Bought the fridge on Monday; it's being delivered tomorrow! Had a repairman out to look at ours. He said (as we've read) that they aren't lasting as long. He's making service calls at 4-5 years instead of 8-10. :glare: His recommendation was to buy a very basic model - don't get door dispensers for ice/water - just more to go wrong. He also suggested only getting "a name you recognize from when you were growing up." So he recommended against LG, Samsung, etc. We used Consumer Reports (think the August issue has ratings - most libraries have a subscription). General info here. We bought from Home Depot. Prices were lower than the CR prices, so that was encouraging. Good luck in shopping! (It's miserable, isn't it? This time, I handed the CR to dh, told him what I wanted and didn't want, and told him to go buy it! We're getting a Maytag, I think. I'll know tomorrow :) )

I have Base 10 blocks. Love them! Ds... not so much. He HATED them in Bk 1 and 2 of Singapore. However... he worked with them today with division in Bk 3 without complaint! In the earlier books, I'd show the concepts with the blocks, then I'd let him just do the work. When he got a problem wrong, I'd make him show me with the blocks and write the correct work. (wailing & moaning & gnashing of teeth - often from both of us!) But he's getting it! I also have pushed on the drill on the basic memorization of the addition and multiplication facts and that prevents counting. (Basically, it's faster for my son to do it "my way" rather than doing it "his way" and then having to redo things my way. Although I will let him try out different approaches.)

Because even though you were gearing up for it, it's a loss. Avoiding dairy is a struggle. We've adapted, but it is hard. Depending on how severe the allergy is, it's scary too - you see GoldFish crackers everywhere. Kids eat cheese for healthy snacks. Milk spills. :grouphug: Unfortunately, ds had a skin test this summer after environmental allergen reactions. We had been hoping to do an oral challenge with dairy and had hoped he'd have outgrown his allergy. He hadn't. I've posted cookbooks I've found helpful before. Enjoy Life is a wonderful brand - expensive, but safe - and they have chocolate!! Give yourself time to grieve. You'll be able to handle it. And, far better to lose foods now rather than once your son enjoyed the taste. You're not alone. Feel free to PM if you need any support or just a place to vent.

Whimper. We did a refi in May to pull out cash and get a car. We did have closing costs and we got a fixed 4.25% for 15 years. Still owe less than the house would sell for (given sales in the neighborhood), so I'm going to try not to whine too much about rates continuing to drop. It's tough to time it. And when we bought the house, my mom said that our fixed 7% was really great. The house they bought in the late 70s had a 12% rate, I believe.

That's why I recommend when learning this to show the steps on the same line rather than beneath - it's too easy to drop a sign. So 5 - a = 1 Subtracting 5 from each side (and showing this!) 5 - a - 5 = 1 - 5 Now simplify: - a = - 4 Note that the coefficient of a is -1, so we can multiply (or divide) by -1 on both sides, leaving a = 4.

I adore the book but as an FYI for others, Feynman does discuss hanging out in strip clubs, so some mature themes if you are really watching what your kids read. I'm also not recalling if he was an atheist or not. (Of course, ds asked about the atom bomb... should probably not have been letting him play Civ so much - and I handed him this book... After he was halfway through it, I picked it up to reread as well. Oops. There are some really nifty stories about working on the bomb. The stories about safecracking seemed to stick with my son.) To the OP, I don't know if it'd help, but you could have a discussion and try a contract where you write out your son's responsibilities with school and consequences if the work isn't done. Doing it after having a discussion may air any issues and having it in writing may help with his buy in. Of course, we haven't hit 13 yet... so it may not work. Good luck.

We started when ds was 7. I assign the complete curriculum on the computer but I tell him to skip the writing sections. I don't use the workbooks or any printed material.

We used US edition for level 1. Switched to Standards for Level 2. It was no problem aligning IP with the Standards edition. In level 3 (this year), there is one more significant switch where some material in 3A is in the IP for 3B and vice versa. There is no Standards edition of IP - but it's well worth using and not tough to align (although after 2 - double check!).

Thanks for the explanation.

We're doing school. Dh is home, but when we do school while he's off, he gets more alone time than he does when we're all off at the same time. :D Of course, tomorrow he'll probably be buying us a new fridge and doing some general home repairs, so not really an off day for him.

