Just another vote for The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper sequence. A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton Porter The historical novels of Rosemary Sutcliffe? Is she ready for Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights? (I read Jane Eyre for the first time at 11 and loved it; Wuthering Heights came when I was 16 and I wouldn't have understood it before that.)

DS6 finishes kinder in a couple weeks and easily/fluently reads upper elementary material. He's also comfortable with multiplication and division work in his Montessori class. DS3 sight reads a ton of words, most of which we didn't explicitly teach him. "Mom, that says 'gold class car wash.' " Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I just installed this exact clothesline this week! You can see a picture of it at work here: https://www.instagram.com/p/BF_3tgPhAiz/ It takes up almost a whole exterior wall, but it's extremely well-made and I love that there's room for huge loads. We live in Los Angeles and get sun 75 to 85 percent of the year (depending on how the marine layer behaves) so an outdoor clothesline is a good choice for us. (I often find that we are more comparable, climate-wise, to Australia than to the rest of the U.S. and the Hills clothesline brand is an Australian institution!)

http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_22743800/stellar-harker-school-student-wins-siemens-award-advanced "Ashvin's AP quest started early. He took his first AP calculus test in the eighth grade, followed by physics and computer science tests in the ninth grade." I went to a junior high that had an advanced math track aiming for AP calculus in 9th grade, but every so often a kid would do it in 8th. I personally think the "don't include achievements from middle school" prohibition is bunk. If your kid wins the National Spelling Bee in 8th grade (or 5th grade) you will (and you should) find a way to mention that in your apps.

My food religion of choice is Nutritarian, as espoused by Dr. Joel Fuhrman in Eat to Live.

I have no idea what's "better" but from what you've said, I would send 'em to school during the day and then unschool/homeschool/afterschool as much as you. It can be easy and fun and enriching. Don't stress yourself out either way. They're gonna be OK. 1. Regular library visits. "Tuesday is library day and then we're going for frozen yogurt." 2. Strewing: lots of books, a music player they can control (anything from an old clock-radio to an MP3 player loaded with audio books), construction toys (blocks and/or boxes of modular junk from the Habitat for Humanity Restore), art supplies. 3. Outings to parks, nature centers, shopping malls, festivals, factories, etc.

You want this: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/my-favorite-simple-roast-chicken-231348 Find a roasting rack at a thrift store. Get some cotton twine at a hardware store. Pick some thyme out of your garden. Buy the expensive Maldon sea salt that's shaped like tiny pyramids. Go to the fancy grocery store and buy the chicken that had the best quality of life you can afford. Open a bottle of wine and find a loved one to share a table with you. Cook, eat, live happily ever after. Cheers!

I know these videos will be viewed suspiciously by some (since they advocate so directly for a meningitis vaccine), but I watched them a few years ago and they were very powerful. Voices of Meningitis: Meningitis Video Library

Whooping cough would also absolutely ruin a semester at school. It's called the 100-day cough for a reason. I've always wondered what happens to the money paid by the kids that have to stop out because they get Mono. Do they get a tuition credit or is that just dollars down the drain?

I've never heard this term before. What does it mean?

* Onions in the Stew, The Plague and I or Anybody Can Do Anything by Betty MacDonald (adult books by Mrs Piggle-Wiggle writer) * Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott (probably has swear words) * Helen Keller-Annie Sullivan stuff Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

My impression is that if the kids (AS A WHOLE) in Los Altos schools in California are 3.2 grade levels above average [for the country], that means their statistical spread is between 0 levels ahead (average for the country) and 6 grade levels ahead for the country. That means some of their 6th graders are doing 12th grade work (nationally) and some are just being 6th graders, and the average Los Altos 6th grader is working on the 9th grade level. Meanwhile, at the other end of the scatterplot, the kids in Detroit, Flint and/or Camden NJ AS A WHOLE are 2.5 grade levels below average nationally, which means the average Detroit-Flint-Camden 6th grader is working at a halfway-through-3rd-grade skill level, while their very top tier are just a little behind national 6th grade standards, and their bottom tier of 6th graders are working on about a first grade level. SO...the spread between the worst-performing kids in Camden and the highest performing kids in Los Altos is actually 12 grade levels. The spread between the center-cut kids is 6 grade levels. And the very worst-performing kids in Los Altos are still doing a little better than the very best-performing kids in all of Camden. Man, that's distressing.

