No, but I never did.

Money isn't the issue for us. There are no good schools available. If we had a classical or core knowledge school nearby, my kids would be there now.

The most likely explanation is constipation. But he should see his doctor.

1. Watching my girls dance 2. My cat 3. My library

My 13 year old still struggles, although we work on it daily.

I agree she should be seen, and PLEASE take her to an ophthalmologist rather than an optometrist.

We got two from a Petco. They were terrified of us from the beginning and we never could get them used to being handled. They are eating machines and they stink. They also fought with each other and we had to put a separator down the middle of the cage. They can be really noisy at night. If you can find nice ones, they might be fun. I would look for a breeder though. This site has great information. I'd recommend building a cage instead of buying one. I've heard great things about rats. Seriously. I wish we'd have gone that route.

Sounds like plantar fasciitis, not gout.

I get 77 recipes at allrecipes.com. I usually sort them by ratings to get the best recipes.

We have very few options in my area, and I know there would be great interest in classical education here. How does one go about it? I am a scientist, not a business person, and I don't have the foggiest idea whether it's even realistic.

Here is a link to his blog. The article was just posted today. The comments section should be interesting to watch.

Looking at his links casts doubt on his credibility. He links to a blog by Michael Asher, but there isn't any information about who that is. The graph on this blog shows a large one year drop in temperature, but that is meaningless in the big picture. I'm not a climatologist, but I know that no credible scientist would ever use this one data point to claim "evidence of significant cooling". There are normal year to year variations in temperature, and it probably has something to do with El Nino or La Nina or some other recurring weather pattern. I recognize that there is disagreement among credible climatologist about global warming. But I wouldn't get my information from this guy.

I'm a little bit psycho about it- I find a lane that has someone in front of me with lots of stuff, so by the time they are done I've got all my groceries up there. I put the cans and boxes on first and the produce last. That way, if one of the baggers insists on helping, they can load the cans in the heavy canvas bags, and I can jump in and grab the produce and stuff it in my stretchy woven knit bags. They are always amazed at how much I can fit in those, and as long as you do it right it doesn't damage anything (carrots and celery and pineapples on the bottom, etc.). By now, most of them know me so when they see me coming they run for the hills anyway.

I know many people do this, and I think my dd could have handled the concepts without any problem. She just needed some more practice with fractions, decimals, and percents. She was making too many mistakes for me to be comfortable moving on. She is flying through Chalkdust pre-algebra, and is much more solid on the basics now. I'd rather take a little extra time and be sure she's ready, than start too early and have to back up.

We tried Algebra after Singapore 6B, but dd clearly wasn't ready. We did ALEKS and are now doing Chalkdust Pre-algebra and I'm very pleased with it.

Whitney Tilson rewrote the football version No Child Left Behind: The Football Version 1. All teams must play hard and do their best. If a team is poorly managed and disorganized, it will be put on probation until it improves, and the coaches will be held accountable. The children and their parents will not be blamed for the failure of the coaches. 2. All kids will be expected to play. Obviously, some kids will play with more skill than others, but all kids will be expected to work hard and perform at a proficient level. Some kids may need to work extra hours to achieve proficiency. The coaches will be expected to put in those extra hours with the kids to ensure their success. 3. Coaches will not focus their resources solely on the handful of players who demonstrate unusual proficiency at an early age. Coaches will be held accountable for the success of EVERY player. 4. Games will be played year round, and statistics will be collected, analyzed and widely disseminated frequently. 5. This will create a New Age of sports where every kid learns the necessary tools to succeed. Just because some children get ahead, it's not acceptable that many children get left behind.

That's what I meant- each state picks what test it will use. They also pick their own proficiency standards. I think that is the real weakness of NCLB. Without uniform standards and testing the results are really meaningless.

Fuzzy math really took hold when the NCTM standards were published in 1989. We haven't had good reading instruction in decades, if ever. My interpretation is that NCLB was a response to those and an attempt to move away from these constructivist approaches. "Reading First" clearly advocates phonics based instruction.

But it's the states that pick what tests to use. I agree, some of them are terrible. But that isn't the fault of the NCLB.

We started out in ps, but eventually gave up because I was so unhappy with the curriculum. I hated the way they were teaching reading and math, and social studies and science were a joke. While I think NCLB has room for improvement, I don't blame it for the direction many schools have gone. If the schools would just adopt really good reading and math instruction, there would be plenty of time for it all. As long as they use "balanced reading" and fuzzy math, they aren't going to make much progress. The Core Knowledge schools are getting it all done.

My 13 yo dd does this. She has been informally diagnosed as mildly dyslexic, although she is now a good reader. She also misspells words, leaves out punctuation, and forgets to capitalize. We've done copywork, dictation, lots of grammar and several different writing programs. We're just starting IEW and am hoping that will help. It is very, very frustrating.

We use the textbook and the workbooks. I bought the CD but we haven't used it at all. I have degrees in the sciences so am comfortable teaching without the TM. We read a section each day, then they do the corresponding workbook pages. We talk about the concepts, using the review section as a guide. Some chapters are more difficult than others and we adjust how much time to spend on each depending on the difficulty and interest level. Although we spend lots of time talking about how you would design and carry out experiments, we rarely do any ourselves, although we've only done life sciences and weather/climate so far. I expect to do more hands-on stuff when we do chemistry and physics. My kids have the opportunity to do some intensive labs (dissection, microscopy, etc.) during the summer at a local academic camp, so I'm comfortable skipping much of the lab work for now. We also supplement with United Streaming and various animations I find online.

Their website is terrible, but start here

Prentice Hall Science Explorer series

Maternal antibody drops off quickly after 6 months- by age one year, only about 10% have antibodies to measles, and about 5% have antibody to mumps or rubella. It drops off even faster for chickenpox; less than 40% have antibody at 6 months, and 0% at one year. So no, it's not true.