Mineral Identification

Miss Em couldn’t wait to start this Gizmo. She had so much fun that she insisted on identifying all 26 samples. Later that day she went back and did some again on her own.

Minerals are identified using 5 characteristics: appearance (colour, shape, and lustre), density (mass divided by volume), hardness, streak test, and acid reaction.

Measure mass on the scale, and volume using water displacement. Divide to find density.

Most samples did not leave a streak, but when they did the colour varied between samples.

She soon discovered that density and hardness were the most reliable indicators. She would search the answer table for minerals with the same numbers as those she measured. Then she would look at acid and streak tests (because most of the sample failed both tests it was rarely useful to start with these results). She found that appearance was the most variable: she would think it was pearly when it was metallic, for example. This led to a discussion about the difference between objective and subjective measurements.

More Genetic Inheritance Studies

I’ve dubbed them “Science Fridays”. This past week we continued working on genetic inheritance. Using Explore Learning’s Gizmos Miss Em bred chickens and mice, explored both dominant and co-dominant traits, and experimented with crossing for two traits.

Chicken feather colour is co-dominant.

Black fur is dominant. Red eyes are recessive.

Movie Trailer

Miss Em has been making movies for some time now. Yesterday she made her first movie trailer. Using a musical template, she added text and edited scenes from a “Let’s Play” type video that she and her brother are currently making for the Playstation Game, Tokyo Jungle. I thought she did a wonderful job. Love the names in the credits!

Stargazing

Last night the sky was clear, the moon was full (or close to it – it was hard to see behind the trees) and the stars were clear and bright. It was the perfect night to drag Miss Em outside for some stargazing. We saw Jupiter, looking bright and amazing. Aldebaran was on its left in the constellation Taurus, and the Pleiades on its right. In the constellation Orion we saw Betelgeuse and Rigel. I pointed out how stars twinkle and planets don’t. And also noted that Betelgeuse is a Red Supergiant, which is due to end its life cycle in a supernova…some time within the next million years or so!

One door closes….

Last summer things were going so well with my husband’s business that we decided it was time to build our new house. We bought this land, with its tiny mobile home, with just such a plan in mind – it was only a question of when. I was thrilled when “when” turned into “now”.

So we hired a designer to come up with a plan, we interviewed builders, and in between all that I spent hours and hours researching building materials, floor plans, room dimensions, traffic patterns in our home, and went through reams of paper drawing and refining plans for my dream home. It was how I spent my “down time” and I got a great deal of joy and satisfaction out of the process.

But I knew all along that it was not yet a given. Life has a way of throwing things at you when you least expect it. Doors open, and you have to decide whether to go through them knowing you will close others if you do. Through all my pondering and talking and researching I constantly reminded myself that this might not happen, that it was definitely not a done deal. Certain things still had to happen, and while it seemed certain they would, you never count your chickens before they hatch. Nevertheless, the dream and the planning had become so much a part of my inner life (it is what I usually thought about when I lay in bed falling asleep) that I knew it might be difficult to let go if the need arose.

You can probably tell where I’m going with this by now…

For the last several weeks my husband’s business (of which he is one of four partners) has been beset with one issue after another. We still thought we would be able to pull off the build, we would just have to get more creative with the financing. Today we met with our financial advisor and he soon disavailed us of those notions. Turns out it will be more difficult than we thought. And based on what he told us, it really doesn’t make sense for us to do this just now.

The “problem” turns out to be one of those doors that open when you aren’t expecting it. And it turns out to be the good news to our good news/bad news scenario. Shortly after we moved here our single-mum neighbour (the only neighbour whose property adjoins ours) mentioned that when her teenaged daughter graduated she would sell her property and downsize. We let her know that we would be interested in buying the property from her when the time comes. We always assumed that we would buy the place as an investment property, rent out the cute little house and surrounding chicken coop and small barn to some crunchy, farm-oriented, local-food growing family, and use the rest of that land for ourselves. We would be effectively doubling our acreage with no change in our mortgage payments.

