Lots of women wait for marriage and still contract an STD or HIV. Waiting until marriage really only protects the partner of the virgin, once s/he becomes sexually active. One remains vulnerable to STDs because one is dependent on the actions and health of others. As an example, I know someone who had an HIV test, and had her fiance get an HIV test, before marriage, who then contracted HIV from her husband. She is a very religious person and was not sexually active outside of her marriage, either before or during. It's one thing to oppose the vaccine, but I am not a believer that being religious automatically provides a shield from all harm.

My son gets Lego Club Magazine, and I remember seeing something in the latest issue involving The Hobbit. Let me see if I can figure it out. ETA I looked in the Nov/Dec 2012 issue and don't see a bug. There is a new series called CHIMA coming out. http://chima.lego.com/en-us/teaser/ Otherwise maybe this will help? http://club.lego.com/en-us/interactive-magazine/ It's the previous issue. Or http://club.lego.com/en-us/building-steps/

I just saw a package of dates in my cupboard with the "sodium free" label prominently dislayed. I cannot get on the anti-carb bandwagon, especially given how most of the world eats. The idea that eating large quantities of dairy and meat is advisable for either health or sustainability reasons strikes me as .... unwise and certainly unattainable. One out of every five people has no access to a toilet, even a public or shared toilet. No toilet. They must simply urinate and defecate outdoors.

I bought a little wooden stove top, I can't remember how much I paid for it, maybe $30, and set it on a bookshelf that was the oven, and my kids sort of played with it. A friend who lived abroad was over and her daughter loved it so I bought her something sort of similar I found at Home Goods or TJMaxx for about $10. But, like Farrar, I would just teach the kid how to cook at this point. Or how to build one out of cardboard or wood. My kids spend more time mixing up stuff in the bathroom and kitchen than they do pretending to stir a pot on the fake stove.

Nice to know I'm not alone. I have a request for a book now, stated in terms of the tense, tone, and subject matter (which I didn't really understand). Yeah, okay.

Indeed. Seriously, the ASPCA represented Mary Ellen Wilson (a human child) in 1874 because she was severely abused by her foster parents.

Really? I have never even looked at it, but I take your opinion seriously.

I think I may need to institute a system like this. I am the main offender.

Most countries don't have the staff or the facilities to take children away from their parents and house them elsewhere unless there is genuine cause. Didn't we just have a conversation about this UN treaty? Maybe it's just where I live, but in the past five years at least, every few months I've seen parents sent to jail for child abuse of shocking proportions, including an international ring of parents swapping videos of their own children being sexually abused, 18 month olds being raped, children killed during potty training, and a mother attempting to pimp out her 12 year old daughter (luckily to an undercover cop). So I don't believes parents always know best.

I get new clothes on clearance. My youngest spent his first year in outfits that cost about $1 each. So I don't buy them used. But books, big yes, and I have some interesting used furniture. A bit scared of bedbugs, though.

Gotcha. Btw be careful of the n-word. Nesbit uses it occasionally in Treasure Seekers books to mean both a black color and people of African origin.

I think the best thing is at http://globaledresources.com/resources.html to go to the One Year Plans I have seen them, and each shows what is covered in each year. The grade 1 document, for example, is 3 p long. You have to fill in your contact information to get them. I've never been contacted by them, and I ordered year 1 a couple years ago.

So that innocent parents who don't watch or know about porn won't name their kid something that has a negative connotation. Another example, you name your kid "John Wayne Smith" thinking only of the western movie star, and not knowing about other John Waynes, such as serial killer John Wayne Gacy -- would be nice to remember the creeps with that name to avoid them, if you feel strongly enough about it. I think this is the reason most people think anyone named Adolf must be a neo-Nazi, when there's nothing wrong with the name, but it has negative associations.

I was having problems unsubscribing with a couple threads, but it just finally went through and let me actually unsubscribe.

Thank you all for your replies!

Stay. Off. Pinterest and blogs! My house doesn't look like theirs, and neither do my meals. I don't have neat laminated items for every subject and a classroom that looks like an exclusive private school. Unplug!

Maybe circle time, first day of school, story time, group songs, class pet (I mean the animal, not the kid), making friends, show & tell, having your name on a little piece of paper on your desk, standing in line, snack time, nap time... I was just reading this older piece by David Brooks called Amy Chua is a Wimp, and I think there are things in here that we all should remember when homeschooling. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Carnegie Mellon have found that groups have a high collective intelligence when members of a group are good at reading each others’ emotions — when they take turns speaking, when the inputs from each member are managed fluidly, when they detect each others’ inclinations and strengths. Participating in a well-functioning group is really hard. It requires the ability to trust people outside your kinship circle, read intonations and moods, understand how the psychological pieces each person brings to the room can and cannot fit together. This skill set is not taught formally, but it is imparted through arduous experiences. These are exactly the kinds of difficult experiences Chua shelters her children from by making them rush home to hit the homework table. Chua would do better to see the classroom as a cognitive break from the truly arduous tests of childhood. Where do they learn how to manage people? Where do they learn to construct and manipulate metaphors? Where do they learn to perceive details of a scene the way a hunter reads a landscape? Where do they learn how to detect their own shortcomings? Where do they learn how to put themselves in others’ minds and anticipate others’ reactions? These and a million other skills are imparted by the informal maturity process and are not developed if formal learning monopolizes a child’s time.

