Unbridled Learning

This posted to one of my groups; just passing on the ideas

  1
     Make a scrapbook of everything you do this summer
      The Basics of Scrapbooking
      http://www.scrapbookscrapbook.com/beginners.html<http://www.scrapbookscrapbook.com/beginners.html>
      2
     Have a picnic
      Planning a Picnic
      http://www.the-picnic-site.com/<http://www.the-picnic-site.com/>
      3
 
   Learn how to play soccer
      How to Play Soccer
      http://www.ehow.com/PrintArticle.html?id=2044097<http://www.ehow.com/PrintArticle.html?id=2044097>
      4
     Visit another country
      Lonely Planet Destination Guides
      www.lonelyplanet.com/destinations/<http://www.lonelyplanet.com/destinations/

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We started in early March by building a box.  We decided to try the square-foot gardening method by Mel Bartholomew.

We planted lettuce, spinach, broccoli, carrots, lavender, sugar snap peas, onions and garlic.  And potatoes, though we had to move those to their own container later because they got too big.  THese pictures were taken after 1 week.

These are after two weeks.

We've had snail problems, so we lost all but one broccoli plant, some of the lettuce and spinach, and the catnip we planted never really got going; neither did the lavender.  A couple weeks ago we planted some tomatoes, strawberries and moved the potatoes and those are all doing well.

Here's our first sugar snap pea that we picked.  IT was delicious!

Last week we had a whole (mini) salad made from our garden!  Here it is now after about 8 weeks.

And our first harvest.

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I think that's a Psalty song we used to always listen to on the way to camping when I was a kid.

Me, William, Kevan and Ben left our house at about 10 yesterday (Friday, the 13th; also Kevan's 14th birthday).  We picked up Ben's buddy Parker in AG, then headed to Fresno where we met Pam and Doug for lunch and then took Doug (Kevan's buddy) with us.  So, ya, me and 5 kids!  But all good kids, so it's all good.

The campground website and Pam both told me which way to go, which did not match my Google map printout or my Tomtom's directions. I figured if I ignored Tomtom and went the way I knew I needed to, he would eventually direct me to the correct route.  Well, that didn't happen... we ended up going through 10 miles of private property with lots of non-gated cows (except the occasional cow bridge.  It was a little scary, since I knew I couldn't turn around with the trailer.  But we came out the other side of the private property, and upon a weird abandoned-looking town.  The kids thought it was pretty freaky so they took a bunch of pictures.

When we got to the campground finally, it was about 7:30 and getting dark fast.  We found the campsite, parked the trailer pretty easily, and had some issues during setup - I told William to turn the water on when the sink was still upside down so a bunch of water poured into the trailer.
Then the power cord was seriously trapped inside its hole and it took a good 45 minutes for us to get it out so we cold plug in.  The door gave us issues for awhile figuring out how to put it in, but we got it.

William made dinner, we played Apples to Apples, and then crashed out around 11:30.

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I have been a little scarce this month, but here are some pictures I have not posted yet.

First, from a get together at Carmen's house to fly paper airplanes and, of course, play around.

And then a trip to Avila Valley Barn to pick out some pumpkins!

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Our homeschool co-op activities:

Well, the plan was to build a tree house, but there was a lot more hanging around (in hammocks, on ropes and swings, and in trees) than there was building!  I don't think anyone minded though.

Check out the full post at http://www.unbridledlearning.com

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Check out our latest adventures at the beach:

9/11
http://www.inclusivelearners.com/?p=12

9/25
http://www.inclusivelearners.com/?p=13

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I did not take very good notes last week on what we were doing, but I'll attempt an overview anyway.

Please visit Unbridled Learning to read about it

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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.

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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

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