Unschooling Journal – March 1-7, 2020

by | Mar 9, 2020 | Blog, Home Learning, Homeschooling, Unschooling, 언스쿨링 | 0 comments

Here’s what happened this week with Ethan as we get into March. One thing that’s been interesting and unfortunate, is how the coronavirus has forced 300 million children around the world to stay home. We certainly feel fortunate that Ethan has been able to learn from home and that as a family, we’re accustomed to having him at home.

It must be incredibly challenging and stressful for the millions of families who need to find alternative arrangements for their children. Hopefully, some of the families find what Ethan is doing as a source of inspiration and hope that their children can learn while at home and not miss much, if anything.

March 1

First day of the month = whole foods breakfast! (not necessarily. not a rule)
Doing some IXL
uUmm what am i doing i don’t know

March 2

Doing some CSA activities to try and get into the CSA camp! (CSA = Canadian Space Agency)
Here is what I made!
Coding was done in Javascript using TextMate for Mac.
You enter your age and the code calculates your age on Mars.
Doing a 7th grade course challenge.
This was for everything in the 7th Grade.
Writing about wormholes, PT 3
Learning about circuits & ohm’s law
TeachTime!
Coding an animation on my browser
ha ha ha ha ha

March 3

Doing some problems about geometry circles.
Doing some IXL.
Learning about digital detox.
Answering some questions about digital detox.
Doing some history about Uranus, not ur-anus or uran-us, ura-nus

March 4

Ethan usually has nature school on Wednesday, but was home sick. He kept himself pretty busy.

Made an origami dragon! (sick today)
An origami transforming ninja star!
… not sure
This is a random walk of a particle.
Here is a bigger one.
Ethan explained that light particles leaving the Sun take 400,000 years to go from the Sun’s core to the surface. The reason is because the particles move in a random pattern and hit atoms on the way out, like in this drawing. Ethan drew the smaller circles, which represent atoms.
Doing some more CSA activities.
Ethan has been practicing researching and writing to complete the CSA activities. Some of the activities are meant to be done in groups, so what Ethan does is write answers to the discussion questions.
Doing some algodoo.
Ethan made the smiley face because it was fun. He also designed this marble run.
This marble run goes in a continuous loop and never ends.

March 5

In the morning, I played with some beans.
Ethan learned about different kinds of salt from his mom.
Ethan was taking out the alphabet pasta to have fun with the letters.
Reading about beans on Wikipedia.
Learning about transformations on Khan Academy.
teachtime!
This is from what he learned about transformations.
teachtime!
This is the same mapping shapes topic but Ethan needed graph paper to explain using graph paper.
Doing some more CSA activities.
This was learning about what things are important to survive on the moon.
Learning about resistivity!
Ethan learned about this on Khan Academy. Ethan was learning about physics and that led to learning about electricity.

Ethan wrote and published something about beans, too: http://www.howtodostuffwithethan.com/beans/

http://www.howtodostuffwithethan.com/beans/

March 6

Doing some brilliant.
This is a game about finding your keys. It was a coding project. Your key is hidden randomly on the board, which represents your apartment. You have to guess where it is. The colours are how close you are to the keys.
Doing a scratch project that was inspired by Brilliant!
Ethan wanted to make his own version of the game and used Scratch to code it. The game worked just like the one he learned about in Brilliant. The only difference is that he didn’t include the hints.
Here is my writing about beans!
Reading the Philosophy files (again)
Sending a Gmail to my friends about the Scratch project I made.
Learning about amplitude & period on Khan Academy.
teachtime!
Writing about the 3 fates of the universe, which is how the universe will end. There are 3 theories.
Here is the video about the three fates of the universe that I learned from!
Here is the blog post!
http://www.howtodostuffwithethan.com/three-ways-the-universe-could-end-by-ethan-kwan/
Reading these books!
Learning about bumblebees!
Doing a flower coding in python.
This program draws a flower. Ethan got the code from Brilliant and wanted to make his own version. He tweaked it by including the ability to enter the number of petals that will be created.
Doing some algebra on Brilliant. This was about Sudoku and multiplication.
Doing some more CSA activities. This was answering questions about cool scientists. Ethan had to read some articles and watch videos on the CSA website before answering the questions.
Ethan wrote the pros and cons related to traveling and living in space.

March 7

As part of the CSA’s Junior Astronaut Camp competition, students have to work on activities from the CSA. One of these was to have a debate with classmates, but since it’s just Ethan, we decided that he could prepare for a debate and present both sides of the argument to us. He also wrote the following blog post about the debate topic…

http://www.howtodostuffwithethan.com/debates-and-questions-from-the-csa/
Doing some coding for a CSA activity using Python. You had to display a message on the console that’s on the right side of the screen.
Here is the code! It might be run on the ISS.
Doing my blog.
Playing donotmove.io (http://bonk.io/)
Doing some geography activities for the CSA space camp contest. I learned about latitude and longitude. I found where I live and where I used to live in Seoul. Here are our coordinates:
49°19’44.9″N 123°09’07.4″W
Making a boat game! The boat has to dodge logs, get coins and try to get the life preserver that gives extra lives. Ethan made this game by himself.

Good luck to all the families out there who have to keep their children home. Hope you can see that there are many resources and activities to complement your child’s learning if they have to stay home.

LC Response

I had a Zoom call with Ethan and his family this week. I wanted to discuss our thoughts and vision moving forward into the 2020/2021 school year. 

Ethan is planning on re-enrolling in Self Design. He is thriving in home learning and I could not be more excited for him. 

The purpose of the conversation was for us to discuss our thoughts of me continuing as his LC next year. I expressed that I felt that I had reached my edge in terms of my knowledge of some of the subjects he is most passionate about: math, physics, space and coding. 

The family appreciated my honesty and my intention to do what is best for Ethan. They understand how I am feeling as Ethan often is interested in things that they themselves know very little about. 

However, the family expressed that they very much want to continue with me as an LC. They are very happy with the effort I put into my responses. I do have to work a bit harder to keep up with Ethan and all he posts. They also can feel how much I care. We have developed a wonderful relationship over the last few years and they want to continue with that and not start over. 

As for now Ethan is doing very well as finding resources and teaching himself. He is happy and that is what matters most to them. 

His family also finds that I might have skills and expertise which Ethan could benefit from such as in areas of the arts, social sciences and language arts. They feel like I am a great resource to help round out his learning. 

I know I am inspired weekly by Ethan’s passions and activities. I also do not want to loose him as a learner, but I wanted to express my thoughts and feelings. 

We had a great conversation overall in which we all felt heard and better understood as to how to work together moving forward. I feel very relieved and am not looking forward to our year ahead together. 

In an effort to be supportive and transparent,  I offered them some names of other LC’s they could look up to see if there was a better match. It does not seem like they will choose this route. 

In a parting conversation, I suggested an idea, with Ethan’s language skills in Korean and Chinese and as such a successful and happy homeschooler he could begin to produce content for the now hundreds of millions of students who are coping with school closures as a result of  COVID-19. 

 I am curious to see if and how Ethan might approach this in the weeks to come. 

Some resources for kids I have been sharing: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/02/28/809580453/just-for-kids-a-comic-exploring-the-new-coronavirus

Thank you so much for the incredible connection and the honor of working with your family! 

Ethan had another incredible week as noted in his Observation for Learning below. I made note of some of the highlights of learning and will be offering the direct contact write up as my response this week.

Natasha Cucek

Zoom Conversation

Hi, 

I can type up notes from our Zoom conversation this week. 

You are welcome to post additional material if you like, but I will offer a shorter response. 

Natasha

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