Catching Up or Marking Time

Two days lost to sickness and one to taking care of family matters and by the start of the second week of school we are already playing catch up.

We got Mom and Dad settled in their new digs this weekend. It was a hard weekend with way to much going on and Dad was exhausted. He walked as much on Saturday (moving day) as he normally walks in a week and then on Sunday, he wanted to go for a walk at the new place and they got lost in the hallways. It isn’t that hard if it is your first day there. In the end, Dad was so tired that he fell several times and on the last fall he bumped his head. It was a minor bump but the rules where they live say he needed to go to the ER and get checked out. That was a 8 hour nightmare. Next time we will find a 24 hour urgent care facility. He also broke his little finger so now he has a splint on one hand. It makes it harder for him to hold on to his walker. I will need to go down a bit more often than I had planned. That means changing they way I do and schedule homework so that the boys will be able to do some work on those trips.

We did manage to get in several hours yesterday and a whole day today and if I am honest, the only real problem is that MY schedule is off. This kids are doing fine and work hard. The first of the year is designed around review and reinforcement before we hit the harder stuff so the fact of the matter us that they are blowing through pretty fast right now. I just have to get over the fact that MY schedule is changed and the kids don’t know the difference. This whole home school thing as all about me isn’t it? Sigh!

On another subject …

Last October my wife walked out of her job to start her own investment firm. We had been talking and praying about it for a long time and even though the stock market was in a free fall, we knew that God’s timing was perfect. Well it was and things are going well but that is not exactly what I wanted to talk about.

Starting the business meant that we had to budget much differently than we had in the past. As a result, I began to look at open source software to meet my computing needs. I was amazed at the abundance of very high quality, free software that is available. I wrote about some of it in the spring but I have since found a lot more. I will write more about my favorites with respect to homeschooling in my next post. Stay tuned! I found some real gems.

Dear GOD

Dear GOD, please help my father and mother through these difficult times. Give Mom strength, patience and understanding but above all please give her your perfect peace. LORD, please help Dad to understand more and to not be so demanding and strong headed. I pray that he will understand what Mom has to do to help and care for him and that he will give her grace when it doesn’t go the way he wants it to. Help them both find comfort in their new home and wash them both with your peace and grace. AMEN

Today I moved my 82 year old father and 80 year old mother from my brothers house, 165 miles to an assisted living facility that while no closer to me is much closer to all of the grand kids and great grand kids. Dad was diagnosed with Parkinsons over 10 years ago and it has taken it’s toll on both him and Mom. The medications have increased his physical quality of life over the years but they too have taken a mental/cognitive toll. Together, the disease and some of the side effects of the medications have greatly reduced his cognitive abilities. He is able to get around with a walker but needs help getting into and out of a chair or bed or anything in the bathroom. He is becoming increasingly combatitive toward Mom when things don’t happen how and when he wants.

They will have been married 60 years this November and Mom gives every ounce of her strength to care for him as he gave his all to provide for her for so many decades. As the disease has progressed, Dad, once the most patient and even tempered man you could have ever known, has grown increasingly demanding and intolerant of even the littlest things that are not as he wishes. This change in behavior has tasked Mom to her limit.

In the summer of 2004, we moved Mom and Dad from their home in Sequim, to a cottage on our property outside of Issaquah. Even then he had a difficult time making the adjustment and it was a 4 weeks before he stopped asking when he was going to be allowed to go home. In 2007 we moved them into my brothers home in Ellensburg because Mom needed more help and my sister in law has many years of experience in long term care. That move was even more taxing than the first and it was many weeks before he finally settled into his new home. Now Dad requires more that Mom can give alone and this weekend we moved them into an assisted living facility.

This was the longest ride that Dad has taken in over 10 years. They are both exhausted. Thankfully I have an extended family that has stepped up to the task. My daughters were waiting at the new place to help unpack, make beds and do everything they could to make Dad comfortable and to help Mom get “back to normal” as quickly as possible.

