"Johann Sebastian Bach" by Elias Gottlob Haussmann -. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons
BACH TO BACH: It's a good school day when your first hour is learning about and listening to Johann Sebastian Bach. The painting above shows him holding a canon he'd written, a couple of years before his death in 1750.
Bach's works we listened to today included Toccata and Fugue in D minor, organ
http://youtu.be/ipzR9bhei_o
We also listened to Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, BWV 582
http://youtu.be/1atQFLYbzuk
Both of the videos above are from a YouTube channel by a man who goes by smalin, but it looks like his real name is Stephen Malinowski. We've been watching his videos for years. It's fun to see the visualization of the instruments in a bold, graphic representation.
CLUBBING: Over the past couple of weeks, we'd made a rather major shift. For the past four-plus years we've been attending classes in Shoreline (a city to the north) once or twice a week, as part of a homeschool cooperative up there.
A couple of weeks ago, we made the decision to leave that co-op and join one in Seattle. The Seattle one, in fact, is in the midst of moving from a location in the north part of the city to a building at the north end of Queen Anne hill, not even five minutes by car for us. That fact will save us travel time, and it will make it possible for the kids to be involved in extra curricular activities. For instance, today, they checked out the first meeting of a social issues club.
It was a lunchtime meeting, and the theme for today was water - specifically water scarcity. We learned that 70 percent of available water is used for farming, 20 percent is for industry, and 10 percent is used by individuals (think cooking, cleaning, drinking). We learned that 800 million people don't have access to enough water (frustratingly, there may be water available, but they can't get at it for lack for lack of a well, for instance).
The group leader shared a story from a lesson plan from The Water Project about a young boy in an African country whose mother used to spend four hours a day walking to a 'nearby' stream and then carting water back to her family. When a well was installed in the family's village, it was a game changer, improving inhabitants' health, and freeing people up from the arduous, never-ending chore of water gathering, and allowing them to devote their time and energies elsewhere.
It was certainly an interesting way to spend a lunch hour, and the kids are looking forward to future meetings.The kids are also signed up for a movie making class at the Seattle school, and CJ's taking a history course, while Annabelle will have art twice a week. Here's to a new adventure and opportunities.
OH SAY CAN YOU SEE: Check out these microchips. If you look closely, you can see CJ and Annabelle's names on them!
We also listened to Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, BWV 582
http://youtu.be/1atQFLYbzuk
Both of the videos above are from a YouTube channel by a man who goes by smalin, but it looks like his real name is Stephen Malinowski. We've been watching his videos for years. It's fun to see the visualization of the instruments in a bold, graphic representation.
CLUBBING: Over the past couple of weeks, we'd made a rather major shift. For the past four-plus years we've been attending classes in Shoreline (a city to the north) once or twice a week, as part of a homeschool cooperative up there.
A couple of weeks ago, we made the decision to leave that co-op and join one in Seattle. The Seattle one, in fact, is in the midst of moving from a location in the north part of the city to a building at the north end of Queen Anne hill, not even five minutes by car for us. That fact will save us travel time, and it will make it possible for the kids to be involved in extra curricular activities. For instance, today, they checked out the first meeting of a social issues club.
It was a lunchtime meeting, and the theme for today was water - specifically water scarcity. We learned that 70 percent of available water is used for farming, 20 percent is for industry, and 10 percent is used by individuals (think cooking, cleaning, drinking). We learned that 800 million people don't have access to enough water (frustratingly, there may be water available, but they can't get at it for lack for lack of a well, for instance).
The group leader shared a story from a lesson plan from The Water Project about a young boy in an African country whose mother used to spend four hours a day walking to a 'nearby' stream and then carting water back to her family. When a well was installed in the family's village, it was a game changer, improving inhabitants' health, and freeing people up from the arduous, never-ending chore of water gathering, and allowing them to devote their time and energies elsewhere.
It was certainly an interesting way to spend a lunch hour, and the kids are looking forward to future meetings.The kids are also signed up for a movie making class at the Seattle school, and CJ's taking a history course, while Annabelle will have art twice a week. Here's to a new adventure and opportunities.
OH SAY CAN YOU SEE: Check out these microchips. If you look closely, you can see CJ and Annabelle's names on them!
Source: NASA OSIRIS-REx mission
Just kidding ... but they are there, NASA promises. Last June, we submitted our names via the Planetary Society to catch a ride on NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission to asteroid Bennu.
The mission, full name Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification and Security-Regolith Explorer, is set to launch in 2016. Then, the kids and a presumably hundreds of thousands of others on the chip will spend a couple of years traveling to Bennu, arriving in 2018. They'll hang out there for over 400 days there before making their way back home with a sample capsule.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tOKCeW66ncM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
SOUNDS FAMILIAR: I have seen the same WIRED magazine story pop up on multiple homeschool forums and lists today. The headline: "The Techies Who Are Hacking Education by Homeschooling Their Kids."
Interesting read, to be sure, and I certainly found a lot of parallels between the parents profiled and what we do here at MPA.
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