What is Algebra? Can I wear it with my Wedding Dress?

Wednesday is Math day (aka Mum's day of teaching at Uni). Step father came home to teach Boy and I asked them to do the excel spreadsheet of family worries Boy and I have already classified into sections on the worry tree.

I came home from uni to find a very happy Boy and step father. "He worked solidly," step-father announced. "Scored over 75% on the five Kinetic units on Algebra". Algebra??? "What's that, in relation to our current Math plan?" I wondered aloud trying to keep abreast of Boy's learning. I thought they were doing the worry analysis.

Step-father claims he forgot (now that's a worry!!) they had to complete a task started by us last week, but, oh well, Boy worked well anyway. "Algie-bra is cool," he intonated in a very bad sexy sounding accent of what I know not.

I asked Boy what Algebra was. My reply was "A= B2". I guess in his Aspergic way, he answered my question. Further, I dared to ask for evidence of learning right in the middle of a World of Warcraft raid. How inconsiderate I can be sometimes. Step father (an accountant) gave me a much more informed answer but I still googled it to sate my curiosity and because Google doesn't bung on that pretend sexy accent.

Algebra is a branch of mathematics that uses mathematical statements to describe relationships between things that vary over time. I wonder what the algebraic equation would be for the pre wedding relationships in our house at the moment? How much fun would it be to have access to that drop dead adorable Math guru from the television serial Numb3rs. I could give him our problem situation (household is out of kilter because we are about to have a major event) and see what math equations and theories he uses to describe why and how we're all going to get back to normal in 12 days time.

In Crime and Computation, Rhonda Hillbery states, "Leave it to television to work out a way to make a national symbol of nerdiness—mathematics—into something sexy". I had to laugh when I read this because my first reaction this afternoon to the word Algebra was, "Okay, strapless bra, U bra, algebra". Oh dear, (I am again laughing aloud) how normal we will all be when this wedding is over and done with.

An Inspiring Neighbourhood Animal Audit

Today is Math day. In preparation for step father's lesson, Boy and I decided to do an audit of animals (I suggested we do flowers but Boy near puked at the thought) in our neighbourhood. What a fun way to inspire Boy and to approach concepts of Math. I was actually inspired after reading A Little Bit of This, A Little Bit of That posted over at Ragamuffin Studies. Elisheva's descriptions of the spiders and animals in her area resonated with me as a learning experience and further inspired me to share what we see on a daily basis.

Here's a few of the Australian animals we live with and were audit inspired by.

Sun Bird. Ms and Mr Sunbird nest on our back verandah every year. The nest stays hanging year after year with the odd maintenance occurring prior to them laying eggs. A popular food source for snakes, we keep a protective eye on our little sun birds.

Scrub Turkey. When Boy was little his nick name was scrub turkey. They are plentiful and become almost domesticated. Boy loves them and would allow them in the house if he could get away with it. For more information about the amazing Scrub Turkey, see this article we wrote just before Christmas: The Christmas Turkey is moving.

Black Cockatoo. Beautiful and incredibly noisy. White Cockatoos are everywhere. They can be a real pest. Although not uncommon to see Black Cockatoos, they are not a bird we spot every day.

Cassowary. Big, big, big flightless birds. A rainforest species, they are endangered. We had them frequent our house when we lived in the rainforest but we hardly ever see them now.

Eclectus Parrot. Beautiful or what! Their vibrant colours are breath taking. They are common and frequent our back yard.

Wallabies: Very common. They are consistent road kill which saddens us. Because we now live in town we don't have them in our back yard but a drive anywhere around our home results in several spottings of Wallabies.

Paddymelon. This is Boy hand feeding a Paddymelon. They are a small reddish brown wallaby, very cute, shy and common.

Galah. Grey and pink, these are very cute and very cheeky Australian birds. More common in the dry season, we don't see them regularly in our back yard. An Australian slanguage name for a person who is a bit of a fool is "galah."

Ibis. Commonly referred to as the "undertaker bird" (because of the way they look), Ibis' are very common. This one was trying to help itself to our breakfast on the verandah.

Rosella Parrot. These are everywhere. They're really pretty, and noisy. Curious and unafraid they are a common site in back yard trees.

Kangaroo: Boy took this photo of the Kangaroo trying to get away from me. Perhaps it didn't like my perfume. WARNING - Kangaroos can sometimes be aggressive so do not try this at home!

Tawny Frog Mouth Owl. Boy's favorite bird. Have a look at his learning about them: The Tawny Frog Mouth Owl

Jungle Perch. Can you see the fish that Boy is swimming with? Look along the front left toward centre of the picture. He doesn't like it when they come and nibble him.

Mossman Gorge. After a long day of animal auditing what else is a Boy to do but have a swim in one of our local creeks.

