Abetrujillo

(The local zoo is rebuilding their gorilla house.)

Dad: “40mm bulletproof glass? Why do the gorillas even need guns?”

Me: “For guerrilla warfare.”

What? Where did you think Swedish Fish come from? Factories? Our pal Dan Piraro of Bizarro sets ya straight - those delicious swedish fish are captured one by one by dedicated fishermen who toiled tirelessly to bring you the delicacy from the frigid waters of the Norwegian Sea.

When we homeschooled we were more into unschooling — ditching a formal curriculum — rather than replicating a school at home. Still, much learning benefits from structure, progression, and well, a curriculum. You’d like to have a good text book for geometry, or grammar. Or some order to present science concepts. There’s a huge industry selling extensive and expensive curricula to anxious new homeschooling parents. My advice is to get this book and assemble your own.

For each grade from pre-school to high school, the author and novelist Rebecca Rupp outlines reasonable skills and knowledge a pupil could master at that stage for different subjects. Rupp then recommends a refreshingly diverse set of resources for that subject and level, including the best textbooks that work at home, expansive readings around the subject, and even video series when available. You select from her highly curated selections and find the ones suited to your child(ren). In our experience her recommendations and options are excellent. They will likely be on the challenging side, rather than dumbed-down. And unlike many (if not most) homeschooling guides this one is not hampered by a dogmatic religious perspective.

Even if you are not homeschooling, kids learn at home, and this book would serve well to enlarge your child’s formal schooling.

This guide supersedes the author’s previously recommended Complete Home Learning Source Book, which is a bit outdated and not as well organized.

-- KK

Home Learning Year By Year
Rebecca Rupp
2000, 432 pages
$12

Available from Amazon

Sample Excerpts:

Grade Six: Language Arts

Read a wide range of age-appropriate fiction and nonfiction materials. Kids should read a mix of classic and contemporary literature, novels and short stories, myths and legends, fables and folktales, poems, plays, essays, magazine articles, and newspapers. Literary experience should be enhanced with a range of supplementary resources, including biographies of writers, audio and video performances, and hands-on and cross-curricular activities.

*

At this grade level, kids should learn the techniques of writing an effective multiparagraph essay: defining a main purpose or thesis, supporting the thesis with evidence and examples, distinguishing unsubstantiated opinion from proven fact, using relevant quotes from attributed sources, and providing a bibliography.

They should be able to tailor their writings to a chosen audience or purpose: personal, academic, or business, for example.

Today, I was visiting my cousin's farm. Going out for a morning stroll, I took an apple with me to munch along the way. As I was eating it, I heard a distant thumping sound and was suddenly slammed into the ground. When I looked up, a horse was eating my apple. I got mugged by a horse. FML

Etsy seller pipandbean sells this adorable hammerhead shark dress up costume for your little critter. If your youngster doesn't like hammerheads, she also sells a more traditional great white style costume.

Link

Gryffin Sanders of Golden, Colorado, was in the car with his younger brother being driven by their 74-year-old great-grandmother. The car was traveling at 60 mph when Darlene Nestor passed out!

Gryffin saw the car start to veer toward oncoming traffic, so he grabbed the wheel to steer the vehicle away -and into a ditch. His father, Sean Sanders, considers Gryffin a hero.
The car slowed down in the ditch filled with mud and he and his brother were unharmed. Passersby stopped to call 911 and help his great grandmother. Sean said there easily could have been head-on collision.

"The car could have rolled. There could've been, you know, a travesty of an injury or even possibly a fatality," Sean said. "The good news is we will never have to know."

Luckily, this is not the first time Gryffin has driven. He says he learned a lot playing the video game "Mario Kart".

"And, I'm pretty good at go kart driving," Gryffin said.

Nestor was airlifted to a hospital where she is undergoing tests. Link -via Geekologie

When someone is in need, this shark will rise to the occasion! This is one of 20 funny pictures, memes, and Photoshoppery devoted to Shark Week at World Wide Interweb. Link -via Daily of the Day 

We've featured Dan Wilbur of Better Book Titles, who "improved" book covers through clever Photoshoppery, before on Neatorama. This time around, Dan focused on improving children's books. I'd say he nailed them!

