So it came up this week that Tex has the Scientific Method as a part of his Scouting requirements, and although they get a healthy dose of it from The Mythbusters I'm always happy to take opportunities to use it in real life. So. Noodle is a nut for "experiments". This mostly just means mixing stuff together, and it doesn't even have to be sciencey (yes, it's a word, so hush) stuff, it can just be bubble bath and water. But on this particular day he wanted to repeat the experiment of the day before by mixing baking soda with various liquids to see which ones could make it bubble the most. He though chocolate and strawberry syrups mixed together had a good chance at the title. So we chose five liquids: the syrup mixture, fresh lemon juice, pasteurized OJ, honey, and filtered water. Noodle helped set up five separate samples of baking soda, and Tex joined in at this point to help me use litmus papers to test each liquid. The fresh lemon juice got the biggest reaction, turning the litmus paper a dark red almost immediately. Next on the list was the OJ, while the syrups, honey, and water all appeared to be rather neutral. We devised a system to rate the reactions, listing a "1" as no reaction, a "2" as a mild bubbling, and a "3" as a very fizzy reaction. After adding water to one sample of baking soda and recording a "1" reaction, we dipped litmus paper in the solution and it immediately turned a deep bluish-green.
Then the real fun started! The honey and syrups had to be thinned with water after our initial attempts resulted in little baking soda-covered balls of viscous liquid, but still rated as "1" reactions. The pasteurized OJ was rated a "2" for its light fizzing. The lemon juice was the clear winner with a big, bubbling foam that threatened to overtake its container! Then Tex and I wondered if fresh orange juice would have a different reactions than store-bought, so I grabbed what I thought was an orange and sliced it open only to find that it was really a grapefruit. Oops. Well, no matter, the Mythbusters make mistakes all the time, so we decided to include fresh grapefruit juice in our sample, too. We then squeezed some fresh OJ and tested both with litmus paper. The color of the litmus paper dipped in grapefruit juice was quite as dramatic as the lemon. The orange juice was less so, but more acidic than the pasteurized variety. Tex and I compared the blue base paper with the red lemon paper and noted that the biggest reactions came when combining the substances that had the most dramatic color changes, and from that he predicted that the grapefruit juice was going to have the biggest reaction of the two new liquids, but that the fresh OJ would have more of a reaction than the store-bought. And boy was he right! Noodle couldn't get over the fizz of the grapefruit juice and had a blast mixing it with baking soda, then mixing the lemon and grapefruit juices and adding them together. Two happy guys. :-)
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Just keep learning, learning, learning
I love this life. There is nothing better than being able to have my children around me and watch them learning. Sure, there are days when I would happily duct tape them all to the couch just to get a half-hour of uninterrupted Quiet Time, but I can wait a couple years until they're more capable of giving me that gift. ;-)
Only problem is: if I don't blog more often, I totally forget all the stuff I was going to mention! We've done SO much the last few weeks since getting back into our homeschool schedule after the holidays, and I'm going to try to remember as much as I can.
We got a microscope for Christmas, and it has already yielded hours of entertainment and learning. It is a compound microscope, so it can view both slides and 3-D objects with its different light sources. We've examined the difference in crystals between table salt, kosher salt, and sugar. We've looked at dead bugs up close. Today Tex and I made our own slide with mold from an old croissant (it's not bad housekeeping, it's science!), and another with water from the toilet (nothing in the water moved, which I found wonderfully reassuring), and plan to get some pond water next time we're out and about, and examine it for beasties.
Noodle was busy experimenting with some acids and bases to see what happens. Tex bought some Pucker Powder at the science museum last week and I noticed that a main ingredient was citric acid, aka the stuff that Noodle likes to mix with baking soda and water and watch it bubble. Noodle begged and pleaded and got Tex to part with one teaspoon of his Pucker Powder to see what sort of reaction it would yield. Unfortunately it didn't do much other than make colored water, but it was worth a shot! We then moved on to squeezing lemon wedges onto the baking soda, and that got a much more exciting reaction! So much fizzing! Noodle was very happy until he discovered that lemon juice and cuts on one's finger do not mix well. Sometimes science hurts. :-(
What else? Well, a couple weeks ago we had an Alabama snowstorm, which means we had actual snow that stuck on the ground and could be made into snowballs and tiny snowmen. Of course the kids had a blast, and we got out our magnifying glass to observe the crystal formation in the snowflakes. We were also completely tickled to discover that one of our nearby ponds was completely frozen over, a phenomenon I've never seen in this town. We went to explore and see how thick the ice was. I thought it couldn't be more than an inch, but after banging and digging with sticks and rocks for a good while we had to stop because we couldn't get farther than about 3 inches deep. Knowing it was that thick, I decided we could risk a little "skate" around the rim where I could actually see the dirt and grass underneath the ice. We talked about ice safety and listened to the faint creaks from the ice as we walked around the edge. The boys would have stayed all day but MonkeyGirl thought landing on her bottom on the cold, hard ice lost its luster after about a dozen times.
