This is me too - the reason I fly through books is *because* I'm so invested in the story. I remember reading a blog post where a person was talking about having read Pride and Prejudice in one day of non-stop reading and she was ashamed of it, thought it was a bad thing, that the book deserved more time spent. It baffled me, because some of my very best days of reading were reading a good book from start to finish in one go - best way to be fully immersed in the book ime - and I think that's of value, too. I do re-read books, so just because I read it once straight through doesn't mean I lose the chance to read it slower over time. And finishing a book fast doesn't mean I don't think about it and discuss it afterward - I don't brain dump a book the moment I'm finished with it, so that if I don't interact with it copiously during the initial reading I don't interact with it at all. And reading fast doesn't mean I don't stop and consider things mid-read, either; I read fast because I love to read, not because I want to get it over with. As C.S. Lewis said, there's no such thing as a book that's too long ;).

Well, as I posted (before reading the rest of the thread), my dd8 reads one that fast, and she really is *reading* it - she's just a very fast silent reader (and prolific - she reads several hours a day). I can read one silently in 15 min or so, probably at around 600 wpm. Max read aloud speed is generally estimated at 150 wpm, so a book that can be read aloud at a good clip in 60 min could be read silently at 3-4x that rate, so 450-600 wpm, which is 15-20 min. So ime it's quite plausible for good readers to read one that fast. But I do agree with you it ought not be the *norm* for everyone to reach in 2nd grade. Eta: I know when I'm reading fiction at a good clip it's more than skimming but less than reading each and every word. It *feels* like I'm taking in each and every word, but some of it is actually seeing the words I expect to see - automatically using grammar knowledge to fill in the "little" words, mostly, along with some story knowledge giving rise to expectations. I wouldn't know I do this, except that when I re-read books sometimes I come across a word I swear I haven't read before, and every so often my expectations are wrong and I come to a halt, going "huh?" and go back and re-read more carefully. And the harder the book (either content-wise or structure-wise) the slower I go, because I can't fill in the blanks as usual. I'm fairly certain my dd8 does the same thing - despite me being hard-core phonics-only in teaching her, she automatically used picture and context and grammatical clues in reading from the very beginning (she really hated to sound things out and hated reading things with no context - I can only imagine how little phonetic knowledge she would have ended up with if she'd been taught via whole language and *encouraged* to use context clues :svengo:).

Under 30 min (possibly in 15-20 min), age 8. I haven't timed it exactly, but it's pretty fast.

:grouphug: It sounds like you've been bombarded with tons of Law (and from the sound of it, most of it was "law", not actually God's Law, whatever they claimed) and precious little of the Gospel. There's a really good talk available on the Internet - "The Gospel for Those Broken by the Church" - you can watch the video, listen to the podcast, or read the transcript: http://www.1517legacy.com/rrosenbladt/2014/02/the-gospel-for-those-broken-by-the-church/ A good book is Broken: 7 "Christian" Rules Every Christian Ought to Break as Often as Possible, by Jonathan Fisk - http://www.amazon.com/Broken-Christian-Rules-Every-Possible/dp/0758631014 - unlike many books that deconstruct bad practices (but never get around to talking about what *is* good and right in contrast to what is wrong), a full half of *each* chapter presents the good news of the Gospel in contrast to the legalism it condemns.

Bumping this because I think I've found (or more accurately rediscovered - looked at an old book in a new light) a practical follow-up to A Case for Character: Lutheran Spirituality: Life as God's Child: http://www.amazon.com/Lutheran-Spirituality-Life-Gods-Child/dp/0758627343/ As a reviewer said, "Biermann takes the 'towards' part of his title seriously" :lol: - he clears the ground for developing a set of Lutheran virtues but doesn't do much more than hurriedly suggest some traditional Lutheran practices as a starting point before the book ends. I appreciated the idea of incorporating historic Lutheran practices instead of inventing a bunch of new things, but I wasn't really sure *how*. But today I was discussing a parenting book that centers parenting around the chief end of man and the centrality of the Gospel (so basically in line with parenting for virtue, although the author did not think in those terms), and I was both appreciative of the approach yet also critical of the *particular* telos chosen and how the Gospel wasn't central *enough*. I offered up my view of man's telos (playing off the Westminster view of the author - "the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever" - I said "the chief end of man is to love our neighbor through serving them in our vocations") and the centrality of the Gospel for both our justification *and* our sanctification. Someone asked for resources on my view of man's telos, and in addition to rec's to Veith's and Wingren's books on vocation, I mentioned that putting vocation in terms of our telos or chief end wasn't actually a very common way of talking for Lutherans (at least it isn't as far as I know, and Biermann's book implied as much). And then I went on to discuss Biermann's book, as the source of *my* putting it in those terms. As I refreshed my memory of Biermann's view of the telos of man - to be fully human, which means to be fully righteous both before God and before man - I realized that I (and the parenting author I was critiquing) had separated the concepts of our righteousness before God and our righteousness before man, and limited our telos to just having to do with our righteousness before man. Sort of the "two poles in constant tension" that Biermann is not a fan of, and in fact a major motivation for A Case for Character was to find a larger framework to fit both kinds of righteousness into so they were in harmony wrt the big picture. Anyway, in considering the greater scope of Biermann's view of the telos of man, I thought it would be helpful for the person asking to be able to see vocation explained within the larger context of Christian life. So I thought of Lutheran Spirituality, which has a chapter on vocation. And as I described the book as addressing both our righteousness before God and our righteousness before man, it hit me - I was describing the book in terms of how it addresses our telos- I was seeing the historic practices of Lutheran piety in virtue ethics terms! And since this thread popped up in my google search on Biermann and a Lutheran telos ;), I thought I'd post it here, too.

