Unschooling Journal December 16-22, 2018 – Cube Roots & Helping Dad

by | Dec 25, 2018 | Blog, exponents, Home Learning, Homeschooling, math, Unschooling, 언스쿨링 | 0 comments

Over the past week of unschooling, Ethan spent a lot of time learning about cube roots. It was also the end of activities for the Christmas break and the start of really gearing up for Santa’s big day.

Still, there was lots of learning going on for Ethan so here’s what happened…

December 16

We asked Ethan to make one of his unique cards for his friends Nico and Paolo for Christmas.
Calculating inches to centimetres to help me with box measurements for a Christmas package we were sending out.
We all chipped in and helped wrap Christmas presents for friends and family.
We made a card for my parents and Ethan found how to write Merry Christmas in Chinese.
And here it is after Ethan wrote Merry Christmas in Chinese.
This is a parachute he made from paper. He later attached some string and a weight to it. The parachute totally worked!

December 17

Ethan got a new set of magnets the day before and spent a lot of time playing and trying different things with them.
He found a lesson on Mystery Science about magnetism and how you can magnetize metal objects.
Ethan had been learning about square roots and this week, he learned about calculating cube roots. He found a way to quickly calculate the cube root of large numbers and created flashcards to practice.
The different coloured cards represent the level of difficulty.
Here, he’s taking an online quiz to solve cube roots.
Learning about performing mental math.
He got Dong Eun to test him on cube roots.
The technique he learned didn’t work for anything over 6 digits, so Ethan did some research and found a way to calculate cube roots for those larger numbers.
This is the method he found.
He created an updated to-do list for Thursdays.
And he created a to-do list for other days and added a little comic strip about two fish talking about “fryday vs Friday.”
Messing around with messing up his hair after a shower.

December 18

Started the day with a jog.
Morning violin practice. He’s been working on Minuet 2 and 3, as well as Happy Farmer from Suzuki book 2.
One of his favourite websites… Mystery Science. In this lesson, the overall topic was erosion engineering.
Heading out to play.
He’s very focused when he’s doing his learning, whether it’s online or reading a book.
In this case, he wanted to learn about solving cube roots by approximation.
On the way to taekwondo class, we stopped by the florist to pick up some flowers. The next day was Ethan’s maternal grandfather’s death anniversary so instead of a traditional Korean observation of this day, we purchase this type of white flowers and light a candle by his photo.
The traditional ceremony involves special food, drink and visiting the deceased person’s grave. Unfortunately, Ethan never met his maternal grandfather but we hope that this reminds him of his roots.
Ethan made a video to teach percentages and used an app called Graphic to illustrate his teaching.
This is the video he made about percents.

December 19

Heading out for some exercise.
Once home, Ethan learned about finding a non-perfect cube.
Practicing what he was learning about cube roots.
The numbers on the left are a guide to help him figure out the answers for figuring out 5th roots.
Learning about the weather on Mystery Science.
I needed some illustrations for a video and asked Ethan to help draw one of the characters. He used the Graphic app for Mac and the drawing tablet and stylus to draw this and several others.
He’s seeing how the illustrations would animate. The illustrations were great and I used two of them in the video project I was working on. Good job, Ethan!!
Learning about ancient Greece on Khan Academy.
Learning about nouns on Khan Academy.
making a book about math
He made a little happy face from pieces of paper he was using.

December 20

Practicing order of operations with his calculator.
A little wet but he still went out for a jog.
He wanted to calculate how old each of us was in hours. This was really fun.
Practicing The Happy Farmer.
He watched a lesson on Mystery Science about how and why plants need sunlight. There was a comparison using two plants. One had sunlight and the other didn’t. In another experiment, they cut a hole on the side of a box below the plant and the grew towards the hole to reach the light.
He watched this lesson about building a paper house before but wanted to learn about this topic again.
He watched a video about mental math tricks and solving for the cube of a number.
We were talking about how fast the International Space Station (ISS) travels and wanted to compare it to other machines. I was curious how many times a day the ISS orbits the earth.
Ethan told us about how NASA is observing the brightest comet of 2018. The NASA website has been a new favourite of his to visit.
He learned about NASA’s first mission to the Trojan asteroids. He was excited about how the spacecraft would actually make their journey and the time it will take.
He learned about solving fractional exponents on Khan Academy.
He also took a quiz about exponents and radicals.
Later, he asked me if I could solve fractional exponents. I had no idea, so he taught me how to do it.
Not sure I completely remember but Ethan had it down pat.

