Skip to main content

Monkey Bars (What Unschoolers Do Instead of School)

This week I’d like to talk about what the gang does while they’re not in a classroom setting, (because they’re almost never in a classroom setting).  I’ll describe one thing they’ve been up to each day, and share what makes me so ridiculously proud about the their daily activities that I just giggle.  So, without further ado: Monkey Bars!


Five year-old No. Two hit a monkey bar milestone today!  He rocketed past one bar at a time grabs straight up to traversing the two bars at a time!  As if that wasn’t enough he then mastered turning around to go the other direction when he got to the end—another thing he’s never done before.  Watching him in his striped shirt, pink tights, and hiking boots with his shock of almost white hair bobbing back and forth as he swung like a pendulum preparing to hit not the next bar, but two bars over, made me grin from ear to ear!  My grin mirrored his as he pulled off his new acrobatic feat.

I love that unschooling allows the gang the time and freedom to pursue physical endeavors as well as mental ones.  As I watched Two I couldn’t help but think, “Wow!  This kid’s going to have upper-body strength and balance in a way that I’ve never known.”  What he’s doing now, with any luck he’ll keep doing, even build upon.  I’m proud of his confidence.  I’m proud of his willingness to surrender his body to chase after a new accomplishment that he decided on—a quality the entire gang shares.

I love that the gang goes up, and hangs out in  trees like panthers and ocelots.  I love that one of their favorite comic book characters is Poison Ivy—generally portrayed as a villain, sometimes as a hero—whose physical prowess is equaled by her passion to interact with as well as save all the green things.  The gang gets to hangout in the woods, climb trees, trek to playgrounds, and make the whole world their gym!  They’re secure in nature!  They hike, they explore, they go wherever they please and believe they are able.  Last night when one of them was headed to the playground with me, she stopped short at the gang’s favorite set of climbing trees.  “Dad, we don’t need to go any further to the playground.  This is the playground!”  What a gig!


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

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