Ember's End, just finished it, have questions. 😆 Anyone else?

Narwhal and Jelly, my kids think they're hilarious. Possibly the Dog Man series, by the Captain Underpants author(s). We don't personally own copies, but it's on my maybe list.

Another little comment on the "How much does one have?" idea: I use this all the time when determining rate. Rate is typically "over 1," that is miles per (one) hour, meters per (one) second, revolutions per (one) minute, and so on. Another way of thinking of 7 / (2/3) would be, "A bird flies 7m in 2/3 of a second. What is their speed in m/s?" And I always think of these problems as ratios, so I'd do something like 7 : 2/3 as ___ : 1 which I'd set up as fractions, 7/x = (2/3)/1 = 2/3, then cross multiply.

Conformity : Anthem, by Ayn Rand. It's her only book of "normal" novel length and it's very good. It's dystopian. The book plays with language in an interesting way. The main character only has the pronoun "we" to describe himself, but can feel that this is somehow wrong. He eventually managed to escape and in some old writings, discovers "I" (IIRC, it's been years...)

This is also how I'd do it. Bar models are great for making this comprehensible.

The things that kept my kids busiest the longest at that age were not books, though we did like the Kumon cutting books. They were: A big, relatively shallow rubbermaid container filled with rice. I'm realizing now might not be the best time to buy 10lbs of rice, but if you can, it stays surprisingly "clean". I had the same box of rice for 10 years with no issue. Throw some little sandbox type toys in there, and put the fear of God into them about throwing or intentionally spilling rice. Set the box in the center of a king size sheet, and let them play. So much easier to clean up than sand. Play dough of some kind on a safe surface water color on a safe surface. Don't use cups for the water, use something like a baking dish that cannot be spilled by accident. Mosaic art- Pre-tear little bits of construction paper from the scrap bin into pretty small pieces, then print out some very basic coloring pages or just blank paper. Kids use the torn paper scraps and a glue stick to fill in the coloring page or to make their own design. 3 and 6 year olds can also be trained to do quiet time in their beds with a few books of their choice. Set timers, use stickers as rewards, but be absolutely consistent with the "quiet time" and you will be rewarded with peace and quiet.

I think that falls in the realm of normal for PP, but keep a close eye on it, as well as your fatigue level, shortness of breath, and other anemia symptoms. If your periods don't straighten out within a couple months or if the bleeding lasts beyond a normal (albeit too early) period, I'd go in.

I hed a free trial about a year or so ago. It was ok, but I did not end up buying a subscription.

While I deeply respect everything you have to say about math around here, my experience with the commutative property of multiplication has been very different, so far for my first three kids, including my struggling student. We used cuisinaire rods for the first week of multiplication, constantly showing that a 2x6 rectangle is the same as a 6x2 rectangle in terms of area, and so on. So maybe I could say that we defined multiplication as area before defining it as repeated addition? Anyway, we had no issues. Every time I read a mulitpilcaiton problem as we introduce the topic, I always read it as "3 times 4. That's 3 copies of 4 or 4 copies of 3. Which do you think you could do most easily?" and then let them choose how to proceed. I do the exact same when teaching adding. And every time we do subtraction or addition, I say, "Remember with subtraction/division, order matters. We need to start with the whole amount." I don't like defining subtraction as taking away, because it is also the operation of comparing. I try to distinguish early on these two types of subtractions. Problems like "Jim is 123cm and Ryan is 140cm, how much taller is Ryan?" are not obviously subtraction since no one is taking away from anyone. We always draw bar diagrams for these to see better what the whole and 2 parts are.

Like @CuriousMomof3, we also spend a lot of time going over if we know a part or a whole, which can help with picking out the right operator. - Ok, so with this information do we know the whole or are we trying to find the whole? Remember, when we know the whole and are looking for parts, order matters in the operation. - Are these parts? Are we trying to find the total and we know all the parts? Also, I discovered early on that several of my kids did not know the difference between "whole" and "hole" 🤣 Be sure to clear that up with little kids!!!

Addition means "put together" Subtraction means "the difference between" Multiplication means "of" Division means "shared equally between" (this one isn't quite as good as the others) Equal means "balances with" I didn't invent these, I learned about them from educationunboxed.com. But they work quite well, especially when trying to determine which operation to use in word problems. The "of" for multiplication is especially helpful. How many times have I heard myself saying to my kids: - What do you need to find? - 3/20 of 60. How do I do that? - What does "of" mean in math? - Oh yeah!

I'm starting to get the weirdest knee jerk reactions to math problems, books, and tv shows where people are meeting in groups. I'm thinking, "Noooooo! Social Distance!!!"

Vacuuming. Our floor ends up not only with dust, but crumbs and bits of dirt from the shoe-removal area, hairballs from long-haired family members, legos, bits of paper... The shelves just get dust. And while I do realize that dust is made of dead skills cells and mite poop... I still prefer to walk on a clean floor. I'm always barefoot and feel grit instantly.

