It has been a long time since I enjoyed a book as much as I enjoyed this one. I can't think of anything I didn't like about it. Thanks to Ivy for encouraging me to read it.
Putumayo is a recording label that specializes in world music. All of their CDs guarantee "to make you feel good." So far I have found this to be true. A couple of weeks ago, while I was showing my mom and two of my sisters some of the cool shops in our area, I bought Putumayo's Brazilian Lounge . We like various kinds of electronic music (or techno or whatever; I am easily confused by labels), especially lounge stuff by groups like Thievery Corporation ), and I admit that I thought if I bought something Jon would like, he might not notice the money I was spending. (I also bought a floral mat made from recycled plastic, which I love very much and used as a sort of porch to our tent when we went camping recently.) Anyway, it was another successful music acquisition: groovy and mellow with cool Brazilian melodies and words. Shortly after I bought it, Jon said we needed to get more because he was in danger of making himself sick of it by listening to it too much. Now that...
I believe this book is the first book on homeschooling I've read cover to cover. Apparently John Holt's earlier book Teach Your Own: A Hopeful Path for Education is a homeschooling classic (specifically about what is perhaps unfortunately named unschooling ). His protégé Patrick Ferenga has taken that book and updated it. Overall, I enjoyed it, but as I read it, I was glad I hadn't read any until we'd already been homeschooling for years. I came to basically the same conclusions, but in my own way. I'll start with a few small and probably petty annoyances. One of the authors commented that nobody would need to "learn computers" at school because it's easy to teach yourself or take a community class. But what he actually meant was learning to use spreadsheets and word processors, hardly what I think of when someone says "learn computers". Programming, troubleshooting software or hardware, etc. are far beyond mere user semi-competence. Mi...
I finally finished the sweater I designed and made for Jon, and here it is: Jon is a programmer, user, fan, and proponent of free software (similar to open-source software), hence the "free as in freedom." I don't know if the phrase is the official tagline of the Free Software Foundation , but it's the title of a biography of Richard Stallman , the father of the free software movement, and it describes what is meant by "free software." Anyway, I wanted Jon's sweater (the first I've made for him) to be unique to him, and this is what we came up with. It looks good on him, right? :)
Yay! I liked this book too. Sarah is my hero.
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