The Human Body

A long time ago Manisha bought "The Human Body: Your body and how it works" by Drs. Bruun (and lavishly illustrated by Patricia J. Wynne) for her own edification. It is now finding new use by our kids. Aseem has had a couple of traumatic visits to the dentist and is now fascinated by the pictures of teeth and how they decay. Supriya has been spending time with the book on her own and looking at the pictures (since she is not reading yet). Today Manisha and the kids looked at the digestive system. Supriya has seen the digestive system episode of the Magic School Bus and has a good handle on how it works.

Magnetism

Last night Manisha read "Amazing Magnetism" (The Magic School Bus: Science Chapter Book #12) to Supriya at bedtime (why not?!). Supriya got the bulk of it, according to Manisha. Today she is watching a videotape called "Magnetism" by Bill Nye the Science Guy (produced by Disney Educational Productions).

Anxiety about "Learning"

Last week I had several problems with Supriya. She was not able to tell time. She had a budget of $1 for candy at the grocery store and did not know that 99 cents would fit in that budget. I was getting a little anxious about her lack of progress on these issues. All I want her to know at this age is what is necessary and useful in daily life - namely, telling time, making sense of the calendar and basic concepts of money.

So I consulted three MVHL moms who have teenagers. They were unanimous - there is no problem. These concepts take quite a while to take firm root in the kids' minds, and the kids have to be developmentally ready. I know that Supriya is very bright and that she has no problems with basic arithmetic. We have played with math before and there are no issues there. All three moms reassured me that she will learn everything she needs when the time comes. I am glad we talked about this. I guess even I, a die-hard unschooler, will have occasional anxiety about the kids not "learning". Now I know what to do about it!

Questions about Learning

Forbes magazine had a recent article "Sharp as a Tack". It has an embedded slide show called "Six Ways to Keep Your Brain Sharp". It is targeted at senior citizens, but I don't see why the recommendation would not apply to all humans. Here are the 6 suggested activities:

• Learning to play a musical instrument
• Learning a new language
• Dancing
• Playing ping-pong
• Doing jigsaw puzzles
• Juggling

Several questions immediately arise:

• Why these particular activities? What's so special about them?
• Since each of them presumably "exercises" the related brain-center, each of them should lead to more growth (more & better synaptic interconnections?) within that region of the
  brain. Does that also lead to a better "overall fitness" of the brain (if there is such a thing)?
• If it does increase the overall fitness of the brain, how do the activities rank in terms of improvement per unit time spent?

I am going to email the author of the article to see if she has answers or pointers to any of these. I will keep you posted.

How does a homeschooler change a lightbulb?

My friend Christina Kennedy sent this:

First, Mom checks three books on electricity out of the library, then the kids make models of light bulbs, read a biography of Thomas Edison, and do a skit based on his life.

Next, everyone studies the history of lighting methods, wrapping up with dipping their own candles.

Next, everyone takes a trip to the store where they compare types of lightbulbs, as well as prices, and figure out how much change they'll get if they buy two bulbs for $1.99 and pay with a five-dollar bill.

On the way home, a discussion develops over the history of money and also Abraham Lincoln, as his picture is on the five-dollar bill.

Finally, after building a homemade ladder out of branches dragged from thewoods, the lightbulb is installed.

Well, the humor aside, this shows how everything is connected to everything else!

150 for Me!

I had a breakthrough in my hooping yesterday and I did 105 twice. Today I did 110 once and 150 once. It is definitely getting easier, but I am still exerting and contorting far too much. Next goal: 1000 - actually make it "doing it as effortlessly as Supriya"! I will get there eventually. I have nothing to lose but my paunch...

Drumming

Supriya and I spent about 10 minutes today on a Marathi song - with me singing and her drumming on her drumset. For the past several months now she has been sitting in the van and drumming away on the back of the seat in front (to Billy Joel, the Eagles and the Bangles). She probably gets half an hour's practice every day! As a result her beat has become very steady, and she held her own through the song. She does a decent drumroll as well and we practiced adding that to the song. It was a lot of fun, and we will be doing this regularly...

