:: Learn ::

I have a love of learning, I would happily go to school for like ever. Really. There are so many places to find information online. You probably already know you can take classes there, too. Did you know many of them are free? I just started an Introduction to Statistics class at Udacity. I've signed up for their Visualizing Algebra course also, which begins January 30. These two classes are not actually for pleasure on my part, but because I really want that information. I think I can use it. I'm sure I can, in fact. Even if it's just to support my kids who are learning it now and in the future.

I suppose I could go into a diatribe about education. But I'll spare you my take on that and simply share where you can find some free courses for yourself or someone you love:

Udacity - This is a start-up in Palo Alto, CA that offers free online courses. The lectures are short videos that also have input fields as you're learning. At the end of the course you get a certificate of completion. You can also earn college credits on some of these courses (college credits cost $). But if you don't need the credits you can take it for free!

A while ago I found this fabulous blog post: 12 Dozen Places to Educate Yourself for Free on Marc and Angel Hack Life blog. This is a pretty exhaustive list of places to learn online, from MIT to the BBC, go check this list out! I'm pretty sure you'll find something you just have to learn.

TEDed - Their mission statement: "We believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world. So we're building here a clearinghouse that offers free knowledge and inspiration from the world's most inspired thinkers, and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other." These lectures are always inspirational, often funny. The above video I watched on TEDed tonight - and I'm going on a walk tomorrow!

Khan Academy - A great place for homeschoolers of all ages. We used it for math for a while. You can find courses on many subjects there and it will track your work.

Lynda.comhttp://www.lynda.com/ - This is a great place to go to learn software, that's what I used it for a while ago. Many lessons are free, but if you want access to them all you need to pay. It's great for homeschoolers who want to learn Garageband, for instance. :) You can become a member for one month or the whole year, depends on your budget and needs. And, as I said you can watch many intro lessons for free.

Other "places" I found while farting around the web:

Open Culture - They have a collection of over 650 free courses in liberal arts and sciences which you download onto your mp3 player.
Coursera - Partners with top universities around the world to deliver their courses. I sure see some courses I'm interested in taking here.
Academic Earth - Video courses on quite a few subjects.


There is so much to learn and do, why does anyone watch television anymore? 

Point Lobos; The Other Carmel

When I think of Carmel I think fancy shops and spendy real estate. This is the reason the real estate is so spendy: Natural, Breath-taking Beauty. The boys and I went with our homeschool group to Point Lobos a couple Fridays ago. It's a natural reserve located an hour and fifteen minutes south of us, in Carmel. Wow. It was a spectacular day weather-wise, and we were so happy to be in such a beautiful location with wonderful docents and abundant natural wonders. We saw an otter and seal sunning themselves side by side, apparently this is highly unusual, the seals usually chase away the otters. This is also an historically significant place for the Native American Ohlone population, with evidence of centuries of use and civilization long before the Europeans arrived. There is an abundance of poison oak here - the Ohlone people can eat it like salad and it has no ill effects on them!

If you live nearby I highly recommend a visit. It's easy hiking if you've got really little kids and there is a lot to observe and learn. There is so much to see, we just scratched the surface with the tour we went on. Bring your camera, sunscreen and lunch! It's worth the drive.

Makers Meet: Paper Making

For our first Makers Meet about three Fridays ago we made paper. We had been expecting three families and ended up with one - thankfully. It was a lot to prepare for and the containers I had for the pulp turned out to be not big enough, so we just had one pulp container going. It was a rainy day so we were inside the studio and the sun wasn't available to dry our papers - we used a toaster oven. We put seeds into some of it, made balls with some to create beads (or blow dart ammunition in my house). We got the lovely green and blue colors by adding the "grass" from our Easter baskets to newspaper. All and all I thought it was a fun day of creating for me, and after our guests left even Coleman gave paper making a shot! He came in and out of the studio to talk and observe, and after seeing the results wanted to give it a try. Max had absolutely no desire to give it a shot, maybe next time.