I really like the Worldview Everlasting videos. The pastor who does them posts two each week: a Greek Tuesday one, where he goes through one of the week's Scripture readings (usually but not always the Gospel reading), and an "Ask the Pastor" one on Fridays. Dh and I usually watch them, and he uses some of them with his confirmation class - Pastor Fisk is an engaging speaker and includes funny and pertinent video clips. He has several on grace; here's a link to the the videos tagged grace: http://www.worldvieweverlasting.com/tag/grace/ Eta: the summary of second video on the linked page, with the (characteristically) odd title of "Hadouken is not a Substance" :lol::

I love Lutheran Satire! "teaching the faith by making fun of stuff" :lol:.

Maybe she's referring to this post: http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/528785-fascinating-article-re-roman-empire-and-christ/

I know it's pretty much an annual tradition to have articles "debunking" traditional Christmas beliefs appear at Christmastime (and Easter gets the same treatment) - it has gotten to the eyeroll-inducing point by now - but my understanding is that the "no room in the inn", as popularly depicted as no hotel rooms available, and the idea of a stable/cave, and crèche, and other staples of Christmas scenes, are indeed not really accurate wrt 1st century Jewish culture. Here's a podcast on the topic from a professor who holds to historic Christian beliefs (so different than the usual debunking approach): http://issuesetc.org/2013/12/24/the-first-christmas-dr-ken-bailey-1314/

Here's a link to my denomination's (Lutheran, LCMS) calendar of commemorations (includes a link to short bios): http://www.lcms.org/page.aspx?pid=506 And here's a link to our feasts and festivals (overlaps with your other liturgical year question): http://www.lcms.org/page.aspx?pid=435 All of that is under our church year information page (there's a sidebar link to Sundays and Seasons, for more liturgical year information).

Interesting - I'll have to pay closer attention. The end of the statement period and the due date of the previous statement seem to be pretty close together on my card (throws me off, tbh) and I haven't paid close enough attention to the exact amount of points to verify which statement period it goes with. It just seems like a *very* long time, and this time I happened to notice they were posted shortly after the payment due date; maybe it was also the end of the next statement period.

As far as I can tell, the points show up a few days after the "pay at least the minimal payment by "x" date" day. So let's say the statement has charges 10/15 to 11/14, and the payment is due on 12/12. The points from the purchases made between 10/15 and 11/14 will show up during the week after 12/12 (maybe 3-4 days). So it can be a full two months from the time a charge is made to the time the points are credited. As far as I can tell, the points are credited after the payment due date - it doesn't matter when you actually make the payment.

I've had the same issues with my dd8 with Singapore math. I pulled out Zaccaro's Primary Challenge Math today and she really liked it - wants it to be her primary math. (She also pulled out the next Intensive Practice book and commented that it was harder and more interesting when she skipped the text and went straight to the problems.). I also just ordered Beast Academy - she liked the samples, and she likes to figure things out on her own. (Not to hijack, but I've had trouble placing her from the beginning. She gets concepts so quickly yet needs a fair bit of procedural practice; when I skip ahead too much her lack of computational fluency trips her up, yet when there's no conceptual challenge to add interest and motivation to do the hard-for-her computations math becomes pure drudgery.)

Wrt old cheap paperbacks falling apart, I have some from my childhood (that were old when I got them), and though dd8 tries hard, they do fall apart on her - she just opens them too far for too long. A solution that's worked well is buying giant binder clips and clipping them on the spine to take the strain off the binding - makes it so dd8 can read them without inadvertently destroying them.