Since the daughter is due to graduate this year, and since buying an investment property is a different financial kettle of fish than buying a residential property, our meeting today included a discussion of how best to go about making that happen. Turns out that by far the best scenario for us would be to rent out OUR current house and move into the one next door. When we compared option 1 (build a house on this site, buy next door as an investment and rent it out), with option 2 (buy next door, move in, and rent out current house) it was a no-brainer. I don’t want to publish details about our personal financial situation; suffice it to say that it would be irresponsible and foolhardy for us to go with option 1 when we added up all the potential benefits of option 2. As much as I didn’t want to let go of my custom dream home, even I could see that there was no decision to be made. Option 2 won by a landslide.

I’m now having to process the fact that we won’t be building a custom home any time soon. I can’t say that I’m shocked, because I knew all along this could happen. I suppose it’s like losing something that you kinda thought you were going to lose anyway. There is still a grieving process, but it isn’t accompanied by shock and disbelief. Writing this post is a big part of it for me, as I’m very much a verbal processor.

And of course, I’m trying to keep this in perspective. This is as “first world problem” as it gets and I don’t want to overemphasize its relative importance in my life. Every day when I walk my dog through the forest next door, smell the fresh moist air, and hear the birds and ravens calling I feel like I already have everything I need. Life is Good. And it’s good Right Now. I don’t forget that, and I don’t want to come across as feeling sorry for myself or anything like that. I’m just one of those people who need a Plan; I’m always looking forward to the next step. But I’m also quite flexible, and easily able to embrace change. I just need time for the new idea to sink it, and then I’m off and running.

That means transferring dreams of floor plans and building materials to new dreams about what living on the other property will look like. There are outbuildings to paint (a small barn, a chicken coop) and new gardens to be planted. Renovations to the house will cost considerably less than building a new one. And then there are the opportunities that open up now that we aren’t committing to an expensive build. In the last year we’ve gone from one horse-crazy homemaker (that would be me) to a family where everybody is taking riding lessons and we knew that eventually horses would be in our future. Shelving our plans to build a house opens up the possibility of getting horses sooner than originally planned. If there is anything that can get me over the idea of a custom home, it’s the idea of having horses.

So that’s Life. You think you know where you are headed next, and then an opportunity falls in your lap and changes everything. Even the “bad” stuff that’s been happening at my husband’s business has resulted in some exciting opportunities opening up for him. It’s really true what they say about one door closing and another one opening. I think that’s actually what makes life interesting. So here’s to the future. Whatever may happen, I’ve already got all the things that are really important. The rest is just icing on the cake.

 

Occupational Therapy Game

Our Occupational Therapist comes every other week and spends 2 hours with each child separately. She plays games with them, using a variation on Floor Time Therapy for older kids. The games are chosen for specific skills they require, whether that be fine motor skills, turn taking, imagination, etc.

Miss Em has great fine motor skills, probably due to all her years of drawing. This task plays on her love of drawing, and also introduces visual-spatial puzzles. Needless to say she excels at these sorts of tasks! And she was particularly happy with this one, which has as its subject one of her favourite animals: a black and white cat.

  

Sewing Project

Miss Em wants to learn how to sew. Seeing as I just bought my first machine this year, and a rather fancy one too, I felt up to the challenge.

She wants a stuffed cat, not the easiest thing to start with as a first project but she is determined! We found a pattern that included dolls and a dog, but the cat alone takes such a small amount of fabric that it plus all the notions came to less than $20. My kind of project!

She cut out the pattern pieces herself with no assistance from me, and even remembered later how many duplicates we needed (the smaller pieces don’t have that written right on the piece. She helped me pin the pattern pieces to the fabric and has begun cutting it out. I’ll post more pictures as we progress.

Fun with Homeschooling

As I wrote a while back, we have introduced some structured “sit-down” time into our homeschooling. I do what we call Project Time with each child separately. They do 15 minutes of an activity of my choosing and I give them 30 minutes of my time to do any activity they want. They can also earn extra time with me by spending extra time on my chosen activity. It’s not only going well (as in, the kids are not putting up a fight about it) but I’m having a good deal of fun, too.

We started with Dreambox Learning, an online math curriculum that is particularly appealing to visual learners like my kids. I sit and watch but I don’t offer them assistance in solving the problems. The program keeps track of their progress and struggles to adapt the program to them, so even mistakes are important. In some sections there is a “Too Hard” button the kids can choose if they are confused and the system will take them back to the previous steps. I love this program! I love how it tailors itself to each individual child, how it breaks math down into many different skills and allows students to progress in each skill at their own pace – if a kid excels at, say, place numbers, they can jump ahead to more complex problems while at the same time working extra on, say, negative numbers if need be.

