Yesterday I went hiking on a new trail with my Daddy, and my sister Maddie. I saw about 9, or 10 dogs. And I got a picture of each one! But I have some bad news too. I can not get the pictures that are on my iPad of the dogs to this computer. Because the last time Maddie tried that we had to erase all of my pictures. But there is some good news though. There was a little river with a bridge and I got to go across it!
And boy did I sleep last night. Ashleigh
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This is part two to the post I wrote yesterday. Today, I will focus on the program I followed to educate my eldest daughter. I will likely follow the same steps with Ashleigh, although I will likely have light changes to the regimen due to differences in their personalities. Maddie was a very strong reader at an early age and thus she started writing reports on the classics at a very early age. To give you an idea of her reading abilities, Maddie read Harry Potter at the age of four. Even so, the first classic I gave her to read didn't turn out too well! At the age of seven, I gave Maddie Black Beauty to read. I always thought children loved that story, so I thought it would be a pretty safe way to introduce her to the classics. How wrong I was! She ended up hating the book, and didn't want to read any more classics because of it. The next few books she enjoyed, though, and she quickly learned that not all classics were as droll or boring as Black Beauty. The Wizard of Oz, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and nearly all of the Sherlock Holmes stories were some of her early favorites. Huckleberry Finn was another disaster for Maddie since she had a tough time reading it due to Twain's habit of writing in the vernacular of the South. It wasn't to a few years later when I had her take a college level course on Twain that she learned to appreciate him. Blogging & WritingAs Maddie was growing, we did a number of age-appropriate projects to help her learn. Blogging played a large part in her education. Over the years, Maddie had at least three blogs that were dedicated to learning. Her first, was maddiesthinkathought.blogspot.com. The blog only shows posts going back to 2011, but I think we started the blog in 2008. We started it as a writing exercise for Maddie. Each day she had to write something down. It could be about anything she wanted. After writing on the blog for a few years, it morphed into a poetry blog. One of my proudest achievements in Maddie's education is that I successfully passed on a love for poetry to her. Both Sharon and I wrote poetry, and I love to read poetry as well. If you would like to read some of Madison's early poetry, follow the link above. In 2010, We started a second blog to help Maddie learn about animals. This blog was called Absolute Animals, and it was a site where Maddie wrote a short post on a new animal each day. Although she no longer writes on this blog, her write ups are still there along with pictures of the animals she wrote about. Maddie's Minerals soon followed. This site was a blog where Maddie wrote about all of the elements on the elemental table, as well as about gem stones, since she really found those interesting. I found blogs were a fun way for Maddie to learn, and I often gave her writing assignments that required her to place them on a blog. One creative project I gave her involved the book "Around the World In Eighty Days". After reading the book, I had Maddie start a blog where she had to write a blog post as if she had to go around the world in 80 days. The trick was that she could only travel a few hundred miles per day, and she could not fly. If she took a ship, and reached her travel limit while out in the ocean, she then had to write a post telling what she did on the ship that day! Maddie was determined to not have to write about being stuck on a boat, so she came up with some creative places to go on her journey. You can follow her journey here: 80 Days. The last blog I'll mention here is called The Book Stack. The Book Stack is the blog where I had Maddie post most of her book reports I had her write. Being able to communicate is a very important skill, and my teaching style required Maddie to read a lot and then write reports explaining what she read. Unfortunately, many of the above blogs seem to be erasing some of her older work, or deleting some of the pictures she used. Thus, some of the older posts have blanks where the pictures used to be. If you are looking for ideas on how to home school your children, I think you may want to browse through the different blogs I linked to above. The Great Courses & Coursera
good grasp of the subject. Other times, I would give her topics that I already knew well to make it easier to tell if she was learning. I particularly liked to use the Great Courses for history and math. Some of the courses Maddie studied are in the picture at the top of the page. After researching on the web, I found a second resource to use with Maddie... Coursera. Coursera is an organization that offers online courses from many of the major colleges across the globe online for free. At first, I was a little skeptical that these were real college courses, so I decided to take a class myself to see how tough they were. I enrolled in, and passed a course on the Python programming language from Rice University. I can tell you that these are definitely college-level courses! Soon after, Maddie signed up for, and passed a course in Songwriting from the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Maddie passed her first college course at the age of 12. She has passed eight others since, including courses from Rice University, The Georgia Institute of Technology, SUNY, and Duke University. Although none of these courses gave her college credits, they gave her experience taking challenging courses, and more importantly, the knowledge she gained from taking the courses. VLACsAlthough Madison is still being home schooled, most of her learning is coming from a home-learning program for high schoolers set up by the state of New Hampshire. A friend from karate had told me about VLACs and I looked into it. There were two things that I found very appealing about the program. 1. Maddie could continue to work from home, and would still receive a high school diploma if she successfully completed the required courses. The second point that I liked was that if Madison was accepted into an accelerated college program, she could graduate high school with both a high school diploma and an associates degree from Southern New Hampshire University.
