This is Carl, Ethan’s dad. We’re going to document Ethan’s home learning journey on his website to help us keep track of what he’s doing, to help him reflect on his accomplishments and for his SelfDesign Learning Consultant (LC) to see what Ethan is doing. I’m sure this will evolve as we learn to do this but we have to start somewhere, right? I’ll post pictures and videos whenever possible to make it more clear as to what Ethan did. Here we go!
Video Overview
8/27
Made a coin sorter out of construction paper.
Made pom-poms out of yarn from instructions he found on YouTube.
Made a double pencil from two corks and two pencils.
Made a cube from craft sticks.
Made a paddle boat wheel from craft sticks (didn’t work, though).
Fixed a gingerbread man ornament with hot glue.
He made some optical illusions with blocks and Kinect pieces.
8/28
Morning:
Read Big Nate on the Kindle.
Made a marble labyrinth game. Spent the whole morning working on it.
Made base, then the maze; discovered the marble would make a loud noise when it fell through a hole in the maze, so he added a bottom and a way for the marble to come out.
Traced a pair of scissors and made a paper cut out of them.
Practiced violin; 6 songs.
Afternoon:
Programmed a cat to dance to music that he composed on Scratch.
Understands how different functions are added to make the cat move to the beat of the music.
Did workbooks based on Gr. 1 to 3 curriculum. Ethan wanted to buy these a couple years ago so he is working through them each day.
Drew 3D shapes and a “floating sphere” optical illusion. He has been interested in optical illusions. He’s borrowed some books and watched videos about them.
Read Tom Gates book: Top of the Class (Nearly)
Played at the beach playground for an hour.
Went grocery shopping, read the greeting cards. Helped carry groceries.
Asked what a “period” is when he heard Dong Eun mentioning it; we briefly explained menstrual cycle to him.
He told us that the oldest water on earth is older than the solar system. He learned that from the Wow in the World science podcast.
Played chess on chesskid.com for 50 minutes.
Worked on Algodoo; created a marble machine that has gears spinning and shooting marbles inside a container.
Read Big Nate on the Kindle.
Wrote what he did today in his journal; discussed his day’s activities with us.
Now Ethan has something to say:
First of all,Algodoo was before chess. Here is the order that they went in: algodoo,scratch,and chess (there was time for youtube at the beginning of everything but that’s another story). Oh yeah and I like……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..r……………u……………..b…………….i…………….k…………s………………c………..u…………..b………………e……….s!
(wow I did not know it would take that much s……p…..a…..c…..e! 😀 )
Anyways…
😀
Can you solve this?
What is the the mistake?
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Answer: what is THE THE mistake
:]:]:]:]
An optical illusion!
And a few more…
thx for reading!
I had a phone conversation with Ethan’s father as a way to get to know a bit more about Ethan and his learning activities and goals for the year ahead.
Ethan is eight years old and will be entering grade 4 this year. He has been attending public school for the last few years, but is very excited for his transition to home schooling. He keeps asking about when it will start and seems quite prepared for the change.
Some of his interests over the summer included science activities such as observing the phases of the water cycle using ziplock bags and practicing his coding skills with a program called Scratch. He is very interested in making music, I am assuming electronic music, as his interest in technology is expanding greatly right now.
His family limits his screen time so they are finding ways to mitigate his technological interests with other more hands-on activities. Ethan is very interested in Monecraft and at this point is allowed to read books about it, rather than go online.
He loves comic books such as Garfield and is creating his own comic books and vidoes these days.
For example, he is quite interested in chess and even went so far as to create a chess club at his school last year, going through all the formal steps to establish a new club in the school. He is also very excited about solving Rubic’s cube problems.
He is also enjoying swimming quite a bit this summer as he lives two blocks from the Ambleside pool in West Vancouver.
His father sent me a follow up email describing his online website. Ethan has his own Youtube channel as well where he documents “how to do stuff”. I am very much looking forward to checking it out:
We started documenting Ethan’s activities and decided to put them onto his website. Here’s the first: http://www.howtodostuffwithethan.com/home-learning-journal-august-27-28-2017/
Also, Ethan is practicing writing into his journal what he did each day.
I am looking forward to working with Ethan and his family. He seems to be a very engaged and activated learner. I encourage you to begin working on the Learning Plan Slide show and brainstorming for the year ahead. He is very self motivated and more interested in the process of learning versus the product. His father expressed that they are working on developing a daily routine which works for them and is open to suggestions in this area.
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