The sun was out this morning! Yes, it’s been a while so it was nice to see a bright sunny sky when we got up. But to be honest, it’s just great to wake up and start a new day, no matter the weather.
A note about today’s post
We’re trying to be more efficient with the posts, so we’re making notes in the post and then writing up everything after we’ve collected all the photos. So that also means Dong Eun is making her notes her, instead of in a notebook. That’s why she’s the author of this post and not me, Carl. I’m just filling in the details today 🙂
Morning
Ethan started his day by reading the coding games book he’s been so into. We’re not sure if being in front of a screen for hours at a time is a good idea, but we’re doing our best to just be supportive and let Ethan explore and learn.
We talked about restricting his screen time, but that didn’t work so well before because he would try to rush through things and not really experiment.
We’ve settled on letting him complete one project a day so that he’s not in a hurry and can focus on learning and problem-solving. We’ll see how it goes.
With the beautiful sunny weather, we were hoping Ethan’s day at Soaring Eagle Nature School would be a little drier, even though he doesn’t seem to mind.
But he did come up with an ingenious way to keep the water from getting inside the plastic bag that holds his stuff by throwing on a bag clip.
With bag packed, we were off to nature school.
Let the coding begin
That afternoon, it rained quite a lot but Ethan still had a great time at nature school. Once he got home, he started working on a couple of coding projects, starting with a ghost game.
Next, he made a game with a car driving around a track. Yes, this was a second project but it was after today that we decided to limit coding to one project a day.
This car driving game was quite fun and Ethan added something different by including scoring for every time you made it around the track. It took him several tries to get the scoring to work properly, but he eventually figured it out.
This kind of validated our thinking that we should let him complete a project because if he had a time limit, he may have given up or not even bothered trying to add new functionality to the game.
New Eggza
Ethan really likes his eggza recipe and wanted to try a new version today. I have to admit I’m still a little nervous watching him cut, but he listens to instructions when I see him doing something that could potentially be dangerous.
Anyway, here’s today’s eggza…
Turkey earthquake
Ethan was reading Timelines of World History and saw a part about the massive earthquake in Turke in 1999. The book said that over 15,000 people were killed, so we looked it up and read a little more about the earthquake.
Taekwondo practice
Ethan’s been back in taekwondo and seems to be getting into it more. He has been practicing his pattern more frequently, so I’m curious what has been motivating him to do so. Either way, it’s great to see him so enthusiastic about practicing.
Ethan needs to practice his kicks so I held out some “targets” for him. This was actually fun to do together.
Learning about civil rights
Ethan has learned about civil rights on other occasions, and we even visited the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial in Washington, DC, so he has an understanding of what the struggle is.
Tonight before bed, we read a book about Martin Luther King Jr. called Love Will See You Through, which was written by his niece.
The book outlines the principles of non-violence and love that Martin Luther King Jr. preached and practiced. Reading the book was a good way for Ethan to learn more civil rights, Martin Luther King Jr. and connect the dots a little from our trip to DC.
And that was today, but it took a while for Ethan to get to bed. He said he wasn’t sleepy, so we let him stay up and read.
The unschooling experts have said that saying “Yes” more can help Ethan feel more confident in his choices, while also helping him understand consequences.
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