Angles

Matias and Violet have been learning about angles recently.  We encountered the concept while building our Rube Goldberg Machines.  At first I thought that this was going to be a difficult concept for them, but it turns out that angles are everywhere, and they are visible and tangible, and really not that hard at all!  A few things we did with angles:

So, how about those backwards < and > signs?  We knew what we meant :)

We discussed the difference between obtuse and acute angles (awww, isn't it so a-cute?!)  Matias does taekwondo, and he has already learned to jump 90 degrees, then 180 degrees, then 270 and 360 degreee circles, so he immediately grasped that idea.  I had no idea he already knew that much.  Cool!  We got a good workout practicing jumping those different angles- a few 360s in a row, and I was quite out of breath!  I don't think there is any learning quite as solid as building a physical memory of a concept (and I will not soon forget just how far around 360 degrees is!!)

Next we pulled out the protractor and measured some angles around our house: the fireplace screen, the art drawer, the door frame, etc.  The kids have been noticing angles all over the place ever since!

Then, while the little ones napped, Matias used the miter box to saw some angles into some old boards (leftover from taekwondo testing, actually). That was a BIT hit!  

It just goes to show that most complex concepts can be introduced at an early age, especially if the child is eager to learn about them.  Obviously, we don't care if they master the concepts, learn to measure angles perfectly, or teach formulas...we just introduce the ideas and tools and play around with them.  Hopefully, in the future, they will encounter angles in a more formal way and they will say, "hey, I learned about this when I was little...this is easy!"

Spring Thoughts

Spring is not so far off.  There may be snow on the ground outside, but what better time to force some bulbs and plant a bit of grass?  We thought that our little man might enjoy watching some plants grow...who knows if he's had that opportunity before...and on day two they are already popping up.  Hooray for quick growing plants!  We planted a few in water beads as well, just as an experiment, and they also appear to be quite happy.  I am ready for Spring flowers, how about you?!

The Wonderful Pigs of Jillian Jiggs

Jillian Jiggs, by Phoebe Gilman, was one of my favorite picture book characters growing up.  She is spunky, creative, and just a touch messy.  In The Wonderful Pigs of Jillian Jiggs, she sews a bunch of stuffed pigs to sell, but then falls in love with them and doesn't want to sell them.  Instead, she teaches her friends how to make their own pigs.  Then, she teaches you as well.  I have fond memories of sitting on the floor of my basement, surrounded by stuffing and buttons, making my own pig.  This week, I decided to introduce my kids to Jillian, and they made a few pigs of their own.

If you are not familiar with the Jillian Jiggs books, I highly recommend that you check your library!

Linking:

Rube Goldberg Machines

Lately, we have been quite inspired by Rube Goldberg Machines.  YouTube has a host of wonderful RG Machine videos.  You can find two of our favorites at the bottom of this post.

Since watching them, we have tried out a few ideas of our own.  We had a RG Machine playdate one day with a friend who brought over some fun parts.  Then, this weekend, our friends Noah and Allison came to visit, and we decided to build one.  Allison is completing her PhD in Physics, so we knew we were in good hands.  We used all sorts of fun things- levers, pulleys, hammers, duplo blocks, marbles, dominos...and lots of tape and string!

Here are a few videos that show what we came up with.  As with all RG Machines, we had a few failed attempts before the whole things worked...but that is a great lesson in itself...and it was so exciting when it finally did!

Part 1- explaining the machine

Part 2- the first try

Part 3- the second try

Part 4- IT WORKED!

A few of our favorite Rube Goldberg Machine Videos on YouTube:

Audri's Monster Trap

Ok Go's "This Too Shall Pass" Machine

Linking up with:

Sylvester and the Magic Pebble

Our story this week was Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, by William Steig.  It is a great, classic story about a little donkey who find a magic pebble, and ends up accidently turning himself into a rock.  The story is a sad while his parents are looking for him, and he is giving up hope of ever becoming a donkey again.  It all ends well, however, and my kids really liked the story.

We decided that it would be fun to do an experiment with some "magic" pebbles of our own, so we brought out the water beads again (and yes, I still have my love-hate relationship with these monsters).  We filled a pan with them, and then left them out on the counter for four days.  We watched them shrink down to tiny pebbles as the water evaporated.

