Are there any free resources out there for teaching math?

Barb from Harmony Art Mom has a second blog where she does Outdoor Challenges for nature study using the Handbook of Nature Study. I like these because they are helping us to sharpen our sense of what is right around us. Things we would otherwise overlook. This could be used for science (certainly through the middle school years and possibly also for a good part of biology and botany), language arts (by writing about what you see) and art (nature journal).

There are all sorts of reasons why money might be tight in the coming months. If you had to school for a year or two without spending any money on books, could you do it? What would you use and how would you use it? I'm hoping for answers beyond use the library, although that would be one of my favorites. I have saved tons of money by getting books from our library system over the past couple years. But I was thinking more along the lines of Mama Squirrel's Thriftschooling posts. Or this one. I really like these because they help me think of HOW I can use what I already have or what is available for free (library) or for pennies (thrift store). Or what about the Ambleside Online curriculum with books from the library? It looks like many of the books listed are commonly available either from the local library or online. And the schedules are free. Or what about going back to that first edition of WTM with its notebook and narration learning. I could probably save a bit of money by going back to the basics there.

The National Archives has lesson plans and worksheets for historical documents. Todays political cartoons and ads are tomorrows historical artifacts. The analysis sheets can even be typed in online and then printed, so you could list the symbols in a cartoon, or the phrases in a document that you wanted your kids to pay special attention to. Archives Teaching With Documents section also has a few election related lessons: Tally of the 1824 Electoral College Vote Political Cartoons Illustrating Progressivism and the Election of 1912 Woman Suffrage and the 19th Amendment FDR's First Inaugural Address They even have an inagural quiz.

Anyone care to take a break from discussing candidates in favor of sharing educational resources on politics and voting? Anyone?

I remember how excited I was when I found one on abebooks.com for a good price. My kids are finally growing into the age where they will use it. DH was at the Montgomery Co Library booksale in MD last week. He got a bunch of Questions in History books that we collect and 7 We Were There history books that look almost brand new, including the loveliest full color dust jackets that you've ever seen. (We Were There books are similar to Landmark histories but with the historical figures interacting with a couple kids who might have lived where the event occured. Favorites of ours.)

What a great list. I haven't visited Hoagies in a long time. Thanks for the reminder.

Maybe it's worth thinking of testing as three different assessments. 1) An assessment that would help you determine your son's ability, strengths and weaknesses 2) Subject assessments that might help you better place him in his curriculum to a place that is challenging but not frustrating 3) An assessment to submit to the state that will fulfill their requirement of demonstrating adequate annual progress Even if you did an out of level test, you wouldn't necessarily get a better measure of #1 or #2. I did have both ability and achievement tests done on my older kids when they were 1st and 2nd grade. It told me that they were in fact in the gifted range. It told me that I should go ahead and give them complicated, high level work at a pretty fast pace. But it didn't help me place them within a specific program. To do that I had to give them placement tests from a curriculum publisher or just have them do sample chapters until I found a level that was a good fit. I've always wondered what would happen if I gave a higher level test, say the fifth grade test for third grade, then had their work level out. What if two years later they weren't ready to test at a seventh grade level? Would some evaluator at a school decide that in that year we'd failed to make progress? I have just stuck with the grade level test for state purposes, even when it didn't give me the best picture of where the kids really were. You could always go ahead and give a higher grade sample test from a practice book to give you an idea of how they did at higher levels.

They play these ads all the time on the stations I listen to. One day one of my kids piped up from the back seat, "Ever notice that they don't have the kids talking in these ads." I have no idea of the content of the program, but I think of that everytime I hear the ads now.

The problem I have with programs like this is that they can be very invasive and very hard to decline. I had pre-natal and delivery with my third kid through military medicine. At the info meeting where they laid out all the options for where you could get your pre-natal care, they had a huge stack of forms. There were the normal forms that you fill out for any military medical check up or patient enrollment. But there was also a multi page questionaire on things like nutrition, smoking, alcohol, gun ownership, spouse relationships etc. It felt a lot like the sort of thing I would have filled out in order to report my husband as an abusive spouse. I really didn't feel that they needed to have a form like this in order to give me the pre-natal care I wanted. I asked and only then was told that it was actually optional. There was also a program where you would get What to Expect books. But you got them during a home visit by a nurse. I already had all the books I needed so I declined that too. Now wouldn't you know, I got that survey form again by mail, twice. I also got calls asking why I hadn't enrolled in the home visit program. Are there families who could benefit from the help? I'm sure there are. I just resent the coersive tone that these programs seem to take on. Plus these programs are designed to support government policies. You aren't going to hear much about risks of vaccines, delayed vaccination schedules, home alternatives to pre-school or homeschooling from one of these programs.

Lots of libraries have cut back/cut out their periodicals in favor of online journal databases. You might ask if your library has a journal database and ask if there is a librarian who can give you a quick lesson on how to do good searches. I don't know if there will be anyone there who is able to show you how to use the database. I know that we have hit and miss results at our library. They are all very nice, and want to help. But sometimes I feel like I'm the only person who comes in with questions about books.

DH has picked them up while traveling overseas. But it also looks like some titles are available at amazon.

To disagree with your friend on one point. Germany has had no problem with keeping homeschooling de facto illegal, despite its membership in the EU. Rather than making it specifically illegal, it must be approved. And it simply never is (unless you are a teen aged member of a pop band, but that is another story). Appeals to the European Human Rights Court have not yet been successful. I'm hoping that a recent appeal on the ground of employment discrimination for European workers might have a better result eventually.