We signed Maddie up for freshman year in high school last year, even though she technically should have been starting eighth grade. They allowed her to start as a ninth-grade student and the lowest grade she had in her first year was a B+. Maddie has started her sophomore year now, and has signed up for her first official college course. Although I am no longer teaching her, I do keep in touch with her teachers and monitor her progress. She also continues to write on our family blog daily. To me, nothing I have done in my life has been more rewarding than teaching my daughters. I sometimes miss the discussions Maddie and I used to have about the books I assigned to her. The look on her face when she first discovered that there were layers of meaning in some stories (The Swimmer by John Cheever) will be etched in my memory forever! I will also cherish some of the interpretations of poetry that she did. I am happy that we both share a love for the poetry of Robert Frost as well as for Shakespeare's sonnets. I look forward to teaching these subjects to Ashleigh as well. When I was younger, I often wondered what the meaning of life really was. Sometimes, I still wonder. Other times, I think that the meaning of our lives can be found in the meaning that we make for ourselves. And for me, a large part of that meaning is to find how I can best help my daughters to find that meaning for themselves. I think the best way I can do that is to teach them how to think for themselves in a logical manner. I hope that the education that I have given them... am giving them goes a long way towards achieving that. On Monday I'm having a party! I have already decorated a gate, leading to my tent. I have also put out pink and blue flowers. I still have some more planing to do.
I wrote a list on what is allowed, and what is not. Here are my rules. Everyone needs to wear their best outfit. No one can wear black, because it is my least favorite color. No sharp things, can be brought to the party and no one can wear jewelry. Finally, no pillows and blankets are allowed, because It is not a sleep over. Ashleigh Before I start, I just want to apologize for not posting much over the past week or two. I am a stock analyst and I research companies and write reports about the prospects for the equities of the companies I cover. I had thirteen stocks due on Tuesday, and they were going to press this week. Next week I will be a bit less busy, and I should be able to write blog posts regularly again. Usually, once people find out that I home school my daughters I get asked a lot of questions about how I do it. In today's post, I will try to explain the process I use to teach my girls. This post, I will focus on Ashleigh, and the early years of education. Next post I will focus on Maddie and how I interact with her to help her learn. To start, I just want to say that I only loosely follow a set curriculum. After researching a number of programs, I thought that the Robinson curriculum would work best for me. The Robinson curriculum is very heavy into math, and stresses a lot of free time for reading so that the children learn through their spare time as well. ReadingThe biggest challenge, I find, is actually teaching the children how to read. With both of my daughters, we started by using Hooked on Phonics. I like the flash cards that help to show the children which sounds come from which letters. Although Ashleigh now knows how to read, I still go back to asking her what sound a particular letter or set of letters combinations make to help her figure out what a word is when she gets stuck. The second stage I used for Ashleigh was to have her write down very simple words, repetitively. I would give her a set of about six to 12 words and have her write them down ten times each in a row. On trickier words, I would have her say them out loud as well. I had her do this every day for weeks on end. As she began to recognize words, I started having her copy short sentences too. After a few weeks I began having her try to read some of her story books to me. Since she was very young, My Mom and I have always read little stories to Ashleigh. As she progresses, we began having her read them to us! Unfortunately, many of the Disney books are not geared towards young children reading them themselves. I found that too many words were there for adults to read them to the children. I solved this problem by finding an old McGuffey Reader online. For many weeks, I had Ashleigh read passages from the reader to me. I then wrote down sentences based on the words she read in the passages and had her write them in a notebook. We have gone through a number of notebooks that way. The exercise helped to improve her reading AND writing abilities. Next, I began to have Ashleigh write a short blog post each day for this website. Her topics are simple, but it helps her to learn to write out her thoughts. Me or my Mom will usually help her with spelling for some of the larger words, and I do read it with her and help her to fix punctuation mistakes. Ashleigh has to read out loud each day and when she finishes reading a book she has to write a book report for it as well. She publishes