After they had completely shrunk and dried, we decided to see what would happen if we rehydrated them.  Instead of using plain water, we soaked them in Tonic Water, which glows under black lights.  We have some special black light experiments planned soon, so we are going to see if our water beads glow.

The beads rehydrated well, and the rehydration is much more spectacular to watch than the dehydration because it happens much faster.  Overall, it was a very successful experiment, and the kids got really into checking the beads to look for change.  And the beads did NOT end up all over the house this time (woot!)

As with most of our stories and experiments, I encourage the children to write about them in their journals.  I blogged here about how we use journals.  The journal not only offers great practice at writing and expressing themselves on paper, but it also allows us to easily look back over what we have learned and review and reminisce about our year.

Tinkering Lab- Grand Opening

Today we had the great pleasure to attend the grand opening of the Tinkering Lab at the Chicago Children's Museum.  Matt happened to meet the CEO of the museum at a think-tank-like conference he recently attended, and she passed along an invitation.  So we packed up the van the night before and left home slightly before the crack of dawn to attend the opening.  Our kids got to be the first in the exhibit (not counting the media soft opening yesterday), and got to play with some of the enthusiastic and awesome people who worked to create this exhibit.  The donors and creators seemed to enjoy watching our kids explore the new space.  And explore they did, because  

it. is. awesome.

For those of you familiar with the museum, the new lab has taken the place of the large vertical conveyor belt exhibit, next door to the dinosaurs. Upon entering, you pass through a room with pegboards on the wall, and all sorts of balls, tubes, pegs and funnels to play with.  There is a baby area with more balls, scoops and tires.  Beatrice loved the bike tires on the wall that had keyrings attached to the spokes.  They make a great sound when you spin them.  When you enter the main room, you see tables and lots of shelves full of stuff.  Bits of wood, hammers, saws, screw drivers, screws, nails, corks, beads, batteries, tape, old electronics...just stuff.  Stuff that is begging to be made into cooler stuff.

By far the best thing about this exhibit is that everything is real- not a toy hammer in sight.  As the director said, "Pretend tools are great for pretend play."  But this place is all about the real thing.  Violet was particularly excited that she got to drill REAL holes in a piece of wood using a real battery-operated drill.  Then she got to pick out screws and nails and hammer and screw them into the holes she made.  She also got to see the inside of a princess wand (from the gift shop), and using an old Christmas tree light battery tester, she found a live battery and connected the wires from the wand to make it spin and light up.  She had obviously never considered HOW this kind of toy worked, and she was fascinated.  And when the battery ran out of power and it spun but would no longer light up, she was equally fascinated.  

Matias enjoyed using the REAL miter box and saw to cut REAL wood.  He also had fun with the hammer, tongue sticking out in concentration all the while.  He only thwacked his finger once, and then decided that perhaps having me hold the nail for him was the way to go.  Um, no thanks!  He figured it out after a few tries.  He also had a great time working on a spinny-toy-duct-tape-motor-wood-string-bead electronic contraption with one of the men who was there.  It was, at any given time, a rocket, a weed-eater, a super spinner and an airplane.  He could have worked on it for a very long time (and really, in kid-time, he DID...he spent at least half an hour on this thing).

We will definitely be heading back to the Tinkering Lab soon...and perhaps investing in a few real tools of our own, and a couple of electronics from the thrift shop to take apart.  It is always fun to discover that your children are capable of more than you thought...and ours certainly proved today that they can make REAL things with REAL tools.

There is a great article about the Tinkering Lab over at The Maker Mom today...she attended the media opening yesterday, and also had a lot of nice things to say about the lab.  She has a ton of great pictures...I was a little preoccupied helping my little ones use REAL tools to snap too many pictures.

I hope that any of you who make it into Chicago soon can visit the Tinkering Lab.  It is a great new addition to an already great museum!

Yarn Along- Sheep Edition!

My Ravelry notes

My awesome friend, Anna, gave me a few skeins of some yarn- homespun from her brother's sheep farm.  It is really rustic and awesome, and I decided that it would make the most adorable little stuffed sheep for someone's Easter basket.  There is something kind of funny and fitting about taking wool from a sheep and knitting it back into a sheep. It is knitting up quick and easy and I am having fun with it.  Hopefully it will look something along the lines of this:

Fuzzy Mitten Lamb- pattern free on Ravelry!

