All of the destination house and snack threads have me thinking that I'm a bit unusual. I like children. I even like children that don't belong to me. A few people said that they like having other kids over. Everyone else seems to look at it either with horror or as a necessary evil. I don't mind feeding children (obviously, the budget restriction makes sense). I don't mind the noise and chaos. I don't even mind talking to or playing with children. You want to sit here and give me a blow-by-blow retelling of Pikachu's battle with Spiderman? Go for it. I spent my high school and college summers running preschool playgroups and school-age all-day camps through parks and recreation. I loved it. I find my little house quite dull in comparison. Am I just strange? I see at least a few other people who like having little visitors, but we seem to be in the minority.

Crawling is a cross lateral movement. (I think that's right word.) Both sides of the body and brain have to work together. My youngest is 9.5 months old, and he pulls himself forward but not with his stomach off the ground. If he wasn't interested in moving, I would probably just get things checked out to make sure there aren't any "fix-able" reasons. I know of one baby who stayed put because of fluid in his ears. He didn't show any sign of pain, but it was uncomfortable for him to balance or move around. The regular doctor was able to figure that out though.

Any chance there is someone else in the house with a similar name that the bank wouldn't give an account to? Bank of America refused my younger sister an account because she has a somewhat similar name and obviously several records of living at the same address. I had an account with them that was supposed to be closed out, but apparently I owed a fee that went through after I was told the account had been closed. I owed the bank $100 after they tacked on all their late fees, which I paid as soon as I found out! They thought she and I were the same person. Sorry sis! (It's been long straightened out now. I felt pretty awful at the time.)

I just looked them up. I guess they were the Mayfair Witch series? Looking through the plot summaries on Wikipedia, I am again awestruck that my mother let me borrow them from her.

That is very helpful. Thank you both so much!

That's the only one I can think of. I remember reading The Green Mile when it was first released. It was a serial originally, if I'm remembering correctly. I had to have been around 12, if not a little younger. I read some of the other books around that same time. It didn't scar me, or even scare me terribly. I probably did scan some passages instead of reading every word. (Now the Anne Rice books that my mother let me borrow from her - those I found a little disturbing.)

The members tab lists 23012 members, but that usually only includes members who have logged in within a certain time frame. 411 out of 768 pages were posters with at least 1 post.

Can anyone tell me what, if anything, has been changed in the beginning of the new edition? I tried to look on Amazon, but it only shows the previous edition. I ask because I'm trying to set up a very (very!) gentle K(4/5) outline for the beginning of time to where we will begin in the first volume of Story of the World. I don't expect much long-term retention of anything we cover, but library trips might be easier if I make a list for our non-fiction selections. The current "toddler and preschooler grab anything at eye-level" method has led to a few winners, but mostly duds. Sorry if this has been covered before. I tried the regular search and the tag search but couldn't find my answer. Thanks!

I'm going to be in Pittsburgh with my husband and my children on the 23rd for a checkup for the baby. We were planning on doing something while we are there. Zoo, aviary, children's museum, one of the Carnegie museums, one of the libraries, the Mr. Rogers playground in Monroeville Mall, something else? Would anyone be interested?

When I read it in a university class, we had quite a bit of discussion on Christian allegory and themes. A lit guide outlining the story might give you a decent idea of whether or not this is something you want to tackle at this point. Some people think allegory is worthwhile, and others think it is blasphemy.

My husband drives an hour each way for work 5 days a week, in a car that gets decent mileage. Unfortunately he also does about 3 more hours a week for that employer to pick up things from other locations - without being reimbursed. I don't see this changing any time soon. We use about half of a tank each month on the van to run errands. I don't see that going down substantially. We have far too many trips planned in the next 6 months. We are visiting my in-laws for a few days, visiting my family for a few days, and driving down to Disney from Pennsylvania. I just mapped it out and it looks like it will be more than 3500 miles total? I'd be perfectly content to never leave the house again, but no one else in this family shares that sentiment.

