I have NEVER seen a loose cart in the Aldi parking lot. $.02 And at Aldi, more than any other store I've seen, I *do* see people bringing re-usable bags. Seems like a successful strategy worth at least TRYING in other venues?

Oh, wow, thank you for sharing!

If you wander into Richard III territory, please give Cumberbatch's Hollow Crown version at least a glance. 😄 It has forever colored our family's intersection of Shakespeare and chess. We did a "light" year of Shakespeare a couple years back, using plays that lined up (loosely) with Middle Ages history. We invited a handful of our favorite teens over and asked them to (A) have a glancing familiarity with the play by either reading Lamb's version, watching the 25-minute animated version linked above, or knowing the basic plot line & characters from some other source, (B) bring a play-related snack (these were often hilarious), and (C) either a show and tell item *OR* a costume. We briefly and casually discussed the play while eating, and then watched a movie version of it, and then called it done. Some of the show and tell items were hilarious, some were extremely in-depth (a detailed family tree of the Lancaster & York families, color coded and with caricature sketches comes to mind), and all were appreciated. [These were kids ages 12-17.] Our method was certainly not "in-depth literary analysis" by any means, but boy, did we have FUN! And for kids who respond well to the "match light" approach (aka 2 of my teens and at least 3 of the invited friends), this has been particularly successful in the long run by pulling them into the plot & time period & social commentary. It's not for everyone, but - it may be for someone. 🙂

We've had things spiral bound at Staples before (with about 70% success rate - they ruined 2 books of mine by cutting the binding off crookedly, but since I had signed a release of liability, there wasn't much I could do). For smaller things, I PUFFY HEART LOVE my GBC Pro-Click . . . it's a spiral binding, but can be opened and closed to add / take out pages, many times. For larger things where I only need to carry around 2-3 chapters at a time, it dramatically reduces weight and improves portability. The holes are specialized (so I have the "other 8" chapters sitting on a shelf in the basement, awkwardly), but I've gotten a lot of use out of my machine over the years. This is the one I have, though I think I paid around $50-ish for it on sale.

I don't know anything about this one, but - maybe interesting? Seconding the Great Courses - I have a kid who loves those, and just finished Decisive Battles of World History, and will do Military Blunders next. https://lumalearn.com/product/military-art-and-science/

Just an idea re: ID - in my state, when you get an ID card made, they do issue you a temporary one at the DMV that is fully functional until your real one arrives. We needed to do this for a not-yet-16 year old taking the SAT. I realize not all states may do this.

Thanks for posting this! As someone with multiple teens in the house and a not-huge budget for travel / college visits, I personally find the longer written-out reviews VERY helpful! Best of luck to your DD wherever she lands!

Yes, I was angry FOR the boys that their school was failing them, badly (by allowing them to think that they could not read books above a certain level). The goal was to improve fluency. Though there may have been (and probably were) undiagnosed learning disabilities in the group, the boys WERE able to read when encouraged (and given PRIVACY and TIME), and they were gaining fluency (helped by my reading aloud to them in between their turns). The pull-out situation was by choice ("which reading group would like to go in the back with the student teacher?"), and the boys were starting to really get into the story. We successfully read nearly half the book using this method. (I would NOT attempt this method with unremediated non-readers.) Their fluency was improving measurably until the day they discovered I had given them a book "too hard" for them to read (it was NOT too hard, as evidenced by their success). The "should kids know their level" question doesn't have one right answer, obviously; every single kid and every single situation is different. I shared my anecdote to offer one potential danger in one situation I was familiar with. I think the question should be handled carefully, for EVERY kid (on both ends of the "achievement" spectrum).

Reading out loud with teenagers here, too. ❤️ Wouldn't trade it for the world, and neither would they.

In my teacher training, I was assigned a pull-out reading session with a group of rough middle-school hoodlums; I handed them each a book (The Contender), and started reading it to them (out loud), and told them to jump in by reading a paragraph now and then to "help" me. Their reading was slow, laborious, painful (no diagnosed learning disabilities, just way behind in reading). They preferred me to read to them, and those apathetic kids were actually getting interested in the story, and making a good effort to read, and achieving success (!) when one of them realized I had given them a book several "levels" ahead of their classification. I'll never forget that day as every. single. one. of them slammed the books shut and were DONE. All that effort and progress, GONE! I was so angry for those boys. I'm sure there are situations where knowing one's level can be helpful, but - it can also be so very damaging.

It's not a perfect fit for everyone, for a variety of reasons, but for us Christian Healthcare Ministries was a fantastic solution to that problem, while we had it.

I've been running an old Samsung Galaxy S6 for a couple of years on Tracfone, with no issues. It's cheap, reliable, does everything that I need / want it to do, and is fine for my needs.

We live in heavy tick country. When we pull them out of a human in this house, we make certain the tick is dead, and then put it in a ziplock back with the date / name of person written on the ziplock in sharpie. I then store them in our freezer and watch for symptoms; should symptoms appear, we THEN ask for the tick to be tested. They are so very common here that most doctors won't test the tick, but you can pay for it yourself through the health dept. Special tick-removing tools are worth the $2-3 at Walgrees / CVS; we keep them in the car, in the bathroom, in the first aid kit, one in the kids' backpacks, etc. They all know exactly what to do if / when bitten. And Seresto for the dog.

NO . . . if the goal is to make money. YES . . . if there were another goal (gaining experience, helping the community, bridging to career / better paid options, benefit for my own kids, etc.). Have acted on both options.

I tutor often on various platforms with a USB "pen tablet" like this one. There are definitely bigger / nicer ones out there, but I needed something cheap just to try, and this one has held up well for nearly 2 years.