these reports on this blog, as well as on a site set up strictly for her reports. You can find that web site here. MathematicsAnother area that is very important to my curriculum is mathematics. I started teaching Ashleigh basic math at an early age. There are two things that I do to teach math. First, I give her a page or two of hand written math problems each day. I started her with very basic adding and subtracting problems, and then moved her up to larger and larger numbers. At the same time, I started her on IXL. IXL is a computer-based math tutoring program that follows the state standards for math knowledge. If you are interested, you can find it at www.ixl.com. Ashleigh has completed the program through level C math and is currently about 50 completed segments into level D math. Each day she covers about five segments, so they add up quickly. The program is good because when she gets an answer wrong, it sets back her progress in that area and she then needs to answer more problems correctly before she is allowed to graduate out from that segment. I have found her math skills have really improved since she has started that program. Recently, I have also started to give her the times table to copy down and learn. Although I have taught her the basics of multiplication, she still views it as a derivation of addition, so her progress has been slow. We still work on it weekly and she has started to be able to answer some of the smaller multiplication problems in her head. When I was teaching Madison. we used the same programs, however we also used the Saxon math books. These helped to broaden her understanding to some degree. Once Ashleigh can read better, I will likely use the same books with her as well. Physical EducationPhysical education is one of my favorite subjects for the girls! Each of my girls started training in karate when they were three years old. Currently, Maddie is a second degree black belt and 2015 Grands sparring champion. Ashleigh is currently a purple belt with a black stripe, and will be testing for her blue belt in two weeks. Both of my girls have won invitations to the Grands tournament in November. Maddie will be competing in sparring and weapons, while Ashleigh will be competing in sparring and forms. Recently, Ashleigh was honored to have her picture featured on a flyer that was sent out to all of the students in the New Ipswich school system advertising a new after-school karate program. The picture is below. Although karate is a great physical activity, the girls gain so much more from it than they would a regular gym class. The most important thing to me is that they are learning to defend themselves. As a Dad, I worry about their safety, and I wanted to make certain that they have every chance available to them if they ever have to defend themselves.
Karate is much more than a sport. It is a life style. Our dojo has five rules: effort, etiquette, sincerity, character, and self-control. We also practice peace over power. In other words, we are trained to not use our skills to start fights, but to finish them. We are only to use our skills in self defense. I like that my daughters will be bale to train in karate throughout there lives. So many of the sports I played as a child are no longer played by me or my friends. Even so, at 50 I still train three times a week. I picked up karate late in life. I started training at the age of 42. I started to train because we reached a point in Maddie's training where I could no longer help her because I did not know the material. I started to train to help her, but ended up continuing because I enjoyed it so much as well! We like to say "A family that kicks together, sticks together!" Both of my girls love karate and it is a major part of their lives. Even so, I made a rule early on that neither of them could date until they had a black belt. Maddie got hers at ten, so the rule did not impact her dating life at all. At her current pace, it also looks like the rule won't have an impact on Ashleigh's dating life. Although the rule was made half jokingly. It makes me feel better to know that the girls are trained to take advantage of weaknesses in anatomy if the need ever arises. A second way that my girls get exercise is by having a love of the great outdoors. I try to take the girls hiking regularly, and they both seem to enjoy it. We all take pictures while we are out, and many of them end up gracing many of the blog posts on this site. Madison also has an instagram account, where she posts many of her pics. Well this post is running a little long, so I will end this post here. On my next post, I will tell you how Maddie's education differs from Ashleigh's since she is older, and I will also touch upon how I teach science and history. Here are four more pics of my girls through out their karate careers! Guess what? We had our first snow today. It lasted for about 1 hour. and then it turned to rain. A little later, it turned back into snow. I was so surprised when I saw the snow! I didn't know it started in October. It did not stick though. I like to think about building a snow man, and throwing snow balls! Winter is one of my favorite seasons.