We've also been making a concerted effort to be sure the kids get their "P.E." every day. Of course some days that's as easy as going to a park and letting them run and climb until they're sweaty and worn out, but Tex also attends a homeschool P.E. class at the YMCA every week and attends Little Gym's homeschool class once a week as well. He's really improved his body strength and can now do a pullover on the bar and a straddle roll, and in P.E. he's started making home runs in kickball and doing better on the Presidential Fitness events. We have also begun, as a family, to use our new Wii Fit Plus that we got for Christmas every morning. Tex especially loves it and gets some good aerobic exercise doing the hula hoop, short jogs, and obstacle courses. It's a nice way to get him moving first thing in the morning.
And finally, our reading progress. I mentioned that Tex had finally had his lightbulb and realized that he could read, but I think he's been a little disappointed that every word isn't easy to read. So I mention to him that he's going to have to practice to get better at it, which is usually met with a rant about how "I don't like reading, I'm never going to read, you're going to have to read to me forever!" LOL But the other night when he lamented that he couldn't read Star Wars on his own and had to wait on pokey ol' Mommy, I mentioned it again, "honey, the more you practice reading, the more confident you'll be, and the more you'll be able to read, and before you know it you'll be flying through whatever books you want to." He seemed to think about it for a moment and then said, "ok". And since then he's been doing more spontaneous reading on his own and not taking it so badly when he's not immediately correct. We even, Tex, Noodle, and I, played gummi words for about 45 minutes yesterday and they both did amazing. I bought these cards designed to help you recognize "word families", so they have things like "___ight", or "___ump" on them. So then we just took our gummi letters and made "bright", "light", and "plump rump" (Tex's favorite). Even Noodle was doing great with the families like "_at" and "_ig". I wouldn't be at all surprised if they were both reading independently over the summer!
Only problem is: if I don't blog more often, I totally forget all the stuff I was going to mention! We've done SO much the last few weeks since getting back into our homeschool schedule after the holidays, and I'm going to try to remember as much as I can.
We got a microscope for Christmas, and it has already yielded hours of entertainment and learning. It is a compound microscope, so it can view both slides and 3-D objects with its different light sources. We've examined the difference in crystals between table salt, kosher salt, and sugar. We've looked at dead bugs up close. Today Tex and I made our own slide with mold from an old croissant (it's not bad housekeeping, it's science!), and another with water from the toilet (nothing in the water moved, which I found wonderfully reassuring), and plan to get some pond water next time we're out and about, and examine it for beasties.
Noodle was busy experimenting with some acids and bases to see what happens. Tex bought some Pucker Powder at the science museum last week and I noticed that a main ingredient was citric acid, aka the stuff that Noodle likes to mix with baking soda and water and watch it bubble. Noodle begged and pleaded and got Tex to part with one teaspoon of his Pucker Powder to see what sort of reaction it would yield. Unfortunately it didn't do much other than make colored water, but it was worth a shot! We then moved on to squeezing lemon wedges onto the baking soda, and that got a much more exciting reaction! So much fizzing! Noodle was very happy until he discovered that lemon juice and cuts on one's finger do not mix well. Sometimes science hurts. :-(
What else? Well, a couple weeks ago we had an Alabama snowstorm, which means we had actual snow that stuck on the ground and could be made into snowballs and tiny snowmen. Of course the kids had a blast, and we got out our magnifying glass to observe the crystal formation in the snowflakes. We were also completely tickled to discover that one of our nearby ponds was completely frozen over, a phenomenon I've never seen in this town. We went to explore and see how thick the ice was. I thought it couldn't be more than an inch, but after banging and digging with sticks and rocks for a good while we had to stop because we couldn't get farther than about 3 inches deep. Knowing it was that thick, I decided we could risk a little "skate" around the rim where I could actually see the dirt and grass underneath the ice. We talked about ice safety and listened to the faint creaks from the ice as we walked around the edge. The boys would have stayed all day but MonkeyGirl thought landing on her bottom on the cold, hard ice lost its luster after about a dozen times.
We've also been making a concerted effort to be sure the kids get their "P.E." every day. Of course some days that's as easy as going to a park and letting them run and climb until they're sweaty and worn out, but Tex also attends a homeschool P.E. class at the YMCA every week and attends Little Gym's homeschool class once a week as well. He's really improved his body strength and can now do a pullover on the bar and a straddle roll, and in P.E. he's started making home runs in kickball and doing better on the Presidential Fitness events. We have also begun, as a family, to use our new Wii Fit Plus that we got for Christmas every morning. Tex especially loves it and gets some good aerobic exercise doing the hula hoop, short jogs, and obstacle courses. It's a nice way to get him moving first thing in the morning.