@IvyInFlorida Literally got choked up over your news! I saw the update in your other thread, but came over here where I feel more like I "know" you! I'm so glad for you and your family. What an amazing surprise. If you have to feel nauseated and miserable, there is no better cause on Earth!

Good, sharp knives DO matter, but they won't automatically improve your cooking. - Texture matters. And having good knives allows you to get the texture right, assuming you know what you're doing. - Getting a new knife or two (you don't need a set!!!) can create a self-fulfilling situation where you are motivated to spend more time working in the kitchen and experimenting with the knife, and more time in the kitchen makes you a better cook through experience. - Working on knife skills usually means working with fresh, unprocessed ingredients, which usually means higher quality meals. Personally, I say go for it. Whether you learn to cook better as you learn to use your knife better, or learn to use your knife better while you learn to cook better, you will find a good knife is just SO satisfying to work with. And then, when you go to your friend's house and discover they've got nothing but an old steak knife in a drawer, you'll STILL be able to make something amazing, because the skills will be there.

I've had three, and felt better by my next period after each, so about a month, feeling incrementally better each week.

We also stopped at the end of 5B (standards) and went on to AOPS Pre-Algebra. I did do some ad-lib lessons on powers and negative numbers, as there is not a ton in SM5 about them. This was for a strong math student. My second kiddo is juuuuust about to do the same. She probably has a month left of 5B.

I wonder if various history/science through a particular lens type resources might also be whole to parts. For example. I'm having my kids read through a book called "50 Plants that changed the world." First, we read specific chapters that related to events in our chronological history- notably the tea chapter and the cotton chapter as we study early American history. This book takes the topic of a plant, such as tea, and brings us from the first cultivators or tea through to the Boston Tea Party and beyond. Following one theme like this is a great alternate approach and helps synthesize across long timelines. Other books, like the Imponderables series (Why do clocks run clockwise series) are going to integrate across many topics as well. Personally, I think this integration, as opposed to a whole-to-parts vs parts-to-whole makes more sense. Approach your subject from two directions: - step-by-step typical science or history approach - integration texts that pull lots of concepts across the curriculum together For science, we're doing The Story of Science- read independently- in addition to a standard science class taught by me. We then add books like the two mentioned above for integration. For history, we are doing SOTW3, The Drama of American History, historical fiction, and books like the plants book that try to integrate single topics over large spans of time. Back to your actual OP. I would imagine studying history by looking at the major stages of human development before diving into topics would be cool: hunter-gatherer to agricultural revolution to industrial revolution to digital revolution, for example. A course like Big History might also be an option for an overview of both science and history before deep diving. Or a very short resource like "A Little History of the World" over the course of a month before attempting the 4 year cycle. A book *about* history as a field of study is also a great top-down view.

Great ideas! - Buy what you know you'll eat, not what you think (out of guilt, because you saw that kale will extend your life by 47 years, etc.) you should eat. - Scale DOWN recipes if you have a hard time pushing leftovers. - A friend of mine has a cool alternative for making veggie broth. She saves all her peels and puts them in her food dehydrator, then throws the dried stuff in the blender until it's crushed into powder. I think she then mixes it 50/50 with salt for veg broth. The powder is shelf-stable and very compact compared to quarts of broth in the freezer.

Ah! I just remembered what creepy thing this reminded me of. Google "blue whale challenge".

Yep, I vote horror movie plot.

@IvyInFlorida I am so sorry to read your sad news. I am glad to hear you are in the loving and supportive arms of your family.

I don't like to waste, so after holiday meal, we eat leftover holiday meal until it's gone. I am getting better and halving recipes for sweets, even for our largish family. There is absolutely no reason for me to make a 24 batch cupcake recipe- that's FOUR per person in our house!!! So I half those recipes. Same for cakes, I'll half the recipe and if I still want a layer cake, I'll use a smaller baking tin. Etc. This helps a lot with not feeling "obligated" to eat bad food until it's gone. In general, now is a great time to slowly move your meals towards healthier. There are plenty of healthy fruits and veggies that can last quite a while, like cabbage family, root veggies, apples, etc. I don't think it's a great time for radical change. You don't want to find yourself with a houseful of kale and pinto beans and then discover that you hate them both. EDIT: I do know the verb is *halve*. Sigh. I can't explain what happened there.

We had super traditional breakfast burritos for Easter dinner. 🤣 Tonight was pizza- homemade crust, jarred sauce, cheese from freezer, and toppings from various nooks and crannies of the fridge that needed using up. Beef stew with egg noodles Citrus black beans over rice with various toppings Noodles with Thai peanut sauce and whatever veggies stif fry Burgers from freezer with sweet potato fries from freezer

Thank you, it's reassuring to know that not every case necessarily ends with surgery. I think therapy might be the next step, but his last appointment being cancelled has sort of left me in the dark after his 3 month patch trial. I was just reading about the brock string online and hav made one for him to try out tomorrow. Can you give me a rough estimate of how much time you spent doing VT per day? Lots of small sessions sprinkled throughout the day or one longer one? I don't mind experimenting on him until his next appointment, which is rescheduled for June.