Ashleigh Today I read a new book called ''Watch Out For Joel!"' One day a boy named Ricky was delivering newspapers. He was very mean! Just then, Ricky's little brother Joel came up behind Ricky. He tapped Ricky on the shoulder. Rick Jumped because he was startled. When he landed, Joel asked him a question. ''Can I deliver newspapers with you he asked. No! Said Ricky. You are only seven, and I am thirteen. I don't need your help! Joel watched Ricky walk off delivering newspapers. He followed him, but he stayed hidden from him too. A little later, Joel saw Ricky squirt water at 2 dogs with a water pistol.He asked Ricky why he was so mean to the dogs, and Ricky said ''they always bark at me, so why should I stop? A little later Joel saw Ricky shooting a sling shot at squirrel he also saw him step on a cats tail. And when it was Ricky's birthday Joel got him the best gift everb a baseball. because he let him do the job that was delivering newpaprs.
Ashleigh I just remembered a movie I haven't watched in an incredibly long time; and that's The Wizard Of Oz! As a small child, I recall being afraid of it for some reason but as I've gotten older I appreciate it a lot more. It's a classic movie that I think everyone should see at least once before they die, simply because it's a good-hearted and adventurous family movie. However, if you're more of a reader... the book is just as; if not more, rewarding. Either way, I'll stop carrying on about things I enjoy and instead give you some good quotes from The Wizard Of Oz to ponder about as you go through your day.
"I am convinced that the only people worthy of consideration in this world are the unusual ones. For the common folks are like the leaves of a tree, and live and die unnoticed." "Home is a place we all must find, child. It's not just a place where you eat or sleep. Home is knowing. Knowing your mind, knowing your heart, knowing your courage. If we know ourselves, we're always home, anywhere." "A heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others." "Some people without brains do an awful lot of talking." "It's not where you go. It's who you meet along the way." "Everything you were looking for was right there with you all along." "The true courage is in facing the danger, even when you are afraid." - Maddie Don't tell me about having respect for those who are working when you don't show common decency to minimum wage workers... I know how to be respectful.
Don't tell me not to yell if you've been yelling for the past twenty minutes. Don't tell me to show you respect if you won't show me any yourself. Don't tell me I'm stupid, clueless, or anything of the sort and then expect me to instruct you in how to do things / fix everything for you. Don't tell me about how to keep my own space clean if your mess is cluttering places the entire family uses. Don't complain about me "harassing" you all day if you ask me to run errands for you and then proceed to harass everyone else yourself. Don't ask me for help and advice if you're only going to tell me that what I told you is wrong and not attempt it in the first place. I'm sorry if any of you take this post in the wrong way. I'm very, very tired of hypocritical people expecting everything to be done in a certain way by everyone around them and then refusing to follow through with it themselves. If I expect something from someone else, then I'll at least try to follow through with it myself. In a way, it's the principle my dad uses with this blog- my sister and I write on it; but to set a good example, he does too. That goes as far as respect. I think I've explained this before but I can honestly never say it enough. I will treat everyone with the same amount of respect until they give me a reason to show them more or less. I'll go as far as to say that I'll even give disrespectful people second and third chances by continuing to show them respect, even if they show none to me. I give chances to see if they'll reciprocate. Some people simply aren't used to being treated nicely and it reflects in their treatment of others. If, after those chances have been given, the person still chooses to be disrespectful? After that point I see no reason to show them any respect after I went out of my way to try and understand them. That's the bottom line and the end of this post, and topic. I really don't have anything more to say. This needs to stop. - Maddie I have a big Dinosaur. It is blue, it has no teeth, but it has very sharp claws. It has a long tail and a very small head but a big body. Now we are going to be talking about my Pterydactyl. My Pterydactel is gold it as curvy wings and there is little red spots at the end of the wing.
Ashleigh Guess what! I finally signed up to be a doctor! I'm just pretending, but I have some of the things a real doctor might use. They are only toys, though.
