Have your kids done any fun/interesting projects that they've really enjoyed or been excited about this year? We've just completed our 3rd official week of school for the year, but so far for 5th grade: My daughter is absolutely LOVING Environmental Science. So far she's made a really cool mural of a forest, using different media (colored pencils, construction paper cutouts, craft leaves, magazine cutouts, even some cotton like material to glue onto a magazine rabbit's tail) and she included living and non-living things, then later went back and added in some human activities. She had fun with that. We also buried a bunch of things in our yard yesterday after reading about decomposers. In 3 weeks, we're to uncover them and see if and how they've changed. Things like: An orange peel, an apple core, a quarter, a piece of styrofoam, a plastic baggie, a plastic spoon, and a piece of lettuce. For social studies, she's made a wooden sailboat, made her own compass, made a diorama of Jamestown and a paper bag Pocahontas puppet. She's also been tracking her shadow stick (measuring the length of a stick's shadow once a week at the same time of day, after six weeks she's got to chart the differences). Those have been her favorite things so far. Next week we'll be making and trying "hardtack" (social studies) and making a simple "worm bin" (science). (Ick)! :) She tells me that science is her favorite subject, followed by reading, and then math (she loves math and looks forward to it now that we've started using TT)! But I think she's been enjoying most of social studies, too- even though OM assigns a fair amount of writing assignments for social studies this year (kind of an integrated social studies/language arts curriculum). My daughter is actually MUCH better this year, though, I've noticed, about doing writing assignments independently. So that's a very good thing! I do love how many hands on kind of things she gets to do in OM even in these "middle school" years! And the writing assignments are usually interesting and she gets a choice of things to write about. So, what are the favorites in your house so far?

What makes you think that "the people of that era" would have ALL shared the same point of view on something like that, any more than the people of this era do? Maybe most people did think that way back then, but it's not totally unbelievable that the "daughter of the house" in that story might have her own, differing, viewpoint.

I tried to start a new post and I got the following message: Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 268435456 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 79 bytes) in /www/welltrainedmind/forums/includes/class_core.php on line 3263 Has anyone ever gotten that before? What does that mean?

I put I don't mind. It rarely happens and when it does it's only on certain written communications from people I'm not close to anyway (or something very formal like a wedding invite). It's not like people call me "Mrs. Shawn" to my face or something. THAT might bother me lol.

Never heard of it. My 9 y/o likes pixie hollow, wizard101, multiplication.com, freerice.com, and Webkinz.

Well, truthfully, I wouldn't decide. I'd let my kids decide. I'd ask the kids to go through (or help me go through) some things and make boxes or piles of 1) things they definitely want to keep 2) things they want to donate to the salvation army or some such so that other kids who don't have many toys/money whatever, can benefit from them, 3) things they might want to try to sell (online, yardsale, whatever) to make some money that might go toward something they really, currently want and 4) things that we agree should be thrown away (broken, missing pieces, etc). If there was something they really wanted to keep or they were going to get upset about, regardless of how *I* felt about it, I would let them. After all, it's theirs. I wouldn't want someone bullying me into "getting rid of" MY belongings, whatever those may be.

Aw. I've never hosted a foreign exchange student but I did host two different Fresh Air Fund children this summer. The first one was only 10 years old and the second one was only 9 years old, and they both suffered some homesickness! The 10 y/o came first and was supposed to stay for only two weeks but she ended up getting so homesick that she left after a week. The 9 y/o came next and was only staying for one week but even then around day 5 she had a bout of homesickness. All I could do was give them hugs, tell them it was normal, try to excite them with the fun things we had planned, and make them a "countdown calendar" so they could count down the days they had left- and see what fun things were coming up, at the same time. And let them call home when they wanted to. And try to distract them with comforting and then something to do (read alouds tended to work). 18 is much older of course but when you're away from home for the first time, it's tough. Sometimes you could just use a "mom" no matter how old you are. :) Good luck, and keep us updated! I hope she adjusts quickly and enjoys her time here!

It sounds like a future lawsuit waiting to happen. You know, one of those commercials you see on TV: "If you or someone you know has suffered a stroke, heart attack, mental illness or death due to drinking XYZ, we may be able to help you win a settlement! Call the offices of Blah, Blah and Blah, et al, TODAY!" No thanks :P

It was her master, I believe. As a punishment for being too slow or some such. My daughter loved the Addy books. When Addy chose her birthday and they had an ice cream party, my daughter asked me to write that day down on the calendar, and the next time that date rolled around, we ate ice cream lol. I like the American Girl books. They touch on tough issues for sure but in ways that (most) kids can handle, I think, and with characters that kids can relate to, and I think they're a good way to touch on/introduce some of our history.

They should have just let him bleed to death. That would have been cheapest! :P

I think if you contact the parents separately outside of a co-op event, where it is definitely not being done in front of other kids, you're fine. When my daughter was in public school, I used to have parties where I'd invite all the girls in her class (the rules were you either invited all of the kids or all of the kids of a particular gender). This was so the other kids wouldn't feel left out as they saw invitations being handed out in front of their faces. Now that she's homeschooled, she's having a birthday party coming up where I invited several of the families that we feel closest to, or that she is friendliest with, and who I felt would fit into the age range the party would be fun for etc, from our homeschool group. I didn't invite EVERYBODY, it would end up getting way too big, crowded and expensive. But I contacted those families privately and invited them separate and aside from any homeschool group get together. I think that's fine to do!

