California native here, and wow. I knew about some states having laws about wine in grocery stores and alcohol on Sundays, but rubber products and cars I'd never heard before. USPS does deliver Amazon packages on Sundays now; they have a special contract.

Thanks for your response!

You've mostly had recommendations for classics (good to read any time, of course), but I wonder if reading modern fiction would better suited to cultural acclimation, if that's what you're after. I'd highly recommend phoning whichever will be your local library in London and asking for recommendations of books that are popular with kids your kids' ages. That way they'll be up on the slang and the local kid culture. If some titles aren't available stateside, you can get your amazon.co.uk account going early (the shipping is still pretty reasonable, even international).

PMing you.

Actually, having just re-read SWB's blog post about the restructuring of the rest of the series, how will the remaining courses be structured? It won't be a four-book series, but surely there will still be only four courses, since it's a high school sequence.

Is it likely that the Early Modern/Renaissance history and lit classes for high school will be added next year or the year after? Also, given that the publication of the Modern history book has been delayed indefinitely, which resources might be used for that class, if one were to be offered in future? Mine are in Ancients now, and I'm hoping to be able to continue the sequence. Thanks! Sincerely, Your friendly neighborhood recreational planner

We haven't had a TV for six years, and for several years before that the TV was only hooked up to a DVD player, no cable. I haven't lived with cable since moving out of my parents' house. I don't think you'll regret it! I consider myself a bit of a no-cable evangelist, but I was still a little surprised to see quitting cable likened to the Invasion of Normandy.

I set both of mine up StayFocused on their browsers (they each have Chromebooks), and they get 30 minutes/day on school days to do whatever they want on the internet. I set it up so that their Gmail and calendar, Todoist, and online class sites are unrestricted. Since we started that, there have no arguments about how much time is spent on YouTube or game wikis, and they've been much better correspondents through email. When their 30 minutes are up and they've caught up on their email, they move on to non-screen things. They get an hour on non-school days, and they also get 2 hours of game time once a week. It's a lot more screen time than they used to get, but it's a comfortable compromise for us right now.

Regarding lefties--did anyone else notice the angle of the paper in Mad Men when Betty was writing? It was a full 90-degree rotation to the left, which allowed for writing without smearing. It was fascinating. I always hated ballpoints, and converted to fountain pens about four years ago, shortly after I remediated my penmanship with GDI. I use an italic nib, and Noodler's Bulletproof black ink. Once I learned to rotate my paper slightly to the right, I had no issues with smearing and my handwriting itself actually improved. My kids only use mechanical pencils for math, because I don't want them to get in the habit of pressing as hard as they tend to with wooden pencils. For everything else they use the Varsity fountain pens. I no longer use pen and paper as such to take notes in class, but I write in cursive on my iPad, and the pen setting I use in GoodNotes is ''fountain pen''. That way I can erase, draw better graphs, write in many colors without carrying around a lot of pens, etc. I still carry my fountain pen for any on-paper writing needs, though, and sometimes write on paper just for fun.

She goes bitey when they try to move her, so I have to remove her to a different room when this happens.

"No math for you." (Aside: yes, we own sheets and matching pajamas. Laundry day.)

I showed mine the part of the video in which SWB talks about WWS, and she specifically says that first the student will say ''I don't know what to do,'' then you have them read it aloud and they say ''Oh! Now I get it.'' He knew her name because it's on some of our books, and hearing someone who wasn't me say what I'd said and say that it's an entirely typical thing made him feel better. Not that I don't still get some resistance when he's already worked about something, but it's been better.

This is pretty individual, IMO. You could assign a grade level as a sort of ''Pretty much all kids should be able to handle this by Grade X,'' thing, but it's more of a maturity thing than an academic thing. I don't think any of those would be inappropriate for a 7th grader, but whether a particular student is going to get enough out it is entirely subjective. Oh, I just remembered a really great thread on this topic: http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/552738-question-about-graduating-really-early/?hl=mockingbird&do=findComment&comment=6383667

With AoPS, the review happens when previous concepts are needed in conjunction with current topic to solve new problems, so it's not labelled as ''Review.'' So it's there but subtle, and I'd say it's on the fairly low end of the review-amount scale. We used Khan Academy well behind of wherever we were in Beast as review. We did four days/week of Beast, and one of Khan. The Khan problems aren't as meaty, but they were enough to make the kids re-derive procedures from concepts often enough to keep them somewhat fresh.

No, fractions are introduced in BA 3.

I totally read ''I only wear makeup if having an affair,'' which also made sense. I was taken aback by the candor until I read it again.

I wouldn't say that you need to do an entire second grade program, but addition, subtraction, and place value need to be *really* solid before you start BA 3. Keep going in Miquon until those are ready, if Miquon is working for him. RS C could work, but it's a big expense for what isn't nearly as fantastic as RS B is, IMO.

I'm sensitive to lots of foods including gluten, and when I cut them out of my diet, I wasn't sick nearly as often. If the immune system is constantly taxed by the diet, then perhaps it has bandwidth to deal with germs. It might be worth trying an elimination diet or auto-immune protocol.

Oh, but that's what I love about this Doctor. He doesn't tell Courtney she's special: he proves it to her. He lets Clara show herself what she's made of. He's a man of action, not pretty speeches.

Likewise, except I think the entire character of Clara is rubbish (through no fault of Jenna Coleman's). She's a less compelling version of Amy, as Martha was to Rose, and I really hope this will be her last season. I'm pulling for Bernard Cribbins to return as the next companion, and since he's 80ish, soon would be good. Capaldi's is my favorite Doctor so far. Actually, I didn't like Amy until she and Rory got married, and then it was pretty much AmyandRory that I quite liked. Donna was great.

Our studio has a boys' class, but they specifically said my son shouldn't take it because it was less ''academic'' than the regular class, and my son wanted to do the thing seriously. At 10, he's started a partnering class in addition to his three regular classes a week. So he's now 4 classes/week plus rehearsals. He has professional aspirations, and would take class every day if he could.

For adding and subtracting, it's just another tool. It's not *essential* to absolute value, but it really helps in understanding why |-x| = |x|.

It's called the Universal Wish List, and it's a browser extension. I've used to add things--including links to tickets for shows--so that everything is still in one place.

This kind of thing is why we should have a hybrid American/European system, in which unmotivated students could leave school for jobs or vocational training (as in Europe), while still leaving the door open to easily go back for college later (as in America). I truly think education is wasted on the young sometimes (including myself at that age).

This is our first year doing online classes, and we're all NervousExcited. It's my second year of grad school, but last year I only took one class at a time and didn't teach on campus. This year is going to be more like my first ''real'' year of grad school, hence the outsourcing. It comes at a good time, because my kids really need to feel themselves academically accountable to someone other me, and I'm starting to really feel the homeschool burnout. Still, I'm afraid they'll crash and burn and so will I.