Cash!! Look! [link]

I might get one for Em, too!!

Oooh! This one has lots of stuff: [link]

Interesting dream, Emily! Clearly you and the Empress are bogarting all the good dreams.

Although, on the subject of curtains, I'm trying to decide whether the dress I had made the other week is too Maria Von Trap to wear out of the house.

I was thinking it would be a nice sensible handy dress for teaching - lovely big pockets. It's based on this design, but as I don't do sleeveless, it's got long sleeves. Swoopy sleeves. And it's (uniquely in my wardrobe - I'm not quite sure what possessed me) in white with a pattern of roses on it. And it's floor length, because...er, because I never quite made it past liking swoopy floor length skirts that you have to grab hold of and hitch up when going up stairs?

The effect, to my surprise, is decidedly medieval Maria Von Trapp. Or rather, SCA on crack and covered in roses.

Had I opted for short sleeves, it would be much less so. But...yeah. SCA on crack.

...

...

...but I do sort of like it. Even though it's probably a leetle sillier than my norm (and my norm, of course, isn't precisely understated). And I'm pretty sure my little girls will love it. And with a long plain-coloured scarf to accessorize and break up the line, it isn't TOO too much. Maybe. Er.

(I know that at some point I need to realise that dressing to entertain six year olds is NOT the way to go; that one can, indeed, have too many sequins, that ruby slippers are not the norm, and that using chocolate perfume is not neccesarily the most grown up of choices. But...hey, I spend most of my day with the little buggers, you know?)

too Maria Von Trap to wear out of the house.

That's the wrong R&H musical, Fay.

d - I want to pass my highschool pal on to you. Checking first - she's @ 7 months pregnant.

See, in the UK system it's not even an option, really - it would be truly exceptional and unusual, at any rate, because the whole concept is that your age determines where you are. And that every class is supposed to contain a wide range of abilities, and that the teacher is supposed to be differentiating in order to accomodate children who are working at a whole range of levels.

In my school, when I was in second and third grade, we had reading groups and math groups -- reading groups were within the classroom, where we were split into groups based on reading ability, and each group would have a different book to read, and the teacher would meet with each group for fifteeen minutes or so while the other groups were doing other sorts of reading activities. Math groups were for the whole grade -- we'd have a math period where we'd all go shuffle around to one of the other classrooms, and get taught at whatever level we were at.

A few years later, though, they got rid of all of that because it was "elitist."

That's the wrong R&H musical, Fay.

Heh. See, Anna Leonowens I have no qualms about aping sartorially. But this dress is just so...flowery.

Thanks, Aimee! Those are great!

This is the one we have currently. But they're too young for china sets.

I am loving the sparkly picnic tea set.

There was this article in the Washington Post a few weeks ago about a school that's been able to get really good results on reading and math tests, pulling up kids who'd been failing into passing, but everyone's all skeptical about the program because it involves splitting the kids up so that each group can be taught at its own level, and there's clearly something wrong with not having every kid doing the exact same thing: [link]

I am loving that there is something called "penetrating oil"