Conversations on Twice Exceptional Homeschooling
As I talked about previously, I don’t feel that modern maths really enters into the classroom, or general maths curriculum very often. But that doesn’t mean it can’t! In fact, some of this maths is so easy, you can start learning and playing and thinking about it with your preschooler or primary-school aged children.
Here’s some cool maths ideas we’ve done at home.
Continue reading “Modern Maths to Do With Your Primary Schoolers: Fractals”
It’s been a busy week here at homeschool central. Not because we’ve had an extraordinary week – though we’ve done a lot of fun stuff. But because I have been tackling the avalanche – or in other words, cleaning. It’s been a long, slow process of stripping cupboards and boxes and shelves, and gloriously throwing away old bills, and receipts from before I was born (exactly how did that bit of flotsam survive 5 moves?). But I am finally seeing some results. How many bags of rubbish were removed? 5+ Maybe? I’m not sure. And that’s not including the bags of clothes and other items that went or are going to charity. But today I’m going to talk about my pantry.
Continue reading “Cleaning and Strewing”
This is a unit study we stumbled upon awhile ago. You see, we love Anime in our house. And DH and I really love Bleach. In fact, the Bleach theme-song used to put C to sleep when he was a baby (The first one. Yes, the loud one!)
And life being what it is, years passed before we got back to watching it again… But we did. Every night, two episodes of anime for about 6+ months. It has become our ritual. What I didn’t expect was how it would morph into a corner-stone of our school experience. Continue reading “Unit Study: Bleach and Japan”
There is quite a difference between the way I thought I would teach chemistry compared to the way C prefers to learn. C is very visual-spatial in his thinking. He absorbs knowledge when he can see it and touch it. He doesn’t mind listening, but he can’t just listen – there has to be a visual component, or lots of space to wiggle and jump around. And when he’s excited by a new idea he gets very loud! Which is a joy. He also loves to play with an idea – to absurdity if possible.
This makes putting together a chemistry curriculum in the more formal way a problem. But it also gives us great scope for experimentation. Afterall, where else can you go? Continue reading “Putting Together A Chemistry Curriculum”
I have decided to write a piece on how to read articles on science. Because, quite frankly, most (but not all) science journalism sucks. The more mainstream the website / newspaper / TV the news appears in, the more the contents are awful and removed from reality.
It doesn’t matter what the topic – climate change, GM foods, vaccines, or ‘gee whizz we’re going to the stars!’, journalists by and large are science and maths illiterate, and will usually get it wrong. Even the good ones are prone to exaggeration and hyperbole.
The thing is, it’s really, really easy to make sure you’re getting the truth. And this is how to do it:
Continue reading “How to Read Science Journalism”
