Learning in the Sunshine State

****Warning — Politics Ahead

There are very few people in the mainstream media unwilling to spout the administration’s talking points. Thankfully, a few do exist. I knew I liked Keith Olbermann, but what he said yesterday just confirmed it. Be sure to watch the video. While the written words are powerful, hearing him speak them is even more so. How long until 2008? Help us.

Olbermann on Rumsfeld

There are 2 problems with having a birthday near Labor Day. One is that sometimes the friends you want to invite, go away for the weekend. So you have to choose to either take that chance, or have your party on a different weekend.

The second problem is unique to people living in hurricane prone areas. It’s the height of the hurricane season, so there’s always a chance that a storm will crash the party and ruin it. Two years ago, Hurricane Frances did just that. Dennis’ birthday is September 3. Frances came on September 4. The days just before were spent preparing the house for a storm. There was no possiblilty of having a birthday party in the middle of a hurricane, so we just had to forget it. I kept telling Dennis we’d reschedule his party, but that never happened. Hurricane Jeanne also came that year, and people were just too busy dealing with the aftermath. He never got a 7th birthday party. He did get a puppy that year, so that kind of took the edge off.

This morning we woke up to the possibility of Ernesto coming through next weekend. Dennis has been planning a Lego themed party for more than a month now. We’re planning to go to Orlando to The Lego Store this week to get some supplies. He doesn’t like crowds, and only invited 4 friends, but they’re 4 boys who love Legos as much as he does.

Now, Ernesto won’t be like Frances, in that it will come from the west. So maybe it won’t be so bad. But Charley came from the west, and still caused a mess for us here on the east coast. If this storm does steal the party, I will reschedule it this time. I won’t let storms keep stealing my son’s birthdays.

We have a number of science kits from The Young Scientist Club, and I finally decided we should start actually using them. Kit 12 is Acids and Bases. Pretty cut and dried science stuff right? Not in our house.

Dennis (yes I decided to start calling him by his name, instead of Kiddo) was working on the kit most of last week. The kit came with litmus paper and ph paper, so you could test different liquids to see if they’re acidic or basic. Okay, so that stuff pretty much comes under the heading of science. But as we started doing more of the experiments, it became clear we were doing more than just science.

One of the experiments involves leaving some pennies in a cup of vinegar for 15 minutes, then removing them, and putting a nail in the vinegar (the nail becomes copper plated). Well, when we looked into the cup, we noticed that one of the coins was a Canadian penny. From there, one thing led to another.

How far is Canada from Florida? How big is Canada? If I go to Canada with my penny, could I buy something? No, I bet I can’t get anything for a penny. How do I get more Canadian money? Will they let you buy stuff with your own country’s money? Is our dollar the same as their dollar?

Another experiment uses the ph paper to test the acidity of various liquids, including rainwater. A brief discussion of acid rain is part of the lesson, but our discussion lasted a while, with Dennis asking some hard questions. (For the record, our rain looks good — between 5 & 6, and normal rain is about 5.6).

Look what one little science experiment kit can do. We ended up discussing geography, political borders, money, exchange rates (at a very basic level), and environmental responsibility. Was that science? Geography? Social Studies? Math? Character education?

I know there are plenty of people who break their school day into subjects, just like they do in school. If that works for you, great. I’m not one to tell people how they should homeschool. But life isn’t broken into subjects. Life is a blend of many overlapping subjects. I prefer the overlap. It makes learning much more real.

I just want to add my name to the list of those saying thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou for getting the site up and running again after it was hacked on Friday.

We have spent the better part of two years trying to come up with a system that works for Kiddo’s storage of Lego bricks. We went from the buckets that large sets come in, to a shallow plastic bin, to a deeper plastic bin. No matter what we did, he’d dump them all on the living room floor so he could sort through them and find the pieces he needed. No problem there, right? The problem came when it was time to clean up. He didn’t want to dump them all back and have to sort again the next day. Dh didn’t want them out on the floor. We had to come up with a better solution.

Maybe we did it this time. I bought a 3 drawer storage bin. Then I bought a single drawer bin to put on top of that. And there’s a very small 3 drawer bin for little pieces.

The bottom drawer has sets he wants to keep separate. He left his Clone Turbo Tank set out in the drawer. There are two large Ziploc bags, one containing the Ocean Odyssey set and one containing a car set he bought with Christmas money.

