Today felt comfortable because Dong Eun didn’t push her schedule onto Ethan. Instead, she let Ethan lead and did activities that he was interested in. He was definitely engaged in the day because he was constantly doing something. We always knew he enjoyed creating and trying new things, so we’re glad to see him exploring and trying new things on a daily basis. The best part is that it’s self-motivated. Unschooling absolutely seems like the best choice we have made for him.
Morning
Read all of one Diary of a Wimpy Kid book in the morning before breakfast.
After breakfast, Ethan worked on his snap circuits. He worked on several on the experiments that come with the kit.
I came home after a morning meeting with pizza and shared some with Ethan for brunch.
Ethan and Dong Eun went to the library but came home a few minutes later. Ethan took his scooter and fell off, scraping his knee. He was ok.
After getting cleaned up, he read “Minecraft: Guide to Exploration” for about 15 minutes before playing Monopoly Deal with Dong Eun.
Afternoon
Shortly after 12, they switched to playing Scrabble. Scrabble is certainly a challenge for him, but he enjoys it, nonetheless. It’s a great way for him to practice spelling, of course.
After Scrabble, he looked for today’s Word of the Day. Initially, he chose common words such as “interesting” or “interest” and then “rest.” That was kinda cool that he could deconstruct the word in that way, but we wanted him to choose a word that wouldn’t be too easy. We suggested using a dictionary and eventually, he found it: takeaway.
It was a word that Dong Eun wasn’t too familiar with so it was a great learning opportunity for all of us.
Afterward, he played chess with Dong Eun.
Since they hadn’t gone to the library, yet, they set off and walked to the library. Along the way was the customary stop at the playground to play.
At the library, he borrowed a STEAM book, along with some STEM project books, one about comets and meteor showers and “Too Many Rabbits and Other Finger Plays.”
He also read a book about coding, as he’s really been into Scratch.
They then came home and Ethan did his workbooks. I’m not overly thrilled with the workbooks because I can see that Ethan gets frustrated that there has to be a “right” answer. It’s good to be able to decode writing and show reading comprehension, but perhaps he’s not interested in some of the topics in the workbooks. However, we also feel that since it was him who wanted to buy the workbooks, he should work through them and complete them, rather than discarding them because he doesn’t like them. We would like him to learn to take responsibility for his decisions and actions is what it’s about for us.
Evening
Caught a big wolf spider in the kitchen. I caught it in a clear plastic cup so that gave us a chance to observe it. I asked Ethan to guess how many eyes it has; he said 4, Dong Eun 12, me 8. Answer: 8
Ethan made a strategy game from the STEAM book. It involves drawing geometric shapes and connecting the angles with lines. Playing pieces are then placed on the board where the lines meet the angles. Player A receives more pieces than Player B. The object is to trap Player B’s piece so it can’t move to any other space.
He loved this game and created several variations of the game boards.
At dinner time, we talked about flying fish and if they are sold in stores. We found out that in Bangladesh, they sell flying fish in the market.
He asked how fisherman catch flying fish. We didn’t look it up but should remember to take every question as a chance to learn more.
We talked about how flying squirrels are really gliding squirrels.
And I said something about wouldn’t it be cool to have gills and breathe underwater, which led to asking Ethan what animal ability he would like to have.
For me, it’s flying but Ethan didn’t know what he’d pick.
We transitioned to talking about how to view an eclipse: Pierce a hole in stiff card, place a piece of paper behind it. He heard about this technique in a podcast.
He was asking us if we know how much light sunglasses and solar eclipse sunglasses can block out. Solar eclipse sunglasses block out 99.5% of light and regular sunglass block 85% of light.
He then told us that If you cut a spider in half, it will deflate. Cool!
After dinner, we looked at the books he borrowed from the library while doing his observation and writing in his journal.
Spider…Actual size 🙂
Scraped knee drawing…
The mapping and navigation book had an activity where you can make your own sundial, so we made one. We had to know the latitude where we live to adjust the angle of the pencil used in the sundial. We’ll try it out tomorrow to see how accurate the sundial is.
Ethan spent the rest of the time before bed looking for an optical illusion to post today.
Now Ethan has somthing to say:
Are these moving?
bye!
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