Making a river

Another trip to Chatsworth, and another bit on our river project.  Many playgrounds these days are well resourced enough to have these amazing things... but we particularly enjoy this archimedes screw and accompanying water feature in a sand pit which provides endless opportunities for collaborative play.  This was the second river project they worked on during their visit, but the biggest hit.  They planned it so meticulously, and thoughtfully so as to create the river despite which way the balance was going, and it most importantly led the water back into the river from where it was sourced via the Archimedes screw.  Their efforts over their visits have led Evan and his friends to recognise key elements necessary in successful channel building - including not letting the water come down before you have created your channel so that it doesn't pool ineffectively at different junctures.  

This was about 15 minutes before we had to leave

Evan was beginning turning the Archimedes Screw to get the flow going just before we left.

It is going...

Here we begin to see the channels - which have been tried out.

Water joining t the two tributuries.

The channel flow has stopped.  They had tried the channel out, but it had filled back with sand as they had nothing to stop the sand falling in again.  So Tom re-dug out this section on the fly as Evan turned the screw.

Keep going Tom!

Here you can see a section where it pooled.

Here is the last bit of the circut, below here led to the river - both our batteries ran out so no more photos I'm afraid!

During this magnificent play Su and I were discussing how well the kids were playing and I have to say it makes such a difference that they have free reign over the equipment, and are not being pressured (either by peers, or adults) to share.  There are valuable reasons why we share, but we would never expect a scientist to share his equipment in a lab because a whole heap of other people had arrived and wanted to give it  go.  Equally, I would not be expected to share the use of all my craft equipment by others, especially when in the middle of an important project.  I would find it impertinent if someone demanded that I do so... not unlike the feeling I felt when Su told me that amidst the crowds of Chatsworth House today with the magical Narnia land, when an adult took the plastic crown off of Amy's head and put it on his own, without a word.  Unsurprisingly screaming ensued, and not a word of remorse.

I feel sure that the endless opportunities to play at their own speed and with what they enjoy has an enormous role to play in the learning and development that goes on.  I am so pleased that Home Education affords them these opportunities every day.

Sunday nugget 24th November

Me: still suffering from a bit of ankle pain; more Zumba cover classes; new Zumba class on Fridays at university; Christmas presents bought; sent out email about science and maths clubs; still reading 127 hours  -  lots of references to law of attraction.

Evan: playing jenga (invited me to play ; lots of cuddles ; den / burrow / ranch building ; pat off,  so playing the silly quite a lot ; excited about Christmas,  been making presents for autumn and thinking about decorating his bed.

Autumn : very particular ; bat costume required for museum outing ; chatter about tree fu Tom - a lot! ; request of Tft belt for Christmas.

Pat: illness continues,  time off work as suggested by deputy head; light at the end of the tunnel  in Tibshelf job,  application done. 

Sugarcube Mountain

 Today we decided to have a cuddly day, with a bit of shopping, but it turned into a bit more work on our River project.  We watched some brilliant videos - LINK soon.  Read a few books, and decided to do a bit of an activity to demonstrate erosion and how it works over time on a mountain through weathering.  We used a fantastic experiment outline on Science Fair Adventure website .   The set up involved a bit of maths - looking at square numbers as we lay out the sugar cubes in square numbers.  We had 25, 16, 9, 4, and 1 on our layers.  I just love the artistry in mathematics, so this was particularly exciting for me!!!

Once we had made the mountain we began the process of prescipitation - with coloured water to make the process clearer . Adding bit by bit, and noticing the erosion of the sugar cubes.  The kids thoroughly enjoyed this, and both seem to have a better understanding of erosion now. 

T

  

Sunday nugget 17th November

Rivers,  cloud gazing,  speed calculating,  gymnastics and dancing.

Me: reading 127 hours,  loving the journey into the mind of an adventurer.  Loving cuddles from Evan.

Autumn : very particular about clothing.  Enjoying making burrows at home with Evan.  Learning boogie woogie buggy poem.

Evan : also learning the poem.  Intrigued by relative speeds. Enjoying making wooden block structures and dens. Felting Peso.

Pat: continues to struggle with health.  Job hunting,  and visiting new schools.

Our lovely trip out to Longshaw on Monday involved a bit of Island hopping :)

Evan asked me to help him felt a toy Peso, which I did, he did a lot of the work, and it involved a lot of concentrated work doing needle felting. (Quite dangerous, and not for the feint hearted) Evan did a really good job, and was super pleased with the results.

Evan on his tower

Autumn on the very well constructed tower.

Autumn strength building for her tiptoe walks across the beam in Gymnastics

Doing a 30 metre time trial to explore relative speeds, following on from work on Velocity of the river.   We took averages of 3 times.  Results were: Evan Cycling = 13 times faster than the river

Evan Scooting = 12 x faster...

Evan Running = 10 x faster...

Evan Skipping = 9 x faster...

Autumn Running = 8 x faster

Autumn Skipping = 7 x faster

Evan Walking = 6 x faster

Evan Hopping & Autumn (silly) walking) = 4 x faster

This was Autumn walking up from the river after helping Evan with the dam building.

Velocity of the Porterbrook

So we set out today to measure the velocity of the Porterbrook.  According to the Geography site - helpfully pointed to by google, they suggested some simple methods for measuring Velocity using an orange as a float,a nd measuring the side of the river and doing some simple calculations  So that is just what we did.

We went to the place  we were at last friday whilst taking sound samples, and set about our experiment.  

