An object at rest tends to remain at rest, and an object in motion tends to continue moving in a straight line at constant speed unless an outside force acts upon it. So says Newton’s First Law of Motion. The question is…can you see this in action? You bet your sweet bippy you can. You only need a few simple materials for this crazy experiment.
A pie plate
An empty cardboard toilet paper tube
A raw egg (yes, raw)
Water
A large drinking glass or flower vase
Around these parts, one of the most eagerly anticipated portions of the day is late afternoon, when Hydro and Gazelle come to hunt for remnant seeds beneath our feeder. Hydro is so skittish, that until today I wasn’t able to get a good photo. As a side note, you’ll often hear that Seattlites don’t have an accent. Not true. I thought “skittish” was spelled “skiddish”, because that’s how people from the Pacific Northwest pronounce double “t” in the middle of a word. “Seattle” would never be spoken like it looks around here. It comes out “See-addle”. Now you know our secret. Listen for it next time you’re conversing with a Northwesterner. Back to Hydro.
Thankfully, the weather was incredibly warm today and our sliding glass door was open to let in a breeze. Usually the noise of it is what makes Hydro and his momma scurry away. Tonight I managed to noiselessly slide open the screen and get a couple of shots in before the dash from evil me and my clicking lens. Continue reading
One of the most common questions I get regarding Classical Conversations is “You are just filling their head with rote memorization. They don’t understand half of it. What good is that? All that stuff doesn’t even mean anything to them.”. While it is quite true that many of the facts we memorize mean virtually nothing to my children (what 5-year-old cares about Newton’s Laws of Motion?), there is a purpose and a path in our style of schooling that begins at the beginning. With young children who, like sponges, absorb every ounce of data around them. We all learn from infancy by rote memorization. How to speak by repeating the basic words our parents babble to us. The alphabet, the Pledge of Allegiance, The Lord’s Prayer. Kids can sing every song in their favorite movie. Recite entire books that are frequent bedtime stories. All these things are retained and recalled because of rote memorization. I’d like to share a little from Leigh Bortins book “The Core
Last week, I had the opportunity to observe an Essentials class at my CC Community. Even if the next level of classical education is a few years away for your family, I’d highly encourage anyone with a Foundations child to take a looksie at an Essentials class. It broadened my view of this whole classical journey, and renewed my excitement for the process. Seeing English and Math memory work come to life in real application was a great motivator to keep plugging along with all those songs about gerunds and verb conjugations. Bonus, I saw math games in action that I immediately stole, and have been using at home ever since. Including this fun game, called SNAKE.
You can play this as a multiplication or addition game. We learn skip counting in our Classical Conversations memory work, so my 6-year-old can rattle off multiplication as fast (maybe even faster) than his addition facts. We play both multiplication and addition to reinforce both as a good math foundation. Continue reading
Our baby birdie is all grown up. Hydro flew the nest today for the first time. Just his two little un-hatched sibling eggs remained. Kids these days. They grow up so quickly. One minute they are a tiny egg…then poof, they’re flying in the wild blue yonder. Continue reading
Happy Monday! A later update than usual because I spent my entire day observing Challenge classes at a local CC community. In a strange twist, one of the classes has an assignment this week to watch birds as part of their Science lesson. More on all that fun in another post. I know you really want the details on our nest happenings. It’s nasty out today and Hydro looks none too pleased about it. Continue reading
This is a fantastic game for munchkins embarking on early math. Kids journey through Sum Swamp
Happy Saturday! Hydro (and the nest) looked a little worse for wear this morning after a mildly blustery night last night. He almost seemed to be shivering, huddled at the back side of the nest. There were bits of nest coming loose everywhere and tufts of his feathers kind of flying around. Continue reading
Boo-hoo! Hydro is tricky just like his momma. Hiding eggs and making me all excited, then dropping the boom today. No new babies. I’ve officially given up on the other eggs at this point. Hydro was born a week ago. I cannot imagine a scenario where eggs that were incubated at the same time hatch that far apart from each other. Anyone with vast birding knowledge want to correct that thinking for me? Continue reading
Lots of excitement at the nest today! As usual, it was occupied when I peeked around the corner, but as I glanced at the fence, another Junco appeared from next door and dropped off some grub. As soon as the food was deposited, both birds flew away. Gazelle to a nearby tree, the other up to the fence line where he sat, glaring at me. All that, and I haven’t even arrived at the exciting part.
Dissonant Symphony 