Since nobody else has chimed in, you may want to do a search here: http://www.car-seat.org/. These people talk about car seats like people on the WTM board talk about curricula. :-)

My oldest just turned 5, so I haven't taught her anything formally about it yet-- I've been looking ahead, and I still haven't figured out what to use. We've had various informal discussions (Why, Mommy, why???) about why some animals look more alike than others and stuff like that though, so she does know how our family sees things. Wikipedia says the Linnean taxonomy our modern system is based on was published in 1735. On the Origin of Species was published in 1859. I haven't figured out yet what the original explanations for that structure were (Wikipedia is not infallible, it seems), but some of the Classical homeschoolers around here must know! Interesting that I've never thought of this before-- one more hole in my own education to fill I guess!

RS4K is pretty generous about putting samples online, you could probably go read that section and see what you think. That exact issue is what made me decide the "neutral" RS4K would not work for us. It made no sense to me without evolution, since in my worldview evolution (and ancestral relationships among organisms) explains why the relationships in a taxonomic system exist. However, something close to the modern taxonomic classification system has been around since least 100 years or so before evolutionary theory, so there must be other explanations out there. RS4K doesn't provide any explanation at all-- this is the big downside of being "neutral" in my opinion. Hopefully someone who supplemented with a different explanation of how/why relationships are structured this way will chime in. ETA: It's probably also possible to teach it as *just* a structure, without a reason for existing, depending on whether your kids require reasons for absolutely everything like my oldest. Maybe people do that?

We use a Graco Nautilus that looks quite similar to your Radian, and we like it a lot for keeping our tall 5yo harnesssed. It converts to a highback booster and then to a backless booster. The Graco highback boosters look exactly like the Nautilus without the harness to me-- if they are, they ought to be a good seat. They're only $50 at Target right now.

There are lots of different kinds of preschools. My oldest is finishing up a "developmental" one that focused on social skills and did essentially no academics. It was exactly what she needed, and we loved it. There are other preschools in our area that describe themselves as much more "academic." And there are Montessori ones, and religious ones of all kinds, etc etc. The "results" pretty much depend on the kind of preschool you choose.

About the French writing-- yes, in the early 80s at least they were quite serious; kids learned cursive before printing (so I was already "behind" there), and "different" styles were not permitted (at least at my school). Either French or American would have been fine alone, it was the fact that I was made to change them around every few years during the "formative period" when I was learning to write that really messed me up. I wish I could have just stuck with one! I'll be interested to hear how this goes for you. I kind of worry that if handwriting is indeed a neglected area how, teachers would be even more likely to "check the box" of sameness rather than stand back and decide that legibility is more important than matching a standard style.

Is your son's school supportive of his using something non-standard? I learned American printing in K-1, was forcibly switched to French school cursive in 2nd, and forcibly switched again to US school D'Nealian in 3rd grade, all of which my left-handed mom tried to remediate with me, her right-handed child. I consistently got "needs improvement" on my report cards in handwriting, which irked me as a kid. The mish-mash I ended up with is legible, but pretty darn strange, and my hand used to cramp up taking notes in college. If his teachers are willing to accept some other style I'd be all for something more attractive, but if he's going to need to write "their way" at school, throwing another style into the mix may prove frustrating.

I personally do not see the value of coloring pages. My own children prefer to carve chicken and bat ice sculptures in our organic herb garden using replica Bronze Age tools while I read classic poems to them in Kazakh and Russian. But of course, some children may just not be ready for ice sculptures.

:iagree: Kjelgaard was pretty prolific, and I loved his books as a kid (although they do tend towards the formulaic).

I tend to skip over most of them, even when I read them to myself (and definitely with my daughter). I'm a Philistine I guess. But now that I know there are Tolkien musical versions out there, I'm off to Google! They've GOT to be better than Leonard Nimoy...

Another vote for around-the-third-birthday. My daughter had a lot of trouble learning to control the mouse at first, but Jumpstart Toddlers was great for that, and was no more mind-rotting than the TV imho. I would have waited longer to introduce the computer, but she saw us working with computers every day and wanted SO badly to do it herself. At 5, she seldom needs help with anything, so Jumpstart games and the Scholastic "living books" games make fine digital babysitters when I need it. She also does computer eye exercises to fight an incipient lazy eye. She's careful by nature and hasn't messed anything up on it (yet). Her mischievous little sister will probably be a different story, though!

