Today we built two robots and gave them sight! Lily worked on this project as her first project selection from her Tinkercrate and we had a great experience. She and I read through the directions, she assembled the components, and we set to work placing resistors, LED’s, and copper taping in a pattern on a printed […]
Circuitry, Electrons, Atoms, and Catfish
A post under development – as we work through her Tinkercrate (Circuits) this week: Today we read through the Tinkerzine, learning about the basics of electrons, the concepts of particles within an atom, the structure and concept of an atom, how electrons behave, the difference between a particle, an atom, and a molecule, and discovered […]
History of Paper | Papyrus – Fourdrinier Machine | Case Paper
http://www.casepaper.com/resources/paper-history/?doing_wp_cron=1429820921.7867159843444824218750 One of the topics we explored today.
A Googol & A Light Year – That's How Big
Yesterday and today… We’ve been playing with the abacus, learning about the Orders of Magnitude (what we call each major transition in numbers, as they increase exponentially), and multiplication via sets thanks to a few beads on sticks. Yesterday, we talked about how, with each added zero, we increase the size/amount of the number. She’s […]
Minecraft, It Is
This past weekend, we launched our first ever, private Minecraft world that we’re hosting. It’s been offered to a group of young kids from the WLU community and we’ve set it as Creative only. The kids (about 30 of them, ranging from 4 to 15, with all but two of them are under 11) are […]
The Year She's Carved Out
This is the first year Lils has had refined enough motor skills to manage the various tools necessary to carve a pumpkin independently. How excited she was yesterday, and again today, as she got to tell her friend all about her carving adventure. Last night she came bopping down the stairs, pumpkin in arms, lit and […]
Our First Attempt at Marshmallow Construction and the Great Cheese Incident
Quantum Leaping, Roof Raising, Laser Guided Pooping Machines
This morning we began with some wacked out sentences on the fridge, which included flying pigeons with laser guided poop devices. These sentences are made out of English, French, and Spanish words, randomly thrown together. Is this a logical way of learning sentence structure in a language other than English? No. It does generate vocabulary […]
Her Eggs
“I will become a mother. I have eggs to grow.” “Lils, you’re a cat…” “A Chicken-Cat.” Well, then. Ok. The video attached was filmed (is that what we still call it?) by Lily, with the assistance of Russ. Note: discover.cecilynixon.com has become, per the conversation that followed after she made the video, discover.cecilynixon.com. She’s already […]
STEM, Optics First, Robots Next
After learning about the STEM program at our local university a few weeks ago, I spoke with Lily about her interest and upon her request began the process of trying to get her accepted, given that the requirement was a minimum of 4th grade. As we are not utilizing “grades” and she already meets about […]