's about the political situation in the Golan Heights. Here's a blog that talks a bit about the issues: http://meaningwithinwords.blogspot.com/2009/05/occupied-majdal-shams.html

http://www.wadsworth.com/cgi-wadsworth/course_products_wp.pl?fid=M20b&product_isbn_issn=0534646026&discipline_number=21 These are games associated with Spielvogel's Western Civ book, but they might interest others as well.

As far as I can tell, this article doesn't address the issue of whether being in FFA or ROTC is correlated with something else that would tend to knock these kids out of the running. Also, it's difficult to know if this study was done well. The WSJ article references a website put out by Neili who talks about some research for which he gives author names but no link to the actual study. And while Neili gives a lot of handwaving about numbers in the sample, etc etc, there isn't enough there in Neili's article to make out whether this study was done well or not. In particular, I'd like to know how many variables the original authors threw into their correlations -- and whether they even reported all their variables. Were they simple correlations, or part of a multiple regression analysis? In other words, did they try to control for the possibility that FFA and ROTC kids might have lower test scores or GPAs? That maybe they don't write as well? Or that the people writing them letters of recommendation don't write as well? Or that the high schools they tend to go to don't, in the colleges' experience, produce strong college students? Or is it just that FFA and ROTC kids tend to apply more to the schools that were studied, so they are less likely to get in if the schools are trying to get a more diverse student body? There are a lot of questions.

You might try to find some additional reading. It's hard to get grammatical concepts fixed in the mind if you don't see it in context. 38 Latin Stories is good (if you don't already have it) and follows Wheelock's pretty closely. Cambridge Latin is more of a reading based curriculum, which might be useful as a supplement. It doesn't follow the introduction of grammar in the same order as Wheelock's, but it's still helpful. (Actually, there are plenty of teachers who swear by Cambridge Latin as the sole text, although you might want to supplement it with a little more grammar.) The colleges around us are no longer using Wheelock. They've switched to Latin for a New Millennium and Ecce Romani. I haven't seen these books myself, but there must be some reason for the switch. Personally, I find Wheelock to be a better reference than an actual teaching method. It may work fine if you have reading supplementation and a good teacher, but on its own, particularly in the later chapters, it doesn't even bother to explain things. And one can't get the information through inference because there are too few sample sentences and many of them can be translated in a variety of conflicting ways. There are a lot of people who swear by Wheelock, but they often learned Latin in a classroom setting with a teacher who knew the language. As with learning all languages on my own, though, I don't think there's any one method/book that does it all. I've had to cobble things together, so that when one resource doesn't bother to explain something, I can go look it up somewhere else.

I don't think I could get through Brothers Karamazov in a month and get the meaning out of it. It took me a lot longer than that, and I still don't think I figured it out. Maybe count it as 2 books. I thought The Poisonwood Bible was the best of Kingsolver's books. It's more allegory than realistic fiction. Once one realizes that, it becomes more understandable. I've never found the rest of her books to be really worth reading, although I know they're really popular. Grapes of Wrath is a good book, but I found, myself, that I was just sick of the Joads by the end of it. The alternate chapters (inserted between the chapters about the Joads) kept me reading, though. I just finished Cannery Row. It has even more of those random, here's a story that has nothing to do with the plot chapters. It's shorter. It doesn't have the same epic feel to it. Were you not looking for non-fiction? Here's a few off the top of my head ideas: Next of Kin (the one by Fouts about chimpanzees) Guns, Germs, and Steel In Defense of Food Plagues and Peoples Women's Work: the First 20,000 Years Out of Africa (or is this fiction?) West With the Night My Family and Other Animals

Fruit has fiber which slows the absorption of the sugar. This allows the body to handle it better. So no, I wouldn't cut out fruit at first. If you're dealing with allergies, it might be a bit hit or miss as to what's actually causing the problems. Although I'm not a fan of having my kids eat weird artificial colorings and whatnot, I know that for one child, at least, this has very little bearing on how she feels. Another one, though, reacts very strongly. Unfortunately, if it's an allergy, it might be to something completely wholesome.