This question has been popping into my head lately. To what extent does homeschooling's growth affect the public schools? Homeschool is BOOMING here. It's grown so much since 2020 that it is now mentioned in our state board of ed's financial outlook as a reason that they have less funding than they expected. My county has stopped letting us participate in their AP tests, even paying our own fees. In a recent county meeting about funding schools, the school officials stated that most homeschoolers return for high school "to have access to APs." It seems they are guarding AP access to push students back into the public high schools. I joined a national homeschool Facebook group, and am seeing a lot of stories of homeschoolers being grilled while out-and-about on their qualifications. It sounds worse than five years ago. (But maybe that's just the Facebook effect.) What are you observing? How does homeschooling growth affect public schools in your area? How do people view that effect?

Ok, yeah, that's obnoxious. I'm so sorry.

I'd find it cute, myself, but when I go to a wedding I'm generally in a state if mind that finds everything about it adorable. I dress myself and mine as appropriately as I can and then dismiss any urge to police other people's clothes. Really, who cares? They're there, people are getting married, it's all good.

I've frozen the juice and had good results from drying the outer layer of peel. I took it off with a veggie peeler, dried it on the counter, and stored it in a container with a tight lid. When I needed zest, I'd grind up a piece in my spice grinder or blender.

Just normalizing the February blahs has helped me persevere. Also, I plan my garden. For the kids, I plan extra movie nights. I need to add a couple of field trips, maybe one to a trampoline park.

DH is rethinking. He'd probably start changing passwords.

Wow! Thanks.

Those Rod and Staff books look just like the ones I used to learn to read!

Wow. That's a lot! DH thinks someone who has emailed you before got hacked. He doesn't think you need to do anything, given the "null" name. He says you should report all the emails as phishing if you have that option (outlook has a little button).

My friend, who is a native Spanish speaker, wants to teach her kid to read in Spanish, after-schooling. The kid will get plenty of English at school. Is there an OPG equivalent for Spanish? Any great early readers, like the Bob Books? Thanks!

Hurray! I'm so glad!

We're spreading it out over the four years, too. I made a list of topics I want to make sure the kid knows about, and am doing a combination of jumping on opportunities and homemade sort-of unit studies (huh, my 1990s homeschool Mama will be proud). We've found babysitting certification, cpr/first aid, food safety, and childcare worker training for free through various opportunities. A few of those popped up through DD16's job. The health department offers some of them online, free. One semester she read Bryson's book, The Body. Last semester she read Never Enough (Grisel) and Dreamland (Quinones) on addiction and drug policy, and looked at some PowerPoint slides on drug paraphernalia provided by a sheriff's deputy friend. All three of those books were excellent.

Been there! Sometimes I'm just trying to accomplish too much. So frustrating.

I need to clean mine. I cooked a duck before Christmas and it's always very splatter-y.

Wow, thank you! Wouldn't that be a kick to the chin, having a cold and then getting something fungal from your meds!

I don't think test optional will be the norm in the long run. (Pessimistic, that's me.) Also, some schools near us are officially test optional, but require tests from homeschoolers. So I guess I would need to be absolutely sure about that policy before I passed up the test dates. I.kniw what you mean about the time, though.

I'm sorry, sweetie. You've been through a lot. I hope you get get a hug and some real help. You cry if if you need to. The world, and that office, can just make time for you.

I think the knee-based pushups (and I will never-ever-ever consent to calling them "girl pushups") are good for strengthening the shoulders and arms. However, they don't do as much for the core, and I think that's at least half my reason for doing pushups! After my pregnancies, I couldn't do full pushups, and the thing that helped me get those back was doing full pushups on the stairs, with my feet on the floor. I'd do 10 with my hands on step 5, then after a week move down to step 4, and so on. That really worked. I don't know how you'd transition from knees to feet effectively. I couldn't.

I print like I own a tree farm. 🙄 I'm very tense when I travel, and worry that my phone will fail, or I'll drop it into water, or something awful.

Oh, you're right. Thank you.

Ok, that's very good to know.

Hmm, maybe they fix issues as they go in the pdf versions. I will look for an errata document.

Oh, that's not ok. Did we learn nothing from covid? Do not introduce the weird new thing into the population!

We're using this textbook for DD16's AP Statistics course.OpenIntro Statistics: Third Edition by David M Diez (2015-07-02) https://a.co/d/82cWdtK We got a cheap used paperback copy. We like the way it explains things, and the order in which the ideas are presented. However, man could it have used a better editor! There are even occasional errors in the math! Missing words in sentences! We can use it, sure. But it's distracting. Is this common with open-source or free textbooks, in your experience? Maybe I went too cheap.

This is so well-put.