Dad has served GOD sacrificially for over 50 years. He was a prayer warrior and a humble servant to anyone who called upon him for help. He was truly a man after GOD’s own heart. Now, while his physical body is recognizable, the rest of him is not. I am not angry with GOD but my heart and mind scream to heaven … why?!? I understand we live in a sinful world and that sickness, pain and suffering are a result of the fall of man. I understand that our reward is not on this earth but that we will surely receive it when we are with HIM in heaven. Yet I still cannot bring myself to accept that Mom has to suffer these things?!? Dad, though he is weak and often frustrated with his lack of mobility, for the most part is either content or unaware of what is happening to him. Mom now bears the burden fully and does so with the faithfulness of a saint.

Dear GOD, please give Mom strength and patience and more than anything, please give her your perfect peace and grace! I know that the heart that you gave Dad to serve and sacrifice is still there. Please, please heal what ever is wrong in his mind that robs him of who you made him to be. I am not asking you to make him strong or asking you to give him years. I am asking, no I AM PLEADING with you oh GOD to let the heart that served you so faithfully for all those years, bless Mom and give her peace and grace! Let these last years, months or days be filled with sweet memories and without the pain. PLEASE GOD PLEASE?!?

95 Degrees Today – Was It Summers Last Fling?

We don’t get but 4 or 5 days of temperatures in the 90s each year. This year we not only had about 15 but we also had 4 that were in the 100s. One day even hit 108. Add in about 40% humidity and you have some pretty miserable weather. (For those of you not familiar with the Puget Sound, we live about 25 miles east of Seattle in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. The temperatures are generally about 10 degrees warmer on sunny days and 10 degrees cooler on clear nights. If it is windy and rainy, the temperatures stay pretty uniform around the area due to the winds mixing of the atmosphere.) I generally don’t mind the heat having spend many weeks in the Army training in full combat gear when the temps were near 120. You get used to it and though it isn’t fun, it is tolerable. Well the opposite is true when you get used to the mild weather of the Pacific Northwest. You become much less tolerant of temperature extremes and they become down right miserable. Well today was one of those days. Yes 95 was MISERABLE! Try it with the flu, a fever and no air conditioning and see if you don’t agree. On second though … pass! It wasn’t any fun.

I did get the weather station back up and running again. I will get a web feed from the weather station and post a link in the blog sometime next week. Yeah I’m a geek but you should have seen Putz the Younger’s eyes light up when he saw the information from the base unit appear on the screen of the computer. He tried to hide his delight but his eyes told it all. Now he keeps sneaking back into the room to watch the graph change as the temperature changes. He is learning graphs and he doesn’ even know it!

There was no homeschool today. As I said before, I have the flu and Putz the Younger though feeling better was still running a fever and neither of us were in any mood to try school work. Putz the Elder even ran a fever for part of the day. When he doesn’t even care if the TV is turned on or not I know he is sick.

Now for some rest!

Back in the Saddle Again!

Summer is over! … But then I suspect you knew that already.

We started homeschooling this week and now the flu has swept in, slowing things down some. At least no one will be behind “the rest of the class” when we get started again.

I spent the better part of the summer researching curriculum and finally settled on a mix of curriculum sources. We are using:

Math-U-See
KONOS
Stick Figuring Through the New Testament
Phonics Road
Artistic Pursuits
and material from the folks at Critical Thinking.

Our science materials are due in any day. We went with Academy of Science for Kids.

KONOS is a unit study format and the other subjects such as literature, history, science and social studies are covered therein. Some of the other subjects like science are also included in the KONOS but I am a bit of a geek/nerd so I really wanted the science kits to play with …. er I mean to use as a teaching aid. Yeah that’s it!

I Got a New Vacuum! And I Like it! A lot!

In case any of you doubted, yes I really am the stay at home dad and I do the cleaning. Yesterday I was cleaning in preparation for the visit of my wife’s father and step mother and my Hoover died. Well is still sucks but is the self propelled version and it was that portion the quit. Now in order to vacuum carpet you have to plant both feet and push with a great deal of strength to get it to move. I vacuumed one room that way and I felt like I had spend an hour at the gym. So I got on the phone to my lovely wife …

“Hi sweetie. How has your day been?”

“Good, I’ve gotten a lot done today. Have the cretins been helping with the cleaning?” she asks, knowing the answer beforehand.

