Ethan likes to randomly pick a theme for certain days of the week and today was math day. Ethan really likes the freedom to learn and focus on whatever he likes as an unschooler, so we’re also quite happy with these theme days.
Math randomness
Ethan started out by reading Help Your Kids With Math, just randomly flipping through the book. It seems as though this helps him get an overview of different math concepts and when he encounters a concept, sometimes accidentally, he remembers seeing it in the book. He will usually explore that particular concept further.
Dong Eun’s main concern with this was that he was too all over the place, but this seems to be his way of learning and she now thinks it works for him.
After breakfast, Ethan watched videos about black holes, supermassive black holes, quasars and what is programming on Khan Academy.
He then spent some time reading and read Love Will See You Through about Martin Luther King Jr. and a Magic School Bus book about climate change.
Bike ride
It was a nice day out so Dong Eun took Ethan out for a bike ride along the seawall.
Library
The bike ride took them to the library, where Ethan got in some Garfield and Smurf books before heading home.
More math
Since today was Math Day, Ethan spent some more time reading Help Your Kids With Math and followed that up with some coding.
Playtime
After the school let out for the day, Ethan headed over to play with his old schoolmates at the school playground.
Math Day continues
After playing with his friends, Ethan printed out a worksheet to practice adding and subtracting fractions with unlike denominators.
He then did a math unit test on Khan Academy for fun.
After the math test, he watched Introduction To Algebra on Khan Academy. When he saw ‘What is a variable?’ he connected this concept with coding that he used to make his game.
The Gear Cube
Ethan loves Rubik’s Cubes and has a Gear Cube in his collection. He hasn’t been able to solve it so he decided to learn how by watching some videos on YouTube.
After a little while, he got it figured out. He understood how the Gear Cube works and was able to understand how solving the Gear Cube is similar to solving the classic 3×3 Rubik’s Cube.
Still Math Day
Ethan practiced some more math using the DreamBox website. We like that DreamBox uses a simple format to teach math, rather than relying on something graphics heavy or a game.
Math Day was winding down and it was time to practice Ethan’s taekwondo pattern.
Math Day nearly done
I read The Story of the World to Ethan and we both enjoyed how they use characters and their experiences to explain history. This makes it much more engaging and fun.
And finally, before going to bed, Ethan used a compass to draw circle patterns like this…
So that was Math Day!
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