This week, I did some coding on Scratch. I went to my swimming, violin, and taekwondo classes, and I went to nature school on Wednesday. I also finished the reading comprehension bit for the FSA!
Here is what Ethan did at nature school this past week, provided by Lorenzo, subbing for Ethan’s usual teacher:
Lorenzo covered for Mink’s group today. We started out the day with a game of Blindfold Samurai. Lorenzo was the samurai. Everyone else surrounded the samurai in a circle about 3 metres in diameter. The goal of the game was to pin clothespins on the blindfolded samurai without getting hit by the pool noodle sword. River supported by choosing who would be the next person to enter the circle. The group was clearly already quite experienced at this game, adept at being silent and slowly fox walking to avoid getting detected. I only hit two or three people in about 15 minutes of playing this game – I think – measuring time is weird when you’re blindfolded.
I’m sure we could’ve played more, but we we had a surprise guest instructor joining us for part of the day: Delmar Williams. Delmar is from the Squamish Nation and a master at bushcraft skills. Today, he brought a fascinating group game for us to play together to develop leadership and team-building skills. We were each given a piece of pvc pipe cut in half length-wise, about arm’s length. The goal of the activity was to pass a marble between each of us using the pipes, and drop it on a target on the ground. If the marble falls to the ground, we start again.
This was an amazing exercise in problem solving and team work. There were many strategies proposed and attempted, and finally after maybe 15 or 20 tries, we got it!
The next level of this exercise had two marbles, one starting from each end. Ask your child if they remember what the trick was that we used to do it – or if you can brainstorm any more alternative solutions!
The next part of the day we sat down and took out our knives for carving. Delmar brought us a beautiful pieces of cedar for carving spoons. As we started carving the general shape of the spoon, Delmar showed us his strop for knife sharpening and gave everyone’s knife a few quick strokes. Everyone exclaimed how much easier carving got after just a few strokes on the strop.
After a good amount of time sitting and carving, everyone had a good start to their spoon (or sword).
As the sun was starting to hide a bit again, to get warmed up, the group showed Delmar and I how to play Shrew Ball, which I had only heard of up until today. We mostly played 2v2v2 and I have to say this game was a blast, thank you Mink & Mink’s group, I will definitely be adding this to my bag of games!
After we played enough that we needed to rest, we carved a bit more and bid farewell to Delmar.
We closed the day with a sit spot and free play before meeting parents for pickup just 50 steps away. I can’t believe we had spent the entire 5 hours in that single space!
-Lorenzo
Hello Ethan,
I gave an article for you about two teenagers who discovered some exoplanets. Did you read about this? Would love to hear your thoughts.
Have you considered in all your space research and learning what you might discover or wonder most about….
https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/24/world/exoplanet-discovery-high-schoolers-scn/index.html
I made a spreadsheet about a real sampling distribution! See it here:
I checked out you spreadsheet, what was the sampling distribution of? How are you most interested in working with sampling distributions? What sorts of statistics are you interested in?
I am interested in the applications for psychology: https://www.psychologyinaction.org/psychology-in-action-1/2016/08/13/what-is-a-sampling-distribution
I created a Scratch project about a sampling distribution!
I’m planning to make a video about the sampling distribution!
I feel like I need to learn more about sampling distributions from you, good thing you are such an excellent teacher Ethan
I saw this in my really old Google bookmarks, “If the moon were only 1 pixel, ” where you can scroll through the Solar system, and this shows how far everything is! Find it here: https://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html
I am a huge fan of getting real perspective on distance based on accurate models. The scrolling it takes to get between planets is a very hands-on approach to this. Love it! Thank you for sharing Ethan.
I did my violin homework about scales and half steps.
I did some reading comprehension questions on Khan Academy, because I have to do the reading comprehension for the FSA.
I did my FSA! On the computer first, and then i wrote it all on paper.
How did the FSA go for you? Congratulations on completing it!
I learned about the proprieties of the potential energy stored in a spring.
Wow, very interesting. Has it got you thinking about springs more?
The spring that comes to mind for me are the struts in a vehicle : https://www.howacarworks.com/basics/how-car-springs-and-dampers-work
How about you? What springs are you thinking about?
I learned how to do particle effects in Unity!
Making art: drawing rock faces
I just loved your rock faces art. They are adorable!
Check out this collection a kindergarten teacher collected, all found in nature, pretty incredible:
And I made this game called “Interstellar” over the weekend!
Welcome to Interstellar, my most advanced game yet!
You are the spaceship withe the blue cockpit. Use the arrow keys to move, and space to shoot. the red cockpit spaceship is an enemy spaceship, trying to shoot you. and the UFO’s are attacking you (and the red spaceship)! shoot them before they get to you.
First to 50 points wins the game!
I tried playing your game, but as usual I am just not very good at videogames, never really have been. But way to go on the coding and design, complex and well done.
Here is what Ethan did at nature school this past week, provided by Lorenzo, subbing for Ethan’s usual teacher:
Blindfold Samurai sounds like a ton of fun. I wish I could play with the kindergarteners, but I think I might hurt them or they will just start copying me and hitting each other with whatever they can find which looks like the pool noodle, too bad, but I have a game now for older kids.
How is your carved wooden spoon coming?
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