December 21

Learning how to simplify square roots.
Practicing simplifying square roots.
Learning more about simplifying square roots from Khan Academy.
He did this experiment before about stored energy. He must have really enjoyed it because he tried it again.
Heading out to play with friends.
Ethan took some shots of the sun moon.
Learning about neutron stars.
He wrote about what he learned. He must have really enjoyed what he learned because he wrote quite a bit.
He asked me if knew how to simplify square roots. Uh, no. So he explained it to me.
We were curious about how fast different objects were and he found a website with information about the fastest plane, car, animal, human, etc.

To finish the night, we all watched a few episodes of Brainchild, a fun and engaging science show for kids on Netflix.

December 22

Today, Ethan started learning about probabilities. He also learned about dependent and independent probability.
We went out for a walk to the library and to pick up some things from the grocery store. Ethan brought his skip rope to keep himself entertained.
At the grocery store, Ethan picked up this local newsletter. He likes it because they have jokes and riddles in it.
On the way home, he folded the newsletter into a pyramid for fun.
Back home, he was right back into Mystery Science and he did the lesson on engineering and bridge building again.
While we were out walking and the other day while driving, we noticed some signal lights had gone out or were flashing yellow. Ethan was curious about power outages and found this lesson about electricity on Mystery Science.
We all played a board game together called Blue Marble. It’s one of Ethan’s favourite games and is kind of like Monopoly.
Back to math and learning about dependent and independent probability.
Of course, there is almost always violin practice.
Chilling out with some Roald Dahl before we wrapped up our day with some Brainchild on Netflix.
This is a video I made about our walk to the library.

We again watched Brainchild on Netflix and learned a few things about how our memory works. There was a memory trick that hopefully, helps Ethan remember lists of things… hope it helps me, too!

We’ve also been reading the first Cosmic Trilogy book by C.S. Lewis. Ethan seems to like it because it’s set on Mars. The language is a bit older for him, I believe, so I sometimes stop to ask him if he knows a certain word or expression. ( Ethan here… I like it because Mars is a great planet. Mars is the fourth planet from the sun, it is half the size of earth, and it might have had life!)

Anyway, that was the week! Have a Happy Holidays and all the best in 2019!

how to make the fidget fliker!

LC Response

What a full week! Ethan is just maturing and growing before my eyes. I could learn a lot from the math Ethan is doing, some of it is indeed a review from many years ago (middle school and high school), but I have never done anything like all of his square root work. It is amazing how he wants to learn how to solve these problems with such large numbers.  I am so glad he is patient enough to explain to you how to solve some of the equations he is challenging you with too.

I checked out Brainchild a bit, the episodes and trailers, looks very engaging indeed. I can see why Ethan wanted to watch a few episodes.

I agree, NASA has such a fantastic website for youth and adults. There is so much on there I often suggest it as a resource for students interested in space. He is obviously getting a lot out of the cutting edge science there and writing about it in his own words! I had a feeling he would start summarizing and explaining his research in his own words either on video or in writing and he is indeed already doing both!

By the way I love his animated figures and how he is using new programs to make instructional videos for others. I shared a few with a friend and mom who is here with me in Hawaii and she was blown away. Ethan is a very inspiring young person and i hope he develops some sort of TED talk of his own someday, maybe on unschooling or how to learn and teach others….or about space or math who knows!?? I am sure he will have some incredible videos and visuals to support whatever his message is. I hope he gets more followers on Youtube too. I know 100 is his goal for this year, but I know he has so much to share and others will catch on soon enough.