And finally, our reading progress. I mentioned that Tex had finally had his lightbulb and realized that he could read, but I think he's been a little disappointed that every word isn't easy to read. So I mention to him that he's going to have to practice to get better at it, which is usually met with a rant about how "I don't like reading, I'm never going to read, you're going to have to read to me forever!" LOL But the other night when he lamented that he couldn't read Star Wars on his own and had to wait on pokey ol' Mommy, I mentioned it again, "honey, the more you practice reading, the more confident you'll be, and the more you'll be able to read, and before you know it you'll be flying through whatever books you want to." He seemed to think about it for a moment and then said, "ok". And since then he's been doing more spontaneous reading on his own and not taking it so badly when he's not immediately correct. We even, Tex, Noodle, and I, played gummi words for about 45 minutes yesterday and they both did amazing. I bought these cards designed to help you recognize "word families", so they have things like "___ight", or "___ump" on them. So then we just took our gummi letters and made "bright", "light", and "plump rump" (Tex's favorite). Even Noodle was doing great with the families like "_at" and "_ig". I wouldn't be at all surprised if they were both reading independently over the summer!
Better late than never
Here's an entry from Daddy-O about a pre-Christmas trip to Atlanta:
Brownie and I decided to break up the trip to Atlanta (technically, Gwinnett County/Lawrenceville/Duluth) by stopping at the Tellus NW Georgia Science Museum. For being next to the middle of nowhere, that place ROCKED! There was a gorgeous collection of prehistoric creature skeletons (including a T-Rex, Edmontosaurus, and mosasaur), huge minerals/crystals, many planes, trains, and automobiles...and the little kid section was pretty big. Thanks to our having a membership to the science museum here in town (which is very mediocre and basically a scienced-based, educational, indoor playground), we got in to the museum for free. It was an absolute hit for the whole family and will likely become a regular stop whenever we travel to ATL.
Brownie and I decided to break up the trip to Atlanta (technically, Gwinnett County/Lawrenceville/Duluth) by stopping at the Tellus NW Georgia Science Museum. For being next to the middle of nowhere, that place ROCKED! There was a gorgeous collection of prehistoric creature skeletons (including a T-Rex, Edmontosaurus, and mosasaur), huge minerals/crystals, many planes, trains, and automobiles...and the little kid section was pretty big. Thanks to our having a membership to the science museum here in town (which is very mediocre and basically a scienced-based, educational, indoor playground), we got in to the museum for free. It was an absolute hit for the whole family and will likely become a regular stop whenever we travel to ATL.
Brownie here: Tex and I spent some quality time with the skeletons of prehistoric creatures. I asked him to explain to me the difference between bird-hipped and lizard-hipped dinosaurs and we went around the room classifying each. We found that the pterosaur had a completely different-looking pelvis than any of the other skeletons. And we learned that dunkleosteus is pretty intimidating even when he's a fossil. After that the kids had a blast excavating dinosaur skeletons and especially enjoyed the water feature where you get to "pan for gems". Tellus has little bits of lapis, tiger eye, quartz, jade, malachite, jasper, and other shiny bits buried in sand, covered by running water, and you have to scoop some up and find the gems buried inside. We left with a small bagful that they are planning to use to decorate a small trinket box or something similar.
Friday's big adventure was to drive to I-285, hop onto the MARTA rail, take it to Midtown, visit the Federal Reserve Bank, and back. In case you didn't know, it was raining like crazy on Friday. Thankfully, the MARTA station was only half a block from the Federal Reserve so it wasn't far; but even after hanging out at the visitor's center for about an hour, our clothes were still quite damp. Then we had the pleasure of running back through that rain to the station. But since the Fed was free, two of the three kids rode the rail for free, and parking was free, it was a fun, educational activity to fill the day with the boys. While the Federal Reserve was our "destination," Noodle's primary interest was in riding his first subway car. He was been very interested in the driving capabilities in the Sim City 4: Rush Hour set. He loves to build a city of infrastructure and then drive/pilot cars, trains, planes, and boats on the screen. The anticipation of finally riding in a subway train had Noodle absolutely giddy.
Friday and much of Saturday was spent at the relatives' home. Well, more specifically, in their basement. They had the Wii set up there and it was the boys' first exposure to RockBand/Beatles RockBand. After all the playing, Tex has been singing numerous lines from the songs. Although he had mild interest in "Ticket to Ride" and "Drive My Car" a couple of years ago, the only songs he actually sings to himself are ones from Depeche Mode and Duran Duran along with "Smoke on the Water." Now he's going around singing verses of "Eight Days a Week" and "Yellow Submarine," and thankfully only a few lines of "I Am the Walrus."