View more over at Better Book Titles - via Laughing Squid

Citizen Brick designed a laboratory playset from the TV show Breaking Bad made of 500 pieces of customized LEGO bricks, minifigs, and accessories. It's called the Superlab Playset, and you can purchase one, complete with little Walt, Gus, and Jesse. It's not cheap, but it's perfect for the ultimate Breaking Bad fan. Link -via Laughing Squid

My 10-year-old daughter and her friends love playing with the Fort Magic kit. It’s a box of PVC pipes and connecters, along with clips to attach sheets or tarps. You can build all sorts of things with them, from dangerous blow guns (we use cotton balls and tape with a big needle) to clubhouses. See Fort Magic’s YouTube channel for other projects. We’ve had Fort Magic for a over a year and Jane has not yet become bored with it.

Here’s a video of Jane and her cousins showing me one of their creations.

Fort Magic
$200

Available from Amazon

Did you hear about this one: Your dad constantly tell bad jokes in socially inappropriate situations. That's just dads being dads ... or is it? Maybe he's suffering from the Joking Disease.

No, it's not a joke: though rare, the Joking Disease or witzelsucht (derived from the German word witzeln meaning to joke and sucht meaning addiction) is quite real. The neurological disease is caused by damage to the frontal lobe of the brain. People with witzelsucht compulsively tell jokes and puns, but do not seem to "get" the humor - they don't laugh or smile, nor do they show any emotional reaction to jokes, either their own or other people's.

Your friends got unruly kids? Here's the perfect gift: Straitjacket for kids (now with cute cuddly bear design). Part of the ad campaign for TV Show Super Nanny by Brazil ad agency Publicis - via Ads of the World

Nizakana Teishoku: simmered sardine set menu lunch. [Photographs: Jay Friedman]

Tokyo tops the world in terms of Michelin-starred restaurants, but that doesn't mean you need to spend a fortune to enjoy the food at one of these acclaimed establishments. Not far from Shinjuku Station, in the basement floor of one of the city's many nondescript buildings, Nakajima serves up a set menu lunch at a bargain price of 800 yen (about $8).

Iwashi (sardines) are the star of the show during lunchtime at Nakajima. They're available fried with panko, sashimi-style, simmered in dashi with soy sauce (known as nizakana), or, for another 100 yen, prepared in an eggy casserole known as Yanagawa nabe. The set menu comes with miso soup, rice, and tsukemono (pickled vegetables, which were daikon and mustard greens the day I dined), with green tea available at no additional charge.

In the nizakana preparation, slow simmering keeps the delicate sardine skin intact. Once you pull the flesh from the bone, the meat's oily-rich flavor really shines, thanks to a subtle dashi that lets the fish do most of the talking. In the sashimi prep, the slices of raw sardine sparkle with flecks of silver, and retain their full firm texture and oily flavor. The sashimi comes with wakame (seaweed) and grated ginger, which tends to pair well with silver fish. (I ignore the lemon wedge when I know I'm going to dip the fish in soy sauce.)

Sardine sashimi

With pricing and quality this good, it's no surprise that lines start forming at Nakajima before it opens. While a line that backs up from the basement entrance and climbs up the steps to the street may seem intimidating, service is professional and efficient, with tables turning fairly quickly. Counter seats offer a view of the chefs at work, prepping for the dinner service thats costs more than ten times the price of lunch.

Nakajima

3-32-5 Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 160-0022 (map)
(81) 03-3356-4534; shinjyuku-nakajima.com

About the author: Jay Friedman is a Seattle-based freelance food writer who happens to travel extensively as a sex educator. An avid fan of noodles (some call him "The Mein Man"), he sees sensuality in all foods, and blogs about it at his Gastrolust website. You can follow him on Twitter @jayfriedman.