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rutheart

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Everything posted by rutheart

  1. I wanted to buy a house on Chateaugay Rd, but my husband and teenager found the street name absolutely mortifying. We didn't get it because it needed too many repairs to pay full price and the owner wouldn't budge on the price. There was a large hole in the dining room ceiling that you could see the second floor through. Decades of dust was caked so thick, you could see the narrow walkways where the homeowner walked through the house. The master bath looked like a crime scene. That wasn't even the worst house we saw during that 8 months of house shopping... I always pause to think about long street names that have to be spelled out every time. One of my childhood homes was on Entree View Dr. Once you spelled out Entree, people would demand View be spelled as well, like they couldn't trust that would be a normal spelling. My current street name has to be spelled out, but it's only 4 letters, so I don't mind as much. I passed by Cut Thru Rd yesterday, and thought that would be a miserable place to live. My youngest desperately wants to live on Boring Rd. lol
  2. I kept supplying graphic novels for pleasure reading, but also made sure there was a shelf full of interesting novels of various reading difficulties available. For school time, I would require regular books at the current reading level. To switch from picture books, I started with one page stories. If the kid could see all the print there was to read, it made it seem more doable. Once that was fine, we moved to 2-3 page stories, and then a chapter of Magic Tree House, etc. Eventually, the kid made the switch on their own with their pleasure reading. The biggest thing is to keep non-school reading fun, so they keep reading.
  3. I am generally okay eating anything, as long as I don't try to eat peanuts, or pizza and ice cream on the same day. Antibiotics do seem to throw everything off for a bit. I've found that while my digestive tract is recovering from a round of antibiotics, I need to eat lower fat AND lower sugar for a couple weeks.
  4. I've always ordered mine via setontesting.com Some of the tests do require the proctor to have a college degree. When I lived in Georgia, I used the ITBS (Iowa Test of Basic Skills). They revised the test for common core standards, so it's now called the Iowa Form E. In Tennessee, they refused to update their test list (I emailed so many people at the state education department, but to no avail), so I had to use the Stanford 10. Overall, I preferred the feedback from the Iowa test, but I got enough information from the Stanford 10 to get a sense of whether I was doing enough with the homeschooling, and which areas to focus on in the future. We also skipped schoolwork on testing days. The last couple weeks of school, I tend to skip/condense assignments because everyone is ready for summer, so our school year is still 180 days. I figure if the schools can count standardized testing days as school days, so can I. If anything, schools have fewer days of instruction because they waste a week or more on review for those standardized tests.
  5. I had 3 wisdom teeth erupt in my teens, no problem. All of my teeth were textbook straight. Right after my first semester of grad school, the 4th one erupted and in the space of 3 weeks (the time it took to see the specialist and get a date for the surgery), one of my front teeth started turning. I now have a gap in my smile between my upper central and lateral incisor. If the wisdom tooth didn't cause it, that is a crazy coincidence. ETA: The tooth stopped moving after the wisdom teeth extraction.
  6. Brunch: ham or eggs, assortment of fruit, Filipino Spanish bread (crescent rolls made from scratch, with a caramel filling) Dinner: cranberry chicken, butternut squash, multigrain bread with butter. I bought small dark chocolate bunnies for dessert, but if we crave a sweet, we may just substitute some rolls leftover from brunch, and save the bunnies for another day.
  7. There are more replies from this year on this thread:
  8. Between Kroger pickup and Market Wagon, I'm paying $400-500 per week for groceries for the four of us. We have so many allergies and dietary restrictions that it's crazy (to the point that when my medical insurance paid for a nutritionist, the nutritionist said she couldn't help me). Groceries have always been a big chunk of our budget. Chicken here is about $17 for 1.5lb, when it's available. Ground beef is still $6/lb. I'm paying $8.10 for a half gallon of milk, but it comes in a glass container so it tastes MUCH better than cardboard or plastic. It's extravagant, but it's like a taste of childhood.
  9. When we built a frog pond at our old house, we used The Pond Digger's videos to learn how to do it. It helped me to know what not to do and why not to do it, in addition to learning the proper method. My parents also used his videos to build their own koi pond with waterfall feature.