1. Set out our tape measure along the length of the river for 5 metres (the instructions were 10 metres, but as the area was pretty rocky, I felt that there was a large margin for error with greater length.)
2. Asked Autumn to sit at the furthest downstream ready to shout STOP when the orange passed her
3. Asked Evan to drop the orange a little further upstream from the start point to give it chance to go with the current.
4. Asked Evan to shout NOW when the orange passed the starting point.
5. I timed this.
6. we repeated it, and tabulated our results 5 times.

Here is the first spot we used.

The results are here
1    25 seconds
2    34 seconds
3    42 seconds
4    45 seconds
5    23 seconds
Average  33.8 seconds    SPEED = 14.8 cm per second (cm/s)

Then we made a few measurements of width and depth at various points along the length, and also the deepest and shallowest points, and widest and narrowest points.

We moved further downstream and found ourselves doing it all over again.

After a few tries we realised that the results were getting unnaturally skewed and not representing the velocity of the river, rather the length of time the orange took to travel that distance, which varied according to whether it got caught in an eddy, or pushed down by a mini waterfall, or got sucked back because of a waterfall, or simply got stuck on a rock as it was very shallow at points.  So I changed how I was working,and paused the timer each time it paused due to one of these circumstances, allowing a more accurate measurement of actual velocity of the flow of the river.

Here are our Second set of results
1   17s
2   18s
3   28s
4   26s
5   17s
6   15s
7   25s
8   14s
I took just the results where I had been mindful of stoppages - in bold
Average = 17.67s
SPEED = 28cm/s

And finally, now that our methodology was improved, we moved downstream and did another set of experiments.

Results
1  19s
2  15s 
3  18s
4  18s 
5  18s
Average = 17.6 seconds
SPEED = 28.4cm/s

Average Time = 23 seconds
Velocity = Distance / Time  = 500cm / 23s = 21.7cm/s

Variance in Depth = 13cm   Shallowest = 2cm Deepest 15cm 
Variance in Width = 144cm Widest = 180cm  Narrowest =36cm

After this last video we decided to let the orange travel further and follow it.  This was fun, and it did get stuck a few times along the way, and unfortunately we lost track of it a bit as the terrain was a bit complex alongside the river.  This took us to a little spot where Evan wanted to make changes to the flow of the river by opening bits up and daming other bits.  Autumn got involved, and they had an awesome time, until the dark began to creep in and it was time to go home.

Another lovely River project day. :)

ICT and literacy

We started,  on our journeys over the last few days by listening to a poetry cd,  and talking about the devices used to make a poem work well.  We noticed,  repetition of words and phrases; alliteration ; rhythm and rhyming.  We also noticed that the poems sometimes use similes to illustrate and give greater meaning.  One particular poem which uses this a lot starts off,  last night I saw the city breathing. The poem which has caught Autumn's imagination the most was "boogie buggy baby".  It has great rhythm,  and fun images pop into your head.  

After lunch Evan and I put together the words we came up with whilst at the river last week. We decided to use similes to bring it to life a bit more.  I modelled a lot of the process as it was his first experience of poetry writing.  He joined in with phrases and similes which were lovely.

After our trip out last week I wrote out the words we came up with on pieces of paper in the style of the word wherever possible.  Today we arranged the words in an order that felt about right.  Evan and I added to the words and phrases by expanding some of them to be similes   We left the onomatopoeic words and phrases on their own.

Here it is:

The Source of the Porter Brook

Fresh, still, cool air

Earthy leaves

Dripping from the moors like a snotty nose

Tributaries feeding it like you feed a baby

Rocks making the it go fast

Bubbling like spit bubbles around its mouth

mountains of foam and

a gurgling drain

A shower, bouncing off rocks lilke a ball bouncing on the ground

Water rushing like its late for an appointment

Bending this way and that

Wiggly and windy like a crazy dance

Getting bigger and smaller

Wider and thinner

Deeper and shallower

Pond-like yet flowing

Splayshy Splash

Whooshy Whoosh

Gushy Gush Gush

Double Gush

Lingered - Don

(the Porter Brook has its source near Ringinglow Village and follows a route down into Sheffield where it meets the River Sheaf and then the River Don - the last line is a pun about this initiated by Autumn)

After this Evan was eager to search for some of the Octonaut items he would like for Christmas.  I suggested he make a Christmas list, so I helped him, using Publisher, to put together a list using photos clipped from the internet.  He then set to work writing what they all were.  He had to be quite specific with the wording, as there are a lot of different types of things, and he didn't want duplicates.  He learned 

How to save a picture into a file from the internet

• How to make a text box
• How to highlight text
• How to increase font size
• How to change font
• Developed a greater awareness of letter placement on the keyboard.

Our literacy goals he achieved  today were:

• develop a greater understanding of poetry
• Understanding and use of devices for making poetry more interesting
• Spelling words, and using phonemes in context.

Sunday nugget 10th November

Me: non-stop activities,  tidying,  cooking,  ferrying,  reading and bedtime doing.  Most notably finished a 500 page novel,  after just 10 days of reading.  Got to be a record for me.  It was House rules,  Jodi  Picoult.  Now I have begun, stuck between a rock and a hard place.  'gripping'!!! Began job application for alumni volunteer manager at university,  but realised it was full time,  so a no-go.

Pat: illness continues,  stress and headaches prevail.  New job application hopefully. More focus on saving money or making more.

Evan : stunning us with his drawing and writing.  Fairly calm.  Fewer incidents of a screaming nature. Massive den building. 

Autumn : enjoying,  through cover eyes,  the Spiderwick chronicles.  Achieved bridge unaided in Gymnastics with straight arms.