Spring has come to Arizona early in February this year. My garden is
growing and the Wisteria tree in the back yard is budding out.
We have hit the doldrums in many ways, having suffered through a season of colds and upper respiration issues we now are looking for new projects to keep my teenager engaged and learning.
We have hit the doldrums in many ways, having suffered through a season of colds and upper respiration issues we now are looking for new projects to keep my teenager engaged and learning.
He has gravitated like many young men his age to gaming and is
interested in creating more story lines for his Favorite Game, Sony's
Play Stations crafting game "Little Big Planet". This is a chance for
my son to collect and show what his creativity can do. It may be
Vloging or some format of film making along with his many drawings of
his concepts for the story line. He hasn't really figured out the how.
This is a life's work in progress. A chance to learn how to blend multi media into his own plan. He is working on this ongoing project
of marketing himself. How to package what he can do, present it and
contribute in his own way. My son is already thinking about protecting
his ideas and asking the important question of how do I protect my
intellectual properties.
One of the tools that working with SelfDesign Global people has
taught me is that of Mindmaps. A map of goals and bubble ideas of where a
learner is and where a learning can go. A tool for mapping out my
son's ideas and all the many mini projects that go into the journey to
finally connect all the dots to finish a big project. A mind map takes a
lot of little ideas and draws them into to one big picture.
So he is going to start working on this. Focusing and clearing his lens
of what he wants to do with each idea to make a collective whole. This is his first time he has come to me and told me he wants to do
this "Thing". It's totally his idea. So I want to help him find a way to
organize his thoughts, his talents, his story and make something. I
will keep posting on this big project.
One of the catapults of inspiration for this projects has been my reading of Resa Steindel Brown's book of The Call To Brilliance" Here. Resa is an educator who homeschooling her own children. What makes her so different is she knew how to lead and direct her children to the right pathways to do and achieve amazing things. Her book has just inspired me "to go for" this paradigm of learning with my own son and help him make "His Creative Dreams Happen". Why not? Our February catapult is now into the world of story design Little Big Planet's Very Big Project.
One of the catapults of inspiration for this projects has been my reading of Resa Steindel Brown's book of The Call To Brilliance" Here. Resa is an educator who homeschooling her own children. What makes her so different is she knew how to lead and direct her children to the right pathways to do and achieve amazing things. Her book has just inspired me "to go for" this paradigm of learning with my own son and help him make "His Creative Dreams Happen". Why not? Our February catapult is now into the world of story design Little Big Planet's Very Big Project.
My son has been drawing pictures of his ideas for a story board for over
a year, so a Mindmap of how he can organize these drawings and use film
or other media of the game to create a big project to present his ideas
is the next step here.
While my 14 year old is now in high school I recently was lucky to find a Montessori AMS trained educator who will work with my son teaching algebra using the Montessori Adolescent Algebra Album by Micheal Waski for 12-18 year olds. workshop for this work here
I am very glad to find an educator who can and will do this for us. The Album is wonderful in context and conceptual flow and I know when I need help and thank God I found a tutor who fits this plan.
We are still doing biology and chemistry with along with Marsed.ASU.ed supports in astrobiology with lesson available online. We just did the "It's Alive Lesson and the dog really did eat his homework. Specimen B a mixture of sand, sugar and yeast is evidently delicious as my Great Dane and Mastiff seemed to have consumed the remainder of the experiment that was left out over night on my potting work bench. The empty baggy was spotted on the lawn shredded and the dogs found licking the grass where I found the remainder of the mixture of the "Alive" lesson and very tasty it was.
We are also jumping into the next step of robotics with a Arduino program using "30 Arduino Projects for the Evil Genius" book and a Dream of a kit by Duniokit.com. Lots of projects and staples to keep us engaged and learning this spring. Mr. C. our STEAMS tutor is leading us with more out of the box projects. After a short dabble into creating a Lego Mindstorm version of Theo Jansen's StrandBeast they are branching on into Zoomtools and free flow, figuring out where they are going to go next.
He has also been working on programming and has been logging hours on the free sight on Code.org
Anybody can learn to code is their slogan and this open sourced web
sight uses a sort of MIT's Scratch click and drop block formatting with a
simple learning centered lesson. Easy to follow lessons that bring
learners right along in what can be rapid self directed pace
While my 14 year old is now in high school I recently was lucky to find a Montessori AMS trained educator who will work with my son teaching algebra using the Montessori Adolescent Algebra Album by Micheal Waski for 12-18 year olds. workshop for this work here
I am very glad to find an educator who can and will do this for us. The Album is wonderful in context and conceptual flow and I know when I need help and thank God I found a tutor who fits this plan.
We are still doing biology and chemistry with along with Marsed.ASU.ed supports in astrobiology with lesson available online. We just did the "It's Alive Lesson and the dog really did eat his homework. Specimen B a mixture of sand, sugar and yeast is evidently delicious as my Great Dane and Mastiff seemed to have consumed the remainder of the experiment that was left out over night on my potting work bench. The empty baggy was spotted on the lawn shredded and the dogs found licking the grass where I found the remainder of the mixture of the "Alive" lesson and very tasty it was.
We are also jumping into the next step of robotics with a Arduino program using "30 Arduino Projects for the Evil Genius" book and a Dream of a kit by Duniokit.com. Lots of projects and staples to keep us engaged and learning this spring. Mr. C. our STEAMS tutor is leading us with more out of the box projects. After a short dabble into creating a Lego Mindstorm version of Theo Jansen's StrandBeast they are branching on into Zoomtools and free flow, figuring out where they are going to go next.