What isn't a slang term for the male body part? Sheesh, Nixon was elected despite having the nickname "Tricky Dick." I would not call my kid "Dick" in this day and age, but I know religious Christians who have a baby named Peter and I've never thought twice about it.

I agree, No Flying in the House is cute, and even though she is half-fairy, she doesn't know that she is. The tiny dog is sort of intriguing, too. Also one of the books we are slowly working our way through at present is Rosemary Manning's Green Smoke, which is actually the first in a series, about a normal girl who befriends a dragon. ETA: Enright's Long Ago Lake

Yes, she was the inspiration for Edward Eager. In Five Children and It they find a magical creature who does the actual spell, and similarly in The Phoenix and the Carpet. But I think the same object is generally the case in Eager's book (the magic nickel, etc). Anything by Nesbit is a good idea. The Magic City is about a boy who builds a city out of blocks and other household items that comes to life. Sort of like Eager's Knight's Castle. Other potential items: Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce Beyond the Pawpaw Trees by Palmer Brown My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett Bedknob and Broomstick by Mary Norton Beyond the Attic Wall by Sylvia Cassedy The Cuckoo Clock by Mrs Molesworth Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Jester Mistress Masham's Repose by TH White The Boggart by Susam Cooper The Diamond in the Window by Jane Langton The Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe by CS Lewis The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm by Nancy Farmer Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Caroll Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin Borderline contenders The Bears Upstairs - ordinary girl stumbles across extraterrestrial bears, sort of an interesting read The Furious Flycycle - again not quite magical, but ordinary boy invents flying bicycle, which is at least fantastic Jennifer, Hecate, MacBeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth by Konigsburg - two ordinary girls try to become witches Pippi Longstocking is not exactly magical, but as close as you can get while still being mortal ;) The Doll's House by Rumer Godden Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbit

But in other ways, I think people living in low technology societies have to be much more efficient. For example, how does one decide how much food to procure or cook for the family when there is no refrigeration and therefore very short storage time before spoilage? There is a small window between not enough and too much that I honestly think most people with a frig just don't worry about at all. This is an important sort of "efficiency," I suppose. I was also thinking perhaps there is an "efficiency" to taking personal connections seriously in a society with limited infrastructure and/or police. For example, if you have carefully maintained your good relations with others, people may be more willing to help you if, say, a thief comes in your house or your child is sick and you need others. I think that has been utterly replaced by our willingness in industrialized societies to be treated like a number. The idea that you want special treatment is irritating, except in some companies that make a particular effort to cater to their customers and/or higher end establishments. For example, American airlines in general do not make any accommodation for members of a family to sit together on a domestic flight -- some of which last for 5 hours! This means that many children who cannot really take care of themselves (I mean like 6 year olds, not 17 year olds) are stuck next to adults they do not know. For an entire flight! And this is supposed to be fine with everyone, because it is more efficient for the airline to consider each passenger as an autonomous individual! The idea that humanity is a herd of cattle that we should shove through the various duties of life is a rather unfortunate "advance," I think. Sure, but when they're my own close relatives who are ignoring me to send an email, of course I take it personally! ;)

I knew someone whose husband was from Europe and one of them was terrified of flying, and that was how they did it. It's very tempting. Not sure I could pull it off to go see my in laws. Hmm. International flights I will do. Domestic flights, I haven't done in 8 years.

I had the labor in the tub for one and have rather fond memories of it! ha. It was sort of distracting to crank up the jet to spray my back during a contraction.

Here's one from the UK from 2011: 3 in 10 children own no books. That's 4 million kids. "The research found that 'at a crude brushstroke', young people who do have books of their own are more likely to be girls, socio-economically better off, from white or mixed ethnic backgrounds and without a special educational need." I think we do not comprehend that "a particularly deprived subset of the population" is actually quite a large percentage of it. 22% of children in the US live in poverty. That means the actual poverty line. But that is extremely low. There is an even larger group that lives around the poverty line: "Some 42 percent of American children — more than 31 million — grow up in families that lack the income to cover basic needs like rent, child care, food and transportation." Many of those children DO have books and treasure them, anyway, but some have none or very few. It’s often assumed that families without books lack interest in reading. But that is not necessarily the case. “When poor people, even those at low literacy levels, have a little extra money, they will buy inexpensive books,” explains Susan B. Neuman, a professor at the University of Michigan, who specializes in early literacy development and co-authored the study in Philadelphia. “But some families have so little disposable income, they can’t afford any books.” Here's the shocker: 80 percent of pre-school and after school programs serving low-income children do not have any children’s books, either , largely because they lack the money to buy them. The same goes for middle class kids. Some of their families don't value books to begin with, even if they could well afford them. "A study (pdf) of low-income neighborhoods in Philadelphia, for example, found a ratio of one book for sale for every 300 children." These are from "A Book in Every Home, and Then Some" (2011) by David Bornstein in the NY Times. Compare this with another UK statistic: "women own an average of thirty four pairs of knickers, that’s three times as many as in 1999, when the average was just 12.....58% of all those women polled admit that bright white knickers are by far their favourite"

I don't think the sugar and corn industry need help making the American public fat. I don't think what's needed is a tax, but an end to the heavy subsidies. That is why junk food is so cheap: it's not an even playing field.