(1) I think this is huge. I think this is actually the case not just with low-income parents but with most parents. The kids are in school, so they must be learning, right? (2) This guy has a very interesting take on opting out of standardized testing, which he believes helps protect students and families against educational malfeasance: "I recently read a report titled, “Out of Pocket: The High Cost of Inadequate High Schools and High School Student Achievement on College Affordability“. The article had some eye opening stats. Here’s a few: 1:4 students entering college had to enroll in remedial coursework This costs students and families $1.5 Billion! 45% of these students came from middle to upper class families while 55% came from poor families 74% more likely to drop out of college Those that do graduate take 11 more months to graduate on average I felt my muscles tensing up as I read this. I remember graduating being in the top 10 percentile throughout high school. I remember having As and Bs, thinking I knew what I was doing. Then I had to take a full year of remedial Language Arts and Math. I remember the counselor telling me that these 6 classes — yes, dammit 6 classes in a quarter system — wouldn’t count towards my college graduation. More than 10 years after college and still owing Sallie Mae more than $75K, I’m still paying for those courses." (3) I found this guy's work when I read the HuffPo version of this post, which I think is superhelpful for all parents, not just black parents: Questions for Black Parents to Ask Their Child's Teacher and School

I've always wondered what, besides corruption/graft/incompetence, is the sitaution at school districts with much higher spending-per-pupil but terribly low results. Is it the spending on assistants for many children with high needs, reading tutors, speech therapists and psychologists? Or something else? The money just doesn't seem to go as far but where does it go?

It also costs money to, you know, buy a bike. Not as much as a car, but enough that the new bike a kid might grow out of soon plus helmet and lock are significant expenses. Another "inequality of experience" story: My dad is a docent at the Getty Villa. The Getty Foundation pays for school buses to bring kids in for field trips. A meaningful number of the kids come up Pacific Coast Highway and say, "Wow, I've never seen the ocean before." They live in SoCal, but the ocean is so foreign to them they might as well live in Saskatchewan.

Is there already a thread discussing this NYT infographic? http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/04/29/upshot/money-race-and-success-how-your-school-district-compares.html The poor are screwed and the rich are terrified, as per this Atlantic piece which came out today: "At its core, this relentless drive to spend any money available comes not from a desire to consume more lattes and own nicer cars, but, largely, from the pressure people feel to provide their kids with access to the best schools they can afford (purchased, in most cases, not via tuition but via real estate in a specific public-school district). Breaking the bank for your kids’ education is, to an extent, perfectly reasonable: In a deeply unequal society, the gains to be made by being among the elite are enormous, and the consequences of not being among them are dire. When understood mainly as a consequence of this rush to provide for one’s children, the drive to maximize spending is not some bizarre mystery, nor a sign of massive irresponsibility, but a predictable consequence of severe inequality." http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/05/american-financial-hell/481107/

This article is a good history: http://www.vocativ.com/278816/the-wild-rumor-that-wont-die-khloe-kardashians-real-dad-is-oj/

There are many many rumors that he already did "date" her and that O.J. Simpson is actually Khloe Kardashian's bio-dad.

Related link: Scroll down for an album of Venezuelan families and what food they currently have in their homes. http://www.businessinsider.com/venezuela-economic-food-crisis-meals-2016-4

We definitely leave a lot of edible food on the table when we trim vegetables. You can eat chard ribs and cauliflower leaves and carrot tops and beet tops and so forth. I do freeze strawberry tops for use in smoothies. That said, I'm not going to burn up my Magic Bullet motor trying to grind up eggplant stems or corn husks or pineapple skin. Use your best judgment.

Neighborhood. Infrastructure is harder to build than houses.

I have a Ph.D. in Dave Ramsey podcasts and I don't think this is Dave Ramsey. I think this is just certain people being penny-wise, pound-foolish and selfish.

Note: French press calls for a "rough" grind. Our coffee grinder is an old Cuisinart that really just wants to do a fine grind so I always have to pulse it to get rough. Higher-quality grinders or a manual grinder should be able to do rough grind easily.

Such great lists, everybody. Thank you!!

I was just re-reading The Tightwad Gazette and she articulated the value of scrimping for a little while so you can afford a sewing machine, garden supplies and cloth diapers, all of which will allow you to save money over the course of many years. What gizmos or gadgets or tools or capital investments have paid off for you over time?