Month: June 2005

For those who are interested, the following are lists of books Kelly and Christian read as part of their Sonlight homeschool program last year. These books were combined with library, internet, and encyclopedia research to cover history and literature. Of course, this does not include their RealScience-4-Kids chemistry program, Easy Grammar program, Singapore Math program, Spelling Power program, and Writing Apprentice program. In addition, they both took a year of piano and swimming lessons with a few gymnastics and alpine skiing lessons and some field trips thrown in for good measure. They take their nationally standardized tests on Tuesday, so we will soon know how they stack up against their peers.

The books Christian read
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Secret of the Andes
The Sign of the Beaver
The Witch of Blackbird Pond
Johnny Tremain
Toliver’s Secret
Carry On, Mr. Bowditch
Paddle-to-the-Sea
Walk the World’s Rim
Justin Morgan Had a Horse
Calico Bush
The Journeyman
Swift Rivers
Classic Poetry: An Illustrated Collection
What’s the Big Idea, Ben Franklin?
And Then What Happened, Paul Revere?
If You Were There When They Signed the Constitution
Winter at Valley Forge
Incans, Aztecs & Mayans
Imprisoned in the Golden City
Can’t You Make Them Behave, King George?
Pedro’s Journal
The Landmark History of the American People (partial)
The Erie Canal
American Adventures, Part 1
North American Indians
The Story of the USA Book 1
The Story of the USA Book 2
The Lewis & Clark Expedition
The Story of Eli Whitney
Pocahontas and the Strangers
The Matchlock Gun
Meet Thomas Jefferson
Phoebe the Spy
Meet George Washington
Robert Fulton, Boy Craftsman
Sarah, Plain and Tall
The Courage of Sarah Noble
The Cabin Faced West
Squanto, Friend of the Pilgrims
The Bears on Hemlock Mountain
Sarah Whitcher’s Story
A Lion to Guard Us
The Skippack School
The Thanksgiving Story
Om-kas-toe
Usborne Science Encyclopedia
The Magic School Bus Inside the Human Body
Mysteries and Marvels of Nature
Introduction to Biology
Listening to Crickets
Martha Washington
George Washington
Naya Nuki
Vostaas: White Buffalo’s Story of Plains Indian Life
Tikta’Liktak
Stone Fox
Ben Franklin of Old Philadelphia
Mr. Revere and I
The Corn Grows Ripe

The books Kelly read
———————————–
Seabird

Island of the Blue Dolphins
The Master Puppeteer
The House of Sixty Fathers
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase
The Horse and His Boy
Journey to Jo’burg
The Hobbit
Tales of a Korean Grandmother
Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze
Seven Daughters and Seven Sons
The Land I Lost
All the Small Poems
Daughter of the Mountains
Shadow Spinner
Ships, Sailors and the Sea
Eric Liddell
Commodore Perry in the Land of the Shogun
Torches of Joy
Whatever Happened to Penny Candy?
Teresa of Calcutta
Gandhi
A Glorious Age in Africa
The Mongols
India: The Culture
India: The People
Arabs in the Golden Age
Faces: Australia Through Time
William Carey: Obliged to Go
Escape to the Jungle
Exploring Planet Earth
Mary Slessor: Forward into Calabar
Genghis Khan & the Mongol Hordes – Landmark
Water Sky
Henry Reed, Inc.
Call it Courage
The Kite Fighters
The Big Wave
The Cat Who Went to Heaven
God’s Adventurer: Hudson Taylor
Silkworms
Just So Stories
The Incredible Journey
Rascal
Beat the Story-Drum, Pum-Pum
Star of Light
Homesick
King of the Wind
Aladdin and Other Favorite Arabian Nights Stories
Around the World in Eighty Days
Ali and the Golden Eagle
Li Lun, Lad of Courage
Mission to Cathay
Red Sand, Blue Sky
Louis Braille
Born in the Year of Courage
The Rat Catcher’s Son
Sadako & 1000 Paper Cranes
Almost 12
Food and Nutrition for Every Kid
Improve Your Survival Skills
Usborne Guide to Rocks and Fossils
Dry Bones and Other Fossils
The Human Body
The History of Medicine
Blood & Guts: A Working Guide to Your Own Insides
Usborne Young Scientist: Human Body

My lunch with my accountant, Dean Sartain, got cancelled yesterday, so we are going out to have Indian food today. I had a good long talk with my Quality Corners partners, Ron Voorhees and Grandpa Milo. We have decided to go ahead and start looking for another building as we will probably need it pretty soon if we keep going at our current rate. The machinery is all working well, the orders keep arriving, and we have lots of new prospects as we increase our capacity. We have lots of hope for our company.