Me again: the kids, especially Tex, have really been enjoying singing lately. Tex is getting more confident with singing aloud in the car and even when he's listening to music in his headphones. He does pretty well! I'm toying with asking him whether he'd be interested in singing with the children's choir at church.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Will wonders never cease
It seemed too early to say something when, not two days after my last post, Tex discovered that he does NOT, in fact, suck at reading. However, since we've now had several days of increased confidence and improved reading, I'm going to go ahead and call it: Tex is A Reader! The lightbulb went off one evening as he had just completed an email to his Papa regarding their plans for the upcoming Sunday playdate. He had written, almost entirely by himself, the subject line of "What to do Sunday", and then the sentence "What's your plan, Papa?". He even had it correctly punctuated! About an hour later Papa replied, and Tex sat down to read it. There were several sentences there, but Tex just started breezing right through the words, reading most of them automatically and stopping to sound out a few, only needing close assistance with two or three. He was halfway through the email when he literally stopped short, shouted "I'm reading!", and then kept going, completely tickled with himself. The following day he said "Mommy, I think I'm a proficient reader now." I told him I was so glad that he was feeling confident in himself. In reality I was relieved all the way down to my toenails, but I can't let him catch me caring about stuff like that or he feels pressured. ;-)
We have some big plans coming up. We have family in Atlanta, GA, and a Christmas party there soon. We plan to take the leisurely way down, stopping at the Tellus Science Museum in Cartersville, which includes exhibits where you can dig for fossils or pan for gold! We're planning to have tons of fun. Then during our time in ATL we will visit the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta Visitor's Center to get an idea of the history of our nation's money and see cool stuff like where they shred the old bills. At the end of the tour the kids will even get a bag of shredded money to KEEP! Why do I see a raid on Scotch tape in their future?
We will also be taking a trip on the MARTA subway system at Noodle's request. Thanks to all his city planning decisions in SimCity he's developed an interest in all public transportation. Today we were out at a park feeding cracked corn to the geese, and I heard Noodle's squeaky voice yelling "Mommy, I saw a city bus! It's different from a school bus!!" But his big interest is light rail and his big Atlanta wish is to ride the subway. He was just disappointed to hear that Atlanta doesn't also have an elevated train or monorail we could ride for purposes of comparison. Guess we'll just have to plan a trip to DisneyWorld and ride the monorail there. Whoops, I think I just heard DaddyO's heart grind to a stop at the thought of shepherding 3 young children through the Magic Kingdom, better go check on that. ;-)
We have some big plans coming up. We have family in Atlanta, GA, and a Christmas party there soon. We plan to take the leisurely way down, stopping at the Tellus Science Museum in Cartersville, which includes exhibits where you can dig for fossils or pan for gold! We're planning to have tons of fun. Then during our time in ATL we will visit the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta Visitor's Center to get an idea of the history of our nation's money and see cool stuff like where they shred the old bills. At the end of the tour the kids will even get a bag of shredded money to KEEP! Why do I see a raid on Scotch tape in their future?
We will also be taking a trip on the MARTA subway system at Noodle's request. Thanks to all his city planning decisions in SimCity he's developed an interest in all public transportation. Today we were out at a park feeding cracked corn to the geese, and I heard Noodle's squeaky voice yelling "Mommy, I saw a city bus! It's different from a school bus!!" But his big interest is light rail and his big Atlanta wish is to ride the subway. He was just disappointed to hear that Atlanta doesn't also have an elevated train or monorail we could ride for purposes of comparison. Guess we'll just have to plan a trip to DisneyWorld and ride the monorail there. Whoops, I think I just heard DaddyO's heart grind to a stop at the thought of shepherding 3 young children through the Magic Kingdom, better go check on that. ;-)
Monday, November 30, 2009
All on their own
I've been such a bad home schooling Mom lately. We've had sicknesses, birthday parties, a root canal for me (and a couple days of Codeine Mommy afterwards; she was fun), and of course the Thanksgiving holidays, and I feel like we haven't had our act together for weeks! "Having our act together" being relative, of course. For us that means we: get moving relatively quickly in the morning and get out of the house to do something (even if it's just playing in the yard), watch little television, and I make myself extra-available as a resource for the kids' learning play. Life has gotten a little bit in the way of those humble goals lately. And yet, I find that I still have many things to report.
Tex's reading gets better and better. Don't tell him I told you, because he hates reading and is determined that he's horrible at it, but he's really not half bad. The other night he and DaddyO read Pepito the Brave together as part of Tex's Wolf Scout requirements, and Tex needed very little help in sounding out the words he didn't recognize on sight. He still seems to think that reading should be effortless and is discouraged when he has to work at it, but I hope that as he practices more and more in his head he'll gain confidence and realize that reading is manageable.
