Leave the kid alone with a compass for the day and what happens?? He goes nuts making things with it! 🙂
But in all seriousness, it was awesome to see all the things he and Dong Eun did with such a simple tool. I know I say it all the time, but this is exactly the kind of thing that makes unschooling so great for us. Ethan spent hours working on geometric patterns using the compass and really got to deep dive into how a compass works.
A rainy day outside meant a great opportunity to do creative stuff indoors.
At breakfast, Ethan bit a blueberry in half and found the seeds. He asked what would happen if he planted them, so we said let’s find out. He also wanted to find out where the raspberry seeds were. He was surprised to find that raspberry seeds are on the outside of the berry. So he picked a few out and put those out to dry, too. We were having tomatoes, so he got a few tomato seeds, as well.
Here are the first couple of seeds.
Ethan wanted a videos section on his blog, so we added the videos to his site’s navigation menu. We also added a section for Dong Eun to talk about unschooling in Korean.
Ethan played with shadows and light using the new stencil he got with the geometry set.
He taught Dong Eun how to draw the impossible heart.
Then he spent some time making games using Scratch and the coding games book he got from the library.
After coding, Ethan worked on some division to figure out the radius of the circles he was drawing.
And he started getting more into the compass by drawing a Yin and Yang symbol.
With drawing done for now, he helped take some of the muffins Dong Eun made to a couple of our neighbours.
Ethan decided he wanted to try drawing an optical illusion. He got pretty far but it was quite difficult to draw, so he gave up after a while.
But then went back at it and succeeded!
After finishing the optical illusions, he worked on his computer for a couple of hours. He was mostly coding, but since he was on for so long, Dong Eun asked him to stop and do something else.
We love that he’s enjoying coding, but at the same time, we’d prefer that he doesn’t stare at a screen for hours on end. After Dong Eun asked him to stop, he seemed a bit unsure about what to do. This was quite unusual for Ethan because he can find something to work on without much thought. So it was good to get him off the computer and doing something else.
The something else ended up being book 17 of Adventures of a Piece of Paper!
And after making the comic book, his creative juices must have been flowing because he wanted to make geometric shapes with his compass.
So he found out how to make patterns and went to work.
Eventually, he created this flower pattern and wasn’t about to stop.
He learned that you can make a perfect square or triangle from a circle. He also found out that you can create all kinds of cool geometric shapes with a compass.
After working on geometry, Ethan and Dong Eun played Scrabble together.
Then after I got home, it was time for a healthy meal with lots of veggies. During dinner, Ethan said the fried rice was amazing. He was then curious about where the word amazing came from, so we looked up the etymology of amazing. It was a lot more complicated than I thought, but the word comes from Old English.
After dinner, Ethan cut up the flower pattern he made earlier. Dong Eun suggested that we could make cards and other types of stationary and put them away for future use, such as for Christmas cards.
Ethan loves the compass and was back at it, drawing some more flower patterns.
Dong Eun and Ethan worked together to colour the pattern. It’s pretty cool that Ethan enjoys doing things together with us like this. I think it’s another benefit of homeschooling, the stronger relationship between parent and child.
He completed the last bit of the comic book after finishing the drawing.
And promptly went back to more drawing. This time, making star shapes with a compass and ruler.
But first, Ethan tried to make another optical illusion.
Dong Eun’s star looks pretty cool!
And so does Ethan’s!
Ethan also took some time to add some designs to the front of his math notebook.
And practice long division with a random number he came up with before packing it in for the day.
All-in-all, it was another jam-packed day of unschooling. It’s great that Ethan has time to explore a variety of interests over the course of a day like he does now.
From what he was doing today with the geometry and compass, we tried to find some books about geometric shapes and geometry to deepen his learning. The books have been placed on hold so we’ll see what his interest level is by the time they’re ready to be picked up.
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