Learning to Build

This is a post I meant to write last winter, and never got around to it. The Kid participated in Destination Imagination last year, and will be participating again this year. It's an amazing program and I highly recommend that you look into it!

For last year's challenge, the team had to learn how to construct a very lightweight structure out of limited materials. It had to bear weight. A lot of weight. Where to start with such an undertaking and a group of 7-8 year olds? Popsicle sticks, of course!

This part of the project could easily be done by anyone. The challenge I first issued to the team was to build a structure out of no more than 50 craft sticks that could withstand weight being placed on top. (For their purposes, we dropped Olympic weights on top. That takes a structure tester to do safely, and that also makes it less tenable for an at-home project.) The structures they built used only craft sticks and glue, had to have an open center, and stand at least the height of one craft stick. Once they could manage a basic structure, we moved on to competing to see who could make the lightest weight structure that still held significant weight.

I was amazed at the construction skills this taught. They had to start with which glues held best. We bought a whole pile of glue, glued together pieces of wood, and then broke them apart to see how much force it took, and whether the glue broke or the wood broke. They experimented with how much glue made for a good joint. They played with clamping vs not clamping the pieces together. They experimented with jigs. They learned how to use cutting tools. They learned about angles and cross bracing. They learned about types of woods, and how much they weighed.

And that was just one part of their challenge. I can't wait to see what next year brings!

There's the box, under the giant stack of books!

Poetry Teas, Simplified

Yes, we do Poetry Teas, though not as often as The Kid would like. Originally inspired by Brave Writer, these have gotten less and less formal with time.

When we started them, we would plan a great snack, do the shopping, do the baking, make the drinks, carefully choose the poems... you get the idea. There might even be flowers.

I found that, for us, all those preparations meant that we almost never actually got around to the Poetry Teas. So, it's been simplified. Now, Poetry Tea is often sparked by having baked goods around in our house. Did we make cookies recently? Hey! We could just add a drink and grab some books and we now have a Poetry Tea!

Or, maybe we just have realized that it's been a very long time since our last Tea. What can we possibly grab to turn this into a Tea? Triscuits and cheese? Perfect! Grab some books!

We have tea, lattes, mochas, steamers, lemonade, limeade - basically, whatever drink we have on hand that we enjoy. No fancy tea set, as we don't own one and don't have space in the cabinets to add one. Heck, we don't even own a dining table. This is all done at our kitchen island bar, where we do all our eating.

And it still works.

Hoping for Long-Term Math Love

Halloween, age 5. This costume relates to math, I swear!

Math has been a bit of a meandering subject around here. The Kid loved math as a preschooler. We played with RightStart manipulatives. We counted how many steps we took in walking a block, and estimated how many steps to get all the way home. We played mathy games. We eventually transitioned to using RightStart Math, which worked well... until it didn't. We tried Beast Academy, but she wasn't yet ready for it then. We took off from formal math for most of a year, while reading mathy books and playing mathy games.

Then back to Beast Academy, which was rough going at first. It was hard. She got wrong answers. She didn't know how to tackle some of the problems. It was a slow, and sometimes painful, slog for a while. But by the time she finished up level 3, she was in love with it. Alongside, we continued reading mathy books and playing mathy games. She played around with Math Kangaroo practice tests, worked in Zaccaro's Primary Grade Challenge Math book, did some Hands On Equations.

She then tackled level 4, which was great for her... until it wasn't. I realized that all the meandering math meant that the second half of level 4 was mostly going to be review for her. I tried just assigning the starred and challenge problems, but those were still too easy. I let her start testing out of full chapters.

Around that time, I had her take the Woodcock-Johnson test. She'd taken it a year before, so I thought I could predict her scores fairly well. Nope. Her math scores had gone through the roof. Among other things, this opened up the option of applying to Epsilon Camp. Unfortunately, our finances took a major hit this year, so that wasn't an immediate option. I discussed the camp with The Kid, who fell in love with the very idea of it. Math lectures all morning! Yippee! (Yes, really.) Thinking ahead to next summer, when she will have just turned 9, she will be required to have not only the test scores, but also have completed Algebra 1 in order to qualify for Epsilon.

We discussed. She very much wanted to give this a try. But... Beast 5, Pre-Algebra, and Algebra all before next summer? Yikes.

We made a plan. She would continue testing out of Beast chapters as appropriate. Beast 5 would serve as most of her Pre-Algebra. She would double her math time from 30 minutes per day to a full hour. Selected chapters from Jousting Armadillos could be done alongside Beast 5 to cover any Pre-A topics that weren't covered in Beast. I could see no way to do both AOPS Pre-A and AOPS Intro to Algebra in one year, so AOPS Pre-A would be skipped. Once Beast 5 and Jousting Armadillos were completed, we would move directly into AOPS Intro to Algebra.

It feels a bit crazy. But in the three months since, she has completed over 2/3 of Beast 5 and almost all of the sections of Joust Armadillos that I selected. Looks like we'll be starting Algebra in September.

Pumpkin pi. She thought it was hilarious!