Science

A Test of Faith
...possibly my worst photo ever. Sorry! The subject matter wouldn't cooperate.

…possibly my worst photo ever. Sorry! The subject matter wouldn’t cooperate.

A test of faith – This past week we completed our “Religions of the World” unit, using an Usborne book as a reference.  It was time to test and see what my son had retained.  I set up the iPad for a multiple choice quiz, and presented him with 30 questions regarding Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Sikhism.  Chalk up another A+.  Yay!

Incidental learning: Thermometers – While we were driving around the other day and the car thermometer read 37 degrees, I wondered if my son knew about temperatures.  So that night, we began a small study of temperatures and thermometers. We found a neat website: www.metric-conversions.org, offering loads of interesting facts with brief, understandable explanations.  We learned the difference between Celsius and Fahrenheit and how to convert from one to the other.  We learned that only the Bahamas, Belize, the Cayman Islands, Palau (Palau? We had to find this on the globe), the USA and its territories use the Fahrenheit system.  Consider us informed on the matter.

New academic unit – I am sorry to write that the chemistry unit we began crashed and burned by night number three. Darn book. When I don’t know what the author is talking about on page one, I start to think that this is not a book for us.  After shunning the chemistry book, we tried out a book on “Oceans of the World” and found conflicting sentences in the first paragraph, so we bypassed that resource, too.  This does not mean we are through with these units, it just means we are seeking the right books. (So many, many sub-standard learning materials out there.  How do they even get published?  Sigh.)

Not to be discouraged, we read through a few pages of “A Young Reader’s Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night’s Dream” by Adam McKeown.  Excellent!  We are loving this book. We are going slowly so we can keep all the characters straight.

3 books

Novels – Two worthy Newberry award recipients: “Hatchet” and “Flora and Ulysses”

  • Continuing on with “Hatchet”, by Gary Paulsen.  There is nothing original I can say about this important book.  There is a reason it is on so many reading lists.
  • “Flora and Ulysses”, by Kate DiCamillo (everything she writes is so great).  Things we’ve had to investigate while reading this book: CPR, near-death experiences (seeing the “white light”), the words “malfeasance” and “cynic”.  I love books that push us into further learning.

fleur de lis

Our music theme last night focused upon the work of French composers – I provided my son a list of compositions by the French composers that we are familiar with: Bizet, Debussy, Delibes, Gounod, Offenbach, and Saint-Saens.  He selected:

  • “The Infernal Galop”, (the “Can Can”) by Jacques Offenbach, what’s not to like?
  • “Clair de Lune”, by Claude Debussy, the soothing music we needed.
  • “March of the Toreadors”, (from “Carmen”) by Georges Bizet…a rather unusual rendition with bottles and a guy on skates.  Why not?

Welcome to the best part of my day!

– Jane BH

Affordable Housing Forever

crab 1 crab 2 crab 3

Our study of invertebrates concluded with an in-depth look at hermit crabs, one of nature’s super-star recyclers.  My son learned that hermit crabs take over shells left behind by snails…the snail dies and disintegrates, but the shell remains in prime condition for hundreds and hundreds of years.  As the hermit crab grows, he houses himself in larger and larger shells.  We learned that the posterior of the hermit crab is soft and curvy so it can easily back into a shell (miraculous and yet, a teeny bit repulsive).  We bid a regretful farewell to Susan Middleton’s book, “Spineless”.  Terrific resource.

Our Farmer Brown story problem last night – we calculated the number of stitches in a pair of striped boot-socks that Farmer Brown just knit for himself (seriously, more than 6,000 stitches).

A new unit! Chemistry.  I need a pair of Farmer Brown’s socks because I am quaking in my boots about this chemistry unit.  I did serve as a lab assistant for my high school chemistry teacher, but as I recall, my primary responsibility was to manage donut orders for all of the science teachers. We are using a DK book, so I know the images will be fantastic.  We’ll just see how this goes.

Maestro Matching – I gave my son two matching tests last night – first we matched symphony composers with famous compositions. Then I gave my son a list of composers and he placed them in chronological order.  Yay!  A+.

 drucker

Music: Last night was VIRTUOSO NIGHT showcasing clarinetist Stanley Drucker! While listening to “Exploring Music with Bill McGlaughlin” on the car radio last week, we heard Mr. McGlaughlin talk about clarinet player, Stanley Drucker.  AWESOMENESS: in 1948, at age 19, Stanley Drucker was appointed principal clarinetist of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra (let’s just think about THAT for a moment), and he retired in 2009.  The math: Stanley Drucker served as principal clarinetist for the NYPO for 60+ years!!!!!!!! (this really calls for 60 exclamation points!).  This is the sort of thing that grabs our attention, and listening to him play flew to the top of our priority list.

  • First, a short youtube video celebrating his 60 year tenure with the NYPO:

  • Then we listened to Mr. Drucker play Brahms’ “Clarinet Sonata No. 1 in F Minor”.
  • Then we listened to the “Doppio Movimento” movement (the “Simple Gifts” variation) of Copland’s “Appalachian Spring”, played by the NYPO.  The clarinet is paramount in this piece.
  • Finally, we watched a show-stopping performance of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”, with Leonard Bernstein conducting AND playing the piano, and Stanley Drucker beginning the piece as no one else could:

Welcome to the best part of my day!

– Jane BH

In Which We Learn about the Cambrian Explosion

We have a gorgeous book to nominate for textbook status: “Spineless” by Susan Middleton.  Along with her jaw-dropping photographs, this book absolutely burgeons with interesting information.  Last night, after learning about the phylum Porifera, I was starting to close the book when my son’s hand came slapping down onto the page, meaning quite vehemently, THIS IS AWESOME, KEEP READING!

spineless    crab

This book has introduced us to our favorite crab: the green-eyed red-spotted guard crab. Not only is this crab THE CUTEST THING EVER, but it is one of only two species that protect coral reefs from the destructive HORRIBLE crown-of-thorns starfish. And we are learning about THE CAMBRIAN EXPLOSION (a short period of time, some 540 million years ago, when animal life diversity jumped from simple, single celled beings and humble sponges toward today’s insanely vast animal assortment). And if that wasn’t enough, we are becoming familiar with new vocab words, “phyla” and “phylum”. GREAT BOOK!

better stamp book     washington stamp

We go postal:  did my son understand how a valentine card from his Aunt Michelle made its way from California to Texas?  We talked about the basic postal system and about stamps.  We considered the neat concept of the “forever” stamp.  We paged through his grandfather’s stamp collection (put together in the 1930’s).  We saw stamps from the 1800’s and we thought about what somebody could have been writing in a letter then…regarding the current president? Farm crops? Holiday felicitations?  We paused to look closely at stamps from countries that have different names now.  What a splendid learning tool.

From our religions of the world unit: last night we looked at beautiful Islamic mosaics – a triumph of geometric shapes, and compared this artwork with intricate stained glass windows from an Anglican cathedral.  Both stunning.

Last night’s music theme: a soundtrack for the Cambrian Explosion!

  • For the single celled amoeba – “Simple Gifts”, the 19th century Shaker hymn, written by Joseph Brackett.  We listened to a very spare and simple rendition by Yo-Yo Ma and Alison Krauss.  Elegant.
  • For the green-eyed red-spotted guard crab, we chose Frank Sinatra’s first big hit, “Polka Dots and Moonbeams”  by Jimmy Van Heusen and Johnny Burke (1940).
  • To honor the Cambrian Explosion, the finale to “1812 Overture”, by Tchaikovsky:

Welcome to the best part of my day!

– Jane BH