This weekend was a fun weekend. I was going to say we did not get much done, but when I thought about what to write today, I realized that we did quite a bit. We just hung out on Friday, but got up pretty early on Saturday so we could buy Christian a suit. We found one at J.C. Penneys in the mall at Crossroads. It is perfect. After that, Kelly, Christian, and I had a banana/chocolate milkshake, a hot chocolate, and a coffee (respectively) at the Barnes and Noble so Lorena could shop for her dress. Kelly read while Christian and I used the wireless internet there to work on our computers. Lorena found a great dress! It is perfect for her coloring and will be fun to wear at the wedding in Mexico in a couple of weeks. We will put pictures of the event up after it is over.
On Sunday, we went about an hour east of Raleigh to a meeting that included two of regular meetings. Afterward, we had a potluck. It was nice because we got to get a little better acquainted with some people we had previously just met in passing. Lorena made deviled eggs and a pasta/sausuage dish. We also took a pie. Of course, we stopped for an ice cream cone on the way home, then I spent a bunch of the afternoon catching up on homeschool corrections. We are in the big push leading up to the Mexico trip. Instead of giving them work to do while they are on vacation, based on some nudges from others and guilt feelings of my own, I have decided they should not take any homeschool to Mexico with them. Still, we are going to push hard before they go and then for a week or so after they return to be in a good place by Thanksgiving.
Kelly and Christian talked to their very good friend Hannah who was our neighbor in Albany for a long time yesterday. We all miss her a lot.
I made great progress on my Betty Blonde comic automation program. It is a program I am writing to help me process Kelly’s comics for publication on the web. I had already written the part that takes the individual scanned frames, adds drop shadows and titles, and accumulates them into a single comic and and accompanying thumbnail. This weekend I added the ability to upload the comic and the thumbnail to the appropriate directories on our website. I think I will just add a rudimentary GUI to that part of the program and call it complete. Before I wrote the program, it took me about five minutes to scan in the panels, then another fifteen minutes to make the strip and put it up on our server. It still takes me five minutes to scan in the panels, but I can build and upload the strip in about thirty seconds now. That helps a lot. The next step will be to write a program to automate some of the daily posting. It currently takes me about ten minutes to do the daily posting. I hope to reduce that by at least half, if not more.
July 31, 2004 – La boda de Tony y Martha (Photos)
August 5, 2004 – The patio is poured
Hey Ken,
Tell the kids they can pay me for the “nudge” later! Ha! You made a good choice. Enjoy your 2 weeks in Mexico.
Take some time to relax yourself. Enjoy your wife and kids without the Homeschool thing hanging over your head. Your kids are WAY ahead of the pack academically – heck, I don’t understand many of Christian’s posts (especially when he talkds about computer stuff) – and will not suffer from the time away.
A tip and a horror story for the kids when taking standardized tests:
Your kids are already very smart, so the material may not be tough. If they are not used to timed tests or
are not savvy on test taking strategy, go over that with them. There are many websites that give specific hints
on how to succeed at these tests. I have never, ever “taught to the test”, but have always given them a quick ‘tune-up”
in test taking skills.
Let me tell you a little story about what happened to Emma this past weekend. She had just finished a section on the SAT said she was on such a rols and feeling very positive about how she was doing. The time was called
just as Emma finished, and just as she finished she noticed that she had mistakenly bubbled in all of her section 7 answers into the section 8 portion of the answer key! She was mortified and called the proctor immediately who listened in horror and who then called the gal above her. Anyway, the decision was that although they totally understood, they could not allow her to move her answers up. They gave her the option of quitting and cancelling her scores, or she could just
continue, but she would have to leave section 7 blank and erase all the bubbles from section 8 in order to make
room for her section 8 answers when they returned from the break. Emma was so upset, but true to her character,
she bucked up, decided to continue, took a minute to regroup, and erased all her precious answers and
completed the test. I was so bummed for her, but very proud of her for not giving up.
Anyway, all that said, tell the kids to be very careful to check the section where the answers are supposed
to go, and remember that all the prep in the world may go out the window in a heartbeat 🙂 Just give them a big hug when they get home. Your kids, if they take the tests every year should be well prepared.
