I spent several hours doing searches using Google, and I was amazed at what I found! So many results included primary source quotes, too. The links were also very helpful, everyone, particularly the one to Jessie's site. Thank you all so much. I have a wonderful list of quotes compiled for copywork. If anyone thinks they'd want it, I'll post.

Personally, I'd think the best thing to do would be to use a site like LibraryThing or Good Reads. Individual users can create their own accounts and friend each other, and you can easily search each others' libraries. As far as the homeschool group goes, you could use your own account for that if you had to, then tag your own books as yours, but I don't know if you could make it private. You could also have another family member register an account and make that the homeschool group's account.

I don't go "make copies", but I do email pdf files to the local copy shop if they're long enough to eat a print cartridge. I'd rather pay six bucks for a hundred and fifty page document (double sided), than pay twenty for new cartridges, and I can just pick the doc up when it's done. I have an HP Vivera, and it goes through cartridges really fast, although things will hopefully be better now that I've figured out how to get it to quit printing the test page every time it turns on. :glare:

How funny! I just signed up today as well. I'm Saille there, too. I've got an account on Book Mooch also, and have had good luck with it, so hopefully this will be just as good.

I just saw the story b/c of your thread, actually. It appears that he specifically targeted the UU Church because of its tolerant views? I agree, that's terribly upsetting. I am simultaneously grief-stricken and proud to see that church members leaped to action, both to protect each other and to stop the assailant.

The other thing to remember is that, when you start shelling the beans, you'll be able to tell pretty quickly which ones are not quite dry. They'll be paler, larger, moister. You may have to leave some of those out in bowls to dry a bit more. Stir around in them when you walk past. They'll dry out in a week or so. Then you can put them in bags/jars without having to worry about them causing mold in the rest of your dry beans. We did this last year with Tiger Eye, True Red Cranberry and Orca beans. They were wonderful; we ate them all winter and into the spring.

If that doesn't work, Pomona pectin (mail order) has recipes for firming up pie. It's good stuff.

My whole system revolves around recording all the unplanned things we do so that I can prove we did them, and not have to drum up some unit on knights when we were obsessed with them a year ago. I have a three-ring binder with a year in view calendar, monthly calendar pages, a to-do list and a page for contact information for people I meet. I keep the IHIP and Quarterly Reports NY requires in one section, a list of subject-area bibliographies for the year in another (so I'll remember what to request from the library), a list of experiments or activities I think I'll actually get to (I pull them from activity books in our library system), that kind of thing. I keep track of our library books by putting them in LibraryThing under the tags "Library Books" and "Past Library Books", and my dh downloads stories off of Story Nory and LibriVox for the kids to listen to in the car or at bedtime, so I print out the playlists and LibraryThing lists of those from time to time and put them in another tab. I made up field trip planning forms and a purchasing list to help me keep track of resources I mean to buy. I log activities using a two-sided form. One side is headed "Recorded Activities". There are lined areas where I record what I'm reading, what they're reading, and what I'm reading to them. Then there are sections where I record activities under the subjects: Math/Logic/Puzzles, History/Geography, Writing/Copywork/Latin and Science. At the bottom is room for me to write a list of events that occur that week, such as library story time or a museum trip. The other side is blank, with the heading, "Collateral Learning". That's where the most writing gets done. I summarize anything we do or discuss if I can possibly think of a way it ties into an academic or life skills goal. I also list things the kids say or do that indicate understanding of some concept, or a particular skill. So, if my son makes a ziploc bag with legos for his sister and a hand-drawn plan of how to assemble them into a spaceship, I write that down. If we're watching TV and my son says, "They're trying to get me to buy _____" I write that down, too. I keep the NYS standards for my son's functioning grade level in another section, so I can check them off as I think he's achieved them. I've got one more year before I have to start reporting on my middle child...I think I'll have to tweak this so I can separate their summaries at the end of each year if I choose, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. And that is probably a much longer answer than you were looking for.

Well, I checked off a bunch of things. We're: •Vegetarian, with some fish •Mostly whole grain (my baking is usually 1/3 to 1/2 whole wheat, and the rest white unbleached. I also add things like oats or flax seed) •Big fruit and veggie eaters. Fresh better than frozen, frozen better than canned, and whole fruit much preferred to juice •Unapologetic dairy and egg eaters. We have a flock of chickens, and have contemplated a milk animal. •Convenience food eaters in a pinch. We love morningstar farms stuff, and are sort of suckers for DiGiornos frozen pizza. •Fairly militant about avoiding corn syrup and hydrogenated oils (for the kids more so than us) I basically do the five a day the color way thing, and focus on food that's as unprocessed as possible, but I'm subject to the same time constraints as anybody. We have a huge garden (an acre) and sell at a farmers' market, so I've managed to integrate a sideline business and our family's needs, which helps.

