Weekly Report - 28 January

This week we had a bit of a focus on sciences. We did a bit of curriculum, completing a set of lab activities on isopodes, with a detour into Venn diagrams, and a unit on birds. We also had a visiting science teacher/friend who took the kids through some fun chemistry demonstrations. Mostly, though, our work was more 'unschool flavoured'. Snowflake #1 was feeling inspired by the 'deconstruction' workshop he'd  done a couple of weeks ago, and decided to pull apart a graphic equaliser so he could re-purpose some of the parts for a new circuit. He used his skipping rope and a few old baby slings to create an elaborate swing/ride for the stuffed toys: a self directed hands-on physics lesson. We continued our informal learning about health and nutrition, and a lot of fun was had racing about observing their heart and breathing rate increases, and tickling each other trying to locate kidneys. When Snowflake #3 suggested having only "backed beans" for dinner, her brother helped me devise a more nutritious meal by using the green/yellow/red light foods analogy to ensure that we included enough "green light" items.

We all had a bit of a spur of the moment desire for a field trip, so we went over to Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary to see and pat some of our furry friends. I noticed that the elder snowflakes made quite a few comments that indicated they were remembering some of the things we have been learning about different kinds of animals, for example noticing adaptive characteristics and coming up with explanations for particular behaviours. Meanwhile, #3 overcame her fear of the kangaroos enough to hand feed some of the smaller ones.

Another highlight of the week was the long awaited helium balloon experiment. The elder two snowflakes have been wanting to find out whether it would be feasible to send their little sister up into the sky (#1) - or even into space (#2)! - by tying helium filled balloons onto her. Daddy Snow helped them carry out some trials to find out. The test subject, a tiny toy dog named Spotty, had a mass of 18g, and it took five balloons to get him to lift off. They were then able to estimate that snowflake #3, weighing in at almost 18kg, would require up to 5000 helium balloons to take off. (Further testing revealed that not all the balloons were equally inflated, however it was definitively proven that Operation Launch Baby Sister would not be achievable with current pocket money rates!) 

There was, of course, a great deal of discussion happening about all kinds of related topics: the properties of gasses, why balloons eventually deflate, how far they can fly, why they can't leave the earth's atmosphere, why it could harm animals/the environment to let 30 balloons with long ribbons fly away, reasons helium isn't good to breathe, to name just a few. I had been rather reluctant to buy the helium, but it turned out to be a surprisingly rich educational experience, as is so often the case when children have the opportunity to design experiments to test their own ideas, rather than relying solely on prepackaged science activities.

After decluttering the craft table, I felt it was a good time to strew something new for the snowflakes to try with their hands (or, possibly, I was growing just the tiniest bit sick of all their ideas involving cutting paper into thousands of pieces). I set out a treasure hunt with a packet of air drying modelling clay as the prize. They worked with it contentedly for about an hour, however #3 found it difficult to manipulate, so I'm planning to make her some play-dough next time they're in the mood for that sort of thing.  

One of our favourite activities in summer is picking and/or buying the sun ripened fresh local fruit: strawberries, then raspberries, logan berries and currants, blueberries, apricots, plums, peaches, nectarines and, towards the end of summer, blackberries and apples. We like to do some jams and sauces, and bottle and freeze some of the fruit for the cooler months, too. This year is something of a milestone in the apricot department, because it's the first year that we've had enough apricots on our trees that I can't actually tell you the precise number. As we move into the harvesting time of the year again, I am also reminded once more of how much learning the snowflakes can derive from simply being outside with the earth in her seasons, and how lucky we are to be able to give them the chance to do that.

As is usual in all households including children, we also had some of those big questions to grapple with (you know, the ones kids are apt to come out with just when you're trying to get the shopping done in a hurry). For Australia Day (AKA Invasion Day), I read them the story of what happened in/around 1788, and we talked about why this holiday is problematic. An interesting counterpoint was introduced through our reading of Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, and although "But why did they drop the bomb?" is not a question I like to have sprung on me when I'm trying to get the snowflakes wound down for bed, it's amazing to see how they're beginning to ponder some of these difficult issues. On the not-so-big questions front, we now know what noise giraffes make (we found the answer here, thanks Annette) and whether moths have penises (yes, they do).