Nature Diary and maths of the fishpond : wasps 7January 2011

When I wrote about wasps three days ago it was a very hot, humid day. The next day was raining - I noticed that there were far fewer wasps visiting the fish pond for water. I have also found out that the very large wasp is indeed a potter wasp and the reason that I only see one is that Potter wasps are quite solitary. I must find the nests now as this is one way of identifying the wasps. European paper wasps make their nests out of dried plant materials which they work into a mushy paper mache type material. The nests I have seen in the past in my garden and around the house hang upside down from a stalk. They make hexagonal shaped cells (the same shape as honey bees) which are not enclosed (if they are European paperwasps) and in these their lavae live and grow. Some wasps coat the stalk that their nest hangs from with a chemical that repels ants.

I have included part one and part 2 of a video on the Maths of the Honeycomb below.

Homeschooling schedule : working with our strengths.

When I was studying at University we were advised to become aware of the times of the day when we were most alert and our down times. It was argued that there was no point in studying when our brain was 'down'. I found that I am a "Lark". That is, I am alert early in the morning, have a downtime in the afternoon and then alert in the evening. This same principle can be applied to homeschooling. We need to work with our natural body rythms.

Secondly we need to work with out character strengths. In the recent ABC television production Making Australia Happy the science of Positive Psychology is discussed. A test that reveals your character strengths can be taken and then it is then suggested that you work with your strengths, this has been scientifically proven to have a very positive effect on ones happiness. I took the test and since I have been working with my strengths I find jobs that were once difficult are now quite refreshing.

So what has all of this to do with the homeschool schedule? Homeschooling/educating children is no walk in the park, while homeschooling/educating is immensely satisfying and rewarding it is a HUGE commitment. We, the parents, need to research what we are going to teach our children, we need to know our children so that we can make sure that what we are teaching them is appropriate for each child, we are still running a house, and things happen. We need to keep a positive outlook while undertaking an enormous workload. A school teacher can teach more or less the same curriculum each year, whereas every week of every year is different for the homeschooling parent. So how to schedule using out strengths?

First of all work out the times of the day when you are really alert and can cope with all of the really stressful things that life has to throw at you and then plan your days around your energy levels. For me my high energy time is from early in the morning up until lunchtime. For example I am planning my year at the moment. My mind is really buzzing with my plan, but I need to tie the pieces together, think about what resources I need, how am I going to achieve the things that I want to achieve, what do I want to achieve, what needs to be eliminated and what needs to be kept, how am I going to keep my goals  attainable, etc. etc. etc. So this planning would take place early in the morning until lunchtime. If you asked me in the afternoon to make big decisions I am hopeless, I can only do jobs where I am on autopilot. When I was homeschooling the afternoons were the time of day that I could read to the children, I used a Charlotte Mason philosophy for some subjects which required lots of reading to children. I knew what books we were reading each day and I could cope well with that in the afternoon. I couldn't cope with organising new projects for or with the children i.e. finding, planning, helping, listening, researching so afternoons were and still are the time of day when I do the things where I don't have to think, I am the same with physical things also, great in the morning not so good in the afternoon. (It could also pay to work out the children's natural body rythms also as this could lead to a better understanding of each child and how to work with them)

Secondly do the character strengths test above and work out your schedule using your top five. My strengths are:1.Spirituality, sense of purpose, and faith, 2.Creativity, ingenuity, and originality 3.Curiosity and interest in the world, 4. Love of learning and 5.Bravery and valor. (I was rather surprised at my no.1 character strength, as I didn't think that spirituality had currency in contemporary society). In the Multiple Intelligences it is said that there are 7 learning styles, however, it is argued that there are additional intelligences, one of which is Existentialist. When I learned about that, during a Museum Studies lecture, I thought that defined my learning style more than any other; possibly explaining spirituality as no. 1) Anyway I digress...

