Oh for goodness sake. Those look nice. I just got a set of The Children's Hour at the library book sale (where I passed over a copy of My Book House because I already bought it! aaaaaagh) and now have two shelves with all my vintage series things together. I think I like them more than anyone else (!), but my son enjoyed Childcraft non-fiction volumes a lot when he was a newish reader. I can't buy anymore though...no more space! I did find some of the older My Book House on Google Books, once, hmm, let me see, here's one http://books.google.com/books?id=OYoXAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

A lot of vintage books are available on archive.org, if you miss downloading any. Anyhow I once tracked down all the Treadwell readers, so here are the links, because they were (at the time) misnamed on Google books. Here's my old post: Actually it's only though Y1 at Main Lesson. I also like Home Geography for Primary Grades by CCLong http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12228 http://www.mainlesson.com/display.php?author=longcc&book=geography&story=_contents http://books.google.com/books?id=EUkAAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

I don't see Chinese government as a clone of the US govt -- that seems a rather odd claim, but that in itself doesn't mean China is awful. (That is a different set of evaluations.) BBC News has an interesting structural chart at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/in_depth/china_politics/government/html/1.stm You can click on each component to learn more I am not sure how or if this differs from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13904437

I see them as a supplement, but one of my children benefited GREATLY before being able to read, by being able to listen to stories independently. I tend to have my kids listening to one book on their own, while I read them others myself.

You can print out graph paper from various websites, too, which is nice if you don't have any on hand. I am glad to hear they are almost finished with 3d.

I don't know how the formatting is, but according to http://simplycharlottemason.com/scmforum/topic/cms-writings-for-kindle you can download the .prc files from http://www.amblesideonline.org/CM/toc.html for free

It was for independent reading and had not yet become famous, just for clarity's sake. My teacher had never heard of it and seemed to think it was basically "Fifty Shades of Gray." My mother was totally bemused by the whole thing. My point was actually that I read plenty of books (including Handmaid's Tale) that were not the best for me at the age I read them. I also remember struggling through Heart of Darkness (another independent pick). I actually have been amused at some of the glowingly positive or otherwise genuinely interesting Arab depictions -- there was definitely a period of fascination and "ooh, exotic" type of outlook at other periods. If you want an example, try the Arab characters in Beyond the Paw Paw Trees, who are at worst a bit strange (with their salaaming all over the place) but definitely not dangerous or lecherous. Tons of really weird African/African American and Asian/Asian American characters, too. I remember once wanting to see Breakfast at Tiffany's. When Mickey Rooney's yellow face popped up, I gasped, and turned it off. I had the same reaction to an episode of Mr Magoo I borrowed from the library (another one of those "let's eat lice!" type of horrible Asian accents) and A Cricket in Times Square.

My son is crazy about square numbers so was really excited about it. I think maybe reading some books and learning about square numbers might help. But I do think it's a tricky chapter that looks at things in a very "different" way. I would maybe move forward, and come back regularly to do a problem or two at a time or something.

Blocks of all kinds. In the WTM there' a recommendation for a jug of geometric shapes, that I followed. My daughter has been making pretty and complicated patterns for years with them. Also interlocking unit cubes have been a hit. Legos are also in this category, although my daughter isn't a big fan.

I had to read it in tenth grade, and I reread it recently. I had totally forgotten about the sleezy friend making moves on the girl, but the whole prostitute thing was memorable. When I read it recently, it struck me as a definite portrait of adolescence and of that time. I mean, checking into a hotel by himself at age 16? Granted it was a sleezy one, but still. I think it had it's influence to such a degree that it no longer seems remarkable.

I think there is something about hairdressers. I might be tempted to say, "You know, I would rather just discuss hair with you." I don't ask them for personal advice, and I don't understand why they think it's relevant. I had a hairdresser want to discuss my relationship with my mother (including if she approved of my marriage) -- in front of my kids. I had another who teasingly said I was pumping out kids. Not the case. I stopped going to both.

The original thread was http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/186055-joy-hakim-science-booksteacher-guides-50-off/ And it contains information and ISBN numbers, and instructions The publisher's site is https://selfservice.randomhouse.biz/bizcf/acmart/index.cfm I don't know if anyone has tried recently, but it worked for many in July 2011.

Do they still have the deal on the publisher's website for an educational discount?

Having just read his book Vernacular Eloquence, I smiled when I saw this. :)

My mom always wanted me to read Faulkner on my own, and it was way advanced. I read Atwood's Handmaid's Tale when it came out. When I wanted to read it for a class, my teacher read the back cover (all about the ceremony) and made my mom give written permission, thinking it was some random smutty book. I try to avoid books with a colonialist / racist viewpoint with my still young children.

I read recently about a kid who moved to Germany and found the social environment vastly more pleasant than in the US. I can say that I hated elementary and junior high school. High school was actually an improvement! I also only went to a neighborhood school for exactly one year of my life, and I walked to school while a good portion of my classmates were bussed in. The rest of the time, I attended a school far from my home. I was bussed in to my high school. I lived nowhere near my friends, who were bussed in from another part of town, and in fact, in high school, I was the only kid over the age of five on my block. I think this influences the environment as well. My neighborhood was not an extention of my school environment. I lived in different parts of the country, too, so it is not a strictly regional thing.

