Unschooling Journal March 31-April 6, 2019

by | Apr 7, 2019 | algebra, Blog, exponents, Home Learning, Homeschooling, Unschooling, 언스쿨링 | 0 comments

Back to normal activities this week after Spring Break. Let’s see what Ethan was up to this week.

March 31

Ethan was busy doing his tasks today, such as math. Here, he watched a Khan Academy lesson about the coordinate plane and functions.
He answered the questions on the computer today by using Google’s presentation app.
He learned about adverbs and wrote a story using them.
Today’s element was darmastadtium.
He went out to play with Kal a couple of times today.
They love playing on their scooters.
After dinner, we watched another Prehistoric Earth DVD.

April 1

Ethan went back in his math book and did some practice mulitiplying and dividing fractions.
Today’s element card was curium.
He read an article on eating well.
He read about the golden age of China.
He answered some questions about the golden age of China.
He learned about using the comma and wrote a fun story using them.
After dinner, we took a bike and scooter ride to the library to pick up some books on hold.
This is one of the books he picked up, How to Beat Your Dad at Chess.

We read Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea before Ethan went to bed. We want to finish this before moving onto The Hobbit but it’s taking a little longer than expected. An interesting story, though.

April 2

Ethan started off his day watering plants and checking the mail for our neighbour.
He then worked on a project using salt to create separate colour layers of water.
He also did a project to show how a paper boat can be moved by soap.
Ethan learned about solving log equations. Afterwards, he played outside, then had taekwondo class.
After we got home, he did some remixing of a platform game in Scratch.

We finished the night reading Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. We’re finally on Part II!

April 3

Nature school today. This is what they did, according to Ethan’s teacher, Scott:

Our first day back together was rainy, but we made the most of it! We started by deciding to take a walk down to Lynn river in search of Licorice fern root. I talked about the rhizomous growth pattern of the fern and how to harvest it in a way so as to keep as much of it growing as possible. Also, we talked of the fact that the spot we harvested from was a good one to choose because of the abundant amount of the fern in the area.

After washing up the roots, we walked back up to the tarp shelter that we had constructed and re-joined Blake’s group. Here, we had lunch and started up the stove. Blake’s group helped by adding more ingredients.

While sipping tea, we played a game of “Catch the poacher” with Blake’s group, then spent the rest of the day playing on a big tree stump!

Ethan was at nature school today. In spite of it raining all day while he was there, he had a great time. After a short rest, he got into some of his activities, starting with violin practice.
He continued learning about solving log equations and how to check your solutions. The video he learned from is from a YouTuber called NancyPi.
The element he learned about for today’s card was copernicium.
He wanted to know how to pronounce copernicium properly and found out that it was named after Copernicus, the mathematician and astronomer who’s model of the universe had the Sun in the centre, instead of the Earth.
Once he was done all his work, he started playing some games in Scratch.
He then went to work on a game he was remixing. In this platformer, you’re controlling both blue squares simultaneously. You need to get around the black blocks by figuring out how to move the blue blocks.
The other game he remixed is one that requires you to use magnetism to move the blue circle to the green squares.
You have to drag a positive or a negative icon onto the screen. You then press the play button to see what happens. The negative icon repel while the positive icon attract.
Ethan’s symphony class has a photoshoot this Saturday and they have to wear concert clothing.
After a full day outside, Ethan had hit his 10,000 step goal. He was still hungry after having dinner so he got a treat from A&W.
After eating, he taught us what he learned earlier in the day about solving log equations and checking your solutions.
He then spent some time listening to the Brains On podcast after we had read a little bit of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

April 4

Ethan continued learning about log equations today.
He started working on videos about the elements. One thing that he had to do was learn how to make the atoms go around in a circle using Keynote’s animation function. Spoiler Alert: He figured it out.
He wrote about Japan today and used a variety of colours, as well as text effects.
Ethan played outside for about an hour and he also had taekwondo class. After he got home, he wanted to do some playing and coding in Scratch.
He found a music composer program in Scratch and programmed it to play the beginning of Hunters’ Chorus.
This was him working on the music program.