I agree. Understanding different bases is extremely helpful in working with computers - my major was computer engineering and I got comfortable in base 2, base 8 and base 16 (and actually I'd already had experience in base 16 just from learning the codes for colors in paint programs - it comes in handy even if you don't program). In my experience, learning to work in another base is like learning another language - the second base is the hardest, as you are wrapping your brain around new ways to refer to the same concept, and things start to really come together when learning the third base, and adding additional bases after that is child's play, because you really *get* how it works and it's easy peasy to apply it to any base you want. And unlike languages, you can learn a new base in an afternoon ;).

This. And also so you can appreciate awesome geeky jokes like: There are 10 kinds of people in the world: Those who can count in binary, And those who cannot. :tongue_smilie: But really, working through the process of counting in another base, maybe making the equivalent of a hundred table to get the hang of how place value works in general, and then making an addition table and multiplication table and using them to add/sub and mult/div with the standard algorithms - basically repeating the steps of learning to do base 10 arithmetic but in another base - seeing how the algorithms work with fresh eyes - that sounds like an awesome use of an afternoon. (I'm geeking out at the thought - arithmetic in base 5 might be in my future today ;).)

I have three 155 sets, one for each kid ;), and that's been a good number (ds3 doesn't do any school, but that doesn't stop him wanting to play with rods when they come out - he makes good use of "his" set ;)). We have a mix of plastic and wood, and I don't have a preference. Dd6 prefers plastic when the colors of the wood and plastic rods are noticeably different.

We usually improvise costumes from what we have around the house, but this year I'm doing a bit of crafting (from my stash yarn, woohoo!) to round things out. Dd8 is Hermione - we're using an old clergy shirt of dh's as robes (previously was used for judge's robes) and I'm frogging an unfinished Jayne hat for yarn to make a Gryffindor scarf; I'll probably buy a Gryffindor crest and we'll improvise something for a wand. Dd5.5 is Elsa - she already had a dress from my mom that was Disney princess-ish (long and blue with sparkles) that works, and I'm crocheting an Elsa hat and picked up some fancy shiny see-through fabric to make into a cape. Dh has visions of dressing ds3 as a hobbit (he's got the cutest hobbit curls), but I'm leaving it up to dh to sort it ;).

