Site-Specific Dance Field Trip

Yesterday afternoon, we rode the Expo to three stops to see a series of site-specific “Transit Dances” - Bollywood, contemporary, and Maori.

Dead Robot

I’m irritated that my LEGO Mindstorms Education Core Set did not include a charging cable. The Education Core Set from LEGO does include a charging cable, but the third-party seller on Amazon that I bought my kit from is selling the “Education Core Set” without the charging cable, for a higher price than LEGO, and selling the charging cable separately. And, Amazon has the seller listed as “LEGO.”😡 I didn’t realize this when I ordered my kit. (Why would I buy a robot with no way to charge it?!) On Amazon, in the questions, someone asked if this was the SAME set as the one on the LEGO site, and the response was “yes.” It’s not. My robot is dead, and I’m not happy.

More Bowling

My Robot Arrived!

Moonshine Crisco Apple Pie

My mom needed to test out a rolling pin (made by a woodworker friend) so we baked an apple pie. The pin is designed to roll a perfect 1/8” inch pie crust. Since we didn’t have coconut oil, we used Crisco, and since we didn’t have vodka, we used 1/4 cup of Bosnian Rakia (180 proof plum wine). Here is the finished (delicious) product...

Poppa’s Chemistry Lesson

Poppa gave Gemma a chemistry lesson today.

He took a copper-plated zinc penny (post-1982), and filed the side.

Then, he put the penny in hydrochloric acid and we watched vapors rise off of it. 

In this video, he’s showing her how the zinc and hydrochloride react to yield hydrogen. (It also yields zinc chloride, which is aqueous).

The result? A floating penny. 

Why is it floating? Because it’s now hollow.

Self-Belief

“One thing at any rate we know with certainty, that no teaching, no information becomes knowledge to any of us until the individual mind has acted upon it, translated it, transformed, absorbed it, to reappear, like our bodily food, in forms of vitality. Therefore, teaching, talk and tale, however lucid or fascinating, effect nothing until self-activity be set up; that is, self-education is the only possible education; the rest is mere veneer laid on the surface of a child's nature.”

~ from Charlotte Mason’s 6th Volume

I was recently reading an article titled “Improving Student Engagement.” The authors - Zypke & Leach - came up with four research perspectives, one of which was “Motivation and Agency.” They write, “Engaged students are intrinsically motivated and want to exercise their agency,” and one of their proposals for action is to “enhance students’ self-belief.”

In their section about self-belief, they bring up constructivism, which is an idea some people in the Charlotte Mason community don’t like very much. Instead of seeing what constructivism and Charlotte Mason-“ism” have in common (“education is about students constructing their own knowledge” and “no information becomes knowledge...until the individual mind has acted upon it”), some people in the Charlotte Mason community reject constructivism because of what constructivism has become: students seated in groups doing project-based learning, with the classroom teacher as a “guide on the side.” Some people in the Charlotte Mason community, and the “classical” education community, believe that direct instruction is best.

But let’s assume that education is about students acting upon information, translating it, transforming it, absorbing it, carrying it across the divide that exists between the teacher and student, changing it from one shape to another.

Zypke & Leach continue: “The self-theories learners bring to their learning impact motivation, agency and engagement.” The ideas we have about ourselves have an effect on why we do what we do. This is always true, but what implications does this have in regard to learning?

I used to think I didn’t like math. I used to think that people had either a numbers brain or a letters brain, and that I had a letters brain. Then, I was forced to teach pre-algebra and my thinking changed. I realized that, in school, I’d decided that I wasn’t good at math because math took work. Teaching pre-algebra helped me see that math is just a language. My self-belief changed. I decided that I was capable of developing a deeper understanding of math, and the result is that now I love it.

I think it’s important to give Gemma lots of opportunities to do things that take work - taking swim lessons, learning a dance routine for a recital, learning to play a new song on the piano. When she is working on something new, we tell her, “You are capable of this. Remember when you were learning [fill in the blank], and it was hard, and you thought you couldn’t do it? But you did it. And now you can do it like it’s no big deal. You’ll get this too. Not today. But you’ll keep practicing, and you will get it.”