We’re more than halfway through Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. It’s a challenging book to read as some of the scientific terms and other words are difficult to pronounce. Anyway, it’s fun!

April 5

Ethan spent most of this day making videos so please see this one about beryllium.

He also learned about probability and did some practice exercises, too.
He wrote about the Japanese Nara period.
This is using Keynote to make the graphics for the beryllium video.
He made this element card for berkelium but we’re not sure it was from today.

April 6

Today was photo day for Ethan’s symphony class.
They had individual photos taken.
And a group photo.
After symphony class, Ethan played a bit then it was time for his skating lesson.
Big game played at the end of the lesson. Ethan’s the one on the ice on the left.
For lunch, we went to the new Northern Vietnamese restaurant near our place. It was awesome.
Ethan watched this yesterday and wanted to watch it again with us.
He has been re-inspired to try origami again because of that origami documentary. He’s inspired by how much math is involved and how many things you can create using origami principles.
Watching origami videos.
Those pyramids he made earlier are actually cones and they all fit together. You press them down and let them spring up.
He was trying to learn some advanced origami designs.
This is like the fortune teller but it does something very unique.
It can change into this rectangular box when you squeeze the sides.

And that was Ethan’s week!

LC Response

Hello Ethan,

Your recent videos on elements are awesome! I passed a few on to my friend who has a grade 2-6 class and they also did the periodic table and element projects. I do hope she shows them to her class sometime.

I love the music you have playing in the background, the animations of the models and the facts you included. Excellent work! I was hoping you would do something like this based on all the work you have put into your periodic table. I learned a lot of new information about helium, so thank you.

It is exciting that you are circling back around to your interest in origami and now trying more difficult ones. The fortune one that transforms into a box is incredible.

I see you were studying the Nara period in Japan. I went to the city of Nara. It has the largest wooden structure in the world, the Todaji temple, and some really cute deer which roam the streets.

I have a few open ended questions for you to answer if you are interested in any of them. Please respond to them in the next (week 32) observing for learning if you choose to.

What would you like to learn more about (today, this week, this year, etc) ?

What problems do you hope to solve (today, this week, this school year, in your lifetime, etc) ?

What will you need to learn to solve those problems? Who could you ask to mentor you?

How are you applying what you are learning in your own life?

What are your dreams?

What are some of the potential obstacles you may face in chasing those dreams?

What are some things you can do to overcome those obstacles or swim around them?

What actions are you taking today to help you reach your goals in the future?

LC shorter response

Hi Ethan and Carl,

I will be responding more lightly to this Observing for Learning communication as I am taking the week to engage in Professional Development activities.

I have taken a few online classes through the Self Design Graduate Institute. Did you know Self Design has a graduate school program? The teachers can get a Master’s in Self Design. So that means Self Design has a k-12 program and a masters all that is left is university…

Some of the Zoom workshops I took were, mindfulness and presence in relationship, using songs to teach literacy and a very interesting one on awareness and the afterlife.

Well I thought of you (of course) when the first ever photos of a black hole made the news headlines. I thought Ethan would enjoy this zoomed out picture of the black hole and the folowing article and the video in the article as well.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/12/katie-bouman-helped-generate-the-first-ever-photo-of-a-black-hole.html

On Wednesday, after 10 years of planning and scientific investments totaling over $50 million, researchers released the first-ever image of a black hole. The image is a feat of modern science — experts say it’s the equivalent of taking a photo of an orange on the moon with a smartphone — and international collaboration. Over 200 scientists across the globe contributed to the project.

One of those scientists is Katie Bouman, a 29-year-old computer scientist who began working on the project when she was a graduate student at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at MIT.

Bouman earned her bachelor’s in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Soon, she’ll begin working as an assistant professor in the Computing and Mathematical Sciences Department at the California Institute of Technology.

But when she became involved in the project almost six years ago, she had no experience studying black holes.

“I go after problems that excite me. When I started this project, I didn’t know anything about black holes and honestly, it was a risky project,” Bouman tells CNBC Make It. “But my heart was in this project. I love this project, and I think that that’s what makes it a success. When you get really smart people together, who are super motivated by the problem that they’re working on, I think people will figure out the answers.”

Here is another article: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47891902

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