Miss Em had some big gaps in her math learning so I started her off right at the beginning. That’s another good thing about Dreambox, you can set your child’s grade level to whatever you want. Because of the continuous feedback system, she has been able to take big leaps ahead on those topics she already grasped, while working in detail on those she didn’t. In this way she has completed almost two grade levels now, even though we haven’t spent as much time on it weekly as I would like. Mr. Boo is also progressing nicely.

I really enjoy watching them play, because you can practically see the learning take place. I love it when they grasp a concept and you can see how they put it all together. Often it is in a very different way than I would approach a problem, which I find equally exciting. Now, to be honest, my kids really don’t like having to “do math”. The idea of being made to learn something they aren’t interested in learning is pretty new to them, and while they do it, they do so begrudgingly. Still, it is one of those things where, when you catch them unawares, you sometimes see a smile! They deny they are enjoying themselves, of course!

With the math program going well my next goal was to do some science work with Miss Em. She has loved science since I can remember, and I suppose it is no surprise given I am a scientist by training (I have a PhD and worked in medical research prior to having children) and her father is an engineer. I’ve been wanting to teach her about the scientific method, how to design and carry out experiments, how to ask the right questions, etc. as part of a general exploration of scientific subjects of interest to her (she loves the natural sciences, for example).

After doing a bit of research I purchased a subscription to Explore Learning’s Gizmos. These are wonderful tools for exploring subjects in either Science or Math. Miss Em and I did a session together last week where she learned about genetic inheritance. Here is a link to the post that describes our breeding experiment with some cute space aliens! She really enjoyed herself, so much so that she said she is looking forward to doing it again. I had so much fun working with her that I’m looking forward to it as well!

I also got a subscription to the Young Scientists’ Club, which mails out a complete experiment kit to our home each month. Our first kit will be Minerals, where we’ll get to identify mineral samples using tests of hardness, acid reaction, etc. Miss Em really likes this area of geology so we are both excited about getting our kit and doing some real life experiments! The great thing about this systems is I don’t have to be responsible for planning the experiments, finding all the materials, etc. It all comes in one kit – awesome!

When the kids have finished doing their 15 minutes (or more, if they choose) they get to pick something to do with me. At first their choice of activities varied, but for the last month or so I’ve been playing Minecraft with them (if you have never heard of this game you simply must check it out – very creative and extremely popular among school-aged kids). While Mr. Boo tends to wander around trying different worlds and maps, Miss Em is more focussed. We use the same world each time where we’ve created a comfy home and are currently exploring a Stronghold filled with all kinds of neat minerals and ores. While I’ve been watching them play this game for well over a year and am familiar with it, playing it myself allows me to understand on a deeper level. Both kids seem to appreciate sharing this part of their world with me as they are big into Minecraft!

My only real problem is carving out enough time to do Project Time with each child more than two or three times a week. I’m not sure my son is ready for that yet, but my daughter certainly is. And he will be eventually. By mid-afternoon everybody is tired so it has to be done in the mornings. I’ve asked my husband to do a bout of project time with each kid when he’s home on the weekends, and he is keen to do so. It is my hope that, as the children get older and are able to focus for longer periods of time, we can extend Project Time and also start covering more subjects each week. Meanwhile I’m having a lot of fun being a homeschooling Mum.

Feeding Therapy: End of Week Two

It has been two weeks, and we’re just starting week 3, since I implemented our Feeding Therapy plan. Some of it has been “make it up as we go along” but I’m starting to feel more confident in my execution of this plan and so far I’m pleased with the results.

We started out with homemade chicken nuggets using ground chicken breaded with almond flour (grain free, gluten free), and also baby carrot sticks. For the first few days I simply placed these items on a plate in-between their dinner plates (they sit opposite each other at a small table). They earned two mini cupcakes or, later, two chocolate chip cookies for doing this. They soon both requested that we move up a level so they could earn an extra dessert that night. That meant that they had to have the foods on their plate, along with their regular dinner. The next night they had to do at least this to earn their two items – when they move up a step it becomes the minimal requirement for subsequent nights. This is to prevent having to add a dessert item to each step (there are many!) and it provides incentive to move further ahead when they are ready.

