Here is Emily’s latest animated creation. She draws each frame and then puts them together in such a way so that they flow smoothly as possible. She was very proud of this as it was the first one where she changed the perspective of the character (i.e. the character moves into the background, giving it a 3D effect).
Note: you may have to click on the image to get it to play
This is one of her recurring characters, Dragonflight the Warrior Cat (a la Erin Hunter’s very popular book series)
Emily hasn’t done this in a while, but the other day she was inspired to draw an image of her beloved cat, Max, as he sat on the back of the sofa looking out the window, half asleep. She was very proud of her drawing. I can see why! At first I wondered at the ring around his eye, but he does in fact have a dark stripe that looks exactly like that (he’s a brown tabby).
Our Young Scientists’ Club subscription has been really fun so far. This week we worked on the Crystals kit. Emily started by attempting to break a geode. She wore her safety goggles but that thing just wouldn’t break…
Finally we took it outside and she placed it on some concrete. Then she was able to break it. She was a bit disappointed that it had no colour inside, but it was still pretty.
Was hoping for this:
But got this:
Next we had to make some recipes for crystal solutions. These were put into jars. She tied paper clips to string and attached them to popsicle sticks to suspend them in the solutions. We are still waiting on our crystals to fully form, but she did enjoy a small taste of “rock candy” today!
Here are some shots of her work:
Pouring salt into hot water in preparation for growing salt crystals.
Crystal solutions. Rock Candy (with food colouring), aka sugar crystals, on the left. Salt crystals on the right.
Apparently you can grow crystals on charcoal. We’ll find out in a few days…
Sasha is making good progress with our online math curriculum. He grasps new concepts quickly, and despite his protestations when it’s time to do the work, he applies himself well. He has completed four of the five sections of the Grade 1 curriculum. The last is Addition and Subtraction which he has just begun. He is also well into Grade 2’s first section, Comparisons and Ordering. He has already completed the Grade 2 problem solving section. I’m very pleased with his progress.
Here are some of the lessons he has recently completed:
In this lesson, he uses “Snap Blocks” to visualize numbers on either side of the equation. It allows him to determine whether, in fact, the equation is true and each side is the same value. The snap blocks can be dragged to their respective colour bar so he can compare the numbers side by side according to length.
In this next exercise, the object is the same but they have introduced the algebraic concept of “N”, some unknown number that is represented by a letter.
Finally, he completed the Grade 1 Place Value section. Dreambox uses an interesting visual method for teaching place value: packing items into boxes. For Grade 1 they are working on Tens and Ones. The student can use the packing tool to determine how many ones are left over when a given number of boxes (of ten items) are packed.
I love this picture. She combines two of her favorite themes: Minecraft and Warrior Cats. The cats are dressed/coloured as (from left to right): a Creeper, Steve, and an Enderman. She was very proud of this work and pleased with how it turned out.
Emily sent me this by email. She wrote: “This took forever. At least three hours.”
Emily has been busy making and editing videos again. They are not really to my taste, but I admire her creativity. In these videos she is not using actual film clips but rather she drew all the artwork and put it together using those images. The music is typical obnoxious tween stuff, but you can mute and enjoy the artwork. 😉
WARNING: She is still having volume issues; make sure the volume on your computer is turned way down before you begin playing!
For this next, she told me she spent hours working on the images but she wasn’t happy with how it turned out. The eye opening looks like something else until it actually opens. Note that the same volume issue applies.
HideAway Farm 