We are keen to encourage social understanding and knowledge within our global community of home schoolers. Have a look at an "our community" sharing idea we had. It can be found at the bottom of Scarab Beetles, Winchester House and Social Understanding .

Hope you liked our photographic math audit. We know we live in a beautiful part of the world. Home school and life inspiration is only a look through the window away. What do you think?

If you find these photos inspiring, pop over to the photo contest at An Island Life and vote (between March 9 and 11, 2007) for our natural and tropical Aussie home school inspiration.

All photos by Megan,
except for that one that Boy caught of the Kangaroo trying to hop away from my allure!

Math Friday - A Subset of the Home School Week

Friday is Math day (and mother's day off). Following a spritely wake up, bath, eggs on toast and teeth, boy and step father proceeded to the world of subsets.

Choose one topic out of food, plants and people? Boy chooses food (no surprises there) and has a quizzical look on his face as if to say, “What has this got to do with maths and commerce."

The topic of the day is sets and subsets and with the help of a compass, ruler, calculator and quite a bit of mental arithmetic, boy determined that breads made up around 20% of all foodstuffs and milks made up around 2%. Boy suggested that whilst lollies do not make up the biggest percentage, they are the most important. Again, no surprises there!!

Step father mixed the math with a healthy dose of nutritional analysis (that Mum is much better at) and boy was able to contribute enthusiastically showing a good working knowledge of the food pyramid.

Given that breads and milks made up 22% of all foodstuffs (subsets of food), boy and step father proceeded to account for the other 78% using some fairly big assumptions as to the ratio between meats, fruits, sweets and other stuff.

Boy grasped entirely that once all the subsets had been accounted for, THERE WAS NO FOOD LEFT, and this made both teacher and student very sad.

Next up we divided boy’s life on earth so far into eleven full years and two part years, further use of the subset concept and just as an aside, worked out that he has been alive for 4133 days.

A solid effort: watch this space for next week’s commercial and chemical analysis of dry ice.

Photo courtersey of verzerk at stock.xchng

Division, sub division and lots of blocks of land.

Boy and step father spent the day on mathematics and commerce. Following a trip to the educational supply shop to purchase the required curriculum: texts, compass, set squares and the like, they commenced the days work with a blank whiteboard and a clean writing pad.

Looking for a teachable moment of tangible interest to Boy, step father found the perfect learning to attach today's lesson to: sub division of a piece of Australian outback. Last weekend, we all visited a friend’s property located on the Cairns side of Mareeba, 350 or so acres upon which at some time, a sub division is proposed.

Boy and step father commenced with some of the rationale behind why it is important to be able to divide, such things as fair distribution and the need to work out whether or not there is enough of something (dinner / sports uniforms, etc) to cover what you might be trying to achieve.

LONG story SHORT, after drawing a map of the property with 350 acres written within the map, boy and step father proceeded to determine how many blocks of a particular size would be available for sale after considering the property the owner wishes to keep for personal use and the amount of property that needs to be set aside for roads, parks, paths, drainage and services.

Some assumptions had to be made and boy demonstrated a reasonable ability to grasp not only the concepts behind why there are matters that affect the amount of land for sale, but importantly, the process behind how they determined how many blocks will be available.

Good and focused work with a solid result. Well done Boy. I wish my math was as good as yours!

The Shelf Life of a Home Schooler.

The school year has ended and so have our constant arguments about boy child attending! Hooray.

Highly anxious in his last two weeks, we managed to encourage only one-day’s attendance at school. Hence, many unschooled home school activities focused our days and slotted their way around my heavy pre holiday work life.

One highlight for both Boy and myself was the building (well…putting together) of a set of shelves.

Purchased some four months previously, the shelves have lain boxed, stoic and lonely upon my office floor. Partner is not good at any manual tasks, I have been too busy, and boy oblivious to the pending task of construction.

In desperation to find a non-Christmas, non work sheet, unschooling activity capable of holding boys attention for more than five minutes, the shelves finally saw life from outside of their box.

Boy was terrific in his task of construction. Measuring, matching, balancing and erecting, boy put together the shelves WITHOUT the help of the instructions. Written in poor English, the instructions were destructional to our instructional plan of having boy complete a natural learning activity.

Once again, the greatest learning happened to me. I was amazed at how practical and handy Boy was. He measured with Aspergers dogmatic precision. He worked out how the plastic joins fitted together and calmly corrected my construction mistakes.

When I asked Boy if he had learned anything from the activity, he retorted, “Yeah, I’m better at building than you are.” Never a truer word spoken and how healthy for Boy’s increasing self-esteem. I smiled to myself and roused internally that I had expected an articulate answer that involved tenets of math, comprehension and construction.

Who needs to be unschooled here? ME!