I am a huge believer in nursery rhymes as an ideal introduction to poetry - great for developing an intuitive feel for poetry and learning to love sound and rhythm in language - for both kids *and* adults :thumbup:. I did the AP Lit thing - learned the technical terms and used them in analyzing poems - but I never *got* poetry. I considered myself a math & science person, and the apparent "inconsistency" of the "rules" in poetry drove me *insane*. I sort of thought you understood poetry *through* analyzing it, but with all the apparent exceptions to the rules, it was impossible to know how to apply them - it was like you had to understand the poem *before* you analyzed it - there was no other way to know which rule to apply where - but that was impossible, right? Because without analyzing the poem first, how could you ever knew what it meant? No way that I could see - poetry was entirely closed off to me, and I was mostly good with that. (I also approached Latin the same way - you translated in order *to* find out what it meant - but even Latin had enough ambiguity that you could never be sure you were right - you took a stab in the dark and picked something that looked consistent as you attempted to put the various pieces together - and why *this* way was right and the *other* ways were wrong was a complete mystery.) So while I in theory agreed with classical education's "Go poetry!" attitude, in practice I had no personal affinity for poetry and so it was solidly stuck on the "someday" pile. However, entirely separately ;), I did like nursery rhymes - had fond memories of them as a kid, and I was all for doing them with the kids. And we have, since dd8 was three. Lots of fun for us all, enjoying the fun rhythms and wordplay :). And eventually I decided that I wanted to learn to love poetry - so many people I respect loved poetry that I believed there was something there and I wanted to experience it. And I read several books on poetry written by poets, where they shared their love and enthusiasm for poetry. And I learned that poetry is *meant* to be understood just by reading and re-reading it - it's intelligible language, not a puzzle to solve or a cypher to decrypt. Laugh if you want, but this was news to me ;). Also, I learned that enjoying the sound and feel of a poem in your ear and mouth as you say it is at least half the point of poetry, and in fact enjoying the sound of a difficult poem's language can be the hook that keeps you reading and re-reading to increase your understanding of the meaning - especially as the sound and rhythm actually *carries* a large part of the meaning. And the place of analysis was not to somehow make sense of something otherwise unintelligible, but to learn more about how a poem you already enjoy works - analysis deepens your understanding, and allows you to make your intuitive understanding explicit and more detailed - but it doesn't *replace* an intuitive understanding. And I was able to connect to all that *because* of my years of developing a feel for language and love of wordplay through *nursery rhymes* - I just hadn't realized that nursery rhymes "counted" as poetry - but they use language just like "real" poetry does, only in a very overt, easily accessible way. Nursery rhymes are totally poetry for beginners. After years of them, me and my tone-deaf ear can appreciate the more subtle rhythms of "regular" children's poetry :thumbup:. I'm becoming more and more convinced the education in the early years is all about providing lots and lots of exposure to the good things you want to later on analyze and understand in depth - that fostering a love of the subject and developing an intuitive feel for it is the best preparation for analysis, because at its best analysis is learning more about something you already love, so you can love it even more :). So that's my goal for poetry for us - we read nursery rhymes and poems from an children's anthology and poems from a single poet, with the goal of enjoyment and intuitive understanding, seeing poetry as beautiful communication rather than beautiful-but-incomprehensible. So I make an effort to read well, feeling the rhythm and reading smoothly. I exaggeration the rhythm and get a good sing-song going for nursery rhymes, mostly because it's fun ;), but also because it makes the rhythm very clear and accessible even to littles (and tone-deaf adults ;)). With "regular" poetry I read normally, sensitive to the rhythm but not emphasizing or exaggerating it. I ask if the kids have any questions, and help them think through some of the imagery, and help explain what any complicated sentence structures are saying. I have the first two MCT poetry books, and I enjoyed them - his love for poetry and language shines through. I've also really enjoyed Mary Oliver (A Poetry Handbook and Rules for the Dance: A Handbook for Writing and Reading Metrical Verse) and Kenneth Koch (Making Your Own Days: The Pleasures of Reading and Writing Poetry) - they were great resources for *me* to learn more about how to appreciate poetry. I do think parents need to feel some love or affection or wonder or enjoyment of the poetry they are reading to their kids, or else it really lessens the likelihood that their kids will enjoy it - better simple but enjoyable nursery rhymes than great-but-meh poetry. (The number of posts from hs'ers who are complaining that they faithfully read poetry to their kids (or taught Latin, or logic, or great literature, or...) because they were told by more experienced educators that it would do <insert great and wonderful and necessary things>, even though the parent didn't see the point when they started and didn't enjoy the process, and shockingly, contrary to the claims made, their kids think it's pointless, too - just like their parents. Often this is used to say that clearly poetry or whatever isn't what it's cracked up to be (just like the parent always thought), but imho it says more about what happens when a parent teaches something they don't like or get - it's not surprising they convey not just information but their *attitudes* about a subject, too.) ETA: Sorry for the novel - it's just that liking poetry seems to be like being "mathy" - either you are or your aren't, and there's nothing to be done about it if you aren't. And the natural poetry lovers, like the naturally mathy, don't tend to have a clue what it's like to not love poetry or math - they are full of enthusiasm for spreading the love, but often don't have advice for how to *get* the love if you currently lack it. I'm naturally mathy, but I am *not* naturally a poetry lover :tongue_smilie:, and after stumbling around on my own for years, I finally stumbled into something that works, something so elegantly simple and historically common that I cannot believe I didn't have a clue - to use nursery rhymes as a poetry introduction, for both kids and newbie adults. And so I'm the zealous new convert, proclaiming the way to poetry love ;).

I second the recommendation to start with nursery rhymes. I've been reading them since my oldest was three, and everyone gets a kick out of them. In fact, *I've* vastly increased my sensitivity to rhythm and language, and general ability to have fun with words :thumbup:. I used to be pretty much tone deaf to the sound of poetry, which cut me off from at least half of the poetry experience; it lessened my enjoyment of poems I could make sense of, and made me give up entirely on more difficult to understand poems - without being able to appreciate the sound of the poem, there was no hook to grab me to encourage me to read and re-read to increase my understanding of the poem. And nursery rhymes are great to start with because they have a very strong rhythm. I *liked* nursery rhymes and wasn't intimidated by them like I was with "regular" poetry, and as what I liked about them was their fun rhythm, I refused to give up on a difficult rhyme. Instead I kept experimenting, trying new ways to read it until I fell into a good rhythm (and as it turns out, that's an essential skill in reading "real" poetry). Plus, unlike "regular" poetry, you're downright *encouraged* to exaggerate the rhythm into a nice sing-songy feel ;) - makes the rhythm nice and obvious, even for tone-deaf neophytes like me ;). (My dds have some auditory processing difficulties, and dd8 in particular has hard time hearing rhythm; I've noticed she's become more sensitive to rhythm lately, making up her own nursery rhymes, and I think all the years of listening to me read them has helped her a lot.) And now, after several years of nursery rhymes, I find that I can appreciate the more subtle rhythms of "regular" poetry. In fact, on some nursery rhymes that were always hard to find a sing-song rhythm to, I find that I actually *prefer* how they sound read normally, instead of exaggerated into a sing-song. This is *huge* for me, because for the longest I couldn't hear *any* rhythm unless it was exaggerated into a sing-song. I've found that starting with nursery rhymes (which I didn't even do for poetry reasons, but for cultural literacy reasons, and because I had fond memories of them) has been the best way to introduce *me* to poetry as an adult. ETA: We have half a dozen nursery rhyme books, but our two favorites are Opie & Wells' The Very Best of Mother Goose and Gyo Fujikawa's Mother Goose.

