Ethan did it! He completed his first year of home learning as an unschooler and has come so far. We know that learning never stops so this blog will continue as usual over the summer months. Overall, Ethan has grown as a person and has learned so much. We couldn’t be prouder of him.
June 24
On Sunday, we had a family brunch with my cousin and his kids because they will be leaving for Hong Kong for the summer. Ethan always enjoys playing with the girls so this was their last chance to see each other for a while.
But Ethan was in need of some food to give him some energy. We were all pretty tired from the garage sale the day before and I guess Ethan was still pretty wiped.
After everyone went home, we chilled and watched a movie.
We went down and played some pool. Ethan practiced some trick shots and we later played with just our hands, which turned out to be a lot of fun.
June 25
After breakfast, Ethan practiced violin. He’s really improved a lot because he practices every single day and seems to really enjoy playing.
He learned about the Nobel Prize from Classroom Ready Science News.
He also learned about dimensional analysis on Khan Academy.
He also did some pre-algebra practice and learned about the commutative property of multiplication.
After, he worked on a Grade 6 math worksheet that focused on multiplying decimals by 10 or 100.
Ethan looked at some images of black holes.
And then he wrote a story about what black holes are.
He found a math riddle and challenged us to figure it out…. How can you make 1 1 1 1 = 5?
The answer: (1+1+1)! – 1 = 5. The first part of the equation equals 6, then you minus 1 to get 5. Cool.
The “!” is known as a factorial.
He then practiced some math on Brilliant.org.
He watched a Ted Talk about the power of doodling.
He wrote a summary of “Fantastic Mr. Fox.”
And he edited the code on the ninja game created in Scratch.
Ethan picked this flower for his mom while out jogging.
He then started drawing stars being eaten by black holes.
June 26
He’s been very interested in drawing black holes eating stars and has been drawing different types of stars.
He learned about exponential versus linear growth on Khan Academy.
To learn some French words, he made his own flashcards. We’d like him to rely less on online language sites like Babbel and find his own way to learn French.
Also, Dong Eun explained to him that we should express what we learn in some way to demonstrate our understanding of a topic, such as the words on the flashcards.
Violin practice, of course.
He’s been working hard on these book summaries, even though writing in this way isn’t his favourite thing to do. But he’s been doing better and better with this practice and using stories he’s already familiar with seems like a good way to practice.
Writing creatively, on the other hand, is something he quite enjoys doing. Here he’s writing about black holes.
Time to listen to podcasts and head to taekwondo class.
Some tennis practice after taekwondo.
We’re practicing hitting the ball up and seeing how many times he can bounce the ball on his racquet. He’s also practicing dribbling the tennis ball with his racquet.
Later, Ethan helped with cleaning up.
We wanted to see just how wide the wingspan is for the flying fox. It’s two meters! For a bat! That’s a BIG bat.
We went through his other work from today, such as the book summary and other reading comprehension work.
More stars being eaten by black holes.
June 27
As has been the case all week, he drew a bunch more stars being eaten by black holes.
He practiced violin with help from YouTube videos.
He practiced converting metric units of length.fun!
And he practiced tennis a bit, too.
He practiced some French with the flashcards he made.
And we checked out this cool effect when pouring coffee into a glass with soy milk on the bottom.
Ethan was explaining how the black holes eat the stars.
Ethan helped prepare lunch by cutting sweet potatoes for the salad.
He wanted some eggs with lunch, so he fried them himself.
After lunch, he worked on word problems about proportions. This was a Grade 6 worksheet. Dong Eun finds these worksheets but It’s cool that he’s also finding these worksheets on his own to practice with.(hi,Ethan here. I don’t like this stuff!)
He wrote Part 2 of the black hole story.
He summarized “The Twits,” by Roald Dahl.
Here, he was explaining how gravity and black holes work in space.
Later, we played tennis together. We recently bought some normal tennis balls, as opposed to the kid-friendly ones we were using, and we’re still getting used to how much more these balls bounce.
June 28
Morning violin practice. I’ve been forgetting to mention that Ethan and I still go jogging almost every day but it’s not obvious since we have no photos 🙂
Working reading comprehension with an article from Classroom Ready Science News about virtual assistants.
Practiced doing some work with exponents.
Talking about some of the things he’s learning about. We often try to engage Ethan in discussions about what he’s learning. We are not only curious, but it’s also good practice for Ethan to learn to explain things in an easy to understand way.
Practiced doing some work on reflection and learning about line of symmetry.
Did some lessons on stars, black holes and galaxies on Khan Academy.
Snack break.
He wanted some eggs and made them himself. Nice to see him doing things for himself like this.
Listened to Minuet 1 and 2. He’s learning how to play Minuet 1 on the violin so this type of classical music is heard every day in our home.
Wrote Part 3 of his black holes stories.
He did a summary for “The Magic Finger.”
And he also practiced math by playing Prodigy.
With the money he earned from selling lemonade, cookies and our old stuff, we headed over to the West Vancouver BC SPCA and made a $100 donation.
We stayed a few minutes to check out some of the animals up for adoption.
He was quite proud of himself for contributing to the BC SPCA and we hope it’s something he wants to continue doing.
We went to the last taekwondo class before summer and after Ethan came home, he learned about hallucinations.
He also learned about why people and animals have different lifespans.
He also found out that bananas are radioactive but that you’d have to eat a LOT of them for any negative effects to occur.
June 29
Morning violin practice is a nice way to start the day.
He followed that up with some math practice.
And read a new book called “Framed!”
He practiced drawing quadrilateral shapes.
And he learned about transformations in math.
He wrote about what he thinks critical thinking is. We still want him to learn how to think critically, or at least be able to think about situations and how to approach resolving issues or coming up with creative new ideas.
He started making a doc about… space!
We then went outside to play with Kal and his little brother.
After we got back in, Ethan had a glass of ice water. The ice was made in a muffin baking tray so the shape and size of the ice made the ice sit above the water in his glass. This looked cool and was fun to watch as the ice melted and slid into the water.
Having fun with a bandana before heading to bed.
June 30
Last day of June! Ethan was syncing his fitness tracker and adding different functions to it.
After going for a quick run, we had breakfast and Ethan helped cook the eggs.
He then played some violin for us.
Learning about dilation and scale factor on Khan Academy.
We registered Ethan for a workshop on building structures that could withstand earthquakes. He seemed to really enjoy it.
We spent some extra time at the library so Ethan picked up Calvin and Hobbes to read.
Ethan borrowed the coding in Python book again.
And that was Ethan’s week! We did actually watch Raiders of the Lost Ark but stopped about halfway through because Ethan found some parts too scary for him. So we watched Brain Games on Netflix, instead.
Tomorrow is Canada Day and we’re planning on checking out some local activities and catching the fireworks. Let’s see how the week goes.
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