Schooling options vary with each child as to what is best for that child. My daughter struggles with homeschooling her oldest child. Basically it becomes a power struggle instead learning. Not fun for either of them. She put her back in public school and they have the same power struggle over getting homework done. One interesting thing when she went back to home school is her school district allows you to send your child to school for specific subjects, you pick which ones. So hopefully more of this will happen among more public schools.

My daughter-in-law struggled with teaching her oldest son. He did not want to learn to read, nor hold a pencil. Can’t I do everything on a computer? Another power struggle. He would be the one who would learn to write his name in a week and a half at a public school with other kids around. Most kids seem to learn best through watching other kids.

Fortunately that grandson has younger siblings who wanted to learn, and when his younger sister started to pass him up in reading he decided to read too. Now at 9 he is reading, reading about a book a day, going through all the books he can find. His younger sister wrote her name at 3 as she grew up watching her older siblings write and she wanted to have her school time too. She is now 4, can read some words, will often answer math problems. This she has learned just by watching her older siblings.

I strongly believe most kids learn best from watching other kids and through teaching each other. I have one child who potty trained himself at 18 months. I was working at a day care at the time and they put him in a class of 2 year olds (because he was tall for his age?) and after a week they said please send him in underwear because he never has an accident. He watched what the other kids were doing in the bathroom and it made sense to him, and he copied what the others were doing. His teacher thought he was about 2 1/2. I let him pick out whatever underwear he wanted at a store on the way home, let him know he could use our bathroom too, and he did.

I wanted to add an alternate method of “vacuum sealing.”
1) Zip your ziplock bag 90% of the way
2) Get a drinking straw and insert into the opening
3) Close the bag around the straw and suck the air out
4) While still sucking, pull the straw and zip the bag
It takes a little practice to remove the straw and close the bag without letting in too much air, but after a few practice run it is easily done.

Jack and I don’t always agree on everything but I agree 100% on one of your best home defense items is a dog. I am a law enforcement officer and when I talk to professional burglars they all tell me the same thing-if there is a dog in the house they move on to the next house. Something that Jack didn’t say is if there is a dog then Burglars or house invaders have to deal with that dog-even if its an ankle biter. If you hurt that dog and the cops/prosecutor/Judge are animal lovers good luck getting any sympathy. You stole the families TV well that can be replaced but you killed the family dog! The amateurs haven’t figured that out but the pro’s know to move on if their is a dog in the house. I have heard that from almost every experienced burglar I have talked to. Jack hit on all the other things a dog brings to home protection.