If she's an independent student within the rules, then she's an independent student, and I'd fill it in on that basis - it's not fraud if you're following the rules. (The system in the UK is a bit different, but as I got married before I finished university, I was then considered an independent student, and my parents' income wasn't considered for my course fees & student loan, which made a big difference to me.)

I'm not going to comment on the story content, but I just thought you might like a UK perspective on some of the words/sentences: I assume the point of lots of the other more obscure words is to make the child read the actual word on the page, since DB Fast Track is a remedial programme.

We used to do that but for the last few years our family tradition is to go out to a restaurant (of the sort that doesn't make a fuss of Hallowe'en, like an Indian or Chinese) for a nice meal, to avoid the trick or treaters.

This is probably the lowest percentage of the electorate that has feels disenfranchised in a UK vote ever! Every vote counted. Normally in a general election we use first-past-the-post, and nearly half the country don't vote at all and of those that do over 2/3 don't get the candidate they voted for. Really, normally the MAJORITY are disenfranchised.

Agreed - I took a maths degree and tried latex, but decided it was quicker to write everything out on paper, even if that included making a neat copy to hand in!

We shortlisted names - in combination with middle names - for both boys & girls, since we never found out the gender beforehand. However, we didn't decide definitely until they were born. Fortunately in both cases we were in agreement as to which of the options to go for!

Scotland and England actually have completely separate education systems already. One potential problem for Scotland is that their universities don't charge fees to Scottish students but they do to the English/Welsh students (whereas England's universities charge everyone). If Scotland were independent and an EU member, then that would be illegal discrimination against another member state, and they wouldn't be allowed to do it any more. The current situation in all EU countries is that international university students from other member states pay the same as home students, and there are generally separate rates for non-EU international students.

If they do separate, the people who will be watching most closely are the Catalans. (One of the reasons I think the split is a bad idea for Scotland is that Spain will veto their joining the EU as a separate member state, because the Catalans will want independence from Spain if they could separate and remain in the EU.)

2.5 for DD (but she is really odd, because that was when, and how, she started talking). Just shy of 3 for DS.

Main dish in our house (once I'd checked that we're talking about macaroni cheese, which is the only thing I've heard it called here!) Usually with a side of veg or salad.

Lie-ruh here too (and I'm in the UK not the US, which might make a difference, as ArcticMama noted upthread).

I used to live in a place called Horsell.

DD started drinking tea occasionally with DH about 18 months, but DS has never been interested at all. I wouldn't have let them under 12 months, but I don't think there's any issue for a 12-year-old drinking a moderate amount of tea.

DH has just pointed out that we also shred herbs sometimes - shred with fingers this time!

I've never heard of shredding cheese before today - I definitely grate it. (I do shred paper with personal information on it, and I'd also shred cooked chicken, or crispy fried duck, using a fork, but not cheese!)

Almost on topic, but may be useful mainly for Calvin ... Oxford has an excellent Oxfam bookshop (though they aren't super cheap, as they know about books!), and Blackwells has a 2nd hand department, which will also buy back books (my DH sold several of his graduate textbooks back to them after his MPhil.) This is another way that students can get their texts cheaper.

Another British perspective here - my sister and I both took Chemistry at university, and truly only had to buy 3 very big fat textbooks (I actually bought 4, as I found one I was using too frequently in the library) and it cost me about £200. Everything else I need was provided in lectures or tutorials, or could be borrowed from the library, or read in journals. My sister used them a few years after me with no problem at all (she graduated in 2008). I presume the difference in the US is that since you take lots of individual courses that there's no co-ordination, and every course requires a new textbook?

Not currently AFAIK! (I can't comment on the 1980s - I was too little to be aware of that sort of thing.) I've only ever heard bathmat used to refer to a bathmat, to go on the bathroom floor.

I still occasionally back-carry my almost 3-year-old in my mei tai, particularly if we're in London! I'm afraid I've got no advice on wraps because I just didn't get on with them particularly. In London baby wearing is fairly normal, because if you use public transport at all you can't get a buggy on the Tube and there's often no space on buses. I can't comment directly on the other places you've mentioned specifically, but I'm fairly sure it wouldn't be comment-worthy in Denmark or Sweden.

So I've just today seen the film Frozen for the first time. I wasn't particularly impressed with the film, but after listening to 90 minutes about "Ahhnna" and "Huns" I now understand why so many phonics threads on the K8 boards concern short 'a'!

:grouphug:

I've certainly re-opened the coils on some of mine more often than that - although I do find that the little bit that clicks them together breaks after a while on some of the coils. It doesn't bother me much if a few of them are broken as they still stay pretty close together, and I've never had pages slip out or anything.

Well I wasn't aware Common Core was mandating specific textbooks, or for that matter the use of any textbooks at all, since so many posters are complaining that having moved to Common Core their schools no longer use textbooks? Also, the other problem with this analogy is that different countries in the EU not only speak different languages (should everybody study 30+ languages? how do you pick 2nd, 3rd, 4th languages for each country?), but also have their own histories, so mandating a pan-European history curriculum would quickly devolve into farce (you'd have to study 2000+ years of history for each of 28 nations!) While Poland is a small country compared to the US, England is not (about 1/5 the size) and it has a National Curriculum, with national exams 16 & 18 (which is what really means that the same materials are taught, although most exams have options, e.g. which eras to study in history, which books to read for literature), but AFAIK none of the papers are multiple guess, they are all short answer or essay questions, so it isn't something that only works for tiny populations.

Surely the alternative to minimum standards is maximum standards that can't be exceeded? You certainly don't want those! What kind of standards would you want instead?

Well you learn something new every day - I didn't know that hospitals in the USA didn't use it! In the UK it's absolutely standard; I don't think there's a midwife led unit or hospital that doesn't offer it, and you can also have it for a home birth. I used a pool with gas & air at a midwife led unit (which is that standard of care here) for both my two, and it was great, although I think the pool was more important as pain relief.