To make paper at home all you need is a blender, scrap paper, water, a rectangular plastic bucket, a picture frame with a screen stretched onto it. You probably have all these things already - I got a roll of screen at the hardware store for $6.00 and some dollar store frames. This is a good project for outside because it can be messy. I used this YouTube video for a refresher course for myself, it's pretty straight forward. You should give it a try!

Charlestown!

Prudence the cannon.

Rigging galore.

On Old Ironsides.

That's a big mixer. aboard the U.S.S. Cassin Young

Cool knot on Old Ironsides! This is the oldest commissioned war ship in the world. Neat, huh?

The U.S.S Cassin Young destroyer was the biggest hit with Coleman, though. WWII buff that he is.

Design is everywhere.

There are meanings to all of the flags. We've got a cool book about this.

We spent a good part of Tuesday in Charlestown at the shipyard. The U.S.S. Constitution and the U.S.S. Cassin Young destroyer is located there. There's a fabulous museum! This visit is part of the freedom trail we'd planned to walk. I thought it would be great to start the tour here since it isn't as crowded as in town and the parking is easy. But Coleman was still sick - the whole darn vacation! - so this is both where we began and where we ended the tour. We did get a peak at the Bunker Hill Memorial from the shipyard. Well, we'll just have to do this again this summer, if we make it back to Boston. It was a beautiful, sunny and crisp New England day.

Interesting Stuff About This Stuff:

Marine Flag Meanings we've got the DK book on Ships and Sailing.
For a book club Coleman recently read Johnny Tremain, by Esther Forbes. The book is set in Boston at the start of the American Revolution.
The Constitution of the United States of America by Sam Fink, this is an illustrated book, one illustration for each line. It's lovely, I found it at a thrift store for $3. I'll bet it's at your local library.
Howard Zinn's A Young People's History of The United States: Columbus to the War on Terror

Trash Talk

We started an ongoing discussion about consumer waste a while back, brought on by The Story of Stuff.  One of my kind guides in navigating the new-to-me world of homeschooling gave me a link to another mom's blog which has a unit on plastics. We took some information from that post and watched some videos on the Pacific Garbage Patch that we found through her post. It got me thinking that this entire topic can be expanded on ten fold. That's when my mind began to short circuit. When I see all the magnificent possibilities I have an extremely difficult time compartmentalizing the pieces. Somehow I was able to manage choosing a place to begin,  making plastic in our kitchen. Which was a fun project, though the experiment I found on the web left out a lot of information about the process, for instance how long it takes to dry (a lot longer than I imagined-several days) and what's actually happening chemically. After doing the plastic experiment I found a more detailed Youtube video from Chemistry Corner. The plastic we made will decompose in about 35 to 45 YEARS. I guess it's better than never.

In a week and a half at our first Homeschool Maker's Meet we'll be making paper and paper beads from consumer waste, we've also got a couple projects planned which will use wood pallets. I've got a pallet pintrest board with a bunch of cool projects on it. I'm so excited for these Maker's Meets!

Tweet Tweet

We love birds. A new spark in interest on this subject happened at the feed store in Aptos. I was picking up some chicken feed recently and found a great laminated pocket guide to the birds of Monterey Bay. We've been pouring over this guide for a week or so. There are a lot of different birds around here. So many opportunities for learning here; habitat, behavior, observation and the vocabulary list alone is spectacular. An added bonus is we spend time outside looking for birds, in the backyard, in the forest, at the beach, the park, and any number of slough around here.
When we're outside we try to identify the birds we see. This can be particularly challenging because they move pretty darn fast and we've got a lot of work to do being still enough ourselves. My Audio School has a great series of videos on bird identification. We've just watched the first two so far, they are about ten minutes each and very informative. We're just really getting our feet wet on this subject, I'll let you know where this takes us (if it's interesting).


Some other interesting links for this subject:

All About Birds site; loving their Words About Birds page. Vocab, baby!

