Nicole Alderman

Melissa Rose wrote:There used to be a place to record your progress and badges earned on this website. Is that still around? Is there a place to record the badges online and share them with landowners?

You can make your own thread in the SKIP Workshop forum with your BB accomplishments and anything else you'd like to add for landowners. You can see a bunch of examples in there of other people's SKIP threads.

I hope that helps!

It's currently usually written as a p with the top of a b on it. Hopefully this shows the lowercase: þ; and this is the capital: Þ. Apparently, it is still used in Icelandic!

In runes, it was written as a triangle stuck to the right of a vertical line. For a while, it was written more slanted, kind of like a funky lower case y. I heard in one video (haven't verified), during the early days of the printing press, English didn't use the letter Y. Since we were using typesets from Germany (where it was invented), we just used the Y for the TH.

Left one is the runic THORN, while the right one is the more commonly seen modern version of THORN

This shows a progression from the runic THORN to the cursive THORN...which looks a lot like a 'y.'

Timothy Norton wrote:For the record, I mentally had to grapple with this one for a while. Great question.

I would go with one per kind of animal. It writes off animals that need to be in groupings of 2+ because that would not be humane to keep them alone. I would definitely want my dog at the end of the day. Perhaps get a horse and a mule so they can be pasture mates in the future.

Some of those flocky animals might be fine with other flocky animals. I have a goose with 7 ducks and 2 chickens. Everyone gets along decently. I used to have 1 chicken with 10+ ducks, and they were happy. You could potentially have 1 duck + 1 chicken + 1 goose and have a silly little flock that gets along well--especially if they're raised together.

Personally, I'd rather have just one type of animal--it's easier to learn to care for them and herd them around. But, my husband is a collector and has a bunch of most everything. I think, therefore, that I'd end up having one of each. (We have--if I actually remember them all--a neotenic salamander, an axolotl, 2 frogs, multiple different species of snails, multiple species of catfish, a crayfish, 3 gold fish, a sculpin, a guppy, 2 cats, 7 chickens, 7 ducks, and 1 goose. There's often some random insect living in a jar or container for a while. At least our kids know a lot about biology from having SO MANY critters in our house!)

Pearl Sutton wrote:Then there's me. I make pie with no crust. I think it's overrated. The filling is the good part. If I put anything it's some kind of crumbs or flakes just to make it dish out easier.

If I eat other people's pie, I generally skip the crust, or eat minimal amounts. I only know one lady who's crust I will happily eat, if all crust tasted like that, I'd eat it. Never met anyone else who did it that good though. Other crusts are just boring cardboard to hold the filling in. I'd just as soon skip it.

So do I eat pie?

Since we don't eat starches, I make "pumpkin pie" without the crust. I still call it a pie, but my mom says it's just a custard.

I'm of the mindset that shape matters. If it's pie shaped and is sweet, then it is pie. If you bake it in a pie pan, you have pie.

Of course, all those other things that are baked in a pie crust, like shepherds pie and mincemeat pie are all pies, too. And historically, pies didn't have pie pans--they used the crust as the pan--as a way to hold the ingredients. And, often, those crusts were not tasty and we not consumed by the intended diner (servants ate them, I'm sure, but not the aristocracy the pies were made for). So, if my pie "crust" is just the pie pan holding the material, why can't it be a pie? If it looks like a pie and tastes like a pie, it is a pie.

(Kind of like how pumpkins are just squash that look like pumpkins. If it looks like a pumpkin and is made of squash, it is a pumpkin. If it looks like a pie and is made of pie stuff, it is a pie. )

Should there be some sort of angry little elf-guy inside the camera, too? That might be even trickier to draw!

I love that he got to go on a journey with you. Hopefully it was a much safer journey than most of the ones he went on in his stories!

G Freden wrote:I find it very hard to read cursive too, despite having learned it back in school (I'm 44 now).  Both my husband and son can only write in cursive, or joined-up writing as they call it here and I really can't read either of their handwriting.  What's worse, they don't know how to write in block script like me, except capital letters:  they were never taught it at school here in the UK.  I learned handwriting in the US, both ways (block script first);  and because I find it so hard to read, I abandoned cursive as soon as it was no longer required at school.

So I guess what I'm saying is, cursive is all well and good, but teach/learn block script too!

It's really easy for cursive to get "sloppy" or even just very angular. I find it rather difficult to read when the letters aren't well-defined.