“Well Matthew is picking on Jack and Jack is whining louder than that vacuum cleaner. Speaking of the vacuum cleaner. Can you stop by Subway and pick up dinner on your way home and oh …. stop by Costco and pick a new vacuum? I am glad to hear you had a good day. I’ll talk to you when you get home. Bye dear”

“Hold on just minute there big guy … why do we need a new vacuum?”

So I tell her the story and she agrees that we haven’t much choice. She calls from Costco and we discuss the selection and decide that since there are only two “better” vacuums to choose from and one of them is self propelled we’d go with the other one … the Dyson. The $400 Dyson. Gulp!

My wife quit her job of 9 years in October and started her own investment firm in January so our cash flow is under constant scrutiny. A $400 vacuum is a big purchase right now and I wondered whether it would be worth the price.

Well … after one day of use I have to say that it is the best vacuum I have ever used. In the past 10 years I have burned up two Hoovers, a Eureka and something else my wife had when we got married. None of those vacuums ever came close to the cleaning ability of my new Dyson. I had vacuumed one room before the Hoover quit and this morning I re-vacuumed the same room with the Dyson. I was stunned at the amount of dirt that came out of that carpet. The Hoover was a model that rated tops in Consumer Reports and had been serviced within the year. In other words, it was doing as good a job as it was designed to do and yet the Dyson was able to get a significant amount of dirt out of the carpet even after the Hoover had given it’s best. I love this machine!!

Yes, I am a 56 year old retired Army Sergeant swooning over a vacuum. Get over it! I like it and I don’t care who knows it!

You laughed. You know you did so share it already!

Weather Studies – Be Part of a Nationwide Reporting Network

Did you know that you can report the rain hail and snow that falls in your area to a data collection point and that information is then used to forecast the weather, predict floods, monitor water resources and becomes part of a large historical database that will help forecasters increase accuracy when predicting precipitation in local forecasts. Hows that for adding realism to your weather studies?

As you know weather reporting stations are located across the country but the weather between any two of those stations can vary dramatically. The result is that forecasts must be more general in nature and creating accurate forecasts for specific areas is extremely difficult. The other problem that plagues forecasters is that the computer models use historical data that was collected at the weather forecasting stations. While this data covers decades and in some cases more than 100 years, it is woefully lacking in coverage. In other words the distance between reporting stations is to great for the historical records to help the computer models predict more localized precipitation amounts accurately. What is the solution? Enlist the aid of volunteers and increase the number of reporting stations by as many are willing to participate.

Enter CoCoRaHS – Community Collaborative Rain Hail & Snow Network.  This organization was born out of the Colorado State University after a flood devastated Fort Collins in 1997. It was determined that the then current network of precipitation reporting stations was not adequate to met the needs of the forecasters. In short the variation of precipitation from one location to another was greater than could be determined with the reporting systems in place. As a result the weather models used to predict precipitation were not able to anticipate the tremendous amount of rain that fell on Fort Collins and the surrounding area. The answer was to enlist volunteers across the country to record rain hail and snow and report that information daily to the data collection center at the CoCoRaHS website. Currently 42 states are online and collecting information to be feed to weather forcasters, researchers and a host of other agencies. Check out CoCoRaHS About Us to read more.

Currently 42 states are participating so there is a good chance that your state is included. It is a growing program and four of the remaining states will be added this year. Your participation could help make the weather forecasting more accurate in your area. Give them a look and consider participating. You will need to purchase a rain gauge at about $25.00 but that is the sum of the cost to participate in this valuable weather data collection program.

Let’s get lots of homeschoolers involved. Share this!

Websites for Teachers (Parents) and Other Fun Stuff

Today’s post will be short as I have not had much time to be trolling the internet. I have been deeply absorbed in the book “Teaching the Trivium” by Harvey and Laurie Bluedorn. I will be posting a review of the book at a later date. I am not yet half way through the book and already it has changed the way I will approach homeschooling when we start later this hear. It hasn’t changed my goals or philosophy about homeschooling so much as it has given me the tools to do accomplish what I already felt I needed to do. I will write more about this in the book review. Stay tuned.

Today I have two websites that are packed with educational tools, links and materials. Then I have two sites that are more fun stuff but yet still have use to homeschoolers. So let’s get started.