OMG, I'm SO sorry! Are there any other creatures that aren't mammals? Could you please explain the difference between each vertebrate class? Would a creature from each class please weigh in here and describe their diet, habitat preferences, and locomotor patterns? Do you think I could arrange a private meeting for my DCs with a representative of each class in order to help them understand the differences and see how beautiful and unique each one of them is? (Because they certainly won't be meeting any in the primate-only coops we've carefully selected and signed statements of primate-hood with.) Should we also be meeting non-chordates? I certainly don't want to raise chordate-centric children. (I was referring to the bats before, I swear...)

Put deodorant on her feet. (Not kidding-- a climber friend of mine swore by this.) I've heard putting shoes in the freezer (in plastic bags) kills the stinky-foot bacteria in the shoes, but I haven't tried it myself.

I am shocked that so many people appear to be capable of using this thread when it is so blatantly anti-chicken. There are numerous anti-chicken references throughout, which no sane family could possibly work around. It may be anti-bat as well, but I don't personally know any bats so I wouldn't have noticed those parts, although I do believe in being considerate towards mammals of all species.

Wow, what a hard situation. Here are a few websites, I hope one of these agencies is able to help. In theory these places exist for situations like yours, but it may take some work to figure out whether you qualify. Medicaid: http://www.cms.gov/home/medicaid.asp (ETA: never mind, you've checked that already) CHIP: http://www.insurekidsnow.gov/chip/index.html US Maternal and Child Health Bureau: http://mchb.hrsa.gov/programs/womeninfants/prenatal.htm :grouphug:

A cooking blog I read posted this today. Serendipity? I haven't tried it yet, obviously, but her recipes are generally good, and it looks delicious. http://smittenkitchen.com/2011/04/heavenly-chocolate-cake-roll/#more-7362

I love both Yellowstone and Mesa Verde! If you end up at Mesa Verde, the Ute Mountain Tribal Park (on the "other side" of the mesa) is amazing, if you're willing to go with a guide-- the sites are empty of tourists and there are still artifacts on the ground. This web page has links to a bunch of archaeological sites in the Southwest (some national parks/monuments, some not) that you might be able to fit in between your other destinations: http://www.cdarc.org/what-we-do/exhibits/visiting-places-of-the-past/. It's also really interesting to visit a pueblo, particularly if you're visiting archaeological sites; in some ways it helps me to imagine how people in the ancient sites lived, while also seeing a modern way of life that's quite different from what many of us are used to. Acoma, Taos, and some of the Hopi mesas are especially interesting. Wikipedia has a main page with links to individual pages with some photos (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pueblo). (These aren't national parks, but several are historic landmark districts or UNESCO world heritage sites.)

Thanks, everyone. I've always "echoed it back," but it sounds like being more obvious about it plus learning phonics (which we're starting to do anyway) will probably help. Most people do understand her just fine, which I suspect is part of why she hasn't self-corrected more quickly.

How old should kids be before one starts consistently correcting their speech, specifically pronunciation? I have always heard that most kids outgrow these kinds of issues on their own and correcting them too early can dampen their enthusiasm for talking and for using new words, but when do you start? And what works best? My 5yo often (but not always) mispronounces certain sounds: she says t for k, d for g, and sometimes w for r or l. She CAN pronounce all of these sounds if she stops and concentrates though, and she does use them in words that have more recently entered her vocabulary. I've tried not to worry about it since it's been slowly improving, but she'll be starting public K in the fall and I don't want her to be misunderstood (or teased, or underestimated). She is a chatterbox who soaks up new words like a sponge, so I'd like to correct her without dampening her enthusiasm. Any advice? Book or web recommendations for me to learn more about this? Her future school does offer speech therapy, but my layman's perception of this is that she's just not tuned into thinking about her pronunciation, and her pediatrician didn't seem concerned.

