Our piano teacher’s daughter is getting married. I don’t know her, but I think my piano teacher is a wonderfully sweet lady and would like to acknowledge this wedding somehow. We’re not invited to the wedding, is it weird to give a card with a bit of money? Is it normal to give a gift to a wedding you weren’t invited to? I don’t want to look passive aggressive.

I'm in Kansas City and we are having rolling blackouts. A lot of government building and the university of Kansas are closed to conserve power.

Have you ever sent a child to summer camp where they didn't know anyone? I went a few times as a kid but it was always with my church group.

I have frozen hamburger patties I want to cook for dinner tonight. It's snowing out so I don't want to use the grill. My usual indoor method is the frying pan, but I need to cook 6 so that's like 3 batches. Can I just put them on a cookie sheet it the oven. Would the texture be mushy since they weren't fried?

Does your child do the online class? Is it simultaneous to the in person class? Do the kids in the online class get as much feedback as the kids in person?

We are having so much fun with this curriculum. We have identified a lot of birds in our backyard. There is a certain bird that we can't figure out and it's driving us nuts! We live in the midwest. This bird is all black (maybe some dark brown) and a dark beak. They are always in a group of about 10. They walk around pecking at the dirt a lot. It is a similar size to the Robin, but a bit thinner. It looks similar to the common grackle, but I never see the shiny irridescent head. I guess it could be a crow, but they seem smaller. Any thoughts?

Thanks!

Dd will be in 8th grade next year. This year we have been using beautiful feet and she loves it. She loves reading and loves learning history through literature. We are interested in the Sonlight middle school program on the Eastern Hemisphere for next year. The only thing is that even the “History Only” kit still has a lot of other stuff in it- Bible, read alouds, etc. I am interested in getting the spine text plus journal, and then 20 books or so- instead of the 51 included in the kit 😳 I also don’t want to get the instructors guide as it’s $130. Do you know is Sonlight will work with me on paring down the kit this way? I’d imagine they want to sell the whole thing. Has anyone ever hand selected Sonlight books making it a more manageable program? How do you know which to choose? Thanks,

We are using Memoria Press science kit about birds. It’s going well and we enjoy it, but we have 1 question- on each bird it lists their “clutch size” and “brood.” What are these 2 terms describing? I’m assuming it has something to do with laying eggs, but I don’t know the distinction between the 2.

I would love to do an Asian or Russian history study since these are often missed in more Western based curriculum. Does anyone know of one?

Wow, this is really helpful. Thank you!

Well, we started SOTW in 1st grade and for a variety of reasons are just finishing in 7th 🤣. I figured we'd do the 4 year cycle again for high school, so that leaves next year (8th grade) as a 1 off. I'd love to do some fun in depth study, but I don't really want to put it together myself. Dd wants to do history of jazz, but I'm not sure how to pull that all together. Any other pre-made history 1 offs?

We are staying at an airbnb for 4 weeks. The place has 5 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. 1 of the showers is broken, so we are down to 1 shower. For 3 weeks, it's just me, dh, and 4 kids and we can manage. For 1 week we have family visiting (6 adults 2 kids- feel free to eye roll our covid decisions). So this week the shower is quite a problem. We paid $2800 for the month and she has offered us a 50% discount for the inconvenience. I feel like that's way too much! I think $500 would be plenty. Dh thinks if she has offered it- it's fine to accept. I know that I am a very simple person and not much bothers me, so I'm trying to get other opinions about what is reasonable. What do you think? Would you tell the owner that 50% off is too much?

We started school in mid August. We took a week off in the beginning of October and 3 days for Thanksgiving. We will be away at an Airbnb for 4 weeks from mid dec to mid Jan. We live in the Midwest and we are heading south looking for warmer weather! I had planned to take 2 weeks off and do school those other 2 weeks, but I am really starting to feel like taking the whole 4 weeks off. With warmer weather we can do hiking. We can watch educational shows we don’t usually have time for. My kids are getting lots of crafty type presents for Christmas so we could spend time actually putting them together. I don’t want to be behind, but I’m leaning toward “who cares.”

This is a really interesting and helpful. Personally I struggle with multiplying by the inverse instead of just dividing, since dividing just seems easier to me. But probably since she’s learning from scratch and doesn’t have the baggage of already learning a different way dd can catch on. But I do wonder about what @EKS said about videotext over complicating (or over explaining) things. Dd is very straight forwards when it comes to math, she doesn’t want to know why, she just wants to memorize the formulas. I know that’s not the current approach in mathematics, but she is what she is.

I’m evaluating algebra programs for my daughter and I would really like one with teaching videos. I am drawn to videoText but I have a question about the way they solve the problems with variables. They always want to add or multiply to solve for X and never subtract or divide. So if the question is 8x + 3= 42 the first step is to add -3. Ok, I would just subtract 3, but I can deal with that. But then when you have 8x= 39 instead of dividing by 8 they multiply both sides by 1/8. I understand that it’s the same thing, but it seems more complicated and harder for a child to grasp. Is there a reason for this method? Do other programs do this as well? When I look around it seems like most programs just “divide by 8” instead of “multiply by 1/8”. If you have done it this way, do kids catch on or is it the bane of you algebra existence?

If searching on Etsy, what would you use as search terms?

I have a new sister in law this year and she has a 12 year old daughter. I want to give the girl a gift when I see her at Christmas. My sister in law said, "She loves drawing art stuff, anything to do with Totoro, Anime, she likes anything to do with hayao Miyazaki movies, she's got a collection." I'm really not familiar with these things or what a gift would look like for someone who likes them. Any suggestions?

In our town they are going ahead with santa photos with these changes: you will be 6 feet away from Santa and seperated by plexiglass. You will also keep your mask on during the photo and Santa will too. We have always taken an annual Santa picture. I understand that these precautions are necessary and I do feel safe with them, so that's not the issue. I'm just trying to decide if I even want this photo. I'm sure 30 years from now it will be a relic from Covid Christmas, but now I just hate it and don't want that photo in my house. If you regularily take Santa photos, are you going to do a Covid friendly one this year?

Thanks for these ideas!

Our family will be celebrating Christmas this year with several of DH's siblings. This is rare, we don't live near family and are usually alone. So I'm super pumped and am layering on the cheese! I want to get matching family tshirts for the whole crew that say "surname family Christmas." The dilemma I'm having is that everyone has the same surname except his sister and her husband who are newlyweds. I don't want them to feel intentionally slighted, especially since he is newish to the family by having a tshirt that says "Johnson family christmas" (not our real name...) when their name is not Johnson. I could get "Johnson" for the Johnson's and "Wong" for the Wong's, but then it doesn't seem as unified. I could get "Johnson & Wong family christmas" but that just seems wordy. Any other ways to word this?

I'm in a rut and need inspiration. We have no food allergies.

The thing that I actually find interesting about this situation is that Melania actually has it too. I've always assumed that their marriage is a bit of a show, and not a genuine relationship. But apparently they do have a close enough relationship that it spread between them quickly.

We are shopping after summer sales for a swimsuit for next year for dd who will be 13. We are moving into women’s suits now, not kids. And I want to get her a nice suit that she feels good wearing. But she is still a kid, she doesn’t exactly have “problem areas” like mama that warrant an expensive suit 🤪 how much do you think is reasonable for this age?

This has all been encouraging. I always feel guilt about the youngest, that I was already working with the oldest when she was that age. So I feel like I have to stay on the same track so as not to short change her simply because she is #4. But I really don't want to get started now, I just need to accept that this is ok 🙂