Birds, Cetaceans, Odes, Herps and More: natural history information about Monterey County


SIMon Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary


Monterey Bay Birding Festival: Come see 200 species of birds in one of the world's most picturesque areas of California on the Monterey Bay.
Date: September 13, 2012 - September 16, 2012
Time: Thurs. - Sat. 6:30am - 9pm, Sun. 6:30am - 12pm

Alternatives

I've been fascinated by alternative shelters for decades. When I was in high school I came across the book Getting a Roof Over Your Head: affordable housing alternatives in my Uncle Jim's vast collection of books. Kindly Uncle Jim gave me this mind-altering treasure that very day. It is one of the few books remaining in my shrinking collection. This book opened my mind to the possibility of doing things differently. Not just in building a home. Also taking an alternate path to journey through life. Building a home in this way (different than most) takes commitment and an alternative outlook on life and how it is lived. Our society is often so overpowering that one can loose site of her own values. Wants translate into needs in our culture. We plant this seed in our children early and cultivate it in our homes. I am no stranger to this way of thinking, I've lived it off and on. I grew up in suburban America in the seventies, after all. These days I'm safely off that band wagon. Presently on foot (or in that darn van) trudging my own interesting path.

I memorized the homes in that treasured book when I was a girl. The stories behind the homes. The people who dreamed them up and made them happen, often with their own hands. It's a skill making your dreams reality. It takes perseverance, drive and believing in yourself. Often you have to step outside of the expected in order to accomplish great things. And when things are not going as you planned or hoped, you have to push your way through it or be flexible and patient and quiet enough to discover what is needed in that moment. Our choice to homeschool is a little like building an alternative shelter. Some days I wonder how so many families manage this homeschool world. I have found it isolating and lonely at time. I crave the community I imagined yet have not made enough of an effort to join the community, not seen an easy way into it. I think I can, I think I can...

Check out this alternative shelter:

Eliphante in Arizona

Eliphante

Creative Writing & Metalwork

 This past week, while I was busy doing the final touches on the auction projects I gave Coleman the opportunity to lead himself through several school days. He spent many hours reading - his favorite subject. He also decided to make some quill pens with our chickens feathers (selected from the ones lying about the yard). Inspired by the book he's reading, Eregon, he also began illustrating dragons. It was a creative week for both of us. He also made a beautiful copper pendant while practicing his metalsmithing skills - my favorite subject to teach. In his Wednesday nature class he began working on making a knife with carbon using tradition blacksmithing methods.

 

Soapmaking Fun

At the end of January Coleman and I, along with a few other families went deep into the Aptos woods and up a mountain to make soap. Another homeschooling mama was gracious enough to invite parents from our homeschooling community to share in soap making for the day. Never having made soap Coleman and I were very eager to learn. The big block we made still sits in our studio awaiting the six weeks required for it to cure. Lye was involved so it was a potentially dangerous procedure, though no one was hurt this day. I am eager to try it again with a little less chaos surrounding the process and an essential oil or two to spruce up the bacon fat aroma.

There were so many wonderful things going on this day. My favorite part was that there were so many people around and the kids were playing together, chickens and dogs were wandering, moms were helping each other and there was general cheer. Coleman met a couple new boys who he really enjoyed spending time with. I was wishing for Max, but he was at school, perhaps this summer...It was all good.

Here's what we used in our soap:
3 cups water
1 1/4 cup lye
12 cups rendered fat (we used bacon fat from a local restaurant)
2 cups goats milk
2 Tbs olive oil
.5 ml cinnamon essential oil (it wasn't really enough, I could have tripled the amount or more)

Because this is a dangerous process, I won't actually go into it. But I can recommend a great site that will give you all the safety tips and directions on how to go about doing this: Soap Queen's four part video on cold process soap making is the perfect beginning step in learning how to make soap. There are a lot of safety precautions you have to take and she goes over all of them. We were way lower tech than the Soap Queen, we just used spoons to stir (I used a wooden one, but you should use a stainless steel one). But we did use gloves, eye protection and face masks to protect our lungs. We also did this outside where the ventilation was good. My next soap is going to have coconut fat in it and aloe...

Plastic Series: Bioplastic From Your Kitchen

We made plastic today! At least we think we did. It hasn't cured yet - hours later. The instructional YouTube video didn't go into how long it would take to dry out and feel like plastic. Somehow we're confident that it will be plastic in the end. Before it biodegrades.

