Archive for the ‘Unshooling’ Category
Taddie legs!
Posted June 6, 2011
on:- In: Science | Unshooling
- Leave a Comment
Frog Lifecycle.
Posted May 9, 2011
on:- In: misc fun | nature | Science | Unshooling
- Leave a Comment
We are growing frogs.
Here is the life cycle we have amassed so far.
Stage 7: There are no more gills and the body is larger. The eyes are also visible here.
Stage 6: The taddie develops gills.
Stage 5: Tail shape is changing. More growth.
Stage 4: Fully hatched. They eat boiled lettuce.
Stage 3:
Stage 2: Eggs are changing shape.
This happened in a very short amount of time. When the weather is cold, it can take two years for a frog to reach maturity. When it is warm (like my house), it can take weeks.
We went frog hunting the other day and couldn’t find any. We could hear them croaking very loudly in the distance but no matter how far we walked they were always just a little bit further.
After admitting defeat, we started walking home.
I spotted this clump of frog eggs in the ditch. I thought, if I can not find some, I will grow some.
Stage 1: In natural habitat (I only took a very small amount -this is what was left when I was done).
Love is…
Posted August 17, 2010
on:- In: Me | parenting | Unshooling
- 2 Comments
… who the frack cares!
Doesn’t matter what you think love is. What matters is how you show it. What benefit does anyone gain from being loved more than earth and heaven combined if they are neglected and treated like shit?
In the most famous love passage (1 Corinthians 3:4-7) Paul describes love. He doesn’t say, “Love is feeling butterflies in your stomach” or “feeling sexually attracted to someone.” He says:
4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Have you noticed that those are all actions?
So let us consider this as we go into the world (our families and workplaces, out with our friends etc.). Let us start being love not just feeling it and desiring it.
Let us be happy for others and not be petty. Let’s not lash out at those who don’t deserve it. Let’s be patient and kind.
I want to be the embodiment of love to my family. I don’t want to JUST be hugs and kisses and then yell at them when I am frustrated. I want to treat them like I love to them.
‘Cause frankly, if I bitch at them all of their lives (or spank them or punish them or over protect them) they will remember my actions. Not my intentions.
Nature walk part deux!
Posted May 28, 2010
on:- In: misc fun | nature | Unshooling
- 3 Comments
On our nature walk we also found bugs/insects:
And some unusual plants:
Something that looks like tall asparagus. And I didn’t bother checking the name of the one on the right but I know that it is a water plant and it was found in a moist ditch.
One of these days I will have to look up all of these plants and add them to our nature journal.
Nature walk.
Posted May 28, 2010
on:- In: food | health | misc fun | nature | Science | Unshooling
- Leave a Comment
Last weekend we took the kids for a walk inside some of the city’s wilderness areas.
My real motivation here was to hunt for morels and while I did find many mushrooms I wouldn’t eat any of the ones I found.
See for your self:
Pirates!
Posted May 24, 2010
on:- In: crafts | misc fun | Uncategorized | Unshooling
- Leave a Comment
Earlier this week I took a trip to my local reuse centre. And as usual I came home with a whole big bag of loot.
There were art kits, vintage patterns (stay posted), miscellaneous supplies for Native American studies, some sponges and ice cream pail lids for painting, a big sun lantern and some rolls of fabric of course.
In the mix I found a small stack of these unfinished pirate masks:
We painted them using watercolours.
To be frank they haven’t gotten a lot of use but with the small fee of the reuse centre they were technically free! So… Ships ahoy matey!
Venus and the moon
Posted May 18, 2010
on:- In: Science | Space | Unshooling
- Leave a Comment
The bright “star” is actually the planet Venus and the moon, well, I am not telling you which one the moon is. You should know that much. Ha ha ha.
That was taken on May 15th.
On May 16th the moon would have been seen above Venus. But I couldn’t see it because my sky was too overcast.
This astronomy stuff is fun!