Kate, I'm not sure exactly what circles you're hanging with in UAE. I did find that with the expat/international/diplomatic/upper class folks that populated the international schools in Germany there was a sense of protectiveness, competition and defensiveness about their school choices. If one family had their kids at the British international school (with its A and O exam preps) it implied a critique of the state run bilingual school (with its Abitur). If someone was at the newer international school in the state just over the city limits (that had an American curriculum), then it implied a critique of international school that was in town (that had had several changes of principal). And that is before you even mix in school choices with a pedagogical attitude like Montessori, Waldorf, religious or homeschooling. I always had to try to listen to what the real question was. Were they just looking for a commonality? Were they looking for a school recommendation? Were they looking for affirmation of their own family's choice. And I did find that the less deprecating I was about homeschooling the less I was questioned. I tried to stay positive about homeschooling, open about how it was a great option for us and also inquisitive about cool things that their kids were involved in (were they in sports, had they done a cool school trip, what museums did they like in town). Don't let it get you down. You didn't make the choice to homeschool in order to please or impress them anyway.

You're calmer than I might have been. Teaching my kids is my full time job. And I gave up a 100k + military career to be able to do it. Plus I might have decided that I didn't need to get our educational newspaper supplement from her subscription booth.

The cathedral is nice. The town square is incredible. Make sure you get some waffles. There is an animation museum that features lots of TinTin stuff. Very cool. They also had an awesome bookstore for graphic novels including some great books on D-Day and The Battle of the Bulge in graphic novel form. If you can swing a side trip to Bruges, you MUST do this. Bruges/Brugge rocks. Spring for the canal boat ride and wallow in the atmosphere. It has a good art museum and one of the nicest cathedrals that we visited in our three years in Europe. The tourists crowd around the Michaelangelo and completely miss everything else. (Don't miss the painting of the calling of Matthew that is in the corner. It is very nice.)

Does anyone have any interesting books, websites or activities for helping their kids understand the political season? We had a great conversation with our kids a month ago that started with one asking why one candidate said something about himself it was so different from what the other candidate said about him. Morphed into a conversation about tax rates and how fairness often depends on point of view. Topics that would be cool: History of elections Electoral college How to watch a debate Political Cartoons Watching political advertisements History of political symbology (animals, colors, even uncle Sam and the Presidential Seal) Building the backstory/mythology of a candidate (for example war veteran or community organizer or log cabin president) And I suppose that I'd love to find a balanced, historical account of the sequence of events around the 2000 election. One resource that I've been enjoying is My History Can Beat Up Your Politics. There are some discussions on the website, but the real meat is in the podcasts. He uses examples from history to really put current events into context. Very well done.

You might want to check out job requirements for the foreign service or similar post graduation job possibilities. We were stationed at an embassy a few years ago. Many of the state department folks had degrees in history, economics, international affairs, international development, communications, technology or even agriculture. And of course, they often had a strong background in languages. Here is the link to the State Department careers page to give you some ideas. Just to say that it doesn't have to be just political science.

I'd like to see it stay here. It is one of the things that makes wading past political threads rewarding.

I have a chocolate cake that is really easy and good for snacking, because it holds together well. It is Inside Out Chocolate Bundt Cake. Seemingly a recipe from Jell-o and Baker's chocolate. The recipe I have uses no nuts, so you can just ignore that in the linked recipe. There is no glaze, but it looks very pretty with a light dusting of powdered sugar.

To be honest, I think that they are perfectly acceptable for most Protestants. I even got my independent Protestant church to put a few volumes in their church library. But a family that would be upset, for example, at a child bringing home a saints card from a neighbor or relative's house would possibly also want to avoid these books.

I really like the Brother Cadfael series. They aren't overly long and I think the main characters (Cadfael and the sheriff) are noble. However, each book has a conflict that is strong enough to result in murder. Some are for money or politics (it is set during the Stephen-Maud war for the crown). Others are related to crimes of passion. I personally think that they handle the subject well because rarely does someone get away with being dishonorable without some serious consequence that they have to live with. On the other hand, these might be topics that I wouldn't want my eight year old to read without talking about them. (But, overall, they are less of a problem than the average episode of Seinfeld or Friends.) On the good side, the books are quite short. I can usually knock on out in a weekend. So you could preread some of them. Also, obviously he is a monk, so there is Christian content in the books. There are genuine good people shown in the church, selfish people and downright crooked people. And because of the timeframe, church means catholic, complete with miracles by and veneration of saints.

I read a book about 25 years ago about a family that was vacationing in the Thousand Islands area, met the last member of an indian tribe, bought an island from him that both Canada and the US thought was property of the other country and then declared their island's sovereignity. It had a general The Mouse That Roared quality, but it was a different book. It is from at least the 1980's, probably earlier, since my English book had a reference to it. So 1950's to 1970's maybe? Oh, and if anyone knows the name of the science fiction story about the interstellar crime families posing as Andean Pipe Bands, I'd love a lead on that too.

I guess it depends on if you don't have a mortgage now because of income level and credit record or because your income just can't extend to the current home prices. Oddly enough, for some areas it might be promising in a few years. Hawaii housing prices have been negatively affected as homes were purchased by non-residents as second homes and as other homes were taken out of the residential pool and turned into vacation rentals. If the housing bubble contracts nationwide, it might have the effect of causing owners of these non-primary residences to sell them. It would be a great thing for many residents here if the housing prices went down. A lot. (The average house here is both over 600k and smaller than the average home on the mainland.) It will also hurt for others, who see the value of their homes decline below what they paid. But it has frustrated me that the financial magazines I get act as if a decline in house price is bad for everyone in the community.