Still, if he doesn't have room for reading in his brain, it's because it's so full of science! I was just now looking at a little science/transportation book we got from Sonic with our lunches the other day, and the first page was about airplanes. I started to read one of the little blurbs, regarding the forces that must be equalized, when Tex piped in with "I know this! The engines create thrust, which pushes against the drag, and then the wind creates lift, which pushes against gravity. That's from Newton." Well. Alrighty then, let's just keep reading, shall we? Here's a nice page explaining an experiment you can do yourself with a straw and a small paper ball, where you keep the ball floating in the air stream and observe what happens when you tilt the straw as you blow. Once again, Tex is ahead of the game: "that's just like at the Space & Rocket Center, where they have a beach ball and a vent, and did you know that the air isn't pushing on the bottom of the ball, it's actually splitting and going around it! And when it goes around [the ball] perfectly evenly, with gravity pushing down, there's nowhere for the ball to go. You have to tilt it SO far before gravity pushes the ball a lot, and makes the wind on the bottom thinner, and then the ball can break through the wind." And there you have Bernoulli's Principle as explained by a 7 1/2 year old. And I had to look it up in the Sonic science book to make sure I had the name right. (sigh)
What else has been doing around here, lately? Well, Noodle has moved on from creating zoos in Zoo Tycoon to creating whole cities in DaddyO's Sim City computer program. It's mostly an excuse to "drive" trains and plot the destruction of whole towns with robots and metal dinosaurs, but in the process he has to do little things like set up power plants or alternative energy sources (he likes the windmills), lay roads and train tracks, build businesses and homes, and other matters of city planning.
And oh, goodness, Noodle is starting to read, too!! He was looking at our coupons box the other day, and he all of the sudden stuck out his finger and started to read: "c-ah-up-onz. Mommy, does this say 'cop-ons'?" You could have knocked me down with a feather!! Of course I played it cool and let him know that in this case the "ou" makes the "ooooo" sound, so he wouldn't sense my excitement and immediately decide to stop reading altogether, but inside I was jumping up and down! And tonight when I made the boys a sign of what they needed to do before bed, he read "teeth" right away. The Noodle is on his way to reading, big time!
Both boys are also still interested in film-making (that sounds so much better than "they both still love abusing the camera"). Tex had asked me how filmmakers get things to move in movies without touching them, which led to a discussion of wires and fishing line, and Tex wondered if we could tie some fishing line to something an move it around. For instance, hmmm, oh hey, Mom, how about this thing I've been carrying around and pretending is a laser blaster gun, will that work? Sure! So we tied some fishing line to his blaster and I showed him how he could pull it without anyone seeing how. Well, Tex found that he could not waste such a wonderful opportunity, so he turned into Director Tex and got us all to play our parts: Tex as a Star Wars baddie, Noodle as Obi Wan Kenobi (the Ewan McGregor version, not Alec Guinness) injured and unable to reach his weapon, myself as the special effects coordinator (I pulled the string), and DaddyO as the cameraman. Tex put us all on our marks and we did at least three takes; it was a grueling 10-minute shoot. But I think that what they came away with was pretty darn cute.
Finally I should mention all the work Tex has been doing for his Wolf badge in Cub Scouts. He's so excited about all of this scouting stuff, and thank goodness he has DaddyO, Grandaddy, Papa, and even a Great Uncle who are all so generous with their time and experience to help him accomplish his tasks. This weekend he did some woodworking and used some basic tools to create a doorstop and cut a notch out of a plank of wood. He even got to use the circular saw under close supervision. There is no doubt about it, that boy is growing up. I hope he's more ready for it than I am. ;-)
Tex's reading gets better and better. Don't tell him I told you, because he hates reading and is determined that he's horrible at it, but he's really not half bad. The other night he and DaddyO read Pepito the Brave together as part of Tex's Wolf Scout requirements, and Tex needed very little help in sounding out the words he didn't recognize on sight. He still seems to think that reading should be effortless and is discouraged when he has to work at it, but I hope that as he practices more and more in his head he'll gain confidence and realize that reading is manageable.
Still, if he doesn't have room for reading in his brain, it's because it's so full of science! I was just now looking at a little science/transportation book we got from Sonic with our lunches the other day, and the first page was about airplanes. I started to read one of the little blurbs, regarding the forces that must be equalized, when Tex piped in with "I know this! The engines create thrust, which pushes against the drag, and then the wind creates lift, which pushes against gravity. That's from Newton." Well. Alrighty then, let's just keep reading, shall we? Here's a nice page explaining an experiment you can do yourself with a straw and a small paper ball, where you keep the ball floating in the air stream and observe what happens when you tilt the straw as you blow. Once again, Tex is ahead of the game: "that's just like at the Space & Rocket Center, where they have a beach ball and a vent, and did you know that the air isn't pushing on the bottom of the ball, it's actually splitting and going around it! And when it goes around [the ball] perfectly evenly, with gravity pushing down, there's nowhere for the ball to go. You have to tilt it SO far before gravity pushes the ball a lot, and makes the wind on the bottom thinner, and then the ball can break through the wind." And there you have Bernoulli's Principle as explained by a 7 1/2 year old. And I had to look it up in the Sonic science book to make sure I had the name right. (sigh)
What else has been doing around here, lately? Well, Noodle has moved on from creating zoos in Zoo Tycoon to creating whole cities in DaddyO's Sim City computer program. It's mostly an excuse to "drive" trains and plot the destruction of whole towns with robots and metal dinosaurs, but in the process he has to do little things like set up power plants or alternative energy sources (he likes the windmills), lay roads and train tracks, build businesses and homes, and other matters of city planning.