Here's what you'll need:

Tools:
Hot plate or stovetop
pot
1Tbs measure
1tsp measure
silicone spatula
silicone mat or silicone cutting board
(you can even find textured surfaces to use, or make your own molds with plasticine)


Ingredients:
1Tbs Tapioca Starch (or Corn Starch or Potato Starch)
4Tbs Water
1tsp glycerin (we could only find the liquid suppository kind at the pharmacy today:)
1tsp white vinegar
optional food coloring

Directions:

1. Add all the ingredients, in order, into your pot.
2. Stir until completely mixed
3. Turn the heat up to medium
4. (if using food coloring this is when you plop it in)
5. "Stir your head off" until it becomes translucent
6. Pour onto your surface and smooth it out to desired thickness. This step is actually slightly challenging, it's rather goopy and difficult to get a consistent thickness. But it was fun, just the same. It cools off pretty quickly. 

We don't yet know how long it takes to become plastic, it's been about five hours since our first batch and it's certainly getting there, but not quite. We also made molds of minifigs using plasticine, and I can see learning how to make molds for something like this being yet another interesting avenue of learning. I think you could do this experiment with young kids, as long as you feel safe with them at the stove. I think the hardest part is waiting for it to set (it is for me, anyhow). Though I must admit, it was difficult for me to sit back and not help at certain moments, maybe that was the hardest for me. (But maybe the best part for Coleman)

Repair Work

Power tools. How can a boy refuse? Coleman's bed was broken a few weeks ago, and Chris had already fixed it once before. It was Coleman's turn to make some repairs. (Coleman's bed is at the bottom of the loft ladder, so many leapers land on that bed - snap!) We used what we had on hand to make the repairs and I think it should hold up a few more (unsanctioned) leapers.

Fire Soup

Coleman and I are easing back into homeschool after our trip back east. We've been back about a week and a half and not a lot of official work has been accomplished. While we were in Massachusetts I found my thoughts on our homeschooling days shifted a bit. I think we're almost completely de-schooled. Which puts me in a new place mentally, a place that feels more sure than before about his ability to step up to the plate and get some work done. This week we have revisited Khan Academy and have begun working again more seriously at math, but I get ahead of myself. Here's how I knew Coleman was ready to get more serious: He made soup. Fire Soup. Lead to the kitchen by the inviting aroma of onions, garlic and ginger sautéing away on the stove. Add to that chopped carrots and sweet potatoes and he was eager to partake. (It was surely very helpful that he was hungry.) What got him cooking up his own pot of soup? I was adding lentils and chicken stock to my stew. He didn't want either of those two things and for sure didn't want stew. Soup was a much more appealing menu item. And so he began digging through all the food and spices we had and built himself a most delicious soup for dinner, all by himself, without even a little prompting. I mean really, really delicious. Step aside Jamie Oliver!

Fire Soup Recipe (makes enough for one big bowl of soup!)

Ingredients:

2 Tbsp olive oil 
1/4 of a Large onion, chopped
1 large clove crushed garlic
1/2 tsp crushed ginger
1 medium carrot, peeled and diced
1/2 sweet potato, diced
1 small white potato, diced
5 thinly sliced apricots
1 Tbs raisins
10 grinds sea salt
7 grinds black pepper
1 tsp brown sugar
1/4 tsp apple cider vinegar
a dash of each: cinnamon, paprika, cayenne pepper, turmeric
1 1/2 cups vegetable stock

Directions:

1. Using a medium sized pot, on medium-low flame, sauté the onion until translucent, add garlic and ginger and stir for 3 minutes.
2. Add: carrot and both types of potato and a small amount of stock to pot. Cook for 5-10 minutes on low heat.
3. Add: salt, pepper, sugar, cinnamon, paprika, cayenne & turmeric, stir to coat vegetables.
4. Add vegetable stock and vinegar, cook on low/medium for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
5. Add apricots and raisins, cook for 5 minutes more.

Serve with croutons and water with lemon slices for a beverage.

