Our first Garage Art Day was not actually in the garage at all. First of all the garage was a mess, and also it was a beautiful sunny day!

A Still Life ( we added a duck and a baseball after this picture was taken to make it more interesting)

Building an art table

Apparently you can’t just screw legs on flat piece of wood and then expect it to stand. We did it the wrong way , and then we took it apart and did it the right way. Good thing there was four of us. It looks great!

Here is a great little video my Uncle made  of Cassius’ most recent Knight Camp performance. Cassius really enjoyed himself this time, and commented that he could tell that all his hard work was paying off. He felt pretty good about defeating two of his teachers also.

Recently at our Homelearner’s Co-op, Anja led some experiments with baking soda and vinegar. Cassius asked me if I knew that some acids, like lemons and some bases can conduct electricity. When we were at home, Cassius asked Rosalind for her meter. He stuck both the ends of the meter in a lemon and was disappointed to see no reading on the meter.

Rosalind explained that the meter just measures voltage or current, it didn’t create a circuit. Rosalind was curious where he got the idea from and he said that it was from a video he had watched on BrainPOP. They watched it and Cassius said he was confused – he was thinking lemons created electricity not conduct it.

This got Rosalind thinking about making batteries from citrus fruit. She sent him the experiments included below. As it turns out, he was right, you can power things with lemon power not just conduct electricity through it

Electric Lemon Experiement

“Find a dime and penny dated before 1987 and wash them thoroughly. Have a parent cut two slits in another juicy lemon, about 1/4 inch apart, and insert the coins halfway into each slit. Stick out your tongue and touch both coins simultaneously. You’ll feel it tingling–that’s electricity!”

This picture is of Cassius and Anja testing their lemons. At first they didn’t put the coins close enough, but when they moved them, it worked.

I found Cassius’ original experiement interesting because it was something he tried because he had an idea and wanted to see if it worked. The fact that it didn’t work led him him learning even more to figure out how to make it work.

Rosalind and Cassius figured out that the penny had copper plating and the dime has nickle plating. We also figured out that the Canadians held on to having these metals in our money longer than the Americans so if we followed the American dates we should be safe. We had to soak the coins in vinegar for a while to clean off the oxidation.

We discovered this game a few years ago – but they didn’t have a mac option. We checked it out the other day and they had a free Mac version 2-12X tables. Cassius loves it – all the kids do. Cassius who has never shown any interest in the multiplication was jumping and yelling out the answers! It’s wonderful to see the looks on the younger kids faces. I can tell they’re thinking, “Math is so cool – I can’t wait till I beat the troll too, like the big kids!”

Of course you can only have the cool environments if you pay for the upgrade, which we discovered when we reached  level three. Cassius convinced me to buy it. He was pleading to learn math, how could I say no? Now I wished I waited until he got to level five or six, so the novelty of the new environments would go farther. But who knows, it might keep his attention all the way to 12. He now knows his 2 and 3 X tables all the way to 12 and is working on the 4’s. So it is really working for him right now, and he is so proud of himself when he succeeds.

I’ve really noticed how much it helps him if I sit with him while he’s learning something new, and help him remember to breath and stay calm when he feels frustrated and afraid of failing ( or getting hit by a troll)! Once he’s got past this point he just takes off!

MAKUTA ZETH

Makuta Zeth had been a loyal servent to Makuta for many years, but was banished when he fell for a trap the Toa had set. Ever since then he has been trying to take down the Toa, this has been made hard by the fact that Makuta has taken away his mask power.

MUTATED MATORAN

Ever since he was mutated, this Matoran has been trying to seek his revenge on the Matoran who fear him and attack him. His desire is to live with them and rule them. He has poison breath and can duplicate.

Bionicle come to the rescue once again. Cassius has been spending time on the lego network. He calls it Lego facebook. He has been posting pictures of his Lego creations and writing descriptions of them. He tells me what he wants to write and I write it out for him. He then copies it out on paper or types it – so he has been getting some writing practice I was so worried about!

Cassius was in the Saint Patrick’s Day parade this Sunday with Academie Duello. It was pouring rain and then snowing. He was freezing waiting in the cold for four hours, but had fun swordfighting down Georgia Street.

Cassius needed to make a puppet for his animation class and he decided to make it of the Blueberry Ninja cartoon he greated a few years ago. He worked sooooo hard on this. The work was very detailed and he had a challange figuring out how to cut along the line. Making the joints was very tricky.