There is more good news too. My Grandma gave me three of her old medicine cups. I have a lot of old pony-tail holders that had two small balls on each one. So I cut the elastic so the little balls would fall off. Some where green, some where pink, some had stripes. A couple even had stars. I used them for toy medicines to fill the cups. Ashleigh (editor's note: This was originally written on 10/21. I have been swamped at work, though, and this was the first chance I had to post it for Ashleigh.) Today I read a new book called ''Henry And Mudge And The Great Grandpas.'' One day Henry and his dog Mudge where going to great Grandpa Bill's house. So when they got there more grandpas joined. Some of them took naps on Mudge. They liked him as a pillow. Mudge did not mine, he liked tired grandpas. So the next day Henry's Mother, and father were talking with the grandpas Henry and Mudge went exploring. So they went in the woods and soon enough they found a pond. So when they told the grandpas about the pond they all went swimming. So when they got back Henry's Mother was carrying a bowl of spaghetti and they all had a nice meal.
Ashleigh Today's post is actually inspired by YouTube! My procrastination actually paid off for once! Yesterday, I took an EXTREMELY long hike with my boyfriend and dog to pay a friend of our's a visit and we were out essentially all day hiking about. I fell asleep at 8:30, woke up at 7:30 and have essentially been in bed since with very sore legs. With nothing much else to do, I replied to a few emails and watched some YouTube. I was watching a playthrough for a game called Fran Bow. It's and Alice In Wonderland-esq game, and I enjoyed it very much.
It was a 2D horror game with a very dark and intellectual plot. Most of the tasks to be accomplished were by puzzle solving and using logic, and by progressing with dialogue. The dialogue was fantastic and some of what was said truly made me think... and I hope that it makes you readers think too. Below are some of the best quotes plucked from the game. "Death is nothing more than the absence of love. Once you can’t feel love, you die… even if your body still walks." "I still don't know many things, but one thing I do know- between guilt and fear, I chose happiness." "You can’t blame those who are ignorant, but you can’t let ignorance decide. Life will teach you, even through pain and tears." "Be curious, and you'll always be amazed." "Don't be afraid. We always fall. And after the pain... we will always rise." These are unfortunately not all of the quotes that I can remember from the gameplay. I remember there being numerous others, but as I can't directly remember and wouldn't want to incorrectly quote this amazing game I'm going to leave this post here. I'd go back through the videos but there was roughly 7 hours worth of gameplay to watch. In any case, I'd recommend checking out the playthrough of this game. I found that alone to be quite interesting and if I had the correct account, I'd probably buy and play the game myself. Very intriguing. - Maddie It's currently 3:09am. I'm still awake and I'm downstairs at my grandmother's laptop because I haven't been able to sleep for the past hour and I remembered I had a blog to write. Not wanting Dad to get mad at me... here I am. I've been feeling like crap all day, so I've had a lot of thinking time. My back was giving me some issues last night and they carried over into today; along with a killer migraine. Some excederin has taken the edge off but honestly I still feel pretty bad. Today has been interesting, to say the least. I had to help out with a children's halloween party at my karate school, even though most of my time was spent talking with my best friend of 8 years. I had a good time decking myself out in wild SFX makeup nonetheless. I'll include a photo below. I literally have no clue where I was going with this post. I really just wanted an excuse to show off my awesome makeup, honestly... it took me roughly an hour to do and it was a major pain in the ass to clean up after. Liquid latex gets EVERYWHERE. Now that I've had my bragging time, I think I'm going to go get some sleep. I have church to be up for in 5 hours and I'd hate to pass out in church (even though I must say it has happened before). Good night all. Sleep well.
- Maddie Today I read a new book called ''The Adventures Of Snail At School.'' One day at school, Snail was in one of the class rooms. Mrs. Harvey said "Would someone go to the library and pick up our books from Mr. Moody?'' I will, said Snail! "Well, ok" Mrs. Harvey said, "Hurry back!"
