September 2018 – Homeschool

Maker Space with glory to workmanship and reuse 2018-09-30

A very important part of learning, is to be exposed to different things. As a child, you do not know all the different possibilities there is in life. We try to expose our children to as many different areas of learning as possible. Then they will have a greater opportunity to choose for themselves what to engage in. To find out what interests them.

In the past few years there has come a lot of offers to children, regarding learning about electronics, which is more and more palatable. One of these offers is Maker Space Copenhagen. There the children can see a fusion of methods used in craftmanship fused with electronics.

On the picture above, the children could see a 3D printer and examples of what it could produce and how it worked.

On the picture is shown a selection of trash that the children could use to create new things with.

On the picture above, a dolls house was build out of cardboard and then some electronic gimmicks was applied to the house.

Often Maker Space also takes the environmentally outlook on how we consume. It is all about reusing.

At this Maker Space there also was a section on biological aspects of creating. You could for example make your own mushrooms growing kit and many other growth projects to learn about biology.

We love ballet

We love going to the Royal Ballet. 2018-09-27 we went to see a modern version of Bizets “Carmen”. We have also seen “The Nutcracker”, “Giselle”, “Ballet de Luxe”, “Swan Lake” and 2018-12-01 “Alice in Wonderland” there. Our children prefer the classical versions of the ballets. We have a child that have been dancing ballet for 4 years now and is a real ballet enthusiast. She also attends a drama School. Once a year, she performs at the Royal Theatre in a show for a selection of ballet schools. The other children like the beauty of the old Royal Theatre and the solemn atmosphere there. When you are a Home Schooler, you can get school tickets, which makes it possible for us to afford going to many ballets a year.

Alice in Wonderland 2018-12-01 Royal Theatre, Denmark.

Carmen 2018-09-27 Royal Theatre, Denmark.

Ballet de Luxe 2018-05-03 Royal Theatre, Denmark.

The Ballet Schools annual Show, at the Royal Theatre 2018.

Cinderella, at the Royal Theatre 2019.

We made a Corn Starch Monster

If you have some old speakers lying around, a good way to say goodbye to them, is making a Corn Starch Monster on them.

Maizena (corn flour) or Potato Starch works well. Mix it with water until it becomes a liquid base.

Then pour the mixture on the speaker and start it on a low frequency, around 20 Hz. The Starch will then start dancing.

The water and cornstarch mixture is a non-Newtonian fluid, and this means it behaves very oddly. You can pick it up, and if you keep moving it about so it’s under stress, it stays solid. But as soon as you let it rest, it goes back into a liquid.

We made a music video

Do you know those songs that just keep on playing in your head? Well this one had been playing in my head since my childhood and just wouldn’t stop. Often I would start singing it for the kids when we had a learning situation where it kind of fitted in. I would find it so fun, but had to laugh on my own, as my family not quite got it. So youTube came around. I searched it for a few years for this song, but nothing came up. I tried the library and the shops. I still couldn’t find it. It became an obsession. Then one day I involved my husband in my psychological problems. He said:”I will find it”. My knight in shining armour. I had my doubts though. But he found it in a far away library and ordered it home. I have the best husband in the world. Next challenge was that it was an old record which we could not play. We didn’t have a record player. But my dad did. So we went to his house, and with my husbands electronic equipment, we managed to get it on digital. So we went home and together with the kids instructed the music video. We had to find all the props and arrange who should be in charge of the different things to be put on the recording space. Now I can find peace from my childhood song. Or just go on YouTube and listen to it.

Dry Ice Bomb in Plastic Bottle

We have really great friends. Some of them are that kind of friends that call you and say:”Hi, I just got hold of 20 kilo of dry ice, wan’t me to come by and make some experiments?”

“Sure we do! Let’s have fun and explode the childrens Swimming Pool at the same time!” We said.

The children learned about cold temperatures and the power of dry ice. It is just as dangerous as hot things.

What happens is that the dry ice melts and turns into CO₂ gas. The gas takes up more space than the ice did, and the pressure in the bottle increases. As the lid of the bottle isn’t strong enough to hold such hig pressure, it is shut of the bottle like a bullet.

Electrolysis of water and salt, 9v battery, 2 screws and an elastic

“Can you take a water molecule apart?” the children asked. “Yes you can, but you have to use Electrolysis”, my husbond said.

The talk came from talking about, how much Hydrogen there is in the universe. Actually 73% of the universe consists of Hydrogen and the children wondered why it doesn’t explode.

They also wondered why water puts out fire, when it contains that flammable Hydrogen.

So we decided to try separating hydrogen and oxygen from water through Electrolysis.

Hydrogen is released by the minus pole, also called the cathode.
Oxygen (oxygen) is released at the plus pole, also called the anode.

Seasonal activities – Chestnuts

We love the changing seasons. The marking points of the year. When we see the ripe apples on the trees, Christmas, Easter and so on. One of these markings is when we can collect chestnuts that has fallen from the trees.

We are so lucky. We live right by a whole street that has Horse Chestnut trees.

Horse chestnut was introduced in Denmark in 1721. It often can be found near roads, parks or in private gardens. It can be around 30 meters tall and has large leaves with 5-7 leaves on each that look like fingers.

When regarding food, the term “horse” used in a name refers to that it is inedible. Animals do eat them, though. An interesting use, is that you can make soap out of horse chestnuts.

We usually make animals out of them and seasonal decorations. For many years, we have struggled to make holes in them with toothpicks, pins, an awl or other sharp things. This year our children were old enough to learn how to use a drilling machine and has really become experts.

And the madness continues 🙂

Carpe diem

Our oldest daughter would like to learn Latin. So we put it on the weekly schedule. We have two kinds of subjects on the weekly schedule – where the children learn individually and where they learn together. Latin is one of the subjects where they learn together. Finding material that is popular with all the children, has been hard. Trying to get to the core of what my daughters goal with learning Latin was, has gotten closer. What they find fun and meaningful with Latin, is the Roman history and mythology. But also how many of the words reminds them of words used in some of the other languages they also are learning. The book “Learning Latin Through Mythology” shown, was found in Foyles in London. We have worked our way through that book and it was a very creative way of learning. We also like to make flash cards and practice them once in a while to remember them.

Learning German

In most subjects we use a large mix of different books and other ways of learning. In German we have been so lucky to find a Donald Duck book in German and in Danish, so we can compare. We actually thought we could use it, as a translation, to look up words or phrases we were in doubt about. But no. We found out that the content of the text in the two different books were very different. The jokes were better in the German translation. As a basis, we use the Danish German system “Gut Gemacht”, mainly for grammar. We also stumble upon fun things like the Leiderbuch on the picture. We found that on a trip to Switzerland, in one of those switch books closets you find some places, where you can take a free used book.