8/25 - 8/30 Unbridled Learning Journal

I'm not even going to pretend to myself that I'm going to keep this up, but as the first week of the new school year has come to a close (and we have a three-day weekend woot!), I thought I would post a log of what we have been learning so far.

On the Math front, besides general review we have been exploring the various dimensions, including the 4th. It started with Kevan's interest in Escher, and his downloading a bunch of Escher artwork which somehow led him to want to download the movie Flatland which I had coincidentally just downloaded the day before. I think I read about the movie on the TAGMAX list, and since Ben had been building tesseracts and supercubes and trying to figure out the fourth dimension a few days before I had downloaded it. What a happy coincidence that Kevan was following the same interest!

So, we watched that movie which was quite fascinating although it didn't illuminate us much about the 4th dimension other than the fact that I don't think it is possible for us to understand it! When we went to the (new! and beautiful!) library, Kevan checked out Spaceland, by Rudy Rucker (which he's already finished) and Flatland the book, which he has started.

At the HSC conference, Kevan purchased a math puzzle game called Pythangos after spending a long bit of time at the table playing with it. So... picture the Pythagorean theorem, with a square on each leg the length of the leg and a square on the hypotenuse the length of the hypotenuse. There are foam pieces the size of both leg squares cut up into various shapes. The puzzle is to piece them together to fill both squares, and then to take those same pieces and fill the hypotenuse square with them. There are several puzzles, with different colored foam pieces, that get progressively harder. Too hard for me after about the second level, lol. Ben spent a *lot* of time on those this week and solved red, orange, yellow, green and blue! All he has left is purple. Blue was a doozy, let me tell you!
Here is a picture of it complete:

One other sidenote... I went to Big Lots and bought some stuff that Carmen had alerted me was on sale (I had been complaining about not being able to find hot tub test strips at Walmart; they were on clearance at Big Lots so I bought them out at 75 cents a bottle!!) I bought a big inflatable 4 person boat. I came home. Kevan came to inspect my loot as usual (I also got a book and some cds at Goodwill). He saw the boat and I told him it was only $7.50 bucks since it was on sale for 75% off (this was not a setup, seriously!) Like 2 seconds later he said, so let's see that means it was about $30? Weirdo! lol

Ok, now for science... we are waiting for a large shipment of chemistry supplies that we need for Ben's newest teddy bear - Home Chemistry Experiments. In the meantime, I found a great site with kitchen chemistry; right now we are looking at different leavening agents. We started with air... yes, air. Demonstrated by putting a balloon in the freezer overnight, measuring its circumference, then measuring again at room temperature, and then once more after placing it in a 110 degree oven for 10 minutes. It grew... and so did the popovers, with nothing but air to grow them!  Ya, they were a little overdone, hehe.

Yum! Then we made cream puffs (no pictures, though... but they were good!)

We also started reading George's Secret Key to the Universe, by Stephen Hawking and his granddaughter. This involves the fourth dimension as well! We watched the show Evolve! on the evolution of sex. Now that was interesting.

And, we watched Bill Nye's new show "Stuff Happens" which was quite fascinating - he talks about and shows you the impact of various choices (in this case, breakfast choices) on the environment.

Oh yeah, we also painted a bunch of styrofoam balls for molecule models. Ben put together a few already - H2O, H2O2, and propane, but we'll do more and take some pictures.

In the area of History, we watched a movie on the Battle of Megiddo (ancient Egypt), as part of a review of ancient history before we go into the Middle Ages through modern that they want to learn this year.  The movie (from the library) wasn't too exciting so we didn't watch the whole thing.

Kevan and I are reading Uncle Tom's Cabin together, which is obviously a great history lesson! I read it years ago, and he has started it a couple times but it is difficult to understand so we are reading it together. We also watch the Daily Show and Colbert Report together which provides great fodder for current events conversation! Not to mention the punditkitchen.com website which we both keep up with and talk about. It's amazing the stuff he knows. He totally got this one:

This is not very historical, but Ben and I are reading Bridge to Terabithia together.

In the "other" category, we have plenty going on as well. We spent two afternoons with our local homeschool group this week planning a weekly co-op that the kids will help plan and coordinate. There was much trampoline-jumping, ball-throwing and game playing. We also planned a kid swap with Ben and his friend Parker so one day a week Ben will go to their house for the day and the following week Parker will come to our house for a day. Parker's mom also works from home so this gives us each a day of relative quiet now and then.

Ben has had two football scrimmages now, and his first real game is next Saturday. He is a defensive lineman. Here he is before picture day (on the right):

Will has lots of pictures of football but I don't have them on my computer yet.

Kevan and I are still in tae kwon do. Ben has been learning and mastering magic tricks again lately, and showing them to everyone who will watch. He learns them on Youtube mostly. He is very good!

One day while we were gone Will set up a scavenger hunt for Ben with clues leading to a $50 bill, which he owed him. They had a blast running through the house finding the clues, so that night Ben set up a scavenger hunt for his dad leading to a $1 bill with 0s taped to it to make the 1s into 100s. Ben is also doing stop motion films (well, so far he is taking lots of pictures, but hasn't put them all together yet) with legos and little wooden art mannequins.