When snail was almost at the library, he saw a water fountain, and stopped for a drink. So he climbed up, and turned the handle. Water came bursting out! He fell off the stool he was standing on and he began to swim! He found a pencil to res on and he used it to surf back to the handle. He turned the handle again and all the water drained away. The books were a little wet, but they were okay, so he went back to class. When he got back, Mrs. Harvey asked him to go get a new student at the office. So snail went to the principal's office. He noticed a fire extinguisher was by the door. "This should not be here", he said to himself. I will move it back to where it should be. But when he touched it YIKES! It blasted off! It landed on another planet! Little aliens that looked like him where on the planet. At first, he thought they where monsters. Then one of them said "Hi! welcome to our planet.' My name is Eddie." A little later they showed him a cake. It was big! Have a piece said Eddie. ''Thanks for the offer", snail said ''But I must go back to my class." I can take you there in my rocket said Eddie. ''Great! said snail.'' So they both got in the rocket and headed for earth. When they got to his school, it was time for a music lesson. Snail went to the music room and waited, and waited for Miss Pink but she was nowhere to be found. While he waited, he brought out all of the instruments. When he was done, Miss Pink ran in. "I'm sorry I'm late." she said. "How did all of these instruments get here?" I brought them, said Snail. Oh, Snail! Ashleigh Guess what! I have a surprise for you. It's a snake! I saw a snake outside today and it made me scream! Daddy thinks it is either a milk snake, or a garder snake. I was not able to get a picture of it though, it happened too fast. It was very fast, but we scared each other and I ran away faster than a speeding bullet when I saw it. It was gray and black. Oh, and in case you are wondering, the picture above is of me and my TOY snake. Daddy won't let me touch a snake I find outside.
Ashleigh Since my dad decided to post photos from the hike taken last weekend, I figured I'd add my photos onto the blog too. Why not. It's beautiful around here currently; with the leaves changing and all... and hikes are truly more enjoyable. There's so much to see and the weather is perfect so you don't over-heat when hiking the trails, which I love. In any case, here are the photos I captured on our hike on Rails To Trails and through the Children's Woods.
Today, I wanted to do a follow-up on two posts I wrote a few weeks ago which covered quotes from Disney princess movies. I stated in that post that I'd likely do a follow-up at some point covering the non-princess movies... and today is the day. Before I rattle off about hiking later on, I wanted to get this out. So without further ado, here are some quotes from lesser known (sort of) Disney movies.
"Now you see, the world is full of temptations. They're the wrong things that seem right at the time." - Pinocchio "The very things that hold you down are going to lift you up." - Dumbo "If you don't know where you want to go, it doesn't matter which path you take." - Alice In Wonderland "Dreams do come true, if only we wish hard enough. You can have anything in life if you are willing to sacrifice everything else for it." - Peter Pan "Just because you can't understand something doesn't mean it's wrong." - The Sword In The Stone "Sometimes, the little things can be quite important." - Mary Poppins "When you find out you can live without it, go along not thinking about it." - The Jungle Book "Goodbye may seem forever, farewell is like the end, but in my heart's a memory, and there you'll always be." - The Fox and The Hound "Oh yes, the past can hurt. But the way I see it, you can either run from it or learn from it." - The Lion King "Life's not a spectator sport. If watchin' is all you're gonna do, you're gonna watch your life go by without ya." - The Hunchback of Notre Dame I've talked in the past about the beauty of where I live; but today it really hit me. Here in NH, the leaves are already fully changed and it's gorgeous. Just driving down my street alone is like driving through a postcard! I had made a timelapse of my road earlier today, but sadly it won't allow me to post it here. Thankfully, I took a couple of photos as well so I'll post those below. I honestly am so glad that I live in an area that makes me want to be alive when I look outside... no matter the season. Literally every season here is beautiful; particularly fall. The leaves are everywhere and the shades are indescribable. If you've never been to NH... I definitely think you should take a weekend trip to see it some time. I promise you, it is worth it no matter the time. I know this has been a short post.. but honestly; I think the photos themselves should make my point for me. "Within nature lies the cure for humanity." Today we are going to talk about my toy, Cotton Candy.' We are not going to talk about a book! We are going to talk about my toy. Now the name may sound like real cotton candy, but it's not! Oh and by the way, I don't think i told you, but Cotton Candy has pink eyes. And she has purple, pink blue, and white fur. Oh, and there is one more thing: Cotton Candy is a stuffed animal horse!
Ashleigh Me and the girls went hiking yesterday. The fall is one of my favorite times of year, due to all of the beautiful colors and the cool breezes. I took a number of pictures to capture the beauty. We hiked about three miles along the Jaffrey branch of rails to trails. We cut off into the Children's Woods, and circled back onto Rails to Trails a little further up. Here are some of the photos I took yesterday. Enjoy! I hope you enjoyed that little bit of Fall color! If you have a nice Autumn scene, send in a pic and I will try to post it. I will naturally, give you credit for the photo.
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