We've been seeing them kind of frequently very recently, here in PA! I've found a few in my house, I've seem them in the yard, and one was in my car the other day. Yuck!

It keeps changing. When I was in my 20's, I said I wanted to be done having kids by 30. But once I was 30, I thought 35 was a good cut off. The reason being because I'd read that from 35 on there were higher risks and that it would be considered more of a "high risk pregnancy." Now that I'm 37 I'd love to have one more, but my husband doesn't want any more.

These are too many letters for me. I'm confused LOL. The first post gives no indication of who the "X's" are. The second post says XX is your daughter (and therefore the one who did the chasing with the knife). But the last post seems to indicate that your daughter is the one who GOT chased with the knife? Going by the latter, after reading all the posts, I'd talk to the kid myself the next time I saw him and tell him kindly but firmly that you expect him to "play nice" when he is around your daughter, and that there is to be no name calling, no writing inappropriate things about her with chalk or otherwise, and that if he ever threatens her or even pretends to use a weapon against her again, you will have to call the police instead of his mother, and that he just needs to try to get along with other kids in the neighborhood better if he doesn't want that to happen.

Yes! Love that show!

Fall is what people tend to use around here (here being both when I lived in NY and here in PA). Of course, we know what Autumn means, but fall is just the more common word to use.

Today was to be my fourth results weigh in. I could not make it to TOPS to "officially" weigh in, as I had a field trip planned with my homeschool group that I didn't want to miss. But I weighed in at home, so here is my current status report: Status Report: 8/26/10, Week "0" Weight: 237 1/2 lbs BMI: 37.2 9/2/10, Week 1 Weight: 235 1/2 lbs BMI: 36.9 Weekly Change: -2 lbs Total Loss: 2 lbs 9/9/10, Week 2 Weight: 234 1/2 lbs BMI: 36.8 Weekly Change: -1 lb Total Loss: 3 lbs 9/16/10, Week 3 Weight: 231 3/4 lbs BMI: 36.3 Weekly Change: -2 3/4 lbs Total Loss: 5 3/4 lbs 9/23/10, Week 4 Weight: 229 1/2 lbs BMI: 35.9 Weekly Change: -2 1/4 lbs Total Loss: 8 lbs Goal: 58 lbs. 8 lbs down, 50 lbs to go. I'M OUT OF THE 230's!!!!!! :party: FYI: You can check out my "weight loss page" on my site where I display pictures of what I've lost according to the Weight Loss Conversion Chart, just for fun :D http://nancextoo.livejournal.com/139113.html (P.S. My husband has lost 7 1/4 lbs so far- I'm beating him now)!

Thanks for the support, everyone! :)

Yep, he's a tattoo artist and body piercer, who owns his own shop. He also does vinyl lettering and graphics for cars. Pretty easy job to describe!

Did you read the thread I started a few weeks ago, where I fessed up to weighing 237 lbs at the start of this diet? Well my official weigh in day isn't until tomorrow but I just stepped on my home scale for a sneak peek, and guess what it said? 229! I'M OUT OF THE 230's!!!!!!!!!! :) (Ok I know 220's still sounds completely awful but it's a great first step, right?!)

I'm going this morning to pick up a loft bed for my son (who currently has a toddler bed in his room). At first, I thought it would make a great 5th birthday present. But his birthday isn't until November 7th. How will I ever bring myself to wait that long to set it up?!?! Could YOU?! lol. (I just know I'm going to be dying to see it set up right away and see his face when he sees it!) I think he's gonna love it. Being able to climb up the little ladder to his bed. And we're going to leave the underneath area as a playspace/fort kind of thing. Okay. I'm really going to try to wait til his birthday. But it's going to be hard!

Exactly, like it's the woman's "job" to serve her husband. Not!!! (But, er, if it works for someone else, that's fine, of course)!

Want mine? I never use it! Heh. My husband bought me one for mother's day a couple of years ago. We all gathered round to watch it vacuum. We thought it was the neatest thing ever. Like, we seriously just sat on the couch and watched this thing vacuum. We even named it. Cindy (short for Cinderella, because it did the work for me)! With all that said, the novelty quickly wore off, I found that it was taking FOREVER, and I mean FOREVER to vacuum a room, it would go over the same spot about ten thousand times, and if I left it to vacuum overnight and went to bed, I'd wake up to find that it had returned to its docking station at some point to recharge, inevitably leaving some spot that hadn't been finished (probably because it wore out its batteries going over some other spot forty-two thousand times), and I'd find myself dragging out the "real" vacuum to get that spot. Or I'd find myself looking around the house and thinking "okay it really needs to be vacuumed and it's going to be much quicker and easier to just do it myself than to get the Roomba and wait for IT to finish" and so on. So at this point, I can't even tell you the last time I used mine, and I don't foresee using it again.

Well, often whatever main meat we serve, we plate over at the stove. Side dishes are usually placed on the table for people to grab from, but if it was something that was cooked in a pot, it usually stays in the pot and goes onto a pot holder rather than transferred into a "serving dish."

5 days a week, my husband is at work when it's "dinner time," and it's just the kids and I at the table. The two days a week he's off, yes, we eat together as a family, the vast majority of the time.