steamschooldelaplane Activity, Garden Science

How does your garden grow?

Our home garden is planted!

I’m no expert, but I am learning along the way. The kids helped me dig, till, weed, create rows and plant seeds. We ended up starting cherry tomatoes and bell peppers inside. The cats have gotten into them a few times, but I’m hopeful several seedlings will survive.
We planted mostly cold season vegetables, but I did take a risk and put some potatoes and corn in the ground early. Fingers crossed we don’t get a hard frost. If we lose the plants, I’ll try again later. 

Our garden

  • Corn
  • Cucumber
  • Carrots
  • Basil
  • Oregano
  • Thyme
  • Peas
  • Broccoli
  • Kale
  • Lettuce
  • Beets
  • Cabbage
  • Potatoes
  • Raspberries
  • Blueberry
  • Flowers
This is the only broccoli to grow so far. I think it’s broccoli!
Potatoes require hilling every two weeks to keep the new potatoes covered and prevent them from becoming green from too much sun. Thank you internet!
Our indoor peppers are growing well.
This oregano survived two winters and is continuing to produce well. I’ve been drying my own and it tastes great.
steamschooldelaplane Uncategorized

Mathematics of every day life

We’re already teaching our kids math at home!!

I found this helpful graphic on the everyday mathematics website of University of Chicago. What I learned from the graphic is that children develop their understanding of abstract ideas (such as a math sentence) through concrete, verbal and pictorial representations. What this means in practice is that teaching math through every day normal experiences with your children is a very good idea and may even be the best way to learn math! Let me give you an example.

3+3=6

My daughter is 5 years old. She doesn’t even realize we do math, but was very excited when I explained the graphic and talked her through our math experience of tonight.

Joelle wanted cookies after dinner. I told her to go ahead and bake three for herself and three for her brother. I asked her, how many total cookies are you going to bake? She counted it up and got to six.

She measured out the dough. We baked cookies. We distracted ourselves with something else while we waited. Beep beep! Cookies were ready. We let them cool. Then, Joelle ate her cookies… and her brother’s cookies too, because he didn’t want them.

At bedtime, I showed her this graphic and explained it to her, giving the cookies as an example.

You see, Joelle had a concrete connection to the cookies. She physically counted them out. She made two rows of three so she would remember whose cookies were whose. Good job grouping, Joelle! (3 for you, 3 for me)

She also had a verbal experience with the cookies, both when I asked her how many total she would make, and then later when I asked her how many she had made for each of them and how many total she ate. She thought she ate all of them, but I had one. I didn’t correct her.

In the morning, we will review the math sentence by creating a pictorial representation of the now famous six cookies.

Tonight, I already helped her write out the math sentence with number symbols, but we can do it again in the morning with our portrait of six delicious cookies.

If she were ready for it, I could have given her a multiplication problem by telling her to make three cookies two times, and then a division problem by asking her to divide her cookies by two people… or maybe a surprise third person who wanted cookies. (Daddy! We forgot him!)

Even if I hadn’t guided her to make the math sentence in symbols, she would have still been developing her understanding of how numbers are connected, how they work, what they represent, and how to manipulate them to figure out what you want to know. Mathematics of the real world, everyday* experience for the win!

 

*We do not eat cookies every day. I’m pretty sure.

steamschooldelaplane Uncategorized

Toothpick Engineering

Happy Spring Break!

The kids and I had a fun time with toothpick engineering today using modeling clay, toothpicks and this hilariously old school video as inspiration. I showed my 5 and 4 year old the video before we started, but you could pose the challenge to older kids without showing the video first. After we tried building tall, the kids just played around creatively with the toothpicks and clay and we talked about what their products looked like (a sea urchin and a spiky caterpillar). Interested in joining us on a regular basis next fall? Contact us at steamhomeschool@gmail.com.

What are they learning?

-Counting objects
-Creating or reproducing 3-D shapes
-Naming shapes
-Identifying which shapes make structures strong
-Using comparison/analogy to identify shared features of two objects

Challenge: build a tower that stands four toothpicks tall using only six toothpicks.

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Building four toothpicks tall with just six toothpicks wasn’t very sturdy.
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We used more toothpicks to create a more sturdy base.
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Caterpillar!
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Snack time and we kept on building.
steamschooldelaplane Activity, Design, Engineering

Engineering for kids

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again!

At the STEAM school, we will use the design process to solve real problems. Check out this great resource from PBS Kids on how to teach kids to use the design process (page 2). The most important aspect of design thinking is that there is no single “correct” solution, rather a series of attempts, redesigns and retests along the bumpy road toward an awesome product. This type of thinking encourages kids to continue trying new approaches until they have a great solution.

When kids use design thinking, it builds their resilience, persistence, diligence and confidence!

Click to access DS_Act_Guide_complete.pdf