Collecting Magnetic Sand
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ocsZ9EjQbng%3Ffeature%3Doembed%26rel%3D0%26wmode%3Dtransparent

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Magnets and Electricity

Has Ethan ever used Magnets to hunt for magnetic sand on a beach? My housemate just did this with her grade 2-6 class this fall and they loved it. https://thekidshouldseethis.com/post/collecting-black-sand-ocean-beach

They all studied magnetism, electromagnetism, electricity and building electric circuits. Has Ethan gone on to make the connection from Magnets to Electricity? There is a lot of info in the LE Library and I am sure on Mystery Science as well:

https://selfdesign.learning.powerschool.com/selfdesignlearning/library/cms_page/view/34698901

Magnet Facts For Kids

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UHave you played with magnets before? Well we’re sure you must have, as most of us have at some point.

Now what you will know is that all magnets can pull things towards themselves no matter what the shape of the magnet is. That is what magnetism is.

They can’t pull things like paper, glass or cloth, only things that are made of iron or that contain iron, so if you try and attach a magnet to something plastic, it’s just not going to work.

Magnets are usually made of metal iron or another material with lots of iron in it, like steel.

magnets

There are different types of magnets and some have super fancy names like Air-core magnets, Electromagnets and the Permanent magnets.

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The ones we usually see are mostly man-made by using electricity.

There are also naturally magnetic rocks called lodestone found on the Earth’s surface and in the past people made them magnetic by rubbing iron on the rock surface.

This made the electrons inside them pull in the same direction.

What is iron?

Iron is made up of tiny particles called atoms and each iron atom is made up of 26 electrons.

Magnets are like a big invisible force that we can’t see, just like the wind. But even though we can’t actually see the force, we can see what the force does to things around it.

In the olden days people thought magnets were magic because as they would see things move without being touched!

Below is a picture of magnetic field lines, which we can’t see with our eyes.

magnetic-field-lines-454910_1280

Why are Magnets Important?

Magnets are great fun to play with but they are also seriously important and they are used in so many ways in our world.

They hold notes to the fridge and help close fridge doors.

They are used in microwaves, electric fans, earphones, speakers, in medical equipment,  electronics and in nearly all electric machines that use motor engines to make them work.

Wow, who would have thought that they were used in so many things?

How Does Magnetism Work?

Magnets have two ends to them.  These are called poles – a North Pole and a South Pole, just the same as the earth.  The two ends of the magnet may look the same but they don’t do the same things.

If you get two ‘North Pole’ magnet ends – or two ‘South Pole’ magnet ends – and try putting them together, they will push away from each other. But if you take a ‘North Pole’ magnet end and put it near a ‘South Pole’ magnet end, they will pull towards each other.

polar attraction magnetism

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Another interesting thing is if you chop a magnet in half, you get two identical magnets and each has a North and a South Pole, so you will never find a magnet with just a South Pole or just a North Pole.

Our Earth is a like a massive magnet with a liquid metal core deep inside it which spins, creating a magnetic field with a North and South Pole.

The field is strongest at the actual poles. The Sun is also very magnetic.

Before GPS satellites were invented, the compass was used to tell us what direction we were facing – this would be rather useful if you were stuck in the middle of the ocean.

The magnetic compass was a simple tool with a magnet which balanced, called a needle. The one end was often marked “N,” for north, or colored in some way to show that it pointed north.

Because of the earth’s magnetic field the magnetic needle was always drawn to the magnetic North Pole.  It doesn’t point exactly north because true north is at the North Pole.

The needle points to the magnetic North Pole which is about 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) south of true north.

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compass-152121_640

Electricity and magnetism have a strong connection with each other and scientists call this ‘electromagnetism’.

Without it we would have no electricity in our homes or electric motors.

The term comes from knowing that a magnet can create an electric current and an electric current produces magnetism.

So, there’s everything you need to know about magnetism. We hope it is nice and clear and that you’ll be a super kid in all things magnetism when you’re asked about it!

Building a scale model of the Solar System

I know Ethan has made a few models of the Solar System. This one is made truly to scale, so exciting!! 

https://youtube.com/watch?v=zR3Igc3Rhfg%3Ffeature%3Doembed%26rel%3D0%26wmode%3Dtransparent

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YouTube: Music and math

I told Ethan I would send him some information linking math to music here is a start

https://youtube.com/watch?v=zAxT0mRGuoY%3Ffeature%3Doembed%26rel%3D0%26wmode%3Dtransparent

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