Kevan has spent a lot of time playing his guitar. One of these days I will sneak and record him hehe. He loves to play but is not quite a performer... yet!!  He and I went and saw The Rocker yesterday at the movies. It was hilarious. We both love silly comedy, and also love The Office... The Rocker starred Dwight from The Office. Will, William and Ben stayed and played football and then watched football. Nerds.

Wow, I cannot believe that was all 1 week. No wonder I was so freaking tired.

Playing Video Games = Learning? Shocking!! (except to those of us who have actually watched kids play video games)

From Playing Video Games Offers Learning Across Life Span, Say Studies

In one paper, Fordham University psychologist Fran C. Blumberg, PhD,
and Sabrina S. Ismailer, MSED, examined 122 fifth-, sixth- and
seventh-graders' problem-solving behavior while playing a video game
that they had never seen before to show that playing video games can
improve cognitive and perceptual skills.

...

Findings from the student studies confirmed previous research on
effects of playing violent games: Those playing violent games were more
hostile, less forgiving and believed violence to be normal compared to
those who played nonviolent games. Players of "prosocial" games got
into fewer fights in school and were more helpful to other students.

Check out this article - Could Violent Video Games Reduce Rather Than Increase Violence? - for more information on this topic. It is highly debated and studies have been inconclusive; contrary to what this article implies.

Other studies involving students showed that those who played more
entertainment games did poorer in school and were at greater risk for
obesity.

Read the rest of the story at Unbridled Learning

Catching up from summer part 1

Well, I have some pictures on this computer and some on another so I decided to do this in parts. I need to get caught up now that William started school again yesterday, football is in swing for William and Ben, and we will have lots of projects to post about soon. Hopefully.

See the full post at http://www.unbridledlearning.com/wp/?p=931

Jefferson Memorial

Sent from my iPhone

- Posted using MobyPicture.com

Mitzie

Sent from my iPhone

- Posted using MobyPicture.com

Day at the River

I should never have waited so long before posting about this trip to the Sisquoc River back in April when it was full.

It was a beautiful day. We met Carmen along the way and headed out. We walked a ways down the shoreline until we found a good spot to settle in.

The kids discovered a bunch of tadpoles...

... and some raccoon tracks.

We had planned to make some miniature boats out of some river willow growing nearby, so we started gathering some good branches.

Then the girls discovered some real branches - driftwood logs, actually - and said, why don't we make a real raft?

So Carmen, well-prepared, creative and versatile, set to work armed with a pocket knife, some twine and some logs.

The kids set to work wrapping and tying...

and testing out the seat.

Then they took turns trying it out.

Michael even gave Xena a ride.

What a great day! I'm so glad we made it out there before the river dried up.

Cable in the Classroom

Don't forget to check this month's Cable in the Classroom guide to see what you want to watch/record. Here's what I don't want to miss.

Ancient Mysteries on A&E
Digging for the Truth History Channel
Gold! on the History Channel
The King's Highway: El Camino Real on the History Channel
Lincoln 200 Years on C-SPAN
Sports Figures on ESPNC
Biography - Charles Darwin on A&E
Forecast Earth Hurricanes on the Weather Channel
How the Earth Was Made on the History Channel
The New Explorers on A&E
The Wrath of God on the History Channel
American Politics/Road to the Whitehouse 2008 on C-SPAN

Kitty!

As you may or may not know, Kevan has been volunteering at our local Humane Society for awhile now, socializing cats. Basically that means grooming and playing with them so that they are sweet and friendly and adoptable. Here he is (with his friend Doug who was visiting) in the kitty room.

So the Humane Society called us yesterday afternoon with the following sad story. A lady named Christine just moved into a new (to her) house last week. They smelled cat urine in the sunroom, so they realized there was a cat living underneath the house. They had a dog, who soon chased the cat out and they boarded up the openings. Soon afterward she started to hear kittens mewing. She opened the openings again, and waited for the mama cat to return, but she did not. The dog had chased her away. Christine found the kittens (two of them) and put them on the porch hoping the mama cat would come get them there. One of the kittens died waiting. She thought both kittens were dead, but one of them was still hanging on. She heated him with a heating pad and purchased some kitty formula and bottles, and then called the Humane Society. She had two small children and could not handle caring for this kitten. The Humane Society can't take them in until they are eating on their own and litter box trained, so they asked us to foster the kitten until that time.

We went and picked it up from Christine at around 2:00.  It was mewing loudly and desperately looking for food.  Its eyes were still closed.  We took it home and started trying to feed it with the bottle Christine had already prepared and was using.  Turned out the nipple didn't have a hole in it.  Once we rectified that problem, the kitten ate like a pro and fell asleep.  Kevan and I read up on orphaned kitten care and learned how to stimulate her to go potty, and how often to feed her, etc.  She is sleeping in a pet carrier with a heating pad wrapped in towels (when we're not holding her that is).  She slept until evening (about 4 hours) and we fed her again.  Kevan and Ben slept downstairs by her box so that Kevan could feed her when she woke up in the night.  He said he woke up a few times, but the kitten never woke up and cried in the middle of the night.

I woke up early this morning (had a meeting at 5:30).  I got her out at about 6:00 and woke her up and started mewing, so we fed her breakfast.  Now she's sleeping again.

Pictures!

William and Ben selling sodas at Will's soccer tournament.

Homeschool Spring Fling park day!

Ben’s typing test

52 words

Speed test