We deschooled (but read consistently and pursued interests) for months, then started (3rd grader and Ker) with writing, then added math, then science, and just now adding semi-regular history.

I just realized that they probably write their names about 1/20 as often as public school kids, due to lack of worksheets and the fact that I'm not going to get their work mixed up with anyone else's.

How will you know you're teaching them the right things if you don't have them tested regularly by the public school system?

It's gambling. The reason you're not allowed to count cards is because the point isn't to win using brain or skill (with the exception of poker, which isn't a game against the house), it's to win or lose using luck, so that the casino makes a reliable profit. I don't understand what the complaint is? Why would a casino be worried about what is "fair"? And of *course* they think gambling is for suckers - gambling *is* for suckers!

OP, do you separate the dairy cows' calves from them, at birth or sometime soon after? What do you do with the boy calves (of dairy cows)?

It made mine cry.

I never learned diagramming per se, although I did learn parts of speech to some extent in school; I am a very competent writer and understand complex grammar.

Yes, this exactly!

Oh, and in my experience the lactation consultants in the hospital are not helpful at all; mine with my first told me everything was fine and that the pain was normal (it wasn't).

I found nipple shields awful, but your mileage may vary. Can you afford to see a lactation consultant? We spent our last $50 on one after 6 weeks of such painful nursing with my first that I cried every time I nursed her; she fixed the problem right away (not a wide enough latch).

Yay for quitting! I smoked for a few years too; quitting was not easy, and I imagine it's much harder for someone after 20 years. What did it for me was that I kept quitting every week or so; I must have quit 30 or 40 times, and every time caused major emotional meltdowns. One day the cigarette just wasn't worth what I knew it would bring, and I never smoked again. I read somewhere that the average ex-smoker quits smoking like 20+ times before it is finally permanent, which always made me feel hopeful even after I had relapsed again, and sure enough, it was true.

My parents were/are the opposite; they're always trying to get me to take meds for things that don't require medication (decongestants for a basic cold, tylenol for kids' fevers under 101, etc.) I think that (like most things), there is a continuum. Some matters of health are reflections of morality to a degree; my dad smoked 2 packs a day, indoors, my entire childhood (my mom smoked about half as much). I don't blame him 100% because he started smoking in 1940something at the age of 12. But I do hold him largely responsible for both his health problems (he died of COPD a couple of years ago) and the effects the smoking had on me (largely social, some minor asthma). People who are severely overweight are similar (with some exceptions for various causes); addiction is a hard thing to beat, and some people are more genetically predisposed to one addiction or the other, but at the end of the day we're responsible for our own behavior, and some behaviors are more selfish and harmful than others. But seeing bad health as some sort of cosmic result of bad behavior without a clear cause-effect relationship like smoking or overeating is just crazy, imo.

I think people in our society say "thank you" way way too much, so that it has become meaningless in many circumstances, but: Thank you, for speaking so openly and kindly and insightfully and patiently about Judaism with me (us). You may find this funny, but the only women I've ever talked to about religion who have been as delightful as you are to talk to about religion/theology/philosophy were the Mormon missionaries we had come by a few years ago. :)

We just knew we'd be together permanently from the very beginning. We don't even celebrate our wedding date (I think it's in July sometime) as our anniversary; we celebrate the day we started dating, for lack of a better word. It was pretty much 100% from day 1.

Yup, it changed things for us. He was a bit ahead of me in school, so while I was in high school he changed to a university nearer where we had both grown up (and where I was still living); then he was out of college when I graduated high school so we both moved to the city where I was going to University. We lived off-campus, which honestly was just the best thing. I'm so glad I managed to avoid dorms. (we got together at 18 and 15, engaged at 18 and 15, married a bit later).

I think part of that (tell me if you agree!) is that once you have a certain level of prosperity, or in this case freedom, there is an impulse to relax and not cling as hard to traditional values or the rigid laws that got you through the hard times. The same thing has happened a few times in the US; in the 20s social mores liberalized, but once things got hard during the Depression and WWII, people became more conservative; in the 60s there was relative prosperity, and tradition was rejected again for a certain degree of relaxation. Perhaps once the Jews stopped being persecuted so strongly in Europe (and started to enjoy religious freedom in the US?) there was a similar sense of safety, and thus the Reform movement was born? I wonder if Orthodox Judaism, or at least adherence to more traditional expressions of Judaism, has had something of a resurgence post-Holocaust?

Hmm, from Hirsch: "Was Judaism ever 'in accordance with the times?' Did Judaism ever correspond with the views of dominant contemporaries? Was it ever convenient to be a Jew or Jewess?… Was that Judaism in accordance with the times, for which, during the centuries following the Disperson, our fathers suffered in all lands, through all the various periods, the most degrading oppression, the most biting contempt, and a thousand-fold death and persecution? And yet we would make it the aim and scope of Judaism to be always 'in accordance with the times!'"

ah, cool! I went back and read it; sums up Judaism as a whole pretty well, no? It's interesting how Judaism promotes both intellectual engagement and challenge and rigorous pursuit of understanding/analysis of the various religious texts, but also insists on a quite strict adherence to tradition and a sort of non-rewriting/reinterpreting of the word of god; there's both more preference for precedence and established belief than exists in most protestant churches and more insistence on intellectual analysis than the catholic church (as far as I can tell, anyway).

Who is your favorite Jewish philosopher/theologian? Do you have a favorite (I forget what the word is, but it kind of means anecdotal tale from the past that may or may not have happened and illustrates something about philosophy or morality or the nature of god or the world or humanity). I don't mean from the Torah, specifically.

I've noticed, from having been exposed to both but never committed as an adult to either, that in Christianity there's generally a sense of sort of, God comprises/is the source of everything good, and Satan comprises/is the source of everything bad, and there's a fair amount of focus on good vs evil and resisting Satan, etc. There was not much of that in Judaism, as I recall. Do you think Jews have a more holistic view of the universe?

Well, Lexile levels aren't perfect, and as far as I can see they don't assess much in regards to maturity of theme, etc. I mostly use them to see how accessible the language/vocab is likely to be. I don't see what interest a 4th grader would have in Grapes of Wrath, hehe :) Mine loves the Percy Jacksons too! And all the others (she is a girl, though).

Yes, newborns in my experience are 10x easier than 9-18 months (the most demanding age). But the *first* newborn is a lot harder than any other age of any kid! Because it is all so new :)

Ah, sorry, I got your signatures mixed up! :) side note, what is cradle and cafeteria in terms of Catholicism?

Yes, Farmer Boy is probably below level for an advanced 4th grade reader, Narnia is right on. He might like the Chronicles of Prydain, The Dark is Rising sequence, etc.

I have no idea, but I have a very advanced reader who is going into 4th grade next year, and she's reading at about a 900-1000 lexile (granted, she chooses her own books, and I may provide something occasionally but I never force her to read anything). If I wanted to challenge her I'd probably push her into 1100-1200 lexile mesure books; I don't bother much with pushing her though, since she likes reading as it is now and does plenty of it. If you figure out the approximate reading level of some of the books your son enjoys independently, you can probably find other books that are at a similar level or maybe a bit above.