There are lots of good possibilities published by Groundwood: http://groundwoodbooks.com/

Music: Ani Di Franco? Joan Baez? Woody Guthrie? Pete Seeger? Joe Hill? Poetry/politics/general all around greatness: Vaclav Havel

José Saramago's Blindness is a wonderful book.

Thanks anyway!

Lee Valley has neodymium magnets: http://www.leevalley.com/us/home/Search.aspx?action=n

It's probably worth taking a look at some universities' websites in regard to their homeschool admissions policies. It varies widely from school to school and province to province. I haven't graduated anyone yet (and I live quite a distance west of you!), but I looked into every 4-year degree-granting school in the country for a big workshop about post-secondary requirements that our local homeschool association sponsored this spring. Not every school has a policy up on its site, but it is illuminating to read those that do. Sarah Rainsberger's blog, though it hasn't been updated for three or four years now, is still a valuable resource as you begin to investigate how things work here. http://www.rainsberger.ca/blog/ontariohomeschooluniversityadmissions

Another cookbook or youtube idea: try James Barber (the Urban Peasant). He was very much into low-stress cooking, using what was on hand, not being afraid to substitute ingredients--the recipes are usually very simple and they always work. ETA: Well, I just keep thinking of cookbooks you might like! Alice Waters's The Art of Simple Food (the first volume) is very simple and very good. Lucy Waverman's Cooking School Cookbook is basic and thorough--the recipes are arranged by type of cooking (grilling/roasting/poaching/braising/etc.); another interesting one of hers you might enjoy, though it's much fancier food, is The Flavour Principle--the recipes are arranged by dominant tastes in each dish and menu(bitter/sweet/sour/umami/salty/tart/earthy/creamy/etc.).

A few ideas: -try cooking breakfast; it's easy, usually, there aren't a lot of courses, and a hot breakfast just gets your day off to a nice start. Porridge, eggs, make your own granola the day before to eat with yoghurt in the morning, fry some bacon/sausage/ham (if you're a meat-eater), fry some leftover boiled potatoes...easy stuff. There are so many ways to make eggs that that alone could be a good skill set to have; experiment with omelette fillings, too. -"cooking"--as opposed to "baking"--lends itself a lot more readily to experimentation. Cook things like homemade pasta sauces or soups to start with--those are easy, and easy to change up in all sorts of interesting ways. Learn to make homemade pizza dough, and then play around with different combinations of toppings--put whole-wheat flour in your dough and use lots of vegetables on top and it's a nice healthy main course. A homemade pizza plus a simple salad and a piece of fruit for dessert, and you've got a homemade three-course meal you can be proud of. And lots of variations are possible. -Do try some baking, too--just don't mess around much with recipes until you're more experienced, since the chemistry of baking is a lot more exacting than something like soup. Try muffins for starters--they're easy and quick. Scones are pretty high-fat, but they're even quicker, and they're a nice treat once in a while (oh, come to think of it, y'all south of the 49th probably call them baking powder biscuits or something instead, maybe). -If you invest in a slow cooker, the kids might like the idea of making dinner in the morning; there's nothing like coming home at the end of a long day of errands and realizing that dinner is made. It's like having your own chef! Porridge is very nice in the slow cooker, too--so you could make the next morning's breakfast at bedtime. -Cook up some batches of whole grains (barley, for instance) to have on hand to be the basis of a hearty salad; add some chopped veggies, a little olive oil and vinegar, a little grated cheese maybe, some cooked legumes, a few herbs--some combination of yummy things, and there's an easy lunch. Hope that helps! Cooking can be a lot of fun.

Just because I'd love to do this myself (!), here's another link about international students studying in Germany (note that there are scholarships available, too): https://www.daad.de/deutschland/studienangebote/international-programs/en/?p=l#q=&degree[]=1&fos=0&fee[]=0&sortBy=1&page=1&display=list

A propos of BlsdMama's instate tuition exchange query: http://home.sreb.org/acm/states.aspx Maybe something there would help?