I am sorry to say that, having been a public school teacher, I can say with assurance that teachers all across the country tell their students that journals are private and then read them anyway. The idea seems to be that children are more likely to write if they are unconcerned about being judged. I used to tell my students to fold the page over if it was private. I admit to sometimes peeking, but I wouldn't have considered anything I read there to be actionable unless it was some kind of direct threat. It seems to me that this child suspected her journal was being read and decided to test her theory. If she didn't think her teacher was a "donkey's patoot" before, she does now. That teacher absolutely proved the child's point. I have a problem with negative comments about body type in general, so I'd address that. I don't consider personal insults to be an appropriate way to handle a problem, even internally. Regardless of whether the journal was supposed to be private, taking her anger to such a personalized and insulting place is as damaging to that little girl as it could possibly have been to the teacher. If my daughter was truly angry at or deeply disliked her teacher, I'd like to know why, and then I'd like to stay focussed on the actual, substantive, behavior-based reasons. I would absolutely have a very direct and frank discussion with the principal, teacher and school counselor about the implications of reading and acting on journal entries that students had been told were private. If I had a spouse/partner, I'd bring him/her. I'd be prepared for the school to be unreceptive, though. I might also point out that, in an era of school shootings, it's probably disingenuous to even suggest that any material written at school would be private. If a teacher sees a threat in a journal, even accidentally, it needs to be actionable. Students need to know that, even if a teacher offers not to read certain things or certain pages, certain things are never OK to write, just as one doesn't make jokes about hijacking planes while going through airport security.

Caveat: Daniel Shore is a commentator, so his pieces are editorials and not really expected to be unbiased. Terry Gross is less newsy. She does a lot of film reviews, actor interviews, that kind of thing. Air America hosts Janeane Garofalo's show, and a bunch of others, I think. You could probably get them as podcasts. As far as an actual liberal pundit, I think that's your best bet. Most of NPR's weekend shows are themed, and either very journalistic (On the Media), or humorous (Car Talk, Prairie Home Companion). They have Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, and that's liberal, newsy and humorous, but it's a news quiz show, not a talk show like Rush Limbaugh. I agree that NPR has a liberal slant, but I also find them to be the most in-depth and intelligent American news coverage I have access to (I also listen to the CBC and BBC). I tend to think of them as populist rather than liberal. They seem to have really pumped up their regional/state coverage as well, and I've been very impressed. I've all but given up on television news, particularly cable. I think the pressure to provide 24 hour coverage of every major event leads to sensationalism.

We use library resources almost entirely for Reading, Science and History. One thing that might be a helpful supplement is the Science in a Nutshell kits put out by Delta Education. They're basically small sterlite totes with a booklet of experiments, a student journal and most of the necessary supplies (except for common items like paper towels, drinking straws, or salt), so if there's one particular area you're having trouble planning, you can just slot in a kit instead. I used an ocean-related kits in a small classroom setting, and found it to be well worth it.

Let me see if I can explain this clearly: We're covering the Middle Ages this year, and I think we'll get through the Tudors by next summer. For the purposes of this post, I'm differentiating between copywork and narration. We're doing copywork so my son can learn the flow of beautiful language and practice his writing skills, and I prefer that it be primary source material whenever possible, so that he can connect with the feel of the time period we're studying. We've got some passages that reflect our family's religious beliefs already, but we're not Christian, so I'd prefer that any Biblical passages or excerpts from religious poetry be descriptive rather than proselytizing in nature. I found this page on Wikipedia, but haven't gotten to chase down all these resources yet. I wondered if anyone else had been in this position, and whether you had some passages you particularly liked. Would you mind posting them, if so? Thanks so much.

I love that one! I use it for quick local errands. Most of mine are Trader Joe's canvas bags. They shrank them a couple of years ago, but mine are older and really roomy. They've held up well. The recycled fabric everyone's using now does tend to rip. I mostly use those for produce. The old standby string bags will also hold a remarkable amount. I don't know if someone mentioned this already, but many stores now give you a five or ten cent bag credit for each bag you bring.