And oh, goodness, Noodle is starting to read, too!! He was looking at our coupons box the other day, and he all of the sudden stuck out his finger and started to read: "c-ah-up-onz. Mommy, does this say 'cop-ons'?" You could have knocked me down with a feather!! Of course I played it cool and let him know that in this case the "ou" makes the "ooooo" sound, so he wouldn't sense my excitement and immediately decide to stop reading altogether, but inside I was jumping up and down! And tonight when I made the boys a sign of what they needed to do before bed, he read "teeth" right away. The Noodle is on his way to reading, big time!
Both boys are also still interested in film-making (that sounds so much better than "they both still love abusing the camera"). Tex had asked me how filmmakers get things to move in movies without touching them, which led to a discussion of wires and fishing line, and Tex wondered if we could tie some fishing line to something an move it around. For instance, hmmm, oh hey, Mom, how about this thing I've been carrying around and pretending is a laser blaster gun, will that work? Sure! So we tied some fishing line to his blaster and I showed him how he could pull it without anyone seeing how. Well, Tex found that he could not waste such a wonderful opportunity, so he turned into Director Tex and got us all to play our parts: Tex as a Star Wars baddie, Noodle as Obi Wan Kenobi (the Ewan McGregor version, not Alec Guinness) injured and unable to reach his weapon, myself as the special effects coordinator (I pulled the string), and DaddyO as the cameraman. Tex put us all on our marks and we did at least three takes; it was a grueling 10-minute shoot. But I think that what they came away with was pretty darn cute.
Finally I should mention all the work Tex has been doing for his Wolf badge in Cub Scouts. He's so excited about all of this scouting stuff, and thank goodness he has DaddyO, Grandaddy, Papa, and even a Great Uncle who are all so generous with their time and experience to help him accomplish his tasks. This weekend he did some woodworking and used some basic tools to create a doorstop and cut a notch out of a plank of wood. He even got to use the circular saw under close supervision. There is no doubt about it, that boy is growing up. I hope he's more ready for it than I am. ;-)
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
That was a good day.
Yesterday should not have been such a good day. It started off with the decision to stay home since Tex and I were both sporting runny, drippy noses, because I knew that if we went anywhere not only would we be leaving behind copious germs, but we'd also get so worn out so fast that it wouldn't be any fun. The drawback is that most days we are "stuck" at home turn out to be tortuously long and full of arguments between playmates.
Not this time! We started off with an episode of The Amazing Race. We've been Netflix-ing the DVDs of Season 1 and watching them with Tex as a fun way to talk geography and dialogue on concepts like sportsmanship, honor, fairness, etc. In this episode we found France and Tunisia, and talked about how two teams working together, even though they're in competition, can actually help both teams do better; and also about how one team that can't communicate will have trouble getting anywhere.
We finished our third hydraulics machine, the scissor lift. Only one machine left to go. Tex and Noodle did weight-testing to see what objects the scissor lift could hold up, and which were heavy enough to actually push the fluid around themselves and lower the lift.
The most fun I think we had all day was graphing the Halloween candy. We made plates for "chocolate", "fruity candy", "gum", "snacks", and "lollipops", and the boys each separated their candy into those groups, counted each group, and then made a bar graph showing how they compared to each other. Then they selected their favorites to keep, and the rest went to "DaddyO Tax". They had so much fun, I imagine we might be doing this again with any candy in their Christmas stockings, or maybe at Easter! :-)
Oh, and Noodles has discovered Zoo Tycoon!! This is a PC game that allows one to build their own zoo (with regular, endangered, marine, and even prehistoric animals), design the exhibits, hire staff, provide for the guests' needs, and maintain the animals' happiness. I credit this game with getting Tex started reading last year, because he had to learn to identify words in order to play it without a grown-up around to help. Noodle isn't quite there yet, being as he's just about to turn 5 and Tex was a new 6-year-old when he got started, but he's fascinated about each animal and how their environments differ from others, why you have to have boy and girl animals in order to have babies, and especially why some animals have a LOT of babies very fast while others take a long time to grow their population. Last year Tex learned about the food chain by putting penguins into the sea lion exhibit and watching the resultant scuffle, then putting the sea lion in the polar bear exhibit and seeing how the predator became the prey. I find it amusing that the game designers created this function, and the "scuffles" complete with swirling lines and stars. LOL
In any case it was a good day. Now send me prayers that today should be as fun, because we've added a sick Monkey to the bunch, so we're staying home again. Noodle may just go crazy.