I just wanted to add a couple of other options for field experience. For a hands-on program specifically for high school students, Crow Canyon Archaeological Center in SW Colorado is amazing. They offer a high school field school as well as all kinds of family programs that are part summer camp, part archaeological training. They are not cheap, though! http://crowcanyon.org/archaeology_ad...mmer_camps.asp. For a less expensive field experience, check Earthwatch. Some well-respected archaeologists have run programs through them in the past. You could also check the Archaeological Institute of America's Archaeological Fieldwork Opportunities Bulletin at http://www.archaeological.org/fieldwork/afob. A lot of those projects are geared towards college students and adults, but some take high school students. If you live near a university or a museum, she may be able to volunteer in a lab. She'd most likely be given very menial tasks to begin with (like washing and labeling artifacts), but can work her way up to more interesting things. This web page may answer some of your questions and point you towards some useful resources: http://archnet.asu.edu/faq/career_faq.php

People generally study archaeology either in an anthropology department or a Classics department. Art historians are in a different department in most places. Very few US schools have a separate archaeology department. I'm only familiar with the anthropology route. People with a BA in Anthro can go on to any number of careers that involve understanding humans, which can be practically anything really, especially personnel or management type positions. People who specifically want to do archaeology for a living with a BA usually work for cultural resource management or "contract" firms, excavating/analyzing/writing reports on sites that are slated to be destroyed by new construction. With an MA, people can either get a steadier or supervisory position in a contract firm, a supervisory-type position in a government agency, or teach. These days, however, full-time teaching jobs tend to go to PhDs, even at the community college level; MAs nowadays are often adjuncts, which usually doesn't pay well. Some archaeology MAs go into museum positions, but there are some specifically "museum studies" MA programs too. With a PhD, people with some experience can get the top positions in contract or government agencies, or teach at a community college or university. The teaching jobs are *very* competitive, however; this year there were under 40 university openings, with literally hundreds of applicants for each one. I respectfully disagree with the previous post re: top-ranked programs for graduate school. Those are good schools, but I think it is more important to choose a program based on what you want to specialize in; some schools are great for maritime archaeology, or environmental archaeology, or Mesoamerican archaeology, etc but have very little to offer students with other specializations. For undergrads on the other hand, these different strengths can make some difference but an all-around-good-school is really the most important thing IMHO.

This thread makes me think that this conversation (which is no doubt in my family's future also) might also be a good time to talk about the more general issue of making assumptions about people based on appearances. Your daughter has someone to help her avoid sending unintended messages with her clothing (whether she likes it or not!), but it also brings up the issue of tolerance for other people's choices. I certainly don't want my daughters to wear clothing labeled "Juicy" on their bottoms, and I want them to understand why not. However, I also don't want them to call girls who do so "sluts" or other names. I hope I can teach them the difference between thinking someone has made a bad choice vs condemning that person. There are way too many examples out there of girls/women being judged and treated horribly because they didn't dress in whatever way those around them happened to believe was "modest."

Are you asking about study materials, or about future career prospects?

I was one of those naive teens once... I remember honestly not believing anyone would think I was dressing like a cleavage-y slut-bomb in order to advertise my "availability," because those clothes were just a style, they weren't really sending a message, and my overly conservative, overprotective, unreasonably mean mom read entirely too much into *everything* and wouldn't let me wear anything remotely stylish. Twenty years later, I thank my lucky stars my mom stopped me from acting like an idiot. It might help to ask her to imagine how a strange adult man might interpret an outfit, rather than what teenage boys she actually knows might be thinking. In my memory at least, nothing is more creepy to a teenager than an adult. :-) Descriptors courtesy of Buffy.

From a social science perspective: I think the kind of postmodernism that people react strongly against is a more extreme form that holds that there are no absolute truths; everything we can observe is translated through our own personal experiences. This makes everything "relative," depending on who is observing it, and implies that every set of observations about the world is unique and nothing can be generalized to all people. This kind of postmodernism was in part a reaction to what some people perceived as a tendency to use science to construct absolute "truths" that were in reality heavily influenced by the experiences and biases of the people who observed them. A lot of the social scientists I know now consider themselves to be using the best of both worlds; using science to make observations and attempt to find useful general patterns, while recognizing that their own biases are important to their interpretations. From a religious standpoint (which I don't personally know much about), I would guess the postmodernist idea that there are no universal truths is objectionable. Some people see postmodernism as meaning that since every person is unique in terms of their life experiences, different things are "true" for everyone, and it's impossible to have moral absolutes in that case. I agree that I wouldn't want my kids to become extreme postmodernists in the sense that *nothing* is universal. I am pretty sure the laws of gravity do not change depending on who is making the observations! But, I think keeping in mind that our experiences do bias our observations and interpretations (and often what we think is "true" and important) is always a good idea.