The results so far? After two weeks Mr. Boo is taking a bite of baby carrot and holding it in his mouth for five seconds before spitting it out into a small bowl provided for that purpose. He is also taking a small bite of chicken nugget, chewing and swallowing it. Miss Em, who is more affected by smell than texture, just this evening felt ready to move up a step. She earned two extra cookies by first holding a baby carrot up to her nose and smelling it, and then by placing a chicken nugget partially in her mouth (no biting yet). Not only is this definite progress for them, but they are doing it willingly! And they seem proud of themselves when they are able to move up a step.

I am really happy with how this is going so far. The lure of the dessert does seem to be serving as an excellent indicator of readiness. This is a relief because I don’t trust myself to guess right on that every single time. I was worried that they might hold back because they simply don’t want to progress, but if I pushed them and they truly weren’t ready it would backfire. Well, when my children refuse an extra cookie for something as apparently “easy” as sniffing a baby carrot…I know they aren’t ready! Yet they are steadily progressing and for that I am very grateful.

I checked in with our Occupational Therapist last week and she said to be prepared for some steps taking a long time. She said it can take up to 20 times of smelling or tasting something for these kids to acclimate to the item. I’m glad she reminded me that Miss Em, especially, is challenged because of her overactive sense of smell. This is why when, today, she asked if she could earn an extra cookie by smelling the carrot I agreed. Mr. Boo didn’t need to take that step – for him it is more about texture I think.

There have been some downsides. It has added considerably to my already busy workload in the kitchen. Now I not only have to co-ordinate their dinners to be ready at the same time (they rarely eat the same thing) but I have to add the chicken nuggets, too (thankfully the carrots just come right out of the bag). I’ve made do by prepping and freezing some batches, but it’s still a lot of work, especially when I then have to make my own dinner too.

What’s even harder, though, is the personal cost of having dessert in the house when I struggle with carb addiction. I had weaned myself off carbs last year after switching to paleo-type low-carb eating. But over Thanksgiving and Christmas I started indulging in carbs and next thing I knew I was hooked again and gained over 10 lbs. I was just starting my own New Year’s resolution of weaning myself off sugar when I implemented this feeding therapy plan. I had already lost some of the weight from the holidays but I have managed to gain it back over the last couple of weeks. It’s just too hard for me having that stuff at hand. So I’m struggling with how to deal with this, yet feeling that I’d rather stay 10 lbs overweight if it means my kids might have a chance at eating a normal, healthy range of foods.

In the meantime, I have cause to celebrate our successes..my children have carrots on their plates!! I’m pretty happy about that, and even if this program takes years I will celebrate each and every step. Maybe one day I will hear shouts of “hooray” when offering something other than pizza for dinner.

Exploring Genetic Inheritance

Using our trial subscription to Explore Learning, Miss Em explored genetic inheritance using a Gizmo that allowed her to construct aliens and examine their offspring. She could change the skin colour of the aliens, give them straight or curly antennae, give them tattoos, and select their body size. By manipulating these characteristics and performing experiments to test her hypotheses, she learned about acquired traits (skin colour, antennae shape) versus inherited traits (tattoos are not passed down to offspring; body size depends on food availability – which could also be manipulated in the Gizmo).

Four offspring of a pink parent with straight antennae and a green parent with curly antennae and a tattoo.

She then learned that there are two copies of each gene, and one can be dominant over the other. In the case of the antennae, straight dominates curly and there is no “sort-of curly”. However, with colour, while one colour dominates the other colour shows up as spots. By manipulating colour, and crossing offspring back to parents, she was able to determine that Green dominates over Pink, and Blue dominates over Pink, and Green dominates over Blue.

Two offspring from above produce solid coloured offspring (sometimes) and curly antennae (sometimes).

We recorded our experiments, the variables we selected, and the outcome on paper. She soon learned to predict what combinations of traits would be seen in the offspring, and with what frequency (and she also learned that Nature doesn’t always follow the frequency exactly: the first four offspring will not necessarily represent all possible gene combinations).

The only way to produce offspring with curly antennae is for the parent with straight antenna to have come from a parent with curly antennae (the offspring got it from the grandparent).