An Unschooling Curriculum: Backwards in Time

Unschoolers love to say they don't follow curricula. I've noticed though, that you can define an unschooling curriculum backwards in time by what the gang, (three year-old No. 3, five year-old No. 2, and seven year-old No. 1), has accomplished in the last week. It's kind of awesome, going in, we had no goals, nor any idea any of this would happen!

3 developed a love of cooking!
3 asked to attend a pick-up cooking class for kids at the Noe Valley Rec Center. (I love that San Francisco kids can drop into Parks & Rec classes if there's room.) She had a blast! About four days later, when she and I went to the red-hat for our weekly meat and egg shopping, she insisted that we get squid. She asked to hold the bag while I levered the squid into it. (This led to an amusing confusion.; unable to see 3 below the seafood ice tray, one of the workers was concerned I was dumping squid onto the floor.) When I was ready to cook, 3 wanted in on that as well. She helped pop their heads off to clean them, and then after I'd sliced them up, rolled the pieces in the batter mix, 3's interest brought seven year-old No. 1 and five year-old No. 2 in on the game as well.

No. 2 started getting ready all by himself!
Five year-old 2 has been wanting to eat breakfast earlier and earlier. Meanwhile, he's been taking longer and longer to get ready in the morning. I don't always remember to respectfully parent, but when I do, wow! It works pretty well! 2 and I took the time before dinner a few nights ago to discuss the breakfast situation. I explained that perhaps part of the reason for delaying breakfast until after he was dressed and ready to go was because his various caretakers were concerned that it would take even longer to get ready if he ate breakfast and then got dressed. We talked about my suspicion that if he got ready more quickly and reliably, he could probably eat breakfast whenever he liked. Then, I suggested that maybe he could lay out his clothes right then, the night before, so that it would be really easy to change into them as soon as he woke up.

The next morning, the first time I saw 2 he was wearing clean clothes, and fairly beaming about the whole thing! Taking time to make sure we talked through the breakfast vs. getting ready issue, covering what all the parties involved wanted, did wonders!

1 and 2 make the Farmers' Market a Breeze! (Also Baby Broccoli is Back!)
With their independence, and math skills cruising along, 1 and 2 are helping me more and more by splitting off to get things at the Farmers' Market where they know everyone. In fact, it was their increasing number of Market forays that led me to send them for: Cheese!

A Wrinkle in Time
On our way to the movie, seven year-old No. 1, who taught herself to read, was heard to say, "I've read the book! Every word! By myself!"

3 Made a Friend!
We have spectacularly vibrant branch libraries here in San Francisco! The gang almost always finds other kids already there when they visit. One afternoon this week, 3 who hangs out with other kids all the time, made her first friend all by herself! She and her buddy were drawing pictures together, singing, and occasionally stopping to talk with each other!

So, there you have it. A whole week of unschooling, with a math, reading, cooking, and people skills curriculum!

More Cowbell! Record Production using Google Forms and Charts

First, the what : This article shows how to embed a new Google Form into any web page. To demonstrate ths, a chart and form that allow blog readers to control the recording levels of each instrument in Blue Oyster Cult's "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" is used. HTML code from the Google version of the form included on this page is shown and the parts that need to be modified are highlighted. Next, the why : Google recently released an e-mail form feature that allows users of Google Documents to create an e-mail a form that automatically places each user's input into an associated spreadsheet. As it turns out, with a little bit of work, the forms that are created by Google Docs can be embedded into any web page. Now, The Goods: Click on the instrument you want turned up, click the submit button and then refresh the page. Through the magic of Google Forms as soon as you click on submit and refresh this web page, the data chart will update immediately. Turn up the:

Cool Math Tricks: Deriving the Divergence, (Del or Nabla) into New (Cylindrical) Coordinate Systems

Now available as a Kindle ebook for 99 cents ! Get a spiffy ebook, and fund more physics The following is a pretty lengthy procedure, but converting the divergence, (nabla, del) operator between coordinate systems comes up pretty often. While there are tables for converting between common coordinate systems , there seem to be fewer explanations of the procedure for deriving the conversion, so here goes! What do we actually want? To convert the Cartesian nabla to the nabla for another coordinate system, say… cylindrical coordinates. What we’ll need: 1. The Cartesian Nabla: 2. A set of equations relating the Cartesian coordinates to cylindrical coordinates: 3. A set of equations relating the Cartesian basis vectors to the basis vectors of the new coordinate system: How to do it: Use the chain rule for differentiation to convert the derivatives with respect to the Cartesian variables to derivatives with respect to the cylindrical variables. The chain

The Valentine's Day Magnetic Monopole

There's an assymetry to the form of the two Maxwell's equations shown in picture 1. While the divergence of the electric field is proportional to the electric charge density at a given point, the divergence of the magnetic field is equal to zero. This is typically explained in the following way. While we know that electrons, the fundamental electric charge carriers exist, evidence seems to indicate that magnetic monopoles, the particles that would carry magnetic 'charge', either don't exist, or, the energies required to create them are so high that they are exceedingly rare. That doesn't stop us from looking for them though! Keeping with the theme of Fairbank[1] and his academic progeny over the semester break, today's post is about the discovery of a magnetic monopole candidate event by one of the Fairbank's graduate students, Blas Cabrera[2]. Cabrera was utilizing a loop type of magnetic monopole detector. Its operation is in concept very sim

Copasetic Flow

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