How I schedule using character strengths is I take the tasks at hand and then work out how I am going to VIEW them using my character strengths. For example my theme this year is food. If I view food as work or as deprivation or as finding out what is bad, I would not enjoy the theme at all, however, if I view the theme of food using my five character senses I will enjoy experimenting with new recipes or different methods of cooking, (creativity) learning about new foods or what is great about old foods.(love of learning, curiosity) My sense of bravery and valor will encourage me to be greener with food, to research food miles and seasonal food. (I would consider this to be part of my spirituality also) So using my five character strengths sits well with me, I feel positive about my schedule, it is exciting, interesting and natural TO ME. Therefore, it helps to know yours and your children's character strengths so that you can use them when making up your homeschooling learning schedule.

I would love to hear from anyone who uses this information and how it worked for you.

Contrapuntal reading and Charlotte Mason

Contrapuntal Reading and Charlotte Mason

In Vol 6. Chapter 10 of Charlotte Mason’s Original Homeschooling Series Charlotte discusses her methods of the teaching of history, that is by reading children historical novels and volumes. I wish to explore the ideology of Charlotte’s era and then explain how in the year 2011 we need to read historical novels contrapuntally.

A close reading of the passage below reveals that Charlotte thought of herself as living in the Metropole (of the British Empire), that history was about great men,  and that history served the purpose of creating rational patriotic servants: 

The more educated among our 'Dominion' cousins complain that their young people have no background of history and as a consequence 'we the people' is their master thought; they would face the loss of Westminster Abbey without a qualm. What is it to them where great events have happened, great persons lived and moved? And, alas, this indifference to history is not confined to the Dominions; young people at home are equally indifferent, nor have their elders such stores of interest and information as should quicken children with the knowledge that always and everywhere there have been great parts to play and almost always great men to play those parts: that  any day it may come to anyone to do some service of historical moment to the country. It is not too much to say that a rational well-considered patriotism depends on a pretty copious reading of history, and with this rational patriotism we desire our young people shall be informed rather than with the jingoism of the emotional patriot.(Charlotte Mason's Original Homeschooling Series : Section II the knowledge of man p.170)

 Charlotte continues explaining her methods of teaching history, that historical volumes of British history need to be read to children and that the children should narrate back what they have learned. Then on page 174 Charlotte says that Mrs. Marshall's Our Island Story, is a capital book to be read to children (the Island being Britain). I happen to have two copies of H.E. Marshall's Our Island Story (it can be found online at Our Island Story) and thought that a read of the first paragraph or two of the history of Australia, from Our Island Story would be interesting:

CHAPTER CVIII

VICTORIA—UNDER THE SOUTHERN CROSS

"Let no one think much of a trifling expense; Who knows what may happen a hundred years hence? The loss of America what can repay? New colonies seek for in Botany Bay."

[500] IN the days of King George III. there was a great sailor called Captain Cook. He made many voyages into unknown seas and discovered new lands. Among these lands were the islands of Australia and New Zealand.

It was in April 1770 A.D. that Captain Cook first landed in Australia, in a bay which he called Botany Bay, because there were so many plants of all kinds there. At that time the island was inhabited only by wild, black savages, and Captain Cook took possession of the whole eastern coast in the name of King George, calling it New South Wales.
While America was a British colony, wicked people, instead of being sent to prison for punishment, as they are now, were sent to work on the cotton plantations or farms there. After America was lost, convicts, as these wicked people are called, could no longer be sent there, and British statesmen began to look round for some other country to which they could be sent.
[501] Then it was that Australia was thought of. It was decided to form a convict colony there. It was hoped that free people would go too, and that soon Australia would become as great a colony as America had been.

If I am to read this opening passage contrapuntally I would ask a number of questions. I would ask Was Captain Cook really great? Did he discover new lands or were there people already living in these lands? Whose concept is the discovery concept? What would the Dutch think of this statement? Why were the people that Captain Cook first encountered when arriving at, then unnamed, Australian shores described as wild, why were they described as savages instead of contemporaries who were culturally different? Who were the wicked people named convicts? Why were they being shipped to far off countries? Why is Australia described as becoming great and not already great? What is meant by this? Are there groups of people in this passage that I as a reader am being encouraged to view as being entitled and other groups as unentitled by the language that is being used? Am I being constructed to view capitalism as a more civilized or ideologically sound concept? and so on.

This talk by Chimamanda Adichie explains why we need to read contrapuntally.