I am currently reading Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers, by Neufeld and Mate.  I picked it up for a nonfiction bookclub through a local homeschooling group (though book club was last night and I certainly did not have it all read.  They didn't mind...the sign of a good book club!)  So far it is pretty good- it definitely hits all the usual attachment parenting ideas.  It is a bit heavy on worst-first what-if thinking for my taste- if your children are more attached to their peers than to you THIS AND THIS AND THIS AND THIS AND THIS AWFUL TERRIBLE THING WILL HAPPEN.  All valid, but not likely.  But it certainly worth the read.  Note to self...next time get the audio book...then I could read AND knit at the same time...and possibly finish one, if not both, of these projects!

Linking up with Ginny's Yarn Along today!

Light Table

I am a bit late to the light table craze that has attacked Pinterest. To be honest, I was feeling a bit counter-cultural when it came to light tables...everyone was doing it, so I WASN'T going to. But last week was a long, dark, inside, winter week, and I realized that we had a big tupperware bin and a string of LED lights leftover from Christmas, so I taped some black paper around the inside of the bin, stuck the lights in there and voila.

Turns out, the thing is pretty fun...who knew?! (oh yeah, everyone on Pinterest)

We started by playing with some colored plastic, overlapping them to mix colors, which happened to go nicely with the book Little Blue and Little Yellow by Leo Lionni that we had just read.  Then we pulled out some pieces from our Blokus game, and a few lenses and prisms from our science set.  Matias discovered that logic puzzles and sudoku are more fun on top of the light table. All three kids seem to enjoy it- especially Beatrice.

I have some other plans in the works for the light table...we will be putting salt on it to do some light table handwriting practice this week.  I also want to get out the clear marble run pieces and try those out.  Maybe play with water beads on there (if I can set aside my type A personality and deal with those bouncing menaces indoors...talk about a Pinterest craze I should have avoided!) I pinned a few more ideas to a light table board on Pinterest (because it is the done thing, you know).

Anyhoo...it turns out that the masses are right...light tables are a lot of fun!

An Election Sign

Following my blog post on teaching children about the election in a non-partisan way, I thought that I would share a project we've been working on.  We have been on the hunt for election signs...searching out the car windows and finding them while biking around the neighborhood.  We count them, talk about what color they are, what the names of the candidates are, guess at who might have put them out.  Today we decided to make our OWN election sign for our front yard.  Rather than back a particular candidate, we made a sign reminding people to vote on Tuesday.  The Election happens to fall on Matias' birthday this year- so he is particularly excited to have NOVEMBER 6th on the sign.

Here are the steps:

Gather red, white, blue and yellow paint, some sort of sign (weather-proof it you plan to put it outside) and acrylic sealer.

Print off an American flag from Google Images and trace it onto the wood with a pencil (push hard).

Paint the sign white, including the flag, except for the blue star portion.

Using blue painter's tape, section off the stripes and paint in the red and blue.  Add 50 yellow dots for stars. 

Paint your message on the sign- I wrote it in pencil and Matias painted over it.

We used a hair dryer to dry the paint as we went along so we didn't have to wait.  Spray the sign with acrylic sealer, let it dry and display it proudly.

Waxed Leaves

How beautiful are the trees right now?!  We are all enjoying the Fall colors and wanted to preserve a few of them.  Sunday we took a family walk around the neighborhood and collected some really beautiful leaves.  Then we dipped them in beeswax to preserve them, and then strung some and made some into a wreath.  It was a much simpler project that I had feared, and they turned out great.  My only warning- use a junk pan (thrift store perhaps), not your everyday cookware.  We used pots from Violet's mudpie kitchen and were glad that we did- the wax will be on there forever.  

Violet and Matt sorting out our finds

Melting our little beeswax bear...turns out the eyeballs were the last thing to melt, making it slightly unnerving.  We made a doubler boiler with two pots from Violet's mudpie kitchen.

dipping the leaves and drying them on waxed paper

We used a needle and thread to string the leaves into a chain

Makes it look nice and festive for the season

Here we just pinned the leaf stems to a styrofoam wreath form from the dollar store...I think it turned out kind of neat!