We've had several discussions about rigor on this board, this forum, and there was a recent one started by AuntPol on the General board. David Kern gave me permission to post this from the Circe Institute Newsletter. "In classical schools much is made of academic rigor, and no wonder given the sloth and lack of interest in what we would call education in so much of the wider culture. Rigor, however, must be purposeful. If we don’t know what we are equipping students for, then we are like Soviet concentration camps that would have people dig up and then fill in holes to keep them busy. Sometimes rigor takes less time than sloth. In fact, it always does. The difference is that right rigor gets things done and sloth doesn’t. Rigor doesn’t mean, in other words, more time. It means more focus. It means imitating great works instead of silly ones. It means translating difficult challenges instead of tedious ones. It means jumping into that gap between what we know and what we don’t know, between what is easy and what is impossible, between what we understand and what is incomprehensible, and swimming for our lives. There is no other way to become a good thinker, student, writer, decision-maker, or communicator. You must fail. It is the only way you can succeed. What skills are being cultivated? What do you want your students to get good at? Can you help them get good at it? Are you? Are you getting the training needed to become good and to help them improve? These are accountability questions that can guide us toward excellence."

I was going to get the one SWB recommended, Roget's, but then when I checked the reviews, I saw that it had been reformatted/reorganized and it was now getting poor reviews. I'm thinking I have an older Roget's in my college book box. I wasn't sure which edition to get in order to have a "good" Roget's so I got a Synonym Finder. We have used it several times so far but I can't give a recommendation for any specific book as of yet.

CC=Classical Composition

There was a discussion back when we didn't have the Logic Stage board, on the K-8 board regarding doing EV and LToW. It's my current plan unless 1TOGO talks me into CC. :tongue_smilie:

This is one of the best threads ever!!!! We learned about Rachel Carson in A Short History of Nearly Everything!

Which Debra Bell book are you referring to?

LOL! http://www.problemwater.com/if_cfpump.html How do you find the slime in your drain? Do you take the pipes off? 'm assuming once we remove the iron, the iron eating bacteria won't have anything to feed on, if we do have them but I'll have to ask. The technician seemed to think we didn't have the bacteria though.

Would the iron eating bacteria be detected when they test for E. coli? We've had two tests for bacteria and they were negative. I've looked in two tanks. I don't see any slime. THere is a ton of rust-colored sediment and rim at water level as well as some flocculent stuff floating. I checked it under the microscope and I see nothing moving. WE've had no slime in drains. It sounds like we have soluble iron...on the day of the test w/ clear water, the iron was at 0.5ppm. I put some water in a container on the day it came out reddish brown and it was a whopping 2ppm. That was insoluble iron. Our water is odorless. There is no odor from the toilet tanks or the tap. If you can look at under the microscope, that would be great. We are planning on getting the chem-free iron system installed once our basement is finished in a few weeks. The first two times we had the reddish water it was during a snow melt and a heavy rain. This last time when it was the worst, the weather was great. Go figure.

WEll, the guy who tested the water said it was not iron eating bacteria b/c there is no slime anywhere. It's not dissolved iron but the other kind, the name is escaping me. THe iron exists in clumps. I look at it under the microscope and yep, it was clumps of particulates. What does the slime look like? He said it would be a slime on the surface of the water in the toilet tank. We don't have anything like that but I'll keep checking to make sure. Yes, I'll be at VF! Capt Uhura

oh my that made me nausous. Poor little guys. I hope he heals quickly. :grouphug::grouphug::grouphug::grouphug:

Pasture's Fight AGainst Microbes is another good one!

I second and third The Mystery of the Periodic Table. My boys loved it. My FIL who has a Ph.D. in chemical engineering loved it! He read it to them twice!

NEVER MIND - I found it! Hello Hive, There was a math thread here over the past few days where a poster listed 3-5 books she has used. I think one of them was "What is Pi?" Can someone please link me to that thread? Thanks, Capt Uhura

You need to have your water tested. We just did. Our iron levels are so high on occasion, that a water softener would not do any good. There is a specific ratio of iron to water hardness that softeners need to work. For our iron levels, we need a chem-free iron system. it's about $1700 but completely maintenance free. Everything else in our water is quite low so we don't need a softener and I don't like them anyhow. The iron is not a health issue. But since we've been in this house, about 9 months, we've had the well belch up loads of iron for about 24hrs then run clear again. the well may take a year to settle down so we might wait it out and test in a few months. It's just an esthetic issue from what I gather. I think it can color your clothes. This last time, I had to clean the toilet bowls daily and the kids don't like taking a bath in orange water.

Here it is. http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=226507&highlight=ACS My post is at the very end of this thread.

There aren't that many things to order for ACS. I think there are 5 chemicals and three "gadgets." Equal mass cubes, density cubes, and a ball/stick thingy (you heat it to show that metals expand when heated just like gasses). On the thread for ACS, I posted things you need and catalogue numbers for a company which will ship to homeschoolers. All the chemicals you can get from Home Science Tools for about $5 each. Also, the ACS book tells you which ones can be obtained "over the counter." Some are in hardware stores etc. I found it easier just to buy them from HST. The three gadgets I am buying from Sargent-Welch.

EV's focus is expository writing. You're given topics to research and then write about or you can choose your own from history and science. I find that many of the writing programs have a main focus so it seems you need multiple ones. LToW level 1, albeit a brief introduction to it, seems to be persuasive writing. 1TOGO is the go to (HA HA HA) person for CC. I don't know if it would overlap w/ LToW. I would assume so and you'd do one or the other but you know what happens when you assume....:lol:

:bigear:

WOW excellent job! Yes, he's young. I would just move on, make a few notes of things you want to address and do it in copywork. Also, when you're reading to him, point out great transitions in paragraphs. Point out great sentences. Give him a list of transition words where they are segregated according to function (time, order, etc). I would point out how well he did w/ time....beginning of his life to the end w/out jumping back and forth. I'd also praise his use of keywords throughout (trouble, tramp painter) and discuss what the use of repetition does for the reader. In short, point out explicitly all the things he did right b/c even if they are/were intuitive, it'll be reinforced by thinking about it. Have him go through and underline his time sequence words (soon after, a long time, etc). He might enjoy reading through MCT Paragraph Town with you. My 2nd grader did and it really helped him to understand paragraphs in a fun and engaging way. If he's open to criticism, you could just mention things that he needs to work on but that you'll work on them later and in under contexts such as there for their.

Some of the Thames and Kosmos kits do not get good reviews. I'd search the boards for that and read other reviews. Did you look at ACS Middle School chemistry? It's free and I think it looks very good. I'm in the process of ordering everything needed for us to do that.

Very succinct!

Yes it was the hovercraft project.

For the project we did, we needed specific size fast food containers that are only used at one restaurant that we frequent. The other container was a meat container so I had to bring my tape measure into the grocery store and find a suitable size one. I think went and asked the butcher if I could have a virgin one. I had to drive to the next town over 30min each way to get a specific type of propeller which turns out you can't buy in stores. Supercharged science sent me some for free but it was still a lot of hassle. I think to buy just that one kit was $50 and the only thing non-consumable was the motor.

The only way I'd do supercharged escience again is if I bought everything in a kit which you can do for about $2000. It was a pain to find all the components. The activity was fun though.

Thanks! I need to go through all my various writing books and see what I have. I just can't think of a good nitty gritty paragraph resource. Seems like everything I have is either sentence or rhetoric.