The Best on the Web for Teachers   This web site offers 1000s of pages and links to 1000s of other sites containing, lesson plans, worksheets, teaching ideas, themes, workbooks, tutorial, sheet makers and printables. I spent an hour on the site and decided that instead of trying to bookmark a few selections that I liked, I’d make it one my first stops when I am looking for supplemental material for the curriculum I am using.

Sites for Teachers offers the same type of information and I am sure that there will be some duplication as both of these sites act as collecting points for a vast array of tools. This site is not as well laid out and it is smaller in total content but for that reason it may be easier to find some of the more common materials you need.

Clipart ETC   I like this clip art site because I like this style better than many of the other clipart sites. It is in black and white, line drawings with a bit of a “wood cut” feel to them. They have an old school look and feel to them and yes, it kinda fits with my classical style. These will make good enhancements to workbooks and lapbook pages.

If you have favorite clip art sites that you use in your homeschooling, please let me know. I’d like to do a post on just clipart sites some time in the future.

Our final site today will have a narrower audience but if you use a GPS for hiking, traveling or exploring in the course of your homeschooling activities, then you MUST check out this site. Everytrail is a place to upload the tracks from your GPS and the photos you took to create a travelogue of your hike, trip or wanderings. You can then create links to your own blog or website and share the trip including maps, photos and your comments. Photos can be geotagged so you can not only share what you saw but where you saw it as well. Geotagged you ask? Yes, the GPS not only keeps a log of your route but it also keeps a detailed date/time log as well. That digital camera that you use, keeps date/time information for each photo you take. Match the date/time log from the GPS and the date/time stamp on a photo and viola! you have a geotagged photo. You can get standalone software to accomplish this task but in this case Everytrail does it for you. All you have to do is upload the GPS track and the images then let the web site link the photos to the GPS log via the common date/times. Your friends can see your pictures and see the exact location where they were taken. Neat!!

So grab your GPS and your camera and record that next science walk-about. Post it to Everytrail and share it with all of your homeschooling friends!

Now share this whole post too!

More Free Books and Other Interesting Internet Finds for Homeschooling

We all like to find free stuff especially if it is something we were already looking for. In today’s installment I share two site for free books, one site for swapping books, movies, CDs and DVDs, a site for creating screencasts and finally something fun.

Project Gutenberg has been a favorite of mine for many years. The site contains over 28,000 books in many different formats from text files to files that can be read on mobile readers such as Palm handheld phones. The list includes Shakespeare, Longfellow, Browning, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Lewis Carroll, da Vinci, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Bram Stoker, George Elliott, Homer, Jules Verne, Victor Hugo, Oscar Wilde, Jane Austin, Aesop, Plato, Robert Lewis Stevenson, Tolstoy, Kipling … just to name a few. If you are going to read to children from the computerized version of a book, I recommend doing one of two things. If an HTML version is available, use that version and once you have it loaded into your browser, hit CTRL + several times until the font is sized for easier reading. Some books are only available in text version. Load these into a word processing program and change the font size for the whole document. Your eyes will thank you and you will avoid the headache from straining to read very small type. The larger type also works well for times when the kids are reading along with you.

eBooks have become popular with the advent of hand held mobile devices like the Palm series, the iPhones and other similar devices. The advantage to eBooks is generally that the reader on each platform does the necessary formatting for you particular device and you only need one eBook. The same eBook file can be read on your computer and your hand held. eBook readers are generally free and can be found at most eBook websites. So without further adeau here are two sites that offer FREE eBooks. ManyBooks and Feedbooks.

It is worth noting here that the eBooks sites will contain a lot of contemporary works and the range of subjects is very broad. I would not suggest sending your children to these sites to look for reading material. The sites themselves are fine but some of the eBooks cover subjects best passed by.

The 10 Best Websites To Swap Books, Movies, Games & CDs
Ok so now you know another one of my secrets for finding these sites and guess what, I wasn’t using Stumble! So there! I can quit anytime I want to! For a while … maybe? The accompanying article says everything that needs to be said so I will move on.

