Franz Lanting

Here is a quick overview of the last few days of week seven, with a few suggestions for follow-up ideas at home.

We enjoyed Farm Day (including a lively Autumn excursion canoeing on the Cache River) and yoga, finished our Chinese fable read-aloud story, had a lesson on using the colored bead bars and stamps to solve multiplication and division problems, and heard How the Rooster Got His Crown by Amy Lowry Poole and followed it with spirals in Form Drawing (drawing spirals from the inside out, keeping the line the same distance apart the entire time).

In Philosophy, we finished up our topic of Nature by taking a nature walk using all 12 of our senses (the internal senses of Touch, Life, Movement, and Balance... the internal/external senses of Smell, Taste, Sight, and Warmth... the external senses of Hearing, Word, Thought, and Ego). Our philosophy book suggests "Resemblance" and "Awe" as the final concepts to consider while philosophizing about Nature. For this I VERY HIGHLY recommend Life: A Journey through Time which is an amazing TED talk by Franz Lanting. For this you will want your fastest internet connection and your screen with the highest possible resolution. This is something to view as a family. ENJOY!

There is a beautiful art coffee table book, coincidentally featuring both the spiral and Nature, called Andy Goldsworthy: A Collaboration with Nature. If you'd like to borrow it to enjoy at home, I'm happy to lend. All of my consulting clients have access to my lending library; of course, the families in my homeschool co-op should have the same privilege!

We also spent some time on a new Philosophy topic, Music, which will get its own blog post!

My older group grappled with Mrs. T's Raccoon Room, a multi-step word problem featuring finding the area of a complex shape as well as long multiplication (three digit x three digit) with decimals.

In Famous Inventors, we added Leonardo da Vinci to our main lesson books, and heard two stories about Ben Franklin (Now & Ben: The Modern Inventions of Benjamin Franklin and Mesmerized: How Ben Franklin Solved a Mystery that Baffled All of France). Led by my daughter Natalie, the children used a playsilk as a blindfold and acted out scenes of Dr. Mesmer and his duped patients, with Dr. Franklin then using the scientific method to discover and reveal Mesmer's fraudulent practices. On Friday we added Benjamin Franklin to our main lesson books, and heard a story about Elisha Otis, the inventor of the elevator. Take a ride on an elevator as a fun follow-up!

In Physics: Sound, we completed demonstrations and investigations with Pitch and Volume, as well as The Propogation of Sound. Our text is Physics is Fun! by Roberto Trostli and we are having a great time! Here are two follow-up activities from his book which you can enjoy at home:

Demonstration #22
Underwater Sounds

Materials: a bathtub

Procedure: Students should experience what can be heard above and below the water, experimenting to see how well the sounds that are created underwater can be heard, whether sounds travel through the walls of the bathtub from other rooms, and how well sounds that are transmitted through the air can be heard underwater.

Comment: Students will be surprised to learn that most sounds can be transmitted through liquids as well as air. In conjunction with this demonstration, the manner in which marine mammals communicate can be discussed.


Investigation #38
Does Sound Travel Better through Air or through Wood?

Materials: a wristwatch that ticks, a yardstick

Procedure: One student carefully holds a yard stick next to his ear, while another student holds the wristwatch tightly against the end of the yardstick. The watch is moved along the yardsticks towards the student who is listening until the listener can hear the ticking of the watch. Measure the distance from which the watch can be heard. Lift the watch from the yardstick; beginning at that distance, move it closer through the air until its ticking can again be heard. Compare the distances.