Video Story Inspiration

http://www.theculturist.com/home/share-your-visual-life-the-sartorialist.html

http://vimeo.com/thepanicroom/videos/sort:date

Simple Machines

This is a good website to explore for our study of Simple Machines.

Environmental Graffiti

This website Environmental Graffiti, always has interesting articles. Please read the description of each link before you click to see if it's appropriate for you to look at.

Great Books-Shared Inquiry

Ask, ask, ask!  Please check some of these videos from the Great Books Foundation about how they teach kids to support their ideas by citing evidence, i.e. examples from the text. Shared Inquiry is a method that encourages critical thinking and analysis. See how a discussion goes here. Good example of a formal school discussion. The children are quite young, and the book is simple, but the class is pulling the book apart and getting at what the story means by actively participating and listening. You're welcome to click on the other links as well, of course!

Biology - Classifying Wackadoodles

We've been sniffing around this subject for awhile, taxonomy, classification, kingdoms, phylums etc. Let's do something about it! I've got a little Creature Classification exercise for us to try from Real Science for Kids.

In the next few weeks, let's try this out...we've got some new terms* to learn before we can tackle this though. Where exactly would a photosynthetic sun-basking shark with green chlorophyll-filled fins (to convert sunlight to energy) fit on a classification chart?!

 Mnemonic of the day for Order of Taxonomy:
*DOMAIN, Kingdom, Phyllum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species
 Did King Phillip Cry Out "For Goodness Sakes!"?

Geology and Art-Sculpture

Those carved marble statues at the Victoria and Albert Museum we saw on the weekend were amazing to see in real life, not just in books. Here is a Saylor art course video on carving marble to check out, from the quarry through the process of it becoming a statue.

Here is someone carving with traditional tools, click here. 

Math Philosophy

Vi Hart has joined Khan Academy! Ms. Hart has made some cool Math Doodles over the past few years and posted them on the internet. Please check some out!

On a related note, the movie, Between the Folds (that's a link to the movie trailer), is a look at origami, paper folding, Math and Art. We've seen bits of this movie over the years. It's on Netflix, and I'd like for us to take a look at it sometime.

Reviewing Parts of the Flower

In order to retain information after the hard work of learning about something, we need to review what we know from time to time. Let's break out the Montessori cards about the parts of the flower. Divide the cards into categories. Male reproductive parts, female reproductive parts, structure of the plant itself.

French Programs

We've tried quite a few programs over the years, haven't we? The Learnables, the famous tutor Mrs. Gonzales, Ecoutez et Parlez, Rosetta Stone, Q-talk, learning by singing etc.. Oh, Michel Thomas as well. Which program have you enjoyed the most? Which has been most useful?

We have come to the point in our studies where we need to tune our ears to the language a lot more. I'll play you a variety of audio files and let's see what we can understand.

Circulation

The Human Circulation game we put together wasn't as interesting as we'd hoped, but I think it would still be a good idea to do a little run through of how it works. Let's all do that, one at a time. Here's a nice little animation of how the heart pumps blood through the body. Remember, there's coronary (heart) blood circulation, pulmonary (lung) blood circulation and systemic (the whole body system) circulation which works to move those oxygen-rich red blood cells throughout the system to all the cells and organs of the body and back again for re-oxygenation.

Book Club

test

Test chemistry

Test chemistry post

Art Theory

Some people (hi Jake!!) are not impressed with much of Modern Art. The simplicity of it when compared to the art of other eras can lead us to easily dismiss it. What were these Modern Artists trying to convey? What were they reacting against? Simon Schama has an interesting series called The Power of Art. We'll be looking at some of the episodes to get some answers to these questions. We'll check out his documentary about Picasso first. Snacks too, of course!

Venice Biennale Art Exhibition

The Venice Biennale (bi-annual) is a contemporary art exhibition that takes place in that Italian city every other year. It has been going on since 1895, with artists from many countries entering the exhibit/competition. You can check out some of the jury listed and shortlisted pieces here.