Not this time! We started off with an episode of The Amazing Race. We've been Netflix-ing the DVDs of Season 1 and watching them with Tex as a fun way to talk geography and dialogue on concepts like sportsmanship, honor, fairness, etc. In this episode we found France and Tunisia, and talked about how two teams working together, even though they're in competition, can actually help both teams do better; and also about how one team that can't communicate will have trouble getting anywhere.
We finished our third hydraulics machine, the scissor lift. Only one machine left to go. Tex and Noodle did weight-testing to see what objects the scissor lift could hold up, and which were heavy enough to actually push the fluid around themselves and lower the lift.
The most fun I think we had all day was graphing the Halloween candy. We made plates for "chocolate", "fruity candy", "gum", "snacks", and "lollipops", and the boys each separated their candy into those groups, counted each group, and then made a bar graph showing how they compared to each other. Then they selected their favorites to keep, and the rest went to "DaddyO Tax". They had so much fun, I imagine we might be doing this again with any candy in their Christmas stockings, or maybe at Easter! :-)
Oh, and Noodles has discovered Zoo Tycoon!! This is a PC game that allows one to build their own zoo (with regular, endangered, marine, and even prehistoric animals), design the exhibits, hire staff, provide for the guests' needs, and maintain the animals' happiness. I credit this game with getting Tex started reading last year, because he had to learn to identify words in order to play it without a grown-up around to help. Noodle isn't quite there yet, being as he's just about to turn 5 and Tex was a new 6-year-old when he got started, but he's fascinated about each animal and how their environments differ from others, why you have to have boy and girl animals in order to have babies, and especially why some animals have a LOT of babies very fast while others take a long time to grow their population. Last year Tex learned about the food chain by putting penguins into the sea lion exhibit and watching the resultant scuffle, then putting the sea lion in the polar bear exhibit and seeing how the predator became the prey. I find it amusing that the game designers created this function, and the "scuffles" complete with swirling lines and stars. LOL
In any case it was a good day. Now send me prayers that today should be as fun, because we've added a sick Monkey to the bunch, so we're staying home again. Noodle may just go crazy.
Monday, October 5, 2009
The blog is slacking, but the school isn't!
Now that it's Fall Break for city schools and we have a week off of our organized activities, maybe I can get some blogging in. And can I just stop for a moment and tell you how much I love Unschooling??? It never ceases to amaze me, although it darn well probably should by now, how much these kids learn whether we're "teaching" at them or not. There's big stuff going on in those little noggins.
Tex and Noodle have discovered a new online game at PBSkidsGO.org, part of the show Design Squad, whereby they have to use various shaped widgits to get a certain number of Tribble-like Fidgits to fall out of their tube and into a little box. So they have to use geometry to figure how to bounce the Fidgits in such a way that they head towards the box, they have to consider the physics of the materials used and how much energy each absorbs (each widgit can be made of rubber, wood, or concrete), and there is definitely a certain amount of creativity and trial & error involved in getting it to work. I especially appreciate this aspect as Tex is a perfectionist, my typical first child who only looks up to adults and thinks he should be as skilled as us with much less practice. It's nice to have a game where, first thing, you HAVE to fail. You HAVE to let those Fidgits drop out of the tube and just let them land wherever they may, and not get into the box at all. Then you have to try out a solution, but it's probably going to fail, too, and that's good because it gives you more information. And so on and so on until finally you tweak your design just right, and those little squeaky, beepy Fidgits finally get in the dang box and shut the heck up. I love this game.
And Noodle, oh Noodle, my little electro-nut. Last week Noodle and I put together Tex's Electronics Lab because he just could NOT wait any more! It had wires! It had springs! It has transformers (NOT actually robots in disguise, though you would have thought so by how excited he was) and capacitors and did I mention WIRES?!?!?! Oh, the joy on his face when he completed a circuit and that little red LED lit up, it was priceless. I must admit I was pretty tickled, too, having never really known before how any of this stuff went together; it was a flashback to the old HeathKit television my dad built when I was about 7 years old. And two days later Noodle and I went right to the library to try to find some books on robots again (they said they'd order more for us) and left with a grade-school book titled Artificial Intelligence and three books about Star Wars (because Star Wars has... you guessed it... robots!). Strike what I said a few posts back about Tex building the spaceship and Noodle being the unwitting test pilot; I'm now quite convinced that they will be full partners in their plot to launch themselves out of the garage. For my part, I just don't know what I'm going to do when they get to more complex physics issues; that is not a class I took and I was quite happy about it. Perhaps they have a kindly grandfather or uncle who will help them experiment safely... or just enable their craziness, you never can tell in this family.
