One of the cool homeschooling parents in our group puts on a chemistry class for young kids. I'm the first to admit that teaching chemistry to 5- and 7-year-olds is probably not really "teaching them chemistry" as most people think about it. You can explain atoms, electron shells, covalent bonds, and chemical reactions all you want, but it will not really "stick". But that's not really the point. ...
I had big plans for the homeschool today… ...
Just a quick little note. The young one and I were playing Dino Store for a bit this morning and I could see it was winding down. So I came up with what I thought might be a quick little one-off activity/game involving coins. I laid out pairs of groups of coins side by side, and the goal was for her to figure out which group had more money. … ...
A few months back I stumbled across The Slovelglove workout. It seemed like an interesting idea, but I didn't like the name. So I call it "Sledgercising". I had a few notes/thoughts on it, thus, this article. ...
Something happened and I can't explain it: therefore the answer is something which is many orders of magnitude more unexplainable than the original mystery. ...
So I'm just your normal, every day, non-religious homeschooling parent. I'm a bit liberal in areas, a bit libertarian in others, and maybe a bit conservative in a few fiscal areas. Then I come across this: ...
Many of my friends and acquaintances fall into the "non-conventional diet" bucket (by "diet" I mean way of eating, not necessarily a weight loss diet). I'm generally OK with that. I don't see much evidence for most of it, but mostly I don't worry about what other people eat or don't eat. I myself have tread down the non-conventional path a few times. ...
This is disgusting! ...
Every few weeks I'll see someone mention/promote some new documentary which promises to solve America's health and/or weight problems. These "documentaries" are all quite similar and follow a simple format:
Step one: Find several fat and unhealthy people who eat the "Standard American Diet".
Step two: Get them to eat a different diet and to exercise.
Step three: Incredibly, they lose weight and improve their overall health!
Step four: Profit.
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This is list of rules I try to follow when interacting with kids. These are not peer-reviewed child-raising techniques, just little odds and ends I've read, heard, observed, or thought. Some are undoubtedly pseudo-psychology. Some are probably hippie-talk nonsense. Some of them might be helpful, some useless, and maybe some are actually harmful. Maybe they're all meaningless, I don't know. I'm mostly talking out of my ass here, but I think they could be important, so I'm sharing. ...
