Ethan made a speedy recovery and was pretty much 100% today, which was great news. I really believe that being a homeschooler helped him get better faster. There are a couple reasons why I think that’s the case.
The first reason why is because he’s home with his family, as a loving and supportive environment likely helps with recovery. I can’t remember where I saw it, but I’m sure there was something about healing faster when in a caring environment.
Second, Dong Eun was able to prepare healthy meals and juices and monitor Ethan throughout the day. For sure, other parents would do the same thing, but because being home was already normal, it wasn’t a disruption to our daily routine.
Or maybe Ethan’s immune system has gotten stronger and the bug that he caught wasn’t that bad? Whatever it was, he was feeling better today and that’s what was important.
Starting again
Ethan got up and immediately started making something. He tried making a confetti shooter the other day but the balloon he used wasn’t big enough. So today, he wanted to try again with a bigger balloon to see what would happen.
Definitely better with a larger balloon because he can now stretch the balloon easily to launch confetti or whatever else he can think of!
The second project Ethan worked on was building a speaker and phone holder out of paper cups and an empty paper towel roll.
He had to wait until I got home to test it, but it worked great!
Support from SelfDesign
As part of SelfDesign, they have an equipment loan program where families can get an iPad.
How it works is they provide an iPad and if you stay in the program for 3 years, the cost of the iPad doesn’t need to be repaid.
But if you leave SelfDesign before the 3 years, then you have to repay the loan for the iPad based on it’s depreciated value.
So after applying for the loan in September, we received the iPad today. We were told it would arrive in February, so it wasn’t a big deal to wait.
Plus, the big bubble wrap was fun to play with.
Playing with DNA
A cool project in one of the science books was building a DNA model. I think Ethan’s heard about DNA from watching videos that talked about how life on earth may have come from other planets.
He’s also heard about DNA on shows like Bill Nye the Science Guy, so it didn’t seem completely random that he wanted to build a DNA model.
Unschooling lets Ethan explore topics as they happen, or as he gets a flash of inspiration. We love that part of unschooling because it fosters creativity and encourages curious exploration.
Jupiter vs the Sun
Ethan wanted to build a model of our solar system using rubber bands, so he needed to find some information about the size difference between certain planets.
The core of each planet in his model was made from US Letter size paper crumpled up into balls.
Ethan found out that the Sun is about 965 times the size of Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system. Jupiter’s diameter is 11 times greater than Earth’s diameter, so you can only imagine how big the sun is.
Jupiter required 6 sheets of paper so Ethan tried to calculate how many sheets of paper he would need to make the Sun.
He worked out that he had to multiply 965 by 6, which turned out to be 5,790 sheets of paper! Needless to say, he’s going to use a few less sheets of paper and not make the Sun to scale.
Off to class
We were able to register Ethan for violin class again, even though it’s halfway through the winter session. Since Ethan can have class anytime, we were able to arrange a time for Ethan with his old violin teacher.
Ethan was excited about having class with her again and brought a bunch of brownies, banana muffins and cookies to her.
Music done. Time to work on the taekwondo.
Dong Eun noticed that Ethan’s pattern has greatly improved because he’s been practicing almost every day. We hope he learns that improvement comes from daily practice and that getting better at things doesn’t just happen.
The Sun
Once he got home, Ethan asked if we had a powerful light he could use as the Sun to demonstrate how little light Pluto receives. So I let him use an LED video light and his solar system was now brought to life!
Ethan really enjoyed explaining how the distance from the Sun affected each planet.
And earlier, he also talked about how long a day and a year are on Mercury, along with asking what does a Black Hole orbit. Very cool stuff and so awesome to see his enthusiasm.
Next, Ethan wanted to play the new song he learned in violin class. However, he was getting frustrated that he couldn’t play the song well.
We talked to him about how it’s a new song and requires practice, but he was still frustrated. This carried over to taekwondo practice later on, too.
We found out that Ethan was feeling quite exhausted after activities in the afternoon and that he was still recovering from his illness.
It’s something that Dong Eun and I have to pay attention to and when we realized it, Ethan was relieved that we empathized and knew what he was going through.
Again, I think that being around Ethan all the time has helped us get to know him so much better. This insight helps when his mood isn’t good or he’s going through something challenging.
It’s certainly an advantage of homeschooling because we have so much more time to spend together as a family.
Nature school prep
Ethan had to prepare something for nature school to share with the group, so he did some research on a vegetable common in Korean dishes and printed it out.
By the time he was done with the printing, he was pretty much done physically, too. He went to bed early for some much needed rest.
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