We've started reading the Chronicles of Narnia aloud, and so far Tex is thoroughly enjoying it. Only the second night, but when I finished Chapter Two tonight he very sweetly said "please don't stop", and who am I to deny this kid a good story?? Frankly, at this point anything that isn't a dinosaur book is a-okay with me! Truly, though, he still insists that he dislikes reading as an activity AND a school subject (even though he's getting better at it all the time), so anything that gets him excited about reading is something I want to encourage. He even wanted me to follow along with my finger so that he could tell where I was on the page, which is something he usually finds distracting. I do so hope that at some point he's going to find the book or topic that makes him want to read things on his own, so that he can get in some more frequent practice and start to reap the rewards. Of course, I should also remind myself that just because being "a reader" is important to ME does not mean that it will or should be so for him. DaddyO is not ravenous about books the way I am by any means. In fact I can only think of a few in which he was so engrossed that he didn't want to put them down to eat, work, or sleep, while I could probably say that about a few dozen books at least. There's almost nothing I like more. On the down side, we're running out of shelf space.
So there you have it, in a week filled with paper-making, computer and board games, The Magician's Nephew, and lots of outdoor and gym play, we have all grown leaps and bounds. I can't wait to see what happens next!
Tex and Noodle have discovered a new online game at PBSkidsGO.org, part of the show Design Squad, whereby they have to use various shaped widgits to get a certain number of Tribble-like Fidgits to fall out of their tube and into a little box. So they have to use geometry to figure how to bounce the Fidgits in such a way that they head towards the box, they have to consider the physics of the materials used and how much energy each absorbs (each widgit can be made of rubber, wood, or concrete), and there is definitely a certain amount of creativity and trial & error involved in getting it to work. I especially appreciate this aspect as Tex is a perfectionist, my typical first child who only looks up to adults and thinks he should be as skilled as us with much less practice. It's nice to have a game where, first thing, you HAVE to fail. You HAVE to let those Fidgits drop out of the tube and just let them land wherever they may, and not get into the box at all. Then you have to try out a solution, but it's probably going to fail, too, and that's good because it gives you more information. And so on and so on until finally you tweak your design just right, and those little squeaky, beepy Fidgits finally get in the dang box and shut the heck up. I love this game.
And Noodle, oh Noodle, my little electro-nut. Last week Noodle and I put together Tex's Electronics Lab because he just could NOT wait any more! It had wires! It had springs! It has transformers (NOT actually robots in disguise, though you would have thought so by how excited he was) and capacitors and did I mention WIRES?!?!?! Oh, the joy on his face when he completed a circuit and that little red LED lit up, it was priceless. I must admit I was pretty tickled, too, having never really known before how any of this stuff went together; it was a flashback to the old HeathKit television my dad built when I was about 7 years old. And two days later Noodle and I went right to the library to try to find some books on robots again (they said they'd order more for us) and left with a grade-school book titled Artificial Intelligence and three books about Star Wars (because Star Wars has... you guessed it... robots!). Strike what I said a few posts back about Tex building the spaceship and Noodle being the unwitting test pilot; I'm now quite convinced that they will be full partners in their plot to launch themselves out of the garage. For my part, I just don't know what I'm going to do when they get to more complex physics issues; that is not a class I took and I was quite happy about it. Perhaps they have a kindly grandfather or uncle who will help them experiment safely... or just enable their craziness, you never can tell in this family.
We've started reading the Chronicles of Narnia aloud, and so far Tex is thoroughly enjoying it. Only the second night, but when I finished Chapter Two tonight he very sweetly said "please don't stop", and who am I to deny this kid a good story?? Frankly, at this point anything that isn't a dinosaur book is a-okay with me! Truly, though, he still insists that he dislikes reading as an activity AND a school subject (even though he's getting better at it all the time), so anything that gets him excited about reading is something I want to encourage. He even wanted me to follow along with my finger so that he could tell where I was on the page, which is something he usually finds distracting. I do so hope that at some point he's going to find the book or topic that makes him want to read things on his own, so that he can get in some more frequent practice and start to reap the rewards. Of course, I should also remind myself that just because being "a reader" is important to ME does not mean that it will or should be so for him. DaddyO is not ravenous about books the way I am by any means. In fact I can only think of a few in which he was so engrossed that he didn't want to put them down to eat, work, or sleep, while I could probably say that about a few dozen books at least. There's almost nothing I like more. On the down side, we're running out of shelf space.
So there you have it, in a week filled with paper-making, computer and board games, The Magician's Nephew, and lots of outdoor and gym play, we have all grown leaps and bounds. I can't wait to see what happens next!
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