If you try this recipe please write to me so I can let Coleman know how you enjoyed it, or how you might change it! Thanks.

In Our Classroom Today

We decided to hunt for mushrooms again in the forest. We didn't have luck at the library getting the book All That The Rain Promises and More so we haven't actually been able to identify a single mushroom on our own yet. But we will, we will. There are spore tests to do, and other ways to identify your mushrooms. They can be tricky little things, looking like one another. There's a better chance you have found a poison one than an edible one - it's got us a little on edge over here in Santa Cruz. So much fun.

Mushroom Factoid: Mushrooms are more closely related to animal than plants.

Sir Ken Robinson - Changing Paradigms [in education]

"Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson will ask how do we make change happen in education and how do we make it last?"

Here's a shorter, illustrated version that will give you the gist of the above video, if you haven't got 55 minutes:

Changing Education Paradigm from Mike King on Vimeo.

Interesting that I found these just after receiving my books on Leadership Education. Which, frankly I can't wait to sell. What attracted me to the Leadership Education specifically was the phases of learning and that it used age ranges rather than specific standards by specific age. Also, that it seemed perfect for a homeschool application. The use of mentors to inspire the student to embrace the hard work of being educated. And that you can't really "teach" anything, an individual needs to make the decision to "learn". What I didn't like about it was how tied to religion it is, though, to be fair, while the author spoke of his christian religion, he encouraged the reader to use his/her own religion as the foundation of the teaching method. What of us, the religion-less? Sort of Buddhist, but not really, philosophical without a "Book" to use as foundation. Meaning The Bible, Tho Koran, The Torah, etc. The other imperative of the teaching is that in order to learn/teach how to think critically one must use the Classics in order to achieve this lofty goal of being a leader type person. In addition, I was looking for more practical organization of a day, a month, a year, I wasn't looking for praying, pledging to the flag etc. I know I should just be able to find/create a rhythm and make it so, it seems to be the most challenging task for me. Other than my morning coffee and thyroid pill anything is game! That doesn't help bring structure to a day of homeschooling a challenging child. And by challenging, I mean resistant and contrary and down right combative at times.

Since last March, the beginning of our homeschooling experience, I have experience such mixed notions and emotions about what I think our "school" should be for both Coleman and I. On one hand I look at everything the state and federal government say he needs to know and when. Then I think of what he's interested in, what I'm inspired by and can share with that sparkle a teacher needs to have. I question and he questions what he really needs to know, "for real". I worry I'll do him a disservice by not feeding him what is on the books as neccessary learning, and at the same time worry I will kill his curiosity if I feed it to him. (I know it should be about delivery - but if I have to fight him to play a dice game so we can learn the times table - what does that mean. A dice game! What could be more fun to learn math?) Perhaps I'm spending too much time picking this apart and looking for a specific way to do it. This is so darn difficult.

I'm still searching, still think that we're doing the right thing. Not sure how well I'm doing it, but I'm going to work at being better at my job. I'll still search my own thoughts for my own philosophy of education and try to inspire my [brilliant] son to want to learn about things. I guess we could spend the year building weapons or mechanical things and I'd have his attention...hmm...that could actually lead to serious learning.

Halloween Pictures

Halloween. It always seems like time speeds from October first to the thirty first in a flash. One moment I'm talking with the guys about what they might want to be this year for Halloween then suddenly I've got five minutes to make two costumes. Sometimes that works out okay. And other times it really was just plain bad planning. Like this year. That Samurai costume took sooooo long to make. Thankfully Max wanted to repeat his Ninja costume - otherwise who knows what would have gone down. The Samurai was part of Coleman's homeschooling experience. Coleman spent a lot of time researching Samurai armor and chose the Edo Period (sounds like Ed-oh). He found the symbol which  I used to make a stencil, he chose the colors, design and he spray painted, gold leafed and did some duct taping. I have to say, it was a lot of fun to make together. The labor was heavily weighted towards me, but it was so great having a willing helper once things started coming together.

I hope you all had a wonderful Halloween! What were you all for Halloween?