The next drawer up has what he calls “different” pieces — corners, curved pieces, roofs, whatever. And the top drawer has plain old Lego bricks of all colors and sizes –what they have in common is the fact that they’re “regular” shapes.

The single drawer, which looks like the top drawer in the picture, has bases and flat pieces. Currently, it’s practically empty, as all the bases are holding creations.

The tiny 3 drawer set holds car parts such as wheels, axles, steering wheels, etc., transparent pieces, and mini figures and their accessories. The closed bin next to it holds pieces he already pulled out for stuff he’s working on.

I had him think about how he wanted to sort everything, then took him to the store to choose some bins. What we ended up with was his idea. I’m hoping that because he owns it, it will be easier for him to keep everything put away, thereby keeping Dad happy.

The next two pictures show his old Thomas the Tank Engine train table. I was going to sell it, but we decided to keep it as a temporary holding place for Lego creations. You see, that was another problem. Once he builds something, he doesn’t want to take it apart, at least not until he needs the pieces for a newer creation. So they were on the floor, on tables, everywhere Dad didn’t want them to be. (Dad doesn’t like clutter, can you tell? Mom can live with it, which is probably not something to brag about). So now the table gets to be the creation location.

Maybe this monster won’t rear its ugly head again, but I have a feeling it’s just waiting a while before it strikes again. I hope I’m wrong. Oh, and now we just have to find a place for all those instruction booklets.

When I went into the living room, I found many of the drawers, as well as some Legos on the floor. This system doesn’t make him any more likely to clean up, it just makes it easier to do. I still need to remind him to put the stuff away!

If you live in Florida, and the calendar tells you it’s August, don’t decide to start running errands at 12:30 PM. The car becomes a furnace in a nanosecond, but the reverse is nowhere near true. The A/C will not cool the car off quickly enough, and it will still be hot when you get to your next stop. You will run all of your errands in a sauna on wheels.

You would think a Floridian (I’m not a native, but I grew up here), with a screen name like FLORIDAMOM, would know better.

First, I need to say that you should not follow my link if you like word puzzles. At least, not unless you have plenty of time to kill. Okay. You’ve been warned.

I’ve been hooked on Babble for about a year now. It’s an online Boggle game, with a new puzzle every day. There’s a great community with a chat, though I don’t usually participate. I’m not big on online chats, plus I pop in and out too often to carry on a conversation. But I enjoy “listening” to the banter. And the people are friendly. Every now and then I, or someone else who’s not a regular in the chat room, will ask for a clue, and they’re always happy to help out.

So what does this have to do with homeschooling? Well, Kiddo sometimes finds me at the computer working the puzzle. He asks to help. Sometimes he even finds words. Often he finds three letter words, which aren’t allowed in Babble. Other times he finds words I already found. But occasionally he’ll actually find a word I haven’t found. And it’s increasing both of our vocabularies, as we discover words we didn’t know were actually words.

After a morning of Babble yesterday, we went to Barnes and Noble to turn in his summer reading list and get his free book (he chose How to Eat Fried Worms), and while we were there he found a travel Boggle game on a clearance table. Anytime I set foot in a bookstore, I immediately become weak-willed, and of course I saw it as a learnng game, so I told him I’d get it for him. When we got home we played several rounds. Since Boggle allows three letter words, he found it much easier than the online game.

This morning we worked on the Babble puzzle a bit, then left to go to the summer reading luncheon that our homeschool group held for those who chose to participate. He brought his Boggle game, and made words the whole way there (about 45 minutes).

I love that my kid thinks learning is fun. I hope he always feels that way.

In other news, dh and I made the mistake of allowing Kiddo to watch the movie Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls. There’s a scene in the movie where Ace is shooting spitballs. Up until seeing this, I think he’d heard of spitballs, but didn’t really know what they were, let alone how to make them. But yesterday, after we went to a drive through to get drinks, I heard strange noises coming from the backseat. When I asked what he was doing, Kiddo told me he was shooting spitballs at his leg.

Now, I have no intention of cleaning dried spitballs off of any surface, but I also figured forbidding him to ever shoot spitballs would not work. So I told him where he could spit them, and informed him that if they ended up where they shouldn’t be, he was to clean them. So far he’s been good about it. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.