The kids are getting a little stir crazy in the house. The neighborhood government school kids will be in school until just after we leave to visit Grandpa Lauro and Grandma Conchita in Mexico. Fifteen minutes each of Marvis Blinkin and piano are all we have planned for them, so when they finish those things and get their rooms cleaned up, they do not have much else on their plate for the rest of the day. They have been doing a lot of art and reading to fill up the time between when they finish their work and the other kids get home from school.

Lorena’s final is next Tuesday. The mad scramble to get ready to go to Mexico will start when she finishes her test.

Christian and I spent about an hour and a half working on his radio last night. We got all the amplifier circuit put together, but did not have the right kind of battery, so we could not check it out. It is a joy working with him. We went to our bible study last night, too. Emma Raun was there and talked about her many, many years preaching in Japan and the many orphans there after World War II. She is a very nice lady. We always have great conversations on the way to and from our bible study in Jefferson. I am amazed that the kids are not complaining a little more about boredom. The government school kids do not get out for summer vacation for another couple of weeks, so there is no one with whom to play until around four in the afternoon. The are doing extremely well.

Grandma Sarah found an article on an amazing tax break for companies like ours in one of Grandpa Milo’s trade magazine. She is amazing that way; always doing research and finding useful stuff. I am glad she is so good at it and enjoys it. She sent me several copies of the article, so I am taking it to our accountant, Dean Sartain today at lunch time. Dean and his wife, Phyllis just got back from vacation. They take great vacations and I always enjoy getting together with him to talk about it after the fact.

This is the third in a series of posts that describe how the our family uses a Linux computer as a tool for education and administration in our homeschool. We believe a Linux computer is a great option for people who would like their children to have access to the very best tools available even though they do not have a huge budget. The intent of this series of posts is to provide clear, step by step instructions for those who do not necessarily have an abundance of computer skills.

Viewing DVD’s – The ability to play a DVD checked out from the public library or rented from Blockbuster is a lot easier than it used to be. My thinking is that this functionality should be available out of the box without additional installations or modifications, but that is still not the case. Draconian legal issues still make it more hassle than it needs to be. Our discussion here will center on the setup and use of the Xine multimedia application.

Streaming audio – We mentioned in a previous post that we liked to listen to the Adventures in Odyssey radio theatre program over the internet. We use the RealPlayermultimedia streaming program from RealNetworks to do that. The RealPlayer program is a closed source program. Rightly, the Ubuntu Linux project does not include it as part of their Linux free (as in freedom) distribution. We will discuss how to install that program and provide links to some of the streaming audio content we use in our homeschool.

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Grandma Sarah and her twin sister Janet

I took this picture of Grandma Sarah and her twin sister Janet and just thought it was great. Janet is one of my favorite people in all of the world. I know I get fairly obnoxious about my kids, but when I ask her if I can tell her something about Kelly and Christian, she always says, “I wish you would!” and, best of all, she really means it. She is just a great lady. She came over to Newberg on Memorial Day for dinner at Grandpa Milo’s house. He cooked us an absolutely great steak dinner with corn on the cob and a salad with the special dressing he learned how to make from his mother Great Grandma Chapman (Ethyl). Grandpa Milo is working too hard and we are all trying to get him to slow down, but he keeps going.

I talked to my cousin Neil (Aunt Janet’s son) with whom I spent many, many hours as a boy growing up. We played together all the time at Grandma Jenkin’s (Ida) house. Grandma J was our little Finnish grandmother that we all loved so much. Janet told me that he did not have the address of my blog anymore, so I called him and we had a nice chat. I also called my little sister, Aunt Jean. We talked for about an hour. I have always loved to talk to both of my sister’s. Back when I was working at Motorola in South Florida and Jean was working for Mentor Graphics in Portland we used to send emails back and forth. Email was just brand new and we almost used it like a chat server. We felt very high tech and had some great talks that way. It was just super to talk to both Neil and Aunt Jean for awhile.