I don't know anything about this, but I thought this article about US students going to university in Germany was interesting: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32821678

My kids loved this one! You also might like Rosemary Manning's Green Smoke and sequels: http://www.amazon.com/Green-Smoke-Puffin-Rosemary-Manning/dp/0140302972

Sigh, the eternal question...I struggled after each kid to find something I liked as a follow-up to Miquon and nothing was ever quite as nice! (Beast Academy didn't exist yet--mine would have liked that). Probably the most successful thing was MEP, supplemented with Hands-On Equations and Patty Paper Geometry (I've got some hands-on kids here). One thing I did find that I liked a lot as a supplement during that transition was the trio of problem set books from the Nuffield foundation written in the 1970s; it's not a complete curriculum, but the problems seemed Miquonesque in spirit to me (I handwrote each problem on an index card, which was a small pain, but not too bad). The three books go in order from easiest to hardest: green, purple, red. Here's a link: http://www.nationalstemcentre.org.uk/elibrary/resource/3212/problems-for-the-early-secondary-years There are some other files from the Nuffield Mathematics Project here: http://www.nationalstemcentre.org.uk/elibrary/collection/623/nuffield-mathematics-project

Oh, I'm glad it looked good to you! My kids loved that book when they were little--I hope your daughter will love it too.

Rosemary Manning, Green Smoke http://www.amazon.ca/Green-Smoke-Rosemary-Manning/dp/1903252296 & sequels...

http://cursivecole.fr/ Would this be useful to you, Mimm?

Here's a thread: http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/512411-what-do-you-think-about-natural-history-as-a-science-credit/ And another one: http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/542702-favorite-natural-history-resources/

Someone here (Hornblower? I think?) once recommended the Homework Helpers term papers book: http://www.amazon.com/Homework-Helpers-Essays-Papers-Career/dp/1601631405 Maybe that would work for you?

I've not read these, but there are many off-the-beaten-track horse books here: http://www.fidrabooks.com/publishing/shop.shtml My kids loved Eilís Dillon's Island of Horses. http://www.nyrb.com/products/the-island-of-horses?variant=1094934649

Had another thought (having heard chortles from the sofa yesterday!): Dan Needles, Letters from Wingfield Farm

http://www.amazon.com/Art-Attack-Cultural-History-Avant-Garde/dp/0395797292/ref=sr_1_14/188-8970115-8611510?s=books&ie I've always thought this one looked interesting.

Mine always loved the Marx Bros. as well as Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, and Buster Keaton.

Birds, Beasts and Relatives was also good!

A couple more ideas: Helen Cresswell, Bagthorpe series Polly Horvath books, especially The Pepins and Their Problems, Mr and Mrs Bunny Detectives Extraordinaire and sequel (her others all have a good deal of humour, too, but deal with some serious topics as well) JBS Haldane, My Friend Mr Leakey Rosemary Manning, Green Smoke Norman Hunter, Professor Branestawm series Lucretia Hale, The Peterkin Papers Terry Pratchett, Dragons at Crumbling Castle Richmal Crompton, Just William series Anthony Buckeridge, Jennings series Kaye Umansky, Solomon Snow series How about some PG Wodehouse? Think beyond the Bertie and Jeeves ones if you've read those already; there are of course the Blandings ones, as well as some very hilarious stand-alone volumes (I'd say the favourites of the non-main-series ones here were Laughing Gas, Hot Water, Do Butlers Burgle Banks?, Leave it to Psmith [there are a couple of other Psmith books also], and Piccadilly Jim--but there are dozens of them--they should keep you going a good long while if they are to your taste). Would you enjoy the Mapp and Lucia books, I wonder? They're very funny and don't contain anything inappropriate, but they're based on a sort of middle-class middle-aged one-upmanship over one's neighbours that might fall a little flat for the young. But worth a try, perhaps?

William Bowman, The Ascent of Rum Doodle Jerome K Jerome, Three Men on a Boat; Three Men on the Bummel Alan Cumyn, The Secret Life of Owen Skye (and sequels) Liz Pichon, Tom Gates books Philip Ardagh, Eddie Dickens trilogy Philip Reeve, Larklight books more later..gotta run!