The trip home from South Carolina was really very uneventful. I went out to dinner with the sales team, we got the technical and sales information we need to move forward on the project, and the customer promised us a signed purchase order by Friday of this week. I was operating on very little sleep on the way home, so all I really got accomplished on the way home was reading a good novel; something I have not been able to do for what seems like a year.
Planning
At lunch time at work today, I did some reading at the Sonlight website. They articulated some of my concerns about the “classical education” approach advocated by the people who wrote the Well Trained Mind book. I have been really worried about “starting from the beginning” and going through four levels of history three times each over a period of twelve years. That sounds like, and probably is, a really great idea. The job of actually doing it with children starting homeschooling in the fourth and sixth grades at the same time seems quite daunting.
The thing I like about Sonlight’s approach is that they appear to be very realistic about providing a level of balance between the homeschooling environment in our society and the needs of our particular children. From everything I have read and heard so far, Sonlight appears to take care of a lot of the busy work of homeschooling and emphasizes parent participation in the discussion of academic subjects. That fits us to a “T”. From our experience with Kelly using the Beautiful Feet we know that a literature based history and geography curriculum is well suited for Kelly and Christian; both of whom love to read.
The Sonlight catalog came in yesterday, so I should be able to spend some time going through the materials tonight. If the materials are everything they are represented to be by the website and word-of-mouth, I might be able to start finalizing some more of the curriculum decisions in the next few days.
Quality Corners stuff
Dad is down in Phoenix right now talking to two of our biggest customers and a number of other smaller customers. We are getting more and more business every day and we are increasing our capacity and efficiency every day, too. If things keep going as they are, my chance of taking a full time position with Quality Corners improves!||I did not get anything new done on homeschool planning on my way home from South Carolina, but I did do some reading and made some headway on deciding about our general direction for History, Geography, Language, and Literature. In addition, the Sonlight catalog arrived at home and Quality Corners is making great progress in both sales and capacity.