Maths, organisation skills and calendars

 Make a calendar using tables in a word document.
OUTCOMES
Technology - making a table using computer
Maths - learning the days, weeks, months, no. of days in a month, months in a year.
Lote - Noongar names of seasons
           Names of months etimology e.g. January named after Janus etc.
Science - The science of seasons - world tilted on axis.

European season Summer	Noongar Season Birak Dry and hot. Easterly or north easterly winds in the morning and sea breeze in the afternoon		January 2011
Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
					1	2
3	4	5 put “Pond clear” in the fish pond. 5ml	6	7	8	9
10	11	12	13	14	15	16
17	18	19	20	21	22	23
24	25	26	27	28	29	30
31

European season Summer	Noongar season Bunuru Hottest part of the year with little rainfall. Easterly winds still prevail but troughs bring humid weather		February 2011
Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
	1	2	3	4 “Pond clear” to be added to fishpond 2.5 ml.	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28

calendar maths of the fishpond

I have now added the "Pond clear" to my pond and it has to be repeated at half dose in 30 days. I will need to post this on my calendar and make a note in my diary.

Natural Learning : Maths of the fishpond

I bought some new plants for my fishpond and they are not looking happy. It turns out that because I removed a rampantly growing plant this has upset the balance of my pond and the increase in algae (observable by the green water) is robbing the new plants of nutrients.

So I have to treat my pond, now, I need maths to do that. I have to work out how many litres of water are in the pond.  My pond is squarish in shape - I just used maths - if it isn't square then it is a rectangle.


I need to measure from side to side which = 72cm
I need to measure from front to back which = 63 cm and
I need to measure the depth of my pond which = 33cm.
Now I multiply 72 x 63 x 33 = 149688 cubic centimetres. To convert that into litres I divide by 1000 or multiply by 1.000 and I have 149.688 litres of water in my fish pond.

The 'Pond Clean' needs to be added at 10ml per 250 litres, so I will need to work out how much of the 'Pond Clean' that I need for my pond.

The link below provides an easy to understand explanation of working out volume.

Calculating Volume

An interesting exercise taken from :  Learning Activities from the History of Mathematics

Ancient Babylonian and Egyptian mathematician - scribes were excellent record keepers. One of their tasks was to determine the quantities of bricks and building stones needed for the large structures built in their societies. Modern archaeologists have uncovered numerous lists and records of Babylonian and Egyptian building materials. One of the most impressive structures of the ancient Eastern world was the ziggurat, or step-pyramid. These "towers to heaven" were constructed from rectangular prisms stacked one upon another. Each prism was a pile of solid blocks. The ancients built their ziggurats by piling up blocks. These builders also knew how to compute the volume of a rectangular prism whose length was b, width was w, and height was h:

V = b x h x w 

A ziggurat 

Nature Diary : wasps 4 January 2011

From my kitchen window I can view our fishpond. I have observed many wasps and bees that come to drink in the pond. I made a video of the wasps that visit my pond. I am fairly certain that these wasps are paper wasps. However, I have also noticed a much larger wasp - we called them hornets when we were children - which I think is a potter wasp.

I think that the paper wasps have their nest somewhere in the grape vine because they are coming and going from that area of the garden. I haven't been able to spot their nest as yet. Paper wasps will sting if their nest is being attacked. I have no idea where the potter wasps are coming from, they appear one at a time, whereas I think that there must be more than one paper wasp nest as they appear in large numbers and apparently there are around 20 wasps to one colony.

I must research as to whether wasps are a useful garden insect as potter wasps paralyse caterpillars and put them in their little houses made of mud, they then lay eggs on the caterpillar and when the eggs hatch the larval wasps feed on the caterpillar.

Nature Diary : ravens 4 January 2011

Today I took my grand-daughter Ruby to the beach. While we were there we looked at some shells, a feather, some seaweed and listened to the bird calls. We heard some magpies, (click on links to hear the bird calls), some Peewits, and some Australian Ravens.

The Australian Ravens were making calls that were one note, two notes and three notes.

I must research this again but I think that one call is 'Good morning' two calls is their name, I can't remember three calls, but five calls means that there is danger around. 

image from : http://www.anbg.gov.au/gardens/visiting/exploring/fauna/birds/checklist-07/index.html

Adult ravens have white eyes and juveniles have black eyes.