I'm curious why you say this and would be interested in hearing how you see a cc as the same as public school. I completed a teaching credential and did student teaching at a public school. It was a truly hellish experience. I then taught at a cc. In some cases I was teaching material that was lower than what I'd teach in high school, but I did not have administrative interference in my classroom. I wasn't limited on what grades I could assign. The school district at that time (and unfortunately more now) made a 50 the lowest grade a student could get on any assignment (yup - even if they only turned in a paper with their name on it - they got a 50). At the cc I teach at, students are allowed to fail. We'd sure prefer it if they didn't, but the onus on their learning is on them. At the public schools, the onus on student learning is on the teacher. So even with teaching similar material, I see huge differences in the approaches. Also at a cc, if it's accredited, instructors have to have certain qualifications that they do not have to have at public schools. For instance, content instructors (math, science, English, etc.) have to have 18 graduate hours in their subject to teach. (In some other states the requirement is 21 graduate hours.) For programs (nursing, automotive tech, etc) instructors have to have certain certifications to teach.

The math was pretty straightforward, but it really helped my son to spend some time before the test doing analogies. He'd never seen them before! I think this was the book we used. I also found it helpful to look back through threads here on the SCAT. It let me know more what to expect - and what to warn my son about. ("It's not a race, take the time you need and don't try to beat the clock." :001_smile:)

I took a classics course at college where we read The Iliad & The Odyssey (both translated by Lattimore) and The Aeneid (translated by Fitzgerald), FWIW. Picking translations can be tricky.

:grouphug: to Jennifer and Amy.

You may want to check Consumer Reports. I think they have some online info for free. They reviewed fridges earlier this year. Ours hasn't died completely, but we had a repairman out last week and he said the compressor is dying and we will need a new one. His recommendation was not to get any bells and whistles (we're going with a traditional freezer on top and an icemaker). He said the lifespan is dropping - he sees problems at only 5 years now when it used to be more like 10. He recommended buying from Lowe's or Home Depot rather than from Sears (he thought they have a lower profit margin on appliances and said Kenmore now could be manufactured by anyone). He also said "Get a name that's familiar; avoid LG, Samsung, etc." We'll probably be buying one sometime this week - definitely in September. Blech. Hope you didn't lose too much food!

Ds is using CWP 3. Today he did 2 problems and challenged dh to do them as well. Dh was unable to do one of them with algebra. The problems were much easier with the bar models. It's fascinating to see how the bar models work and how it gives another tool for solving problems. Ds was just so thrilled to be able to do a problem that his father couldn't do. :001_smile: (Dh does say he would have gotten it had he used trial and error though. :D)

I take care of "my" car; he takes care of "his".

My son basically taught himself to read in the first grade. He strongly resisted any of my efforts to teach him and once he was reading, he would guess at words he didn't know and not sound out words. We made the move in 2nd grade to All About Spelling. That's where we got the phonics - and it's made a huge difference. He spells a lot better and now sounds out words too. So if you don't use an official phonics program, check out some the phonics-based spelling programs.

I'd probably look over the WB problems and if I saw an interesting problem or something I wanted more practice in I might have him do a couple of additional problems. I probably would not have him do all of the workbook though.

You can also see it as a pattern: (-3)(3)=-9 (-3)(2)=-6 (-3)(1)=-3 (-3)(0)=0 If we continue the pattern, we continue to decrease our second number and our product continues to increase by three. So... (-3)(-1)=3 (-3)(-2)=6 etc.

Thanks! I'll still need to play with it a bit, but I think I'm seeing it. I think of polar graphs as things you would draw with a spirograph :001_smile: so that does make this one nifty.

:confused: not helping me. I'm very weak with understanding with polar coordinates. Here, I'm getting hung up on x vs theta... So the best I'm getting is then sec theta = r/x .. But that's not clarifying things for me.

Tell me what I'm missing, please! I just know I'm overlooking something! Frustrated here. :glare:

I'm interested in the follow-up and how he sees it relating to the discussion. I'm definitely weak in graphing in polar coordinates (other than extremely basic functions). My approach is all too often brute force... for instance, here, plotting points which can't be best. Clearly this is undefined when x = 0, pi/2, pi, ... Each quadrant (unit circle) has the same output, so graphing QI should be enough to get the pattern. Using Wolfram Alpha for graphs, on the rectangular plane, I can see the repetition I expect, but the polar graph is showing up as empty. I haven't done anything since Calc I in over 14 years, so rusty is a mild description for me. :001_smile: What am I not seeing here?

I'm also interested in the responses. I think it's definitely better to get number sense - use manipulatives and count, then go abstract. I don't want my son to be stuck using his fingers or counting because it does slow you down. I majored in math in my undergrad program. I didn't have my 9's times tables memorized until my graduate program. :eek: I used my fingers with the "trick". I covered over that page in Singapore 3A for my son. I'm not going to show it to him & he's going to understand first, then memorize! Using my fingers (and dreadful dreadful arithmetic skills) didn't hold me back from getting a bachelor's degree (& later graduate classes) - or from understanding higher-level math. It did slow me down on computations though. Maybe that's the reason?