Abraham's example above shows a very readable (at least to me) cursive font:

Even though I don't know what it means, I can easily read 'el veloz murcielago hindu comia'

The above cursive letters are distinct and rounded, and it's more like print writing, but with the letters connected.

But, not all cursive is formed that way. When I read old American diaries and texts, a lot of the time the cursive is very thin and slanted. This makes lower case e's, c's, and i's all look very similar. And, a string of short letters, like i's, m's, and v's can make it hard to figure out which bump goes to which letter. Here's an few example of some of the more difficult cursive:



Here's a more difficult cursive, at least for me:

I'm not sure what all those letters are

Not everyone forms their letters the same way, either. Reading old census records is a bit crazy, too. There's a lot of different types of cursive, and they're not all easy to read! In fact, if anyone tried to read the tiny cursive notes I make in the margin of textbooks or when listening to a lesson, I'm sure they'd struggle! I don't always even form every letter of every word--I can read it, but I'm sure most people cannot!

I think it's fun to learn cursive, and I love being able to write it, and I want my kids to be able to know what a cursive "r" looks like and a cursive "s." I'd love if they learned it, even if they just learn it as a secret code, much like I learned to write in runes as a kid. But, I'm not sure everyone should have to learn cursive. Most people cannot read medieval calligraphy--the letters are often formed quite differently than ours.

These are print/block letters...but it's so hard to read that I can't even be sure it's in Latin and not English

I found this site with medieval manuscripts written in English: https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/manuscriptsandspecialcollections/researchguidance/medievaldocuments/languages.aspx

This is Anglo-Norman. Can you identify all the letters?

This is apparently written in English...

This is from the 1300's. Also apparently in English

This is from the late 1400's, and is apparently in English

I love writing in medieval calligraphy...and I can't even read most of those! Maybe I just lack skill? But, I have a feeling I'm not the only one. One big reason people want kids to learn cursive is for them to read historical documents. But, if we're aiming for that, shouldn't we also teach them to read medieval calligraphy? Or, maybe we should realize that learning cursive might become a skill that historians learn, and not everyone knows. I still think it's really valuable, but I don't think it's the end of the world if someone can't read or write it. It's a skill, and we don't all have the same skills.

Thank you for this thread! It inspired me to test and see if my kids could read cursive, even if they don't write in it. I had a feeling my daughter could, because she spent about a month wanting to learn it when she was 6, but I wasn't sure about my son (who is like Jay's son).

I made a little message and folded it up 17th-century-letter style and tossed it at them. My son picked it up and said, "Cursive, cursive, cursive," and then tossed it aside.

My daughter then picked it up and read the first paragraph, and went straight to the kitchen to get some Turkish Delight.

This inspired my son to pick up the letter and read the rest of it. He then went straight to our den and cleaned up the toys to earn a board game (and then came to get Turkish Delight and tell my daughter to read the rest of the letter).

Both kids LOVED this, and want me to write more secret messages. But what to write....

Since they were little, my kids have really like radishes. I'd go for an "Easter Egger" blend, with the purple, pink, and red radishes. It's super fun to see what color radish you pull up. Radishes also grow quickly, so there's a more instant reward for the little ones.

My climate is pretty rainy and cool for a lot of the growing season, and I have good success with peas. I get a lot of peas, and harvest them for months. I like growing a mix of green and purple snap peas. I highly recommend Purple Magnolia peas. They grow really well in my area, and the pea pods are purple! The purple peas are also a bit easier to spot than the green ones. I think there's also white and yellow peas, but I didn't have as much success growing those. My kids have always loved picking peas.

Rachel Lindsay wrote:Great selection! Super ideas, I know the kids will have fun with those.

I bet watermelons would be fun, too.

I don't know if watermelons will do well in zone 4? I've only seen a few people manage to grow them in my zone 7/8 area (granted, our zone 8 is a lot cooler and cloudier and a shorter growing season than a zone 8 in Texas. Not every zone is the same!)

I'm glad I could help. I might not be good at understanding code, but I can test things and often find out where the break is.

Hopefully it'll be a quick development fix to make it so that either the pie goes all the way through, or it doesn't go at all. We don't need any confusing, half-sent pie!

And, just like with your error, there is now pie showing on your post, but no pie removed from my account, nor pie added to your account.

Now to test again!

I'm going to send this:

Thank you so much for all of your help in reporting this issues. I'm going to try testing it again by giving you yummy pie

Okay, it has been sent, and it did work! So, the amount of words DO matter!