Ruthie
Some typos, sorry
Hey, is there any way to stop the text from going past the edge of the comment box? I can’t see every thing
that I type and when I do pay attention, I just hit the enter key to go to the next line before the words
go off the page. So sometimes I can’t see if I have actually typed something, and I think I didn’t type it
and them I retype it. It makes my posts look a mess! Do you even understand what I am talking about?
The important stuff first. I am not exactly sure why your entries go off the end of the edit box when you type in comments. I know exactly what you are talking about and am not sure why. It does not do that when I type in entries. I will jump into the forums this weekend and try to figure it out. One thing you can do as a (really lousy) work-around, is type the comment into a text editor, copy it, then paste it into the comment box. Even if it goes off the end of the page, it will format properly when it appears below the posts.
Wow. I would have been mad and frustrated if that would have happened to me on the SAT. I think it is fairly outrageous that they would not let her fix the test or even help her to fix it by moving bubble per bubble. Isn’t the point to know how well the student knows the material? I know there are rules, but in this case, because section 8 was filled in and there were no answers in section 7, there is absolutely nothing that was gained by not letting her make the changes. It would have been verifiable that no cheating took place. Good for Emma that she had a great attitude about it. I hope she will take it again this year.
Your comment on test taking skills is good advise. I had not really thought about it, but will talk to them a little about it before they go in. You are just like me with respect to teaching to the test. We do not do that either. When they do their final pass of the ACT or SAT that they will use to get into college, I might go through some specific test preparation, but right now, I am more interested in just knowing that they are getting the stuff they need. The hug advise is great advise, too. There will be no shortage of that down at Grandpa and Grandma’s house in Mexico next week. They will get enough hugs to last them for months–too bad we cannot test them down there, too (said Scrooge, the dad).
Thanks for the Mexico advise, too. We are very much looking forward to the trip. We will be posting some from down there and Kelly has some Spanish/English Mexican Betty Blonde strips coming along!
If I had been there at the test and had seen what was going on ,I might have been a mother bear. Anyway, I don’t think, at this point that anything can be done about it, but I will investigat a bit further.
It is not only about test preparation, but specifically test taking strategy. Everything
from how to manage their time on the tests to make sure they don’t run out of it,
what to do if they don’t know the answer but can make a pretty educated guess, should they fill in a bubble even if they have absolutely no way to narrow down a choice. I think on the ACT you are not penalized for wrong answers, meaning you just don’t get the point if you answer it wrong, but on the SAT, you actually lose 1/4 of a point if you answer it wrong. So sometimes it comes down to weighing your options, or to how good you think your guess really is. That will make the differendce as to whether, if you run out of time on the test, you just go down the ‘bubbles’, and fill in all the “c” answers, because it won’t matter if you get them wrong..no points deducted.
I think that is the advice for the ACT….you will have to look into that particular strategy .
Ahh… Very good advise. I also talked to a buddy of mine at work. I was worried that the kids have not had trig, but he said that if I just give him the basics — Pythagorean Theorem, SOH-CAH-TOA, and some triangle stuff, that will go a long way in improving their grade on that part of the stuff. The kids already do a first pass on the test to get the stuff they have down cold, then go back to do the things that are harder. That was a good tip on the ACT about not getting dinged for stuff you try. I will look into that. I am also thinking about doing some research, then getting an ACT prep book that should have some additional idea. Let us know how it goes with you guys on the next pass.
They may find out that if they don’t do the test item by item, they may run out of time before they can go back. I would have them go item by item, and if there is one that is taking too much time (and actually if it is taking too much time, they are doing it wrong, or really just don’t get how to do that item)just make a quick guess, and then quickly jot the item number down
and return to those items if you get additional time. I do know that TT Alg 2 does not teach
logarithms and exponential functions like the “state standards” textbooks, so you may want to have Kelly look at those. Pythagorean Theorum is important. What in the world is SOH-CAH-TOA?
Emma said that the math on the ACT was harder than on the SAT. She said that the SAT is more reasoning based, so that if you have never seen something, you may be able to
reason it out. The ACT is more informational based, so you have either learned it or you haven’t.
When can I see the GREAT dress Lorena picked out?? Sleepless in Albany…