Kelly, Christian, and I performed our first chemistry “experiment” last night. I put the experiment in quotes, because it really was not much of an experiment. The task was just to familiarize ourselves with the idea that all things are made of atoms and everything can be described in terms of its basic constituient atoms. It went OK. Actually, the text part of this chapter (and I think the next one, too) was much better than the experiment. The experiments start getting good when we get to the third chapter. I really think we will all learn a lot and have a great time doing it.
Year: 2005 Page 11 of 12
Last night we started in on RealScience-4-Kids. We read the first chapter on the periodic table of elements last night and plan to do the first experiment this evening. This really does feel like a good program. The first couple of experiments do not seem like much, but I might feel better about them after we get them done. Starting with the third experiment, it appears they really get more interesting.
We have decided to go to Mexico for most of the month of June so the family can avoid most of our annual hay fever problem here in the Willamette Valley. We are pretty much on track to do that with respect to homeschool. The only problem we have is that Kelly will have to do a good bit of extra work for this week and possible next on her section on India. The only kink that might get thrown into our plans would be the schedule of Lorena’s class at Linn-Benton Community College. Lorena is planning to take her second to last math class there this spring term. If she does that, we probably would not be able to leave for Mexico until sometime in the second week of June.
There is a Valentines Day party for all of the homeschoolers in the area today. Last night we went down and picked up cards with lollipops for Kelly and Christian to give out. This the normal homeschool play day that they have in the gym of a church just down the hill from our house, but they are having a memorial service in the gym so, weather permitting, they are going to have the event in a park. If it rains, they will postpone it for a week. It sounds, though, like the weather is going to be good.
Joe Layman and Lyle Waldo came over to stay with us for a few days after gospel meeting yesterday. Joe wants to start having a informal bible studies with people we have over from our neighborhood. I was very happy to see that Kelly was very excited about it. Christian was a little stoic, but I think he was fine with the idea. We are going to start a week from Tuesday. I think some people will show up and it will be good for us.
Lorena and the kids went to their play yesterday at Linn-Benton Community College and they said it was great. They all reported that the costumes, set, and acting were all just excellent. A bunch of people from meeting went a long, then afterwards went to Wendy’s to eat lunch. After that, Lorena and the kids drove up to Sherwood for Lorena’s doctor appointment. It is a long way to drive, but she really likes her doctor a lot. The appointment was at 3:00 PM and it started a little late so they did not get back home to Albany until well after 5:00 PM.
Joe Layman called last night and asked if we could have a bible study at our house. It is going to be really great for us and our kids. Lorena is going to invite all the neighbors and I think we might even get a few to come. It is going to be very informal. I have never done anything quite like this before, but it will make me stand up and be counted in the neighborhood. I am so proud of Lorena. She will go out and do all the inviting. Kelly was very excited about the whole deal. I think Christian liked it, too. Kelly said she would really like to be able to have a meeting at our house some day soon. Me too.
We have quite a full week ahead of us. Today will be pretty normal, with just swimming lessons to get Lorena and the kids out of the house, but tomorrow, they are all going to go to a see a performance of “Puss ‘N’ boots at Linn Benton Community College with a bunch of other homeschoolers. After that, Lorena is going to drive up to Sherwood to go to her doctor for an appointment. We were not really very happy with any of the doctors around here that were possible to get in to see, she decided to get an appointment with her old doctor from back there. On Wednesday, the kids have swimming lessons again, after which Lorena has a dentist appointment. On Thursday, there are piano lessons. I hope we all survive!
Today is a big day for the tortoise shell cat sisters. The are going in for a small operation that should make all of our lives a lot easier. Kiwi and Rubix will take their trip down to the vet this morning at about 8:30. We will go get them after they are all fixed up at 5:00 this afternoon. I am looking forward to the weekend. We were going to go to a recital for Christian in Salem, but Jill Hickenlooper, his teacher, tells us she was not planning to have him ready by then, so we get the whole weekend off. I think we will mostly just hang out. I need to get my taxes prepared and fill out some other papers for Quality Corners, but I hope to spend most of the weekend just lounging with Lorena and the kids.
We have a conflict in the house that needs to be addressed. Christian loves to do science experiments more than just about any other part of homeschool. Yesterday, he prepared and experiment to grow some different kinds of corn and beans. The kinds of science he finds interesting are inherently messy. Messiness drives Lorena nuts. Somehow, I have to find a place for Christian to do his experiments that can get a little bit messy without driving Lorena crazy. One thing we might do is build a lab on skids. Another option might be to buy an old camp trailer that we can mostly gut. Something where we could habe water and electrical, a little hotwater heater, a chemistry bench, a computer desk, a general purpose workbench, a benchtop mill, a benchtop lathe, etc. It might be a good summer project just to get the thing started.
A couple of hours after discussing the idea of doing something entrepreneurial, Lorena came up with the idea of making a tube based cat scratch post. Lorena and the kids both believe they will sell well at local pet stores and on the internet. I can think of some ways we might be able to give ourselves a competitive advantage, too. Now we need to figure out how we are going to extend our entrepreneurial effort to include individual service to family, church, and community the profitability required to stay in business.
Last Sunday, we had Jay and Karen Nelson and their five kids over for lunch between Sunday morning fellowship meeting and gospel meeting in the evening. Our kids are all about the same age, so the grownups had a nice chance to talk while the kids were out playing after we ate. We talked about God, family, life, our kids, making a living, and everything else that comes up in those rare opportunities for talking about whatever you want as opposed to what you are trying to get done. We even had time to take a pleasant drive through a new neighborhood going up near by just to see how it was going. In talking about the challenges of paying the mortgage, raising children to fear God, and setting appropriate priorities for where we are in life, I really got to thinking about “the big picture…”
The government school in our area has so many teacher in-service, conference preparation, and educational days off it is hard to keep track of them. Every time we turn around the neighborhood kids are home again during what for us would be a normal school day. Yesterday was one of those days and today is another one. It was such a beautiful day yesterday that I gave the kids half a day off and will give them another half day today so they can play with the other kids. I really do not see how they get anything done…
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.
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.