The next site makes quick work of creating “movies” of things that you do on your computer. Let’s say your friend in another state is having problems figuring out how to embed a photo in their blog. They are using the same blogging service as you and no matter how you have tried to explain it over the phone, it just didn’t work. Go to Screencast, click on the onscreen button. A java applet will be installed on your computer and a small screen will appear that allows you to start the program. It is small and very quick. At the top left corner of the screen will be a “Start Recording” button. Click the button and go through all the steps for embedding an image into a blog using your computer. When your done, move your mouse pointer to the red line at the top of the screen and the recording will stop. You can restart recording if you wish or click stop. That is all there is. You’re done. You have created a movie of every thing you did. Every move of the mouse, every character you typed including corrections and errors. The program then gives you the option of previewing what you just recorded. If you are satisfied, save it and Screencast provides you with several ways to link or send that movie to someone. You can’t edit in any way but it is quick, easy and it is FREE! So if the mistake is bad, you can afford to go back and re-record it.

The last entry for the day is Flipbook Printer. If you don’t know what a flip book is then ask your parents and if they don’t know then it is time to call the grandparents and remind them that you love them. Try creating flipbooks of stick figures walking or jumping. This is a good way to teach children to think through each step in a very literal way. They can also get an idea of how to create animations. How knows, you may have a budding Dreamworks artist in your house.

Well that is it for today. I sill have more to share so be sure to check back soon.

Oh, I almost forgot … share this?

Words and Books on the Internet

Ok, so I have been at it again. I know it is starting to look like I have an Internet addiction but I am really filling out my list of resources before I start homeschooling later this year. Really it isn’t a problem.. I can quite any time. Honestly I can … I promise!

Let’s change the subject a bit. Let me show you what I found and maybe you’ll see that this internet thing of mine is really for the best. Today is the first of several installments that are mainly educational resources. Each installment I will try and add a link that just might make the rest of your life easier.

Lexipedia is an interactive online english lexicon. Type in the word of your choice and get a graphical representation and definition of nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, fuzzynyms, synonyms, and antonyms. There really isn’t anyway to explain the graphical representation other than to say it is unique and functional. So what are fuzzynymz? They are all the other words that related to the selected word but don’t fall into one of the other categories.

WOW Library   Put words together and you get books. This website will send you a weekly list of all the new books that arrive at you local library. You have to sign up for an account but it is free and seems to be ad free as well. You enter your zipcode and then select from a list of the libraries in and around your zipcode. Then you wait. Unfortunately I did not see a way to get in immediate list. The lists are generated weekly and emailed to subscribers. It would be nice to be able to get a list immediately now that we are in the age of “instant gratification takes to long.” Maybe in the next upgrade?

LibirVox   Since we are already talking about books, how about free audio books from the public domain. This site provides over 2000 audio books free to download in a couple of formats. Many are classics such as Shakespeare and Aesop’s Fables and the price is right. New books are added all the time so be sure to check back often. “Hey kids, close up your Nintendo DS’s and lets listen to Macbeth till we get the hotel.”

Flash Card Flash   There are plethora of good flash card sites on the internet. This site allows you to search the top 6 all from one interface. Actually you get results from many more than the top 6 because many of the top 6 tap into other sites as well. On one search I ran I counted 12 different sites listed in the first 30 results. This could very well be your one stop resource for flash cards.

Grocist is not just another grocery list. Add a bar scanner and you can almost eliminate the typing. When you empty a package, just scan the bar code and it is added to your shopping list. What? You don’t have a bar code scanner? You probably don’t but they can be purchased new on ebay for as little as $20. (NOTE: Many bar code scanners are cordless and battery operated. The scanner is all that you need in the kitchen if you want to keep your new laptop away from the various spills and splashes.) This program and a $20 bar code scanner can save you a lot of time. I think that this is could be about the best $20 spent on efficiency I have seen in a while. YMMV

I have many more items in my list and I will share them with you in the next few days.

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How Great is Our God!

God can be found anywhere we look if we will open our eyes and allow him to reveal himself.   God does not always show himself in the bold and obvious but often in the subtle, the underlying meaning of something. It is in the deeper meaning that we suddenly discover that what looks like a mere coincidence has been transformed into the profound!    This clip is an illustration of the transformation from the “coincidental” to the profound.   This clip contains an image of something occurring naturally coincidentally looks like something that reminds us of our Savior. Only when we learn it’s function and purpose do we see the profound. This is an excerpt from a message entitled “How Great is Our God.”

Prepare to be awestruck!

I first saw the video at the Blog Walking Therein.   Drop by and check them out!

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