I've wondered if it's age-related, getting set in one's ways, thinking that you are "done" with learning as a contributing factor for getting out of the habit of learning new things. Sort of like the people who don't keep up with advancements in their field but figure what they do know is sufficient, and once it becomes clear that their old skills are obsolete and they aren't employable, they *still* can't get into the frame of mind to learn the current things. I never ever thought I'd be like that - a person who refuses to learn new things - but when dh got an android to replace his iPhone I had a really rough time learning to use it. It wasn't intuitive and I never had time to sit down and play with it - I only was using it to look up GPS while driving when dh forgot to set it - and after a while of that I found myself helplessly saying I just couldn't work the phone and thinking nostalgically of his old phone, and damning progress. I felt so unbelievably stupid and helpless, and finally it clicked in my head that I was *giving up*. That I was acting like every stereotypical senior citizen who just couldn't deal with newfangled things and was continually getting more and more out of step with current life. And I was just 33! And a bloody computer engineering major in my past life, to boot! That was quite a wake-up call for me - to see how *easy* it was to throw my hands up in frustration and give up on trying to learn something. I *never* thought that would be me, ever. I hadn't quite realized that it's a matter of continually and actively making the choice to learn this new thing or that hard thing - that if you coast on your laurels and let a few things slide here and there then before you know it you're 10 years out of date. And then it probably seems too hard to climb out of that hole and so you might as well give up. (After that realization I decided I wasn't letting any stupid phone defeat me and I *made* the time to figure it out.)

The Senior Fit workout has just Teresa and one other woman, and I don't think the camera moves at all. (Senior Fit isn't just for seniors ;) - I'm 33 and I love it.). The main potential downside is that the workouts on SF are long - 67 min and 47 min, although the DVD is chaptered and it's easy to split the workouts. (And when you've learned them, you can do them from memory at whatever speed you like.)

We did this for three years (rent + mortgage, while waiting for our house to sell in another state), and it was between 40-50% of our income, *not* counting utilities (except when his income was cut by the amount of our mortgage and we were in the process of turning the house over to the bank when it *finally* sold). I don't regret it, though it meant we couldn't save anything and didn't have much extras - we had plenty for food and all the necessities plus the all-important high-speed internet ;). Eta: we did have enough savings to have an emergency fund and not be living paycheck to paycheck - we just weren't adding to it much.

My order total isn't quite so high - 65 orders in the last six months - but the majority of those orders are books for homeschooling - I got *everything* on Amazon this year. And most of those orders are single book orders, because I buy used whenever I can, and so if I order five used books from five different sellers at one time, they are counted by Amazon as five different orders. So the 65 orders probably represents about 80 books or so, which I'm using throughout the year (and some for my own education).

Wrt the terminology issue, some churches do indeed have Sunday school (for kids) at the same time as the service (for adults), instead of service/children's-church and a separate Sunday school. Wrt the "hymns are the only way", that's not what I took away from the article (although that may say more about me than the article). What I got was that, when faced with the (presumed) fact that kids cannot understand or appreciate anything but relatively current hymns and forms of worship, we should make a specific effort to *teach* the older hymns and liturgy to kids. By assuming that nothing old could possibly have any meaning to kids, and thus never expose them to it or teach it to them - and so make it a self-fulfilling prophecy - we cut kids off from their religious past, give them no historical roots or tools to be able to explore the history of their faith themselves. I see lots of parallels with reasons to give kids a classical education in a world that, by and large, sees it as too hard and too irrelevant to "today's kids" and advocates teaching using exclusively modern content and methods. (And just as I can agree with the historic reasons to give a classical education without embracing all the historic methods uncritically, I can embrace helping children grow into the historic liturgy and hymns without embracing all the old methods to do so.)