Renewed vigour!

After a few weeks of very unstructured, not-schooly learning, I think all of us were looking for a bit more "meat on the bones".

But, I have slightly changed the way I do things. Whilst one child is lost in the world of Septimus Heap, I worked quietly the with other, one-on-one, just like I do for tutoring. No distractions, or interruptions.

Video Boy has been baulking at maths worksheets, so I took a different tack - would he be interested in doing some science/maths? Is it science, or is it maths Mum? Both! I am amused by the way schooled children love to put things in boxes - one thing or the other. But that's not how real life works, is it? Anyway, we did some calculations based on Ohm's law (voltage is current times resistance) and talked about formulas, substituting and re-arranging equations. Science AND maths in one easy lesson! And Video Boy was quite chuffed to know he was doing questions from a Year 10 textbook!

If none of the Ohm's Law thing makes sense to you, then this video explains it nicely!

Wombat Girl's work of choice was algebra. We are working through expanding expressions, and for her also new, working with directed numbers (and pronumerals). She hates repetition, so I usually get rid of a whole bunch of questions for her, but include revision frequently. She was working away reasonably happily, asking for help (or rather, reassurance) when she came up against anything she wasn't sure of. So, she was really surprised when I mentioned that she was also working from a Year 10 maths textbook!

"Now I have renewed vigour for my maths, Mummy!" she announced. Too cute! She's very keen to try one of the Open University introductory maths courses :-) and is working towards that goal.

We also had a look at waves and the lack of a untangled slinky in our house led to YouTube viewings:

As I was trying to explain that in waves the particles vibrate but the energy moves, I used a "mexican wave" as an example. I was faced with blank stares. Shock! horror! My children had no idea what I was talking about. Thank goodness, yet again, for YouTube and Brainiac!

All this waves, and frequencies, and periods, and harmonics talk lead us to swinging pendulums - they have one of these at Questacon, and of course Wombat Girl asks "can we make one?":

and

Loving our learning and our life :-)