Today was homeschool group's Learn Through Play. The goal: building a massive train track city using wooden tracks, blocks, and lincoln logs. The result: a generously sized figure 8, built by one of the moms, which is quickly demolished as the kids get interested in books, cars, play kitchen, plastic animals, etc. Well, at least they listened to the story and played with the trains for a few minutes first...
For some people, this change of direction might have been hard to deal with. I mean, we planned and setup for building a train city and now they don't want to play with it?! For us, we decided a long time ago to just roll with the activity changes our kids make. The main goal of Learn Through Play is to provide an opportunity for our kids to learn something while we all build relationships with other homeschoolers. Mission accomplished.
While our kids played together, us moms shared resources and support. C shared an online shopping resource with us, SmallHands.com, a Montessori-style learning toy store. I will be thoroughly "researching" christmas and birthday gifts on this site in the very near future. We also discussed our struggles in finding other consistent homeschooling families to join our group.
We often get families that will join us for a week or two and then they get flakey, cancelling at the last minute or falling off the face of the earth. In my time as a homeschooling family (a little over a year at this point), I've found this seems to be an ongoing struggle with almost every family I've met. I understand that part of the benefit of homeschooling is the flexibility of your schedule, but Come On! A little consistency and reliability would be nice! Flakey people drive me nuts! (end rant)
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Physics of Galloping Gertie
Last week while we were at the Washington State History Museum, we checked out a display on Galloping Gertie, the old Tacoma Narrows Bridge that fell into the Puget Sound.
I didn't think that Loren had understood what it was about until yesterday morning when we were driving over the new Narrows Bridge into Tacoma. Randomly from the back seat I hear, "Mom, why that bridge fall into the water?" We spent the rest of our drive talking about how the guy who designed it had messed up and that when the wind blew it waved up and down until it broke and fell into the water. This didn't appease the questions, so when we got to our destination (a show in Puyallup), we broke out the computer and internet and did a search for information.
First, we watched a YouTube video of the bridge collapse. 4 times. During the video I pointed out how the trees and bushes were blowing and the bridge was waving up and down because of the wind. The video that I found had some of the best footage of the collapse I'd ever seen, and I grew up in the area learning about it every year around the anniversary of the collapse. (View video here)
After exhausting the video (well, actually we exhausted mom's attention to the video, Loren would have watched it all day if I'd let her), we did a Wikipedia search for Galloping Gertie and read about the history of the bridge and the scientific explanation of why it collapsed. We learned the words "aerolastics" and "aerodynamics" during this research as well as what "resonance" is in relation to physics. I don't know how much of the physics she understood, but I plan to do a demonstration of the concepts that broke the bridge at home this week, maybe with dad's help.
On the drive home last night, I discovered that her interest in the bridge collapsing stemmed from her concern that the new bridges would meet the same fate. To alleviate her concerns, we talked about how Galloping Gertie taught the engineers how to build a stronger bridge and that even big mistakes like that can be learning experiences. Vocabulary, history, physics, researching, and life lessons all in one lesson. Gotta love Child-Led Learning!
I didn't think that Loren had understood what it was about until yesterday morning when we were driving over the new Narrows Bridge into Tacoma. Randomly from the back seat I hear, "Mom, why that bridge fall into the water?" We spent the rest of our drive talking about how the guy who designed it had messed up and that when the wind blew it waved up and down until it broke and fell into the water. This didn't appease the questions, so when we got to our destination (a show in Puyallup), we broke out the computer and internet and did a search for information.
First, we watched a YouTube video of the bridge collapse. 4 times. During the video I pointed out how the trees and bushes were blowing and the bridge was waving up and down because of the wind. The video that I found had some of the best footage of the collapse I'd ever seen, and I grew up in the area learning about it every year around the anniversary of the collapse. (View video here)
After exhausting the video (well, actually we exhausted mom's attention to the video, Loren would have watched it all day if I'd let her), we did a Wikipedia search for Galloping Gertie and read about the history of the bridge and the scientific explanation of why it collapsed. We learned the words "aerolastics" and "aerodynamics" during this research as well as what "resonance" is in relation to physics. I don't know how much of the physics she understood, but I plan to do a demonstration of the concepts that broke the bridge at home this week, maybe with dad's help.
On the drive home last night, I discovered that her interest in the bridge collapsing stemmed from her concern that the new bridges would meet the same fate. To alleviate her concerns, we talked about how Galloping Gertie taught the engineers how to build a stronger bridge and that even big mistakes like that can be learning experiences. Vocabulary, history, physics, researching, and life lessons all in one lesson. Gotta love Child-Led Learning!
Friday, October 21, 2011
Trains... and Caterpillars?
Our homeschool group met at Sehmel Homestead Park to continue our study of trains by drawing a train track with sidewalk chalk and pretending our bikes/trikes/scooters were trains. This went over fairly well, Loren has recently gotten very good at pedaling her trike and loved all the space to go "81 miles an hour!" We had a turn out of 5 kids (4 families) and they all rode their bikes around for at least a few minutes before getting distracted by the playground, sandbox, and finally a fuzzy wooley-bear caterpillar. I was excited to see one of these because I hadn't seen one in years and this was the first time Loren got to see one up close.
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