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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   4117 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 20, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Thank you for the kind recommendations, and apologies that I've been too busy to revisit this thread until now.

For this exercise with grade school children I particularly recommend E.H. Gombrich's A Little History of the World, William J. Bennett's The Book of Virtues, and a lot of Rudyard Kipling. As children get older, swap in classic novels as well as challenging nonfiction.

Never heard of any of them! I will follow up and probably benefit from reading them myself.

Also, assuming you are American, get your children to the Smithsonian museums in Washington D.C. at least once between the ages of about 9 and 14. The museums are free to enter, so you only have to pay the cost of travel.

I spent some time in DC! I agree, it should definitely be a bucket list item, although I got a lot more mileage out of the monuments, congress, white house, congressional library, etc. than the museums. Perhaps the calculus is flipped at that age.

And I've not thought of this before, but it occurs to me that "going out to eat as a family" was, in my own childhood, a somewhat formal affair, and a memorable one, while today it seems to be quite a commonplace occurrence for many families.

It's true, to the degree that I somehow reached adulthood with a complete ignorance of cuisine beyond meat and potatoes. To a degree that someone had to explain to me what to do with mangoes, cilantro and other not-very-exotic foodstuffs.

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