The best laid plans of mice and men often go astray. We planned to do our first RealScience-4-Kids experiment this weekend, but it just did not happen. We did, however, have a great weekend. On Saturday, we went out to breakfast at Carl’s Jr. in Albany and went to the Borders bookstore in Salem where I spent the $20 gift certificate I got for Christmas on Mark Knopfler’s Shangri La album. It is really a great album. When we got home, the kids went out to ride their bikes a little then came in to finish their homeschool from Friday because we were not going to have any time to do it between meetings on Sunday. We had Jay and Karen Nelson and their kids over for lunch between meetings on Sunday and by the time we get home on Sunday night after gospel meeting, there really is not much time for anything other than getting ready for bed. So we did not have a chance all weekend to do our first experiment. We will probably try to find time for it this weekend.
Month: January 2005
Christian, Kelly, and I are going to do a chemistry experiment on Saturday. I purchased the RealScience-4-Kids program from Access Research Network. The premise behind this program is that the students do real experiments with a hypothesis, experimental design, data gathering, analysis of data, etc. It looks great. Christian is in charge of gathering all of the required items to do the experiment. On Saturday, we will read the preparatory text and perform the experiment on the kitchen table.
We have a new baby in the family. This morning my sister-in-law, Minita sent pictures of our new niece–Kelly’s and Christian’s new cousin. She was born in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico to Jorge and Mari on January 26, so the baby is only one day old in the pictures. I have put them up in our gallery for everyone’s viewing pleasure. You can find them by clicking here. They have not yet decided on a name. As soon as I have that, I will put it up.
It is a funny deal. I write computer programs for a living and the quality of the coffee really does not have a great impact on the amount of coffee I drink. When I write programs, I drink coffee. I generally try to stick with decaf so I am not bouncing off the walls, but I drink an awful lot of the stuff. It is a funny deal because I work, drink bad coffee, and have never considered that there might be a better way. Then yesterday, a bunch of strangers showed up at the place where I work. They all looked very serious like they had an important job to do. They were talking in serious voices and carrying serious equipment and tools in and out of the building. It turns out all they were doing was installing a new coffee machine. But, oh, what a coffee machine. Filterfresh. Awesome.
Our friend, Bryan Joyce called last night to get my sister’s telephone for one of their mutual friends. During our conversation it came up that an old friend of Bryan’s who is a member of our church had moved to the Prague in the Czech Republic with his wife to have an open home for our ministers working there. I mentioned that Kelly had been studying Russia over the last several weeks. One of her assignments was to write a one page report on one of the Soviet Russian satellite countries. When we talked about it, she decided she would write about the Czech Republic as I had been there on a business trip for about a week several years back. I had been impressed, stunned actually, with the beauty of Prague. After Kelly wrote her report she asked whether any of our ministers were over there. I had to tell her that at the time I was there, I believe there was only one pair of ministers with very few people attending their gospel meetings. So, when Bryan told me that his friends Jeff and Debbie Michaels had moved over there to teach English, I was quite excited.
In 1962, a book titled Silent Spring written by a woman named Rachel Carson was published. Its premise is that the use of DDT to control bugs is evil because of all of the things it kills that she believed it shouldn’t. Christian read a book from his Sonlight program about her titled Listening to Crickets. After reading the book Christian asked me about DDT. I explained to him that many people are dying, particularly in African countries because the use of DDT has been effectively banned there. Some people in a number of governments have chosen to ignore science and the benefit of using DDT to control mosquitos that carry malaria. Instead, they have put the needs of animals above the needs of humans. If DDT were used judiciously in this regard, many thousands of people who have died and/or suffered from the ravages of malaria would be alive and well today.
Yesterday, the kids had a very busy day. They got a little bit of a late start, so all they got done before they went to their swimming lesson was their piano practice. We are at about week twenty in their thirty-six week homeschool year. That means they are a little ahead of schedule. I want to get ahead by about one week more so that we can accommodate their three week trip to Mexico in June to be out of town during the hay fever season. If we gain the additional week, they will be able to both take our skiing /museum field trip to Bend for a week and a week of spring break with the government school kids in the neighborhood.
On the way home from work on Friday, I called Grandpa Milo. He was over at the coast with Uncle Doug and Aunt Sheila. They invited us to come over and spend the night with them in a condo at Depoe Bay. I called Lorena and the kids and they were up for it, so we drove over. That evening all we did was sit around and watch television, but the next day Grandpa and Grandma joined us at the Newport Aquarium.
This is my first entry for my blog. My name is Christian. I like science. I live at ### and my full name is ### To contact me ###. Due to safety violations/security, I am not allowed to state anything that will allow you to hack into our computer and make us look like we are doing something against the law. I am a homeschool student in the third grade. To go to my dads company website, and get some deals on awesome millwork products click HERE. This does count sas my weekly wepage articles.
I am currently at the home of Tony and Martha Nelson typing on their computer. They have invited us over for lunch at their house. We just got back from church. Mrs. Nelson is my Mother’s cousin and Mr. Nelson goes to our church. Mrs. Nelson made me an adorable purse out of Caprisun fruit juice packs. This entry does not count as one of my weekly entries. I will introduce myself in a later entry.
Last night, I walked Kelly through the steps required to make a post. In addition to that, I showed her how to link to another URL, add an image, and highlight text in a post. She took down a lot of notes and will write them all up after she gets all the rest of her homeschool work done. She is also going to try to do her first post here. The idea is that when she finishes, she will train Christian how to do a post. After having explained it once, she should be just fine. Christian is already so computer literate that he probably will not require much training. Christian will start working on the home page using Nvu if he is able to get all his homeschool work finished.
This is Dad showing Kelly how to post to her blog. We NEVER allow comments on this blog for reasons of security. To look at your post before you actually put it up on the blog, SAVE it and then look at the bottom of the page. To put a link on the page, here is how it would look for our own home page.
Kiwi and Rubix the Tortoise Shell Cat Sisters
Our new Chapman Kids Website is now up and ready to be developed. I put up the first test post for the blog yesterday. In addition, I put a picture of the family as a place holder for the website and got the Nvu program set up on the Linux computer at home. I think Christian can figure out how to do the web development all by himself, but I will give both Kelly and Christian a few lessons on webpage develeopment and have them write up a procedure for themselves so they will have some reference if they need it.
This is the first test post for our new homeschool/life blog.