Category: Children (Page 2 of 15)

Rosebud recently out-grew her last year’s swimsuit, and we managed to find a replacement at a Hiper Lider (the Super Wal-mart equivalent in Chile).  Yesterday she brought me her old, outgrown suit… Continue reading

Khan Academy is a free online education program. They cover almost everything. Biology, physics, chemistry, history, economics, and math of all types, from one-digit addition to calculus.

I have been a member for over two years. Doodle has not even been a member for a year, but he is making amazing progress. He has won more awards than me and has almost as many points.

Khan Academy has courses on Canvas, a programming language designed for moving graphics. There are hundreds of amazing video games that have been created by students. It is the go-to place for computer games. The really cool part is that you can edit the code yourself, to customize the game to your preferences! Doodle is creating his own Canvas programs.

For homeschoolers, this is an great option because of its vast coverage and all the ways they make it interesting– Doodle does this on his free time. He is very motivated about it; trying to get this award, or trying to master that skill, or trying to finish his canvas game.

There are some downsides…. they recently redid their site and started everybody’s math status over again, and it didn’t work out well. They had me take a test to see what level I was at, so that I wouldn’t have to re-master simple arithmetic and things like that, but after the test they considered me not proficient in 2-digit addition! I am at a much higher academic level than Doodle is, but thus far according to them I have mastered 65 skills, and Doodle has mastered 165.

Also, Khan academy is like most non one-on-one education situations in the aspect that you’re not forced to actually understand how it works, just how to get the answer right.

Here is a link to the site.

I just finished a course on Javascript, a programming language for adding action and interactivity to web pages.

Using previous experience and what I learned in the course, I made this web page, and am adding Javascript to further enhance the user experience. You can see the site here.

I am learning to walk on my hands. I started about two weeks ago, and my record is ten seconds. I have started doing the 7-minute workout. See the official 7 Minute workout here. I have been doing push-ups and pull-ups for over two years now.

I also run some, and that combined with cycling caused a stress fracture in my shinbone, simply because my calf was too tight, and my shin-muscle was too weak. The remedy to this is to lift a weight with your toe. In my case, I use the couch.

Update on cycling; I rode almost to “Farellones” a town of about 100 people up in the Andes a while outside of Santiago to the east. I gained 3,900 feet in elevation. The whole ride was 45 miles and took me a little over 4 hours. From my looking around on google maps in street view, the switchbacks up there seem to be some of the world’s best.

A couple of days ago, Mom, Rosebud and I were in the kitchen cleaning up.

Rosebud pointed at the fish we were going to cook for dinner and asked; Mama, does it have seeds? Um, I mean bones?

Later that evening, we were all sitting at the table and we had just prayed when Mom said; Be careful of seeds everybody.”