Those Teachable Moments

The decimal to percentage conversion pages in Logan's Math workbooks haven't proven to be very interesting to him up to this point. In fact, none of the pages have. Yesterday he ran across a website that allowed you to create a pie chart by entering data into to form. I let him mess around with it for a couple hours before explaining to him that those boxes where you type in numbers make each wedge a certain size. Those numbers represent a certain percentage and there is a way to divide those numbers by the whole so that you find out what percentage of the whole the wedge should be. Then I let it go.

He pondered that all evening and then decided first thing this morning that this was valuable to him to figure this thing out as it could pertain to his life somehow. He could see what parts of his day he spends doing what and he could adjust those percentages to reflect reaching more of his goals. So today we learned how to actually set up a pie chart.

I showed him how to make a list of all his activities, think of how much time he devotes to each thing, then figure out the percentages for that time. Then we plugged in the percentages and labled them and color coded the whole thing and it plopped out "The Big Pie Chart of Logan". I suggested that he could use that information in several ways. One would be to form a timeline of his day. Now he is in there on iCal plotting his entire day out, like we are ever going to keep a strict schedule. I don't know what is fueling this project but it is teaching him real life examples of time, math, percentages, decimals, planning, and management. So, I just let him keep going. I keep bringing up all of the variables such as park day, trips to the grocery store, random things that happen. He seems like he is doing it more for the concept of learning how to use the information and less for the need to have his entire day mapped out in iCal. I hope so. Life is too short to have it all nice and neat on paper in half hour intervals.

The History Channel is showing something on Lewis and Clark tonight and I think since we randomly picked that topic to read about when we were finally trying out our 100 years of National Geographic disks last week that we may try to catch the program about it. That is about as organized as I want to be.

Speaking of shows, we watched the Tricks or Treats special on Food Network a few nights ago. They are running a whole Halloween thing. I keep forgetting to turn it back on. We seem to have gotten sidetracked with some stupid sitcoms over the last two days. Unwrapped showed how they make Halloween shaped Peeps, candy corn, caramel apples, and all sorts of other good stuff. They take you into large factories and explain how the process is done and sometimes they take you into small family owned kitchens and show you how things were done for generations and passed down. I find that show particularly fascinating for some reason. It is absolutely wonderful for kids that constantly ask you "Mommy, how do they make....?" I have seen them make everything from crayons to Milk Duds. Watch Unwrapped for a couple years and you will have all the answers to the universe. Now they need to do an Unwrapped show to find out how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Tootsie Pop. Actually, I think they may have already. The world will never know.

For someone who has never travelled to any other parts of the world or even to a vast majority of their own country, and are always wondering about what people eat in other places and where certain foods come from, Food Network is a very good thing. When I was four we lived in Salt Lake City, Utah. They didn't know what a coney was. I think it is called a chili dog there. That always freaked me out. When you are four you think everyone calls everything the same name. What we called pop in Ohio is called soda almost everywhere else. I was once told that in some places "Coke" is the generic term for all kinds of soda. I don't know how true that is. If I go into a place and order pop everyone knows where I am from. It must be a Midwestern thing. However, Now that I am an adult I understand the concept of regional food and different names people have for certain things. For example, a big pot of stew made of mussels, crabs, shrimp and various other sea creatures is a coastal thing. The whole thing makes me want to barf. I can't believe some of the things people who live by the ocean put into their mouths. Anyway, that was all random. I wasn't going anywhere with that.

Between Animal Planet, National Geographic, Food Network, The Weather Channel, The History Channel, The Discovery Channel, The Travel Channel and I am assuming The Science Channel (dunno don't have it yet), and possibly the Home and Garden Channel, not to mention all of their websites, there is quite possibly everything you could ever want to know about anything. Too bad it is so unhealthy to sit in front of television all day because there is no shortage of interesting and educational programming there.

Yesterday, Hope was singing the praises of some red eyed tree frog. I guess the mascot for Rainforest Cafe is one. I am sure she learned that somewhere on Animal Planet. I didn't know that and I am twenty-nine. At age four I don't think I would have known what a red eyed tree frog was unless it was something I would have found in my yard. I don't think I had those in Ohio. At that age I didn't know a fourth of the things they do about anything outside of my own four walls. I dare all those people who don't like Steve Erwin from The Crocodile Hunter show to quiz to any of my children about various wildlife creatures. My children hang on his every word. They think he is great. You don't get teaching like that just anywhere.

I started a semi-Waldorf project with Savannah and Hope. I drew H in the center of a white page for each of them and asked them to turn the letter into a Halloween picture using the H in the picture. I drew a picture of Hope dressed in her Tinkerbell costume and used the sides of the H as the sides of her hair and the center line of the H as the bottom of her face. She thought it was amazing. Hope turned the H into a ticket for a haunted house and Savannah turned it into the haunted house. So that worked well. I think I will try to do a different letter like that every day and then make them a book with all their drawings in it when they are done.

Posted by gwendolyn on October 29, 2003 at 02:40 PM