  10. We owned a 2,000 sq ft house, then rented a 1,200 sq ft townhouse (out of state move, and needed to get to know the area and find the right house for us), then bought a 4,000 sq ft house. We are a family of 4, but my youngest is now 12. I find that bigger houses are not that much more to clean. With bigger rooms, it's easier to move the vacuum around the furniture. There is one more bathroom, but my kids clean half the bathrooms for me now. Dust is less frequent of an issue with bigger rooms (i.e. still the same number of bodies shedding skin, but spread over more square footage). I find I do most chores less frequently, so even if they take a minute or two longer, I'm still not spending any more of my life cleaning. Also, the little kid clutter is only for a few more years. Around age 10, my kids started confining their mess to their bedroom. Schoolwork and projects were still in the common space, but toys didn't live in my living room anymore IYKWIM. One thing to keep in mind with such a big jump in house is that it will take more furniture to fill the space. For instance, I had never had a den separate from a living room before, so my living room currently only has one rocking chair in it. I have never regretted having the extra space. Smaller houses give me claustrophobia and I'm just stressed all the time. Being in a large, fairly empty house makes me feel so much more comfortable. This is also the first house I've lived in with 10 foot ceilings and that helps a lot, even more than vaulted ceilings. ETA: The 2000 sq ft house was built in the 1980s and the 4000 sq ft house was new construction, so our utilities actually decreased in cost. The only things that increased in cost were light bulbs (in the first two years we had to replace LED bulbs multiple times , until we bought a whole house surge protector) and HVAC filters (there are four to change every couple months).
  11. Poetry Short story Screenplay Magazine article (let the kid choose an expertise from how they spend their free time) Write a review: book, movie, video game, etc. Compare/contrast essay of book vs movie Autobiography Resumé and cover letter (get ready for high school part-time job applications!) Let the kid pick one project per week. Find resources on your bookshelf or online to teach the skills.
  12. Did he use multithreading to make it check several data points at a time? I know I'm asking a bunch of nosy questions that aren't your area of expertise, but I am trying to understand what kind of coding changes he made, to see if he'd be a good fit for some jobs I know are available. If he's not interested in a new job, there's no need to find out the answer. Regardless, congrats!
  13. Did he rewrite the software to use a GPU to handle floating point computations?
  14. The snow accentuates all the angles and makes Sid look like a warrior. We woke up to 5" of snow over on the east side of the state, and it's still falling. We'd had so many days over 70 degrees this last week that we had been talking about pulling out the summer clothes this weekend. At least we get one more day of cocoa and hot tea. 🙂
  15. My junior has been taking Mythology this semester from an online public school. The class uses Edith Hamilton's book as the spine and therefore only covers Greco Roman mythology, with a couple weeks spent on Norse mythology. She's only halfway through the class, and my daughter is already designing a Mythology II class with her teacher to cover mythology from all the other cultures in the world (Egyptian, Irish, Native American, African, etc.). What books would y'all recommend to cover such a broad range? As an aside, this teacher is the most fantastic I've encountered in a public school setting. While there are tests (it is a public school), there are no worksheets. Assignments have plenty of choices, from making a comic strip about the myth to recording dramatic readings with costumes to taking notes while watching a movie about the myth. There are usually 5+ choices, plus an option to create your own assignment with approval. When they take notes on the text, she gives extra credit for kids who put snarky comments about the myths in parentheses. I can see why my daughter is willing to put in the extra work to get to take another class with this teacher.
  16. I can't garden (I have a black thumb), so I bought a CSA share for this year. Not only am I supporting a local farming family in my county, but my produce isn't crossing state lines, so less fuel is used to get the food to my house. As wheat gets more expensive/less available, I think people will turn to alternate flours to get their carbs. I'm going to stock up on my other staple flours: oat, barley, rye, spelt, potato, and corn. I'll probably also buy a couple extra boxes of crackers. Sometime last year, I got several cases of organic ramen, and that has been such a help for the times the grocer has been out of items. It has enough protein and carb by itself, so I just have to add some veg (and/or fruit on the side) to make it a balanced meal. We've learned a lot of domestic veg tastes really good with ramen.
  17. Vistahigherlearning.com has programs for the elementary ages, but I haven't looked very much into it. For example, their Listos book with 12 month access to their site is $90, and they have a workbook for it for another $22. I'm not sure how independent a younger student could be with their online access, but that's the closest I've seen to what you're asking (other than K12's $900 scheduled course).
  18. I am not a vegan (and not a vegetarian anymore either), but I just wanted to say that the calcium should be taken at a different time of day than the multivitamin. Even if you're not concerned about your iron levels, the calcium can make absorption of some other nutrients more difficult (zinc and magnesium, for instance).