Homeschooling
Posted March 23, 2010
on:- In: religion | school | Unshooling
- 3 Comments
I have been feeling like I haven’t written a heavy post in a long time.
Our family has been, and still is, in some major transitions with work. It has certainly made it more difficult for me to find the time and the state of mind to write the kinds of posts I want to write.
Guerilla Homeschooling has this story about how the bestselling homeschooling textbooks dismiss the theory of evolution and the work of Darwin. http://guerrillahomeschooling.blogspot.com/2010/03/top-home-school-texts-dismiss-darwin.html
Now I don’t really care what you choose to believe but how much preparation are you giving your kids for the “real” world when you are teaching them to discredit the only credible theory on the origin of life.
I don’t care very much about how we were created and as such I haven’t read much on it and haven’t formed an opinion. But would I purposely teach my kids that the prevailing scientific idea of the creation of the life is a lie? And I don’t really care if you think that creationism is a respectable theory. The truth is that it only holds water (and even there barely) if you already prescribe to a certain set of beliefs. Without that foundation, the theory of creationism, has more holes in than a sieve.
This is a perfect example of why people think homeschooling will hurt kids. It isolates them from “bad” influences and makes them naive to the world around them.
I don’t unschool my kids to protect them but rather to liberate them. To let them learn about what they want to and to let them see the world as it really is. To learn the uncensored versions of things!
I also have started watching a documentary called War on Kids and while I admit that it is focusing on the most extreme of extreme examples of the prison like state of many schools I am still finding it interesting.
I especially like the part about Ritalin. Anyone who isn’t living under a rock should know that Ritalin cause psychosis. That the majority of violent crimes committed by students against parents and other students have been committed by kids on Ritalin. Pretty much all of the school shootings in recent history have been committed by Ritalined kids.
And Ritalin is meant to fix a “chemical” problem. Or in other words it’s meant to fix childhood joie de vivre. This is the real crime.
Here are the best segments of the documentary:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lzm6F33QEo&feature=related
Four million kids on Ritalin in the US!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sQxAyqesHE&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gktKcHxWWYc&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgQa1SKi7Hc&feature=channel
Basically everything from Episode 5 on is valuable. I really like Episode 8. Nine is very good too.
If you hate reading…thank a teacher.
Thrifting my way to knowledge
Posted March 21, 2010
on:A while ago I was raving about our reuse centre and all of the great crafting supplies we have gotten from there. We have gotten everything from sewing patterns to plaster to paper plates to envelopes for my home made cards to zippers to plastic egg cartons (which I use for mixing paint).
And today I am wanting to rave about our thrift store. Aside from some wonderful resource books I have also found science kits and glasses for my kids. I wanted some glass cups (since I hate plastic so much) for my boys to use now that they are older and have gotten over the butter fingers part of childhood. But I wanted glasses that I wouldn’t mind if they got broken accidentally. They had a piles of glasses at $0.49 a piece. So I bought a matching set of eight and now I can store some of the plastic cups. Also, the plastic cups don’t clean well in my dishwasher and having my boys using glass cups will mean I can clean their cups in the dishwasher. And that saves me time!
One of the science kits we bought was a plant growing kit. Everything was still in the original packaging. It came with “hot house” tubes and peat moss pellets and even plaster for doing demonstrations about how seeds can crack through hard mediums like concrete. There was more to it than just that and it was worth every penny of that $2.99 I spent on it.
You can see a seed in peat above and the picture on the side is the pinto that we started many weeks ago and the other is one of the “hot house” seed things we have growing.
It’s hard to see as it’s in the background but it’ll be the same kind of idea as the time I grew seeds in a ziploc bag.
The other set I picked up was a large chemistry set for five bucks. It has many, many different experiments to try. Everything from basic chemical reactions to testing pH to creating reactions using electricity etc.
I also found three boxes of prepared slides for a microscope. The slides contain bits of plants and bugs. I don’t have a microscope yet but I didn’t want to pass on those slides.