Week 1 – Learning Curve for Parent and Child Alike
With one week under our belts, I thought I’d take a quick look at where we stand. Curriculum After the initial fun of brainstorming study ideas wore off, we were faced with the hard work of trying to fit all of these ideas into a coherent structure. My wife did …
Homeschooling by the Numbers
The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) suggests that every homeschooled student in the State complete at least 875 hours of instruction per year. Anna has already earned about 108 hours from her first month-and-a-half at the local high school (Art Photo 1 = 18, Algebra/trig = 18, English 10 …
The Roller-Coaster Less Traveled
After the big decision on Thursday, the next couple of days were a blur of brainstorming and planning: Friday My wife filled out the Homeschool Enrollment Form and we started researching homeschooling resources. Over dinner at the Milwaukee Ale House, an extended group of family members generated several pages of …
Taking the Road Less Traveled
My daughter, Anna, has been struggling with fatigue, anxiety and depression for several months now and the everyday stress of getting her out of bed and off to school is affecting the entire family. Her grades are suffering and our dreams of seeing her through high school and off to …
Donald Trump and the Truth Bubble
“Wherever the people are well-informed they can be trusted with their own government.” — Thomas Jefferson to Richard Price, 1789 Thomas Jefferson’s support of a free press and education for the common people — including entry to the highest levels of instruction (i.e. a college or university) — was based …
Discovering New Opportunities for Urban Design in American Cities
“What a city has to say must find expression in its architecture.” Walter Wallmann, Lord Mayor of Frankfurt/Main Here in the U.S., we tend to think of our built environment –- our cities and towns — as mostly finished. Sure, we might tear down a few old buildings or add …
CNN published the mugshots of all of the biker gang members who were arrested after the recent shootout in a Waco, TX restaurant. There were a total of 171 pictures, all in the same standard pose and most in the same standard orange jumpsuit: Seeing all of these pictures got …
There’s nothing too complicated about this post. I’ve been interested in creating an illustration of the U.S. Interstate system for awhile but my initial concept of a “subway-style” diagram of the network had already been done. After some recent experimentation with the D3 Javascript library, I decided that it might …
My family visited Washington D.C. last year for Spring Break and, during our 12-hour drive, I remember noticing a subtle change in the names of the cities and towns we were passing through. In the beginning, the place names had a familiar mid-western flavor; one that mixed Native American origins …
I have been reading a book on the development of the English language recently and I’ve become fascinated with the idea of word etymology — the study of words and their origins. It’s no secret that English is a great borrower of foreign words but I’m not enough of an …