Month: November 2007

After our fellowship meeting yesterday morning, we went to a friend’s house for dinner.  On the way home after dinner, Kelly told us about a small event that she witnessed that we appreciated very much.  There was a little boy there named Warren who must be six or seven years old.  He is a very sweet boy, but he tends to ramble when he tells stories.  There were a good number of kids there, most of whom were a little older than Warren.  Kelly observed that his stories often got cut off by the other kids interrupting him.  It did not phase Warren too much… I guess he must have been used to such treatment.  By chance–there were a lot of kids there–he started telling a girl named Katie a story.  She must have been eight or nine years old.

When one of the other kids interrupted, Katie, held up here hand to stop the interruption and said “Go ahead and finish your story, Warren.”

Kelly was amazed.  I was very impressed with Katie for that act of kindness and very impressed with Kelly for taking note of that kindness and realizing that it was very special.  It was a small thing at the time, but a great benefit in the end, not only to Warren, but to Katie because things practiced become things internalized, to Kelly because that modeled behavior is something she realized was worthy of emulation, and now to me, because of the joy it brought me in hearing the story.

Well, I got up at 5:00AM this morning to go into work.  It was really not too bad.  I started early so I could get off early and be with the family.  I would really like to do some reading with the kids today.  We have not done that for a long time.  I also would like to work on our cat tower and take some movies of the process so Christian can do an Instructables or YouTube video.  He is up to over 2500 hits on his hovercraft video.  We will get better as we do more of them.  I am going to have Christian put the first video together for our KamVu program.  That little program is coming right along, but I do not have too much time to work on it.  Hopefully, we will do our first Alpha release of the program over Thanksgiving.

We are looking forward to going to the Steljis home for Thanksgiving.  It appears that there will be quite an international crowd there.  Our family will be representing Mexico, but there will be families there from Jamaica, too.  And of course, Warren (or as the kids call him – Miss Turbone) is a citizen of the world.

I had to work at my day job today (a Saturday).  It was mindless work running a bunch of samples through the machine we make to get ready for a big lab trial.  So I decided I would try to design us a logo.  You can see it at the top of this page.  Other than that, the only thing I have done since I last wrote is do a bunch of internal work on the calibration class.  I have plenty of work left to do on that, but I still think I can get it and the line tool we need to do manual measurements by the end of next weekend.  I will keep writing on the manual and Bob will keep giving me feed about both the program and the user guide.

I have to work this weekend.  I am going in at 5:00 am on Saturday morning to help get ready for a big lab trial in December for which we need some preliminary data.  I hope to be home by 11:00 am or so.  Maybe we can go to a museum Saturday afternoon.  I need the weekend to get caught up on some homeschool correcting, and I hope to work some on my open source software project, too.  It would also be fun to go look at a house or two with Lorena.  It will be busy weekend.

October was a very good month for us in homeschool. It was a little bit disorganized because I have continued to stay very busy at work and so we have had to do some correction and make-up teaching on the weekends. Still, we have made progress and have only had to make minor adjustments in our schedule for one special event that turned into a great learning experience for the kids. One of our good friends teaches Dental Hygiene classes at a community college several hours from here. Her kids had a day off so their whole family came down to visit us for the day. During the visit, our friend Terrie, gave the kids a stellar class on the human skull. She brought a model of a skull, they did worksheets, and all the kids, hers and ours, learned a TON. We appreciated her efforts in this very much. Now on to our update…

Math
Kelly: In her second week of Intermediate Algebra (Algebra II) this week.
Christian: Starting his third week of Elementary Algebra (Algebra I) this week.

English Grammar, Vocabulary, and Writing
Kelly: Teaching Terrific Writing is a great learning tool for Kelly. She is about half way done now. She continues to work in Wordly Wise 6.
Christian: Three-quarters of the way through the last book of the Easy Grammar series. Started Wordly Wise 6.
Future: We are still planning to start in on WriteShop when Kelly finishes Teaching Terrific Writing and when Christian finishes the last Easy Grammar book.

History and Literature
Kelly: Continues the first year of Sonlight’s two year survey of American history (with accompanying literature).
Christian: Continues the first year of Sonlight’s two year survey of World history (with accompanying literature).
Note: Because of my work load, Kelly and Christian are moving forward on the history book reading together. Kelly reads the history books while Christian draws in the time line book.

Science
Kelly: Physical Science: Jay L. Wiles’ physical science book.
Christian: General Science: This is first year in Jay L. Wiles stellar science education series.
Both: Lyrical Life Science II
Notes: We are continually astounded with how good these books are. We have decided that Kelly will keep going on Science during the summer to do three years in two. The science is the only thing she would have left to complete high school after her sophomore year. We do not want her to be stuck in homeschool a whole extra year just for one subject, so we are going to push ahead in that area.

Bible memorization
Kelly: Will continue memorizing Matthew 5 & 6 through Christmas.
Christian: Will continue memorizing Matthew 5 through Christmas.
Note: We have decided to give them a little more time in this area.

Handwriting
Christian: A Reason for Handwriting F

Computer programming
Christian: C# Game Programming

Spanish
Both the kids are on course to finish the first year of Rosetta Stone Spanish and start the second year by Christmas. We have bumped this up a little so the kids are doing 30 minutes instead of 20 minutes per day. We would really like to get them through this and on to a third language.

Music
Kelly: Kelly is doing quite well with her new teacher. Her personality can be a little bit of a challenge, but all-in-all she is learning a lot, both with playing the piano and dealing with voluble people.
Christian: Guitar goes well. Christian is growing so much, the teacher thinks he will need a full size guitar soon.

We were really loaded up with trick or treaters last night. I bet at least fifty people came by. It was very fun. The kids got all dressed up. Christian’s costume was a particular big hit. He dressed up as a mail box. He even has a better plan for next year. I will put a picture up here in a little bit.