  19. Lunches and dinners through the end of the month: today: potato and turnip gratin, beef smoked sausage, sliced tomato; Italian chicken, garlic breadsticks from scratch, sliced cucumbers (it's what's left in my house) Monday: chicken BLT on a bagel; beef patties, chocolate swirl buns from scratch (we're celebrating Sticky Bun Day), spinach Tuesday: leftovers; baked beef tacos Wednesday: italian subs, cookie; beef burritos (rice, refried beans, chopped lettuce, tomato, shredded jack, taco sauce, etc.) Thursday: pumpkin muffins, high protein low carb waffles with peanut butter and honey; canned soup (we need to rotate our stock as we haven't been sick in a couple years), whole wheat biscuits Friday: beef jerky, grapes, almonds, cucumber sticks, chips, cookie (my husband has to go in to the office, so I'm packing his lunch); burgers, tater tots Saturday: chicken lo mein with kohlrabi, leeks, and bok choy; chicken chimichangas with a cheese sauce, rice, refried beans, and a lettuce and tomato salad (next) Sunday: cranberry muffins, canadian bacon or eggs, fruit; apricot chicken, whole wheat muffins, zucchini Monday the 28th: tomato soup, grilled ham and/or cheese sandwiches, black olives; loaded mashed potatoes, deviled eggs Tuesday the 1st: leftovers; lazy lasagna, brownies ETA: Today's lunch was an instant favorite. The turnips added just enough sweetness to the gratin, and the tomatoes were fantastic dipped into the leftover sauce. We'll probably do this three times every winter (too high in fat to have more often).
  20. A few years ago, I had flank pain come and go and it would completely ruin my day when it happened. It mostly hit in the mid mornings. The intermittent nature made it really hard to figure out the cause. Eventually, I realized it was related to which glass of water I used when I took my thyroid medicine early in the morning. We have two sizes of glasses, and anytime I used the smaller sized glass, the pain occurred a couple hours later. Once I switched to only using the larger sized glass, the pain didn't return. Another thought: has gout been ruled out? That would explain the flank pain happening at the same time as the toes.
  21. It could be that he has a sinus infection that he can't kick. If you touch around his sinuses, does he have any tenderness?
  22. Knoxville/Smoky Mountains area has so many hiking trails. I haven't even explored all the ones within a 15 minute drive of my house yet. If you like coffee, Ugly Mug in Lenoir City and Honeybee Coffee Co in (west) Knoxville are fun bits of local color. Calhoun's is a local chain restaurant. The Tennessee River and Lenoir City locations are riverfront and you can eat on the outside deck and enjoy the scenery. McKay's is a big used bookstore in Knoxville. It's warehouse sized and I always come out with an armful. I hadn't explored too much of the shopping and restaurants before the pandemic hit, so I'm not a local expert. ORNL is not currently open to tours: https://www.ornl.gov/content/come-see-us#before There is a museum in Oak Ridge that has plenty of info about ORNL though: https://amse.org/ When my family went, we were the only people looking at the exhibits, so the 50 person limit should not be a problem.
  23. I hear you about scrapping all the plans. I've always wanted to do a year of project-based learning in middle school. I feel like that synthesis and real life experience would be such a great morale boost for preteens. It would also help them clarify what kind of work they're interested in, so they're self-motivated through the high school years. If my husband wasn't pushing for public school, that is what I'd be planning. I'm currently re-reading Animal Farm myself (it's been a long two years of quarantine, so I've run out of non-academic books to re-read, and next up is the Bedford Anthology of World Literature, lol). I was just telling my husband last night that today's relevance for this book is Napoleon's campaign of disinformation (with all the Covid/political disinformation online now). I'll add it to my literature list as well.
  24. My husband is trying to convince me to enroll our soon to be eighth grader in online public school next year. I have another year of plans I want to finish up with her though, and she doesn't want to do public school anyway, so I think we'll win him over. I've been building up my plans for the last couple weeks to further persuade him. This is my dyslexic/dysgraphic kid whose career goals currently alternate between orthopedic nurse and polygraph examiner. Here are my plans so far: Language Arts: Reading: She will finish the Bible (Psalms - Revelation), as well as read A Midsummer's Night's Dream, Ender's Game, Little Women (or a sequel if she reads this before fall), Robinson Crusoe, Island of the Blue Dolphins, Sherlock Holmes, Hunger Games. For fun, I'll also throw in The Princess Diaries, 13 and Counting, My Family and Other Animals. Other than scheduling the Bible, we'll go back to the method of a shelf devoted to literature for school. She reads at least a chapter a day, and when she finishes one title, she picks the next one. If she finishes all of those books, we'll just do fun reading for the rest of the year. When my family gave her Amazon gift cards for Christmas, she chose to spend it all on books! I can't believe how far she's come, both in her reading level and enjoyment. Writing: We're going to alternate Writing Strands 6 with writing projects of her choice. She can write another novel, some short stories, fanfic, screenplay, articles about interesting things she learned, book and movie reviews, etc. She will pick a topic for the week every Sunday when she writes down her weekly agenda in her planner. Handwriting: she will be using college rule, finally, and if her handwriting ever gets unintelligible on her schoolwork, I'll have some worksheets ready for her to practice. Honestly, this is a big reason I think she needs to homeschool at least one more year. I know public school teachers would just mark something as wrong if it's illegible. Grammar/Usage: I'm thinking about using Gum Drops 8, as well as some sections in Figuratively Speaking. Her writing still has some grammatical gaps, so we're going to be more intentional about filling in those gaps. Vocab: Now that she's finished the lower levels of Vocab From Classical Roots, I was thinking about trying Red Hot, Wordup!, or Greek and Latin Roots. I need to find some screenshots of each to make a decision. Math: either Saxon Algebra 1/2 or just Algebra 1. Either way, I'm going to buy her a graphing calculator and let her get used to using it in math. She's making significantly fewer arithmetic errors this year, and has learned to check if her answer makes sense before moving on, so I think she's finally ready to use a calculator. Science: I have a Glencoe Physical Science textbook lying around, and she said she'll do that for science so we can spend money on her elective. I'll probably spend a lot of June figuring out labs and output assignments to go with reading that textbook. My husband will probably run the labs on the weekends because he finds it way more fascinating than I do, and I want his enthusiasm to transfer to her. Social Studies: after our detour year of studying history through the lens of innovation, I'm thinking about getting K12's Human Odyssey volume 2. She's been steadily writing inventions and scientific discoveries on a timeline book this year, so if we go through the same time periods and list the political changes, I think that will be a great reinforcement. I'll probably have her do a couple research papers again. Spanish: she has begged for a newer textbook (something with cell phones, not records and cassettes, lol). I'm thinking about getting Avancemos 2 with the workbook and digital access. Last time I tried Avancemos, I didn't have time to figure out the website, but now that I'm not homeschooling her older sister (who will be a senior next year!), I think I can decipher that beast this summer. Either way, we'll only tackle half of a Spanish 2 textbook so it doesn't take too much time and the pace feels more casual. At this point, she is the one requesting more Spanish. Her goal is to be bilingual, and she will often lament that English is our first language. She heavily prefers the logic of Spanish. In her free time, she listens to Hispanic radio channels. Art: despite all the choices this year for multimedia projects, she has been steadily been choosing to just draw in her sketchbook, so I'm just going to give her a bunch of drawing prompts each week and let her choose which to do. If she wants to draw everyday, fine. If she only draws once a week, I'm fine with that. I'm viewing art as an elective, and she can do what she wants with it. I've already found over 36 Inktober prompt lists, so she'll have one of those to peruse each week, in addition to a list I'm curating as I see something interesting or ideas come to me. Health/PE: we'll focus on continuing to move and exposure to sunlight. She found all the imaginative play prompts this year to be rather baby-ish, so we'll focus on lifelong exercises to build good habits. We'll probably continue our leg stretching exercises, riding 6+ miles on the recumbent bike on bad weather days (i.e. thunderstorms, below 20 degrees or above 85), but mostly walking around our hilly neighborhood as the weather allows. My foot has finally healed enough (I broke it back in June) that I think I can rejoin the walks. Logic: Orbiting With Logic, Mindbenders 5, The Art of Argument, work on altering programs in Python and maybe designing one of her own by the end of the year. Instead of crossword puzzles, we may spend a day playing with the Lego Mindstorms set. It's one of those things she wants to play with, but never seems to make it a priority during her free time, so maybe assigning it during school time will keep it from being an expensive dust catcher. She is doing the puzzles in the newspaper (word search, sudoku, crossword) during her free time, so it doesn't make sense to assign those anymore. Skills: She will continue cooking at least once a week, focusing on side dishes and baking. I was also thinking about focusing on computer hardware and electronics, as well as map skills. I'm just trying to fill in any holes in life skills before she's too busy with high school classes. I'm sure I'll think of more gaps before the end of summer. Skills should be less time intensive this year though, to make room for her elective. Elective: she still really wants to study Psychology, and I finally found a text written at a lower reading level: Psychology in Everyday Life by Myers. I'm debating whether to buy the book and just let her just read it, or if I should also get something like Oak Meadow's Journey Towards Self-Knowledge coursebook or Myer's Launchpad for Psychology in Modules (created for his high school level text). I'm still trying to decide if anything should be pared down more to make time for Psychology. She's always been really good about getting her work done efficiently, so I don't want to overburden her. Maybe I should omit the Mindstorms, so Logic is only 4 days a week? Or would it be better to skip history for a year, and count Psychology as the social studies course for the year?
  25. I live close to a lot of tourism places. When we finally got a guest room, I went to the county welcome center and picked up brochures for the local sights. I put the brochures on the table in the guest room. Guests can peruse them at their leisure, so they can pick an itinerary that appeals to them during their stay. The table does double duty for holding luggage or being a desk for laptops, tablets, etc. We also put an alarm clock in the room (and always check that it's turned off after a guest leaves!). When the parents visit, they don't use their phones as anything but a phone. In addition to a night light in the guest room, make sure you have one in the bathroom and one in the hall connecting the two. Oh, we also have the guest wifi login and password posted in the guest room.
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