I sat beside him all day as he figured it out. Sometimes I would do it at the same time as him and explain exactly what I was doing. This really seemed to help. I found it difficult to figure out myself, since I had never done it before. It was really fun solving our problems together. After working all day he figured out that the arms couldn’t reach the weapons because the were on the back. I moved then to the front for him. He really did make the puppet himself though!

They spent the class making an animation with the Blueberry Ninja as the hero.

How do you learn basic skills that don’t come up in daily life? If they don’t come up in daily life are they as necessary as we think they are?

Basic math seems to come up quite often. Contrary to popular belief I also believe algebra also comes up in daily life. I see algebra as a kind of way of using your brain to solve problems where you only have part of the information. You use the information you do have to figure out what the missing information must be. I’d love to find a concrete example of this.

How often do you use handwriting in a day? I noticed that I use it mostly to write lists and fill out forms, besides that I do most of my writing on a computer. I have also noticed that most people’s handwriting is elegible – which explains the PLEASE PRINT on most forms. We all know that although Doctors are very educated, but no one can read their writing besides pharmacists. (My mothers handwriting is beautiful, but she has written in a journal everyday for a few decades.)

The question of “How do you learn basic skills that don’t come up in daily life?” came up for me last week, after I asked Cassius to write down a grocery list of food he would like . He was complaining that there wasn’t any food he liked in the house. He insisted it was too hard for him because he couldn’t spell any of the words. He did make a short list which was all capitals and spelled incorrectly.

I had an unschooling panic moment “Oh no! I haven’t made my child do spelling tests, book reports, and write in a journal every day. He’s not going to know how to write or spell unless I make him!

I realized that he had be avoiding writing because he felt he wasn’t good at it. It had been pretty easy to avoid it because the opportunity only came up when I asked him to write a list, a card, or a letter to a friend. He writes on the computer – (mostly passwords). Then the question comes up, if it is so easy for him to avoid how necessary a skill is it? If this skill becomes necessary at a later time, wouldn’t he learn it easier at that time?

To put things in perspective, Cassius only learned to read about two years ago. He insisted he would never be able to, then he picked up a novel he had heard on audio book and read it from beginning to end. He now reads for hours everyday.

I think if it wasn’t clear that Cassius was frustrated and wanted to be able to write, I wouldn’t worry about it. I found it interesting to note that, the fact that Cassius couldn’t write as well as he wanted too and was frustrated about it, came up in the course of daily life. It wasn’t because I was testing him or trying to make him meet a “learning outcome” expected at his age. It was because we were trying to solve a problem: There was no food he liked in the house. Writing a list of food he liked for us to buy at the store, was a solution to that problem.

This led to a new problem to solve. How to help Cassius learn how to write. I tried giving him spelling tests, but we both quickly lost our enthusiasm for that. I figured if I could get him writing, spelling would come. I tried to tell him that if he practiced every day, even if it was boring, he would improve. Unfortunately, every unschooled kid I’ve met has little patience for monotony, unless they have a strong motivation to endure it.

I was stuck trying to figure out how to make Cassius write, when Rosalind suggested I ask him what he wanted. Did he really want to spell and write better and why? Genius! His answer was that he wanted to be able to write stories. Of course this was no surprise – he has always been writing stories in one way or another.

His answer made me realize that I needed to stop trying to make him write, and trust that if his desire and need to write stories was important enough, he would find a way to do it. I know from past experience that he will do it in his own time. At the right time he will suddenly move from “this is impossible” to “I love this!”

This doesn’t mean I will stop encouraging him or finding resources that may interest him, but it does mean I don’t have to make him write. I just have to trust him.

I’ll let you know what happens.

I can tell this is very important to him.

At Cassius’ request Rosalind lent us the BBC planet earth series. It’s five DVD’s with three episodes on each one. Cassius says, “It’’s quite good and interesting!” He enjoys the information about the animals most of all.

We talk about our thoughts as we watch it. We talk as much about the surprising information as we do about the film making. We’ve noticed that there is more of a focus on the visual images, which are amazing, than information. We also noticed the techniques they use to build dramatic tension. We both would prefer if they didn’t do this. For example they use scary music when a lion is hunting but happy music when a dolphin is hunting. Cassius thought it would be funny if they switched the music around. He also noted that if you’re cute when your hunting you get the happy music. He is considering becoming a vegetarian – I can’t believe it’s taken this long!