Has COVID shut down the meat trucks? I can't believe that you have to mail-order meat!

Build Your Library has some secular unit studies. The prehistory unit study is one of my very favorite things we have ever done for homeschool, and my oldest son is loving the WW2 study right now. There is currently a 20% off sale. Mystery science is free right now, I think. My younger kids loved it, and it is really easy to implement.

https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/coronavirus-all-k-12-schools-king-snohomish-pierce-counties-be-closed-through-april-24/XIDPHMLVOJAAREQ5YCL75367PU/ I've been wondering when this would be announced--all k-12 schools in King (main city Seattle) Snohomish (main city Everett) and Pierce (main city Tacoma) counties are closed through April 24. Our local hs music program has been moved online, and our coop is canceled. This will be interesting, locally--Tacoma school district and our local, smaller district are both high poverty districts. Hopefully they can continue nutrition and health services to families in need.

I forgot about this one. It's another favorite here--simple enough for the kids and interesting enough for the adults.

Yes, I am organizationally challenged and I happily pay for a nice schedule and booklist that helps me stay on track. Expect a cease and desist letter in your mailbox tomorrow...👩‍💼 Does that emoji look like a lawyer? She's supposed to be a lawyer.

Someday someone’s going to make a killing with a homeschool curriculum MLM...

Agreed. I have also appreciated the state and county health department briefings, and how open they have been that on many issues, they just don't know what's going to happen.

Haba has a lot of good games for that age group. We have liked Orchard, Animal Upon Animal (I think they make a version of this with chunky, toddler-safe pieces), Sleeping Princess, and Unicorn Glitterluck.

😥 I'm sorry. Dr. Chen made the point that being a bit behind King County meant that they could see what they did right and wrong and hopefully not make the same mistakes. I'm sure that any respiratory illnesses in nursing facilities are going to be scrutinized from here on out.

https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/article240979166.html Pierce county in WA has a confirmed case. I actually feel calmer after watching the press briefing--Dr. Chen, the head of the doh, has such a calm demeanor, and his attitude is that "this is what public health does, and we've been preparing for it for years."

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/03/05/812679331/when-coronavirus-struck-seattle-this-lab-was-ready-to-start-testing The UW developed a test early in the outbreak, and according to this article they will be able to process 4000 samples a day in the near future. I'm glad that someone was paying attention to world news and preparing!

A quick read shows that this is a 14 month long safety trial, after which efficacy trials would be done. I wonder if the timeline would be sped up if there are no red flags early in the safety trial. If this virus shows a seasonal pattern, ebbing in the summer and circulating again in the fall and winter, it could be causing disruption for a long time.

That's a big step. Will the other colleges and universities in the area will follow suit? I'm watching the public schools too. Young adults staying home is one thing, but kids being home would be a huge disruption. I'm glad I don't have to do the cost-benefit analysis on that one.

At what point will all healthcare workers and first responders be using the proper exposure protocols with all incoming patients? When I see numbers like this—30 people quarantined here, 2 dozen there—I wonder who will be left to run the hospitals. Staffing margins aren’t great to begin with.

Conversations in which everyone agrees are not very interesting. 🙂 But yeah, my five minutes of daiquiri-inspired brainstorming isn’t really the basis for a high school curriculum. It seemed like a good idea at the time. 😄

Looking at the curric in question, it's obviously not for stem-y high school kids. But I think that a series of unit studies for high school could work. There would have to be a flowchart to show which classes were absolute prerequisites for others, but there would be some choice. History units would go along with the science units, and would be non-chronological. For example, one unit might be classical mechanics, Newton, the English Civil Wars, Pope, Dryden, and Pilgrim's Progress. Another might be atoms, elements, the periodic table, Mendeleev, 19th century Russian history, and selections from the golden age of Russian literature--Gogol, Chekhov, Pushkin, Tolstoy. The elements unit would have to precede stoichiometry, Jeremias Benjamin Richter, Holy Roman Empire/Prussia, and The Sorrows of Young Werther. Astronomy/Mayan history/Popol Vuh. Botany/the role of plants in Ancient literature--Gilgamesh, the Bible, Greek Myths. Microbiology--story of Cholera in Victorian England, class system, workhouses, Dickens. Just spitballing. lol.

Usually I'd breeze over these types of questions, trusting that a homeschooling parent would be willing and able to determine what materials fit into the scope and sequence of their homeschool, but I am coming to realize that the proportion of the homeschool community with which I am familiar is rather small, and perhaps not representative of the community as a whole. With self-publishing easier than ever, and so many people deciding that expertise is bunk, I can only see this problem growing in the future, and not just for homeschoolers. Wasn't there a recent thread about how many public school teachers cobble together lesson plans from questionable materials on Teachers Pay Teachers?

I Speak Latin by Andrew Campbell might be a good fit for you. It's fun but not cute, and the author has audio files on his website if you get stuck with pronunciation.

I'm sorry if this was already reported upthread, but I just saw on one of our local news channels that the COVID patient in North Caroline had visited the nursing home in Kirkland.

Welp, I'm toast. I have a friend whose husband works with a guy whose wife works with the covid patient who works at Amazon. Is it time to weld myself into my bunker?

Is this a common view? I have come across lots of people (online, anyway) who want a 100% online curriculum because they don't have time to teach or don't want to teach, but I've never encountered someone who bragged about teaching from ignorance. That's just bizarre. Edited to add: I called over my 12 y/o to ask him about the Viet Cong error. His eyes got wide and he was speechless for a moment. And it takes a lot to get this kid to be quiet. 😛

I suspect that lots of people put off prepping for emergencies in general until they have a reminder. While grabbing stuff they might need in the next few weeks, they think "might as well make a hurricaine/earthquake/teotwawki kit while I'm here."

Huh. This reminds me a bit of a curriculum that I rejected last year. Beautiful format, lovely pictures, fun activities, and an apostrophe in each plural. lol

The Wa DOH briefing this morning stated that there have now been six deaths from COVID-19, all from Evergreen Hospital.

I don't know about the source, but our local news is reporting one employee and one resident from the facility are infected.