What IS potash? And is it pronounced pot-ash or po-tash? Anyway I have an Indian cookbook that claims one can make homemade Vimto using potash, and I have NEVER understood this. The author also claims that it is readily available in Indian grocery stores. I don't really need to perform this experiment, as I don't really drink truckloads of Vimto, and a bottle only costs like $5, but I have been wondering for years what potash is and how it would make a drink that tastes like black currant, without killing the one who drank it.

Adzuki beans are smaller than red beans, which are smaller than kidney beans. There is nothing particularly sweet tasting about them. I have made savory dishes with them. All Japanese recipes for sweet bean things involve adding a hefty amounts of sugar to sweeten them, e.g. http://justonecookbook.com/blog/how-to/how-to-make-anko-red-bean-paste/

I don't think you need to be undignified; I think you should contact with very specific information about all the wrong books and order numbers, to get their advice. Amazon customer service is very good.

No, but after reading something about Babar, I very hesitatingly checked it out of the library, mostly because my son wanted books written in the present tense. They didn't really pay attention to the book, nor did they seem to find the purported pro-colonialization tone particularly distressing...or compelling! ha. Anyway I will get my hands on this one. I agree with you that this is a concern. It can also have unintended (or, in my opinion, thoroughly obnoxious) consequences that end up appearing to endorse racist or classist points of view we may be quite opposed to. We can't just read book after book about pathetic characters in the non-western world. And, as always seems to be the case, there are tons of interesting things for little kids, and virtually NOTHING for bigger kids. For that matter, I was rather horrified to read the beginning of The Secret Garden...I'd totally forgotten that bit. I keep having frightening encounters where characters say things like one did in the second One End Street Book (paraphrasing), "If (some other character) saw me with soot all over my face, looking like a darkie, she would leave me at the station!". This also seems to happen to me when I watch Jeopardy, though. Alex Trebek tosses out comments sometimes that make me cringe -- and I don't watch the show that often! So it's amazing how these things just pop up, even when one tries very hard to avoid them. I remember reading something by a Nigerian woman author, that she read a lot of British books as a kid, and not only did she sort of idealize that British sort of outlook, she also was very curious why they were always talking about the weather.

Or is the issue that all non-western cultures beat women? If that's the assumption, I am sorry to say that it is not limited to non-western cultures. The number of local women who show up on my local news who've been killed by their current or former partner is mind-boggling. (And they are not all, or even predominantly, members of some obscure immigrant community.) So, alas, I see it as a depressing reality for women around the world. It's just that it seems more a part of a global threat against women when it's a woman being killed in some kitchen "accident" in India, or whatever, than when it's an angry boyfriend/husband/ex who guns down a woman in your neighborhood. That being said, I wouldn't want to make violence the main theme of reading literature of other cultures. I think the ALA's list isn't bad, and there are well-written works of literature from around the world. I mean, so many people have read Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, and it was originally written in English. There are lots of well written, interesting works of post colonial African literature, however, that doesn't mean they're well-suited for kids, though, and therein lies the trouble. Maybe more choices in high school! There are so many issues surrounding colonialism that I think are a lot more complicated than what is intimated in Babar, and probably are hard for small kids to understand. I did take a class in French about childhood literature (i.e. about childhood, not for children) and read L'enfant noir by Camara Laye, and I believe it's available in English, and the movie Sugar Cane Alley (Rue Cases Nègres) is a must-see, set in Martinique. I have not read the book it is based on. I also have read several interesting books set in Haiti such as Taste of Salt (and I found this list). Keep digging!

And for that matter, there are almost ZERO works of French literature for children! There was a thread about this on here a year or so ago. All the French speakers agreed. It was like Babar, and Madeline, and.... Babar! And Madeline! And Tin Tin! ;) I am really not sure what to make of the OP's idea that violence against women is built in to literature in non-western cultures. If I believed that, I wouldn't want to read it to my children. You might want to peruse this list: http://www.ala.org/a...ngUpAroundWorld Through Growing Up Around the World, we hope to make books that accurately depict contemporary life in other countries more widely available to American children. The project includes bibliographies representing five regions: Africa; the Americas; Asia and the Middle East; Australia and New Zealand; and Europe.... Rather than including the best books about other countries written by outsiders to those countries, the list seeks to identify children’s books written or illustrated by people have lived for at least two years within those cultures. With very few exceptions, we limit the lists to books written in the last ten years and currently available in the United States.

Yeah, I used Reading Reflex (bought used for even cheaper, from someone who sent me all her material pre-cut and organized). That was sort of it with learning to read. For math, on the other hand, I have massively overspent on many things I've never used. And I think I am going to take Angela in Ohio's advice about those downloadable e-books: avoid them! I've spent too much money on these and rarely use them. I also think reading people's blogs probably tends to bring forth an inferiority complex that leads to large orders of various manipulatives. I am just not a crafty, elementary school teacher type of person. I have laminated a grand total of two things since buying my laminator, one of which is a multiplication table.

When I found out about it a few years ago, I tried a few. I then stopped! ha.

Textbooks in general have skyrocketed in cost in the last 10 years. That being said, I do think the internet has opened up many methods of obtaining inexpensive and free materials, though, from free online sources and curricula (MEP, Librivox), out-of-copyright material (Librivox, Google Books, Archive.org), library-sponsored multimedia download borrowing services (such as ebooks and audiobooks), authors producing and selling directly (including ebooks and blogs, including BFSU and The Happy Scientist, not to mention all those apps), as well as the ability to easily find and purchase used books.