We watched a National Geographic movie last week about volcanoes, and not only was the factual information about volcanoes novel (one volcano had black lava during the day, red at night, and white when it hardened), but the stories about the volcanologists were gripping. I hadn't realized how many volcanologists have been killed or injured in their line of work, often by misjudging a pyroclastic flow (which is essentially volcanic avalanche). I have to admit, I was on the edge of my seat as the movie walked us through the unfolding of the Mt Pinatuba evacuation and eruption. We will be following up on this topic with some research activities and a writing or art project.
Since we love science, we are also pursuing another area of exploration, which is Darwin and evolutionary science. So far, we've studied the context of Darwin's publications, including how long he spent developing his theories, his fears of presenting them, his personal life and how his theories affected his marriage, and what other scientists had thought of similar theories at the same time (but were discredited). The hoax of Piltdown man and its relationship to Darwin's work is another topic we're currently exploring. This learning adventure was a fascinating unsolved mystery, though both Jordan and I have our opinions on the hoax culprit, and gives a lot of insight into how easily we can be misled if we really want to believe something. I have to admit, I was also shocked to hear the case for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as a possible suspect, and had no idea how taken he was with the supernatural.
For math, our current unit is on logic, using the textbook Unified Mathematics. The sequential and clear presentation of the material is helpful, and many of the examples are funny, providing some comic relief here and there. We are going back and forth between real statements and their representation as single letters, for example p is "Monkeys are animals". Then we have to evaluate "not p", which would be "monkeys are not animals", therefore false. One recent problem used the statement "Potholes are good for cars", which Jordan and I found hilarious in the context.
One component of our language arts studies has been examining the origins of common phrases. We recently read about "a bitter pill to swallow" and "rub the wrong way". Perhaps some of these phrases will pop up in Jordan's next writing assignment, which is a persuasive essay. That's still in the planning stages now, but I look forward to seeing him organize his ideas and draft the essay.
Another recent exploration has been cruciverbalists, people who create or love crossword puzzles. We learned about Will Shorts, the editor of the New York Times crossword, and the annual Crossword Puzzle Tournament that he started in 1978 and continues to run today. We'd like to try to create our own crossword puzzle, though from what we've learned so far about the process, we will probably want to start with a small one that doesn't have to follow all of the rules that the NYT puzzles follow (and has straightforward clues). We'll post it when it's done.
For now, history/social studies has been focused on ancient Greece, Jordan's favorite topic. The gods of mythology are especially close to his heart. We're discussing shifting towards some studies that will align with the curricular standards, and I'm hoping to find ways to integrate our science, math, and language arts together with history to allow for in depth understandings of various time periods.
Music for us is currently piano, with practice (Jordan practices songs under the direction of his piano teacher) and theory, with a little composition and music appreciation worked in. We need to finish re-stringing our guitars so we can start working on learning a few chords and tunes, and build from there.
French is the foreign language we study, because that's the one I studied to a reasonable level of fluency in college, and we hear songs and stories as well as working through vocabulary and grammar from books. We enjoy incorporating a little French conversationally in our day, and hopefully will do a unit on French history.
Computers is understandably another area of keen interest for Jordan, and the main things we've done recently are to work on our website and start blogs. We discussed the language of websites, including html and css, and I showed him some of the basics of Dreamweaver and how to view the source code in browsers or in Dreamweaver. He is excited to build his own site, though I'm not sure exactly what the focus will be.
Other activities have included learning the difference between chopping, dicing, and mincing onions (in our nutrition unit) and being in charge of directing the assembly of a large shelving unit (reading and understanding the directions, and troubleshooting problems with getting pieces properly oriented for assembly. Physical activity has been yoga, bike riding, and Jordan's new Ripstick.
As for our upcoming adventures, we'll be incorporating some new materials I just received for daily proofreading exercises, writing exercises, and "cool math". We've already done an activity from the "cool math" and it was a hit -- it was the world's oldest brainteaser, and we both ended up being fooled by it. We anticipate a bit of ping pong and racquetball in the near future too.