My three year old is deeply invested in the why stage right now. She will ask question after question about how and why things are the way they are. Sometimes I will ask her what she thinks. Her answer is either "because they are" or "because God made it that way" as if everything I had said was completely irrelevant to the discussion. I'm not even sure where the glib "God made it that way" answer came from. She has a couple books about how God made the world, but I don't think I've ever answered a question by telling her that. In any case, I'm convinced that there are plenty of children who would be content with the short answer.

I've heard similar stories, but most of them said that the people running the gas station probably couldn't tinker with the pumps in their own favor. It sounded like the pumps would be slightly off in their calibration. Sometimes they would start recording before the gas went into the tank, and sometimes they were a hair late. Personally, I'd go somewhere else next time though.

I know what they have in common. Any woman can describe herself with these terms, but if you say the same thing, you've crossed the line.

They absolutely do recruit. I have a family member who coaches for a community college. (Not basketball and not as a landlord!) I went to a DI school, and the recruiting at the CC level is nothing like what I experienced though. I'm not sure exactly how the regulations play out, but there are different limitations on what benefits a player can receive at a community college. I'm not big on going out of the way to get people into trouble, but I could see this causing trouble for the team and the school if the athletic department hasn't cleared it. (I hula-hoop in my yard wearing a bikini when it's hot out, but I'm pretty sure teenage boys are NOT interested in watching me play with my children.)

I recently finished reading a book called Losing Our Language by Sandra Stotsky. It covers how multicultural education has changed some aspects of teaching. It lists examples and overall numbers for the change in reading vocabulary from difficult words in the English language to specific vocabulary words in other languages. It also highlights some changes in the types of questions that students could be asked about the literature they read, many of which I felt were inappropriately leading for grammar and young logic stage students. The book also lists examples where teaching strategies have been changed to accommodate students who speak or read other languages instead of helping them learn to use English. I thought it was very interesting, but my opinions on the matter aren't set in stone. Someone who wholeheartedly agrees with all of the ideas in the book would probably love it. It wouldn't be an easy book for an opponent to read with an open mind. I definitely saw some of the highlights of the book put in place when I was a student. (Classroom discussion at a standstill because no one could pronounce the names and objects in the story, for example.) I do still read books to my children about different cultures and with dialect, but I do those out loud. I don't know if it is truly the cause for the poor educational results we see. I have a burning questions myself, about the idea that we are expecting too much from students. How is it that we can't prepare average or above average students to take college courses, but other countries are able to prepare below average students to outperform all of our students on international tests? I'm thinking of the examples where our best students are below the level of the worst students in other countries. I know a lot of it boils down to cultural priorities. I don't think that the actual ability of the students is the limiting factor.

....I do this. I also can't tell my left from my right without making the L. I can get an A in calculus, but I probably couldn't pass kindergarten.

It doesn't match up exactly, but I found that the first set of Bob Books and the beginning Starfall stories have pretty similar levels. We also borrowed some of the Moncure books like the short vowel Word Bird stories and short vowel/long vowel stories from the library. We are using Funnix as our main program right now. It has a completely different progression from the majority of other programs that I've seen. I'm not crazy about the setup of the words introduced prior to the first stories for Starfall. (pan, fan, man etc.) The child only needs to figure out the sound of the first letter, instead of decoding the entire word. I do like Starfall for letter sounds. It didn't help much with the jump from sounds to blending.

At the very end of the article, a kid says that the regular milk doesn't taste good. The article implies that it is because kids prefer the sweetened alternatives. I am very fond of any type of milk except skim. The milk cartons my school served were awful. At some point, they had gotten too warm. It might have been while they were sitting near the register being sold, or it might have happened before they were delivered to the school. They never tasted the way milk usually does. I would never drink chocolate milk at home, but I'd buy it at school because the flavoring covered the off taste. That may not have been what the child was referring to, but it was the first thing that came to my mind.

