Snowball effect: Unschooling



I love being able to witness my girls' passions, and see how they lead from one thing to the next. Georgia's interest in Crocodilians led to an interest in learning more about the Yangtze River, which led to learning more about rivers of the world, which led to traveling the world through Google Earth, which led to discovering the Sandwich Islands, which led to the history of the sandwich and explorers, lol.

She also discovered through her research that the Cincinnati Zoo has a special program with the Chinese Alligator. (one of two alligators, the second being our own American Alligator) It is one of the rarest of the crocodilians, with very few surviving to adulthood due to loss of habitat, pollution, over-hunting, poisoning (from local rice paddy farmers trying to poison pests, which the alligators then eat.)  What the Cincinnai Zoo does is they raise the Chinese Alligators until old enough to survive on their own, then they release them into the Yangtze River in China! We already have plans for visiting the Cincy Zoo when the weather warms a bit, and I'm sure we'll get into other interests along the way!!

 

Unschooling is an adventure I get to share with my kids!!!  I love it!!

Crocodilians

That has been a fascination of Georgia's for a few weeks now.  We've recorded a lot of documentaries on the subject, borrowed library books, and surfed the web for sites, photos, and videos.

One of her favorite sites is this site hosted by the Florida Museum of Natural History. (also found at http://crocodilian.com/ ) She has studied the species list and had me quiz her on the scientific names.  Phew...she got all but one of them...and there are 23 species! We looked up some of the scientific prefixes and suffixes and learned that suchus comes from Greek for crocodile. (and crocodilos from ancient Greek for lizard.)  She already knew what paleo meant. She also told me that the -ensis at the end is Latin and means that it is from that place, as in the American Alligator, Alligator mississippiensis.

She loves that site.  It has maps showing the distribution of crocodilians worldwide.

They talk about the taxonomy and how they are classified...and the debate about it.

And of course their species list, where you can click on a crocodilian to learn more about it.

There is also extensive information on crocodilian biology, including evolution and morphology.

And it wouldn't be complete without some mention of conservation.

Other sites to check out include:

The Visable Alligator Skull from the University of Texas Morphology Group

Gharial Fact Sheet from the National Zoo (we've visited there!!)

Gharials, Nile Crocodile, American Crocodile,  Saltwater Crocodile, American Alligator all at National Geographic.

Why do animals have scientific names? and Make your own scientific name from the San Diego Zoo.

And she made a salt dough crocodile that, once dry, she will paint!

 

This all of course led to other interests.  She's read up on estuaries, and she now wants to learn more about India and the Yangtze River in China.

Canning for Christmas

I planned on giving Mulberry Jam in gift baskets for Christmas this year.  I underestimated how much we liked it. Mark went down to the root cellar to bring some jars up and that is when we realized we only had one jar left!  I gave the last jar to my grandmother and gave the rest blackberry or blueberry lime jam instead. Next year we will need to plan our gift basket giveaways a little earlier...and keep the jars seperate from our stash!!  Hoping to add some more variety to the baskets than just jam next year.  Maybe some pickles, or sundae topping... We did bake up a storm, and make lots of fudge and peanut brittle, too. It was a good year.

Georgia Crochets

Georgia has been getting into crocheting lately.  She has really picked up on it, learning new stitches and techniques. We've borrowed some books from the library, looked up how-to sites and watched how-to videos, bought some crochet pattern books, and she's made some patterns up on her own. We bought different types of yarn and have experimented with crocheting with jute twine, and have tried all different sizes of hooks, including P and Q.

In November she made a hat for herself!

And she stayed up late at night in her room to secretly crochet a scarf for me AND one for her sister!!!  I was so surprised.  No pattern, this was her own design.

She also crocheted a little net with jute as she practiced a mesh pattern.

PHOTO OF NET HERE


And lately she has been crocheting motifs.

And here is a hat she made...no pattern....her own design just playing around with it and trying new things.

PHOTO OF SMALL HAT HERE


She amazes me!!

Doodling in Math Class

Found a really neat site from a recent NPR piece.

Ulam Spiral.... Pascal's Triangle.... graph theory.... Ouroboros.... Borromean Rings... Knot Theory... you still with me????

This site  is by Vi Hart, who puts fun back in math with her videos and tips and tricks.  Vi describes herself as "a recreational mathemusician" and as evident in her videos, loves math, music, being creative, and having fun with it all.  Georgia sat in front of the laptop for over an hour watching her videos with sketch book in hand.  She had a lot of fun trying the techniques shown in the videos...especially this one.

I'll put Georgia's sketches here when I get to the other computer.