The days leading up to the big test were manic days for the whole family. We all worked hard to get ready, the kids took the test, and now we are back to what passes for normal in our household. I worked out the homeschool schedules for the next couple of weeks on Sunday evening, but I have never included our read aloud books in those schedules. We are on the verge of finishing our Intelligent Design book, and I am in a little bit of a dilemma about what to read next. The choice is between radio theory and broadcast techniques. I would really like to do both, because in some senses these subjects go together. We could turn it into kind of a unit studies kind of thing.
Writing about this has given me a little bit of a plan to run by the kids. Christian and I are well into building the radio. All we need is some epoxy wire to finish winding the transformers (we did it wrong the first time and wrecked the wire, so we have to start over), then we can finish putting the thing together in just a few more days. Kelly did not work on this because she has too many projects already and was less interested. Nevertheless, the information in the radio theory book would be beneficial to both of them. At the same time, it is a lot more fun to actually broadcast stuff and not just study the technicalities of broadcasting electronics. So, here is what I am going to propose.
Now that the ACT is over, we have a little more time on our hands. We might use that time to read through The Electronics of Radio together just one day per week. We will all work on tuning, adjusting, and testing the radio we built (and about which the book is written) one other day of the week in place of reading aloud. Then, we could start reading through Sound and Look Professional on TV and the Internet the other two days per week that are available for reading. When we get far enough into the that material, we could go to one day per week of reading aloud about broadcast subjects and spend one day actually preparing and performing a broadcast.
I will talk to the kids to see what they think. If they like it, that is what we will try for awhile to see if we can make it work. They might have some thoughts on ways to improve this plan.
Note to Christian: There is still time for this.