What are you starting at if you are trimming $300? It's easier to reduce by 10% than by 75%. What do you buy? Any diet restrictions? Cheap breakfasts like oatmeal by the canister help during the winter, but they can be too heavy for the summer. Actually eating leftovers for lunch instead of letting them sit in the back of the fridge until they need to be tossed is helpful. (How do those bowls end up behind the milk cartons? :ack2:) I do only buy things that are on sale, like pork chops when they are below $2/lb. But instead of eating for the week based on sales, I buy a ton and freeze it when its on sale and make my meals based on what's in the freezer. I see a ton of recommendations for shopping from the weekly sales flyers all the time, but I think I spend a lot more doing that than just filling up the pantry and cooking with what I have on hand. I use allrecipes' ingredient search when I need help with recipes using food from the pantry.

I think the level of AP Spanish is going to vary quite a bit. I attended high school in NY. The year after the Regents, our Spanish classes were combined into a 4th year Honors/5th year AP course. (The 1st year credit is usually from both 7th and 8th grade.) We read quite a bit of Don Quixote, and we did work on some grammar. I took the 4th year, but decided to spend my last year concentrated on French instead of doing both languages simultaneously. My senior year I took the French Regents. I don't know if a second year of that particular Spanish class would have prepared me for the AP. I took 2 truly AP-level courses my senior year that were far more demanding, but produced great scores for most of the class. Learning French after working with Spanish expanded my abilities with both languages exponentially. I'm not sure if the effect would have been as great if I was a native speaker of two languages, but I think looking at multiple languages makes it much easier to see the framework behind the language. I took Latin in college, but I believe that my Regents scores exempted me from the language requirement. If just proving proficiency to a university is the goal, lots of schools offer some kind of standardized (CLEP?) or school-specific testing. Given the opportunity, I'd probably have chosen a different route than this particular student. I don't see any ethical objections to the student's choice though. It is disappointing that there aren't enough slots for all the students who want the classes.

I'd love it if you could elaborate on this. Any other threads, websites, or books you could point me to? I have a three year old that is constantly asking to watch movies in French. She only reads in English though. I don't expect any degree of fluency, but she enjoys using a few vocabulary words and expressions. I haven't seen anything yet stating this is harmful, so I'd really like to look into anything saying that it is. (Also, hi. I live just outside of Pittsburgh.)

I noticed that Funnix is listing a free download for their math program in June. Does anyone know if this is a brand new program? I haven't found any other mention of it on their site, but I may not be navigating well. We've been using the reading program and we like it. We really don't need any kind of math program at the moment, but I'm curious to see what it looks like. I'm not sure if it will be worth the trouble to download. The downloading process was a bit annoying last time. I don't want to waste my time, the drive space, or their bandwidth if it isn't something I'm interested in. Is anyone familiar with this?

My husband is severely intolerant, so for the first 6 months or so I only give "fake" (lactose-free) milk to the children. After that I slowly add in regular milk until I'm sure that we won't see anything explosive in the diapers or projectile vomiting. I prevaricate on whether I ought to let them have dairy sooner or hold off on it longer. The recommendations change constantly. For now I don't worry about foods that contain milk, but I don't give regular milk as a beverage in the beginning. Milk is the main beverage for my children, with water occasionally and juice on special occasions. With my first pregnancy I was under orders from my OB to only drink whole milk or milk shakes because I wasn't gaining any weight. I didn't seem to have that problem with my second and third pregnancies...:glare: Now I only have enough milk to swallow my vitamin in the morning and leave enough in the mug to cool my coffee. We've been planning on getting a pair of goats for a while, because my husband is okay with goat milk. I'm still not sure we have a good spot for them that isn't right near our neighbor's house.

Jumping on the furniture? We always had a couch that was falling apart in the playroom or basement that we could jump on when I was growing up.