"The Hole in the Wall"

is the title of this very interesting article that appeared in Dataquest magazine. A must-read for anyone interested about unschooling. It is about kids in a slum in New Delhi learning to use computers by themselves. This is how humans learn - curiosity meets opportunity.

"Shoulder-back Ride"

You have heard of horse-back rides. You know what a piggie-back ride is. Do you know what a "shoulder-back" ride is? Here's what it looks like. Aseem coined that term and it makes perfect sense.

Aseem was sick a few weeks ago with stomach-flu and threw up several times. A few days later when he thought he was going to throw up he came to me and said, "Daddy, a throw-up is coming." Another term that fills an open niche.

This is exactly how new words get invented - such as "fundraising" and of course "blogging"... 

755!

That's how many hula-hoop revolutions Supriya did today (in one go obviously). She started with the goal of doing 200, but then just kept going and going and going...! That's her personal best so far. I am still stuck at 40 in the meantime. I will be very happy when I cross into triple digits.

On Learning

I have learned a few things about learning over the years, and I thought I should write them down. Here are some of them:

1. You can learn anything at any age. This is almost a tautology for a human being. Our brains stay plastic until we die and we can always learn new things. In fact in this fast-changing world of ours, staying alive is almost proof that you are learning!
2. Anyone can get better at anything - on a relative scale. In other words, if you focus on something, you can get better at it tomorrow than you are today. On an absolute scale, however, there are limits on how good a particular individual can get at a particular skill. Not all of us can make it to the level of a concert pianist - even if they were to spend all their waking energy on it.
3. Learning is easier when you want to learn. I can say this from my personal experience. All through college I put a lot of work into stuff I was interested in and learned a lot. I stayed away from stuff that was forced on me and did not learn much. From what I have seen of most humans, this is how the world works for most part. Our psychic energy and time are our most precious resource and we instinctively allocate them in the direction of our interests.
4. Learning is easier when there is a context to it. This is related to the previous one. The context (e.g. doing something because your child is interested in it) directs your psychic
   energy.
5. Use it or lose it. I grew up in Pune in a Marathi-speaking household. All my neighorhood friends spoke Bengali, and so I became fluent in it. So much so that I spoke it better than I did Marathi. Then we moved away when I was five and pretty soon I lost all of Bengali. Later I learned to speak some Tamil from a couple of friends in college (I was probably 20), and also to read/write some Tamil as well. Most of it is forgotten by now, from lack of practice. Ditto for most stuff from school and college.
6. There seem to be a few specific areas where learning stays with you. For example, gross-motor skills (hooping, swimming, bicycle riding etc.) seem to last for decades. (I don't know if fine-motor skills follow a similar pattern.) There is also evidence that you cannot develop a native accent in a second language once you are past puberty (note that this is only about the native accent and not about learning the language itself).

I have yet to come across any research showing that if a child does not learn a specific skill by a certain age, he/she will never be able to learn it later. Please send me info if you come across related research.

Cool Hooping Link

Apparently hooping is getting back in style, and "hooping" is the accepted terminology. I found this cool link.

Doing the Hula-Hoop

Supriya has really mastered the hula-hoop. I challenged her to do 100. She did it easily. Then I asked her to do 2 hoops at a time. That was easy too. Now she is working on doing 3 hoops! She has the skill, but the hoops are not identical (2 big, 1 small) and that's creating synchronization problems. On our next trip I will get her a couple of big ones, just to keep the challenge going! Pretty soon she will be heading for the circus...

I, in the meantime, am feeling inspired to do the hula myself, and in fact I have been able to do 25 turns once. (Hint: If you want to learn to do the hula, get the biggest size hoop you can get. Size does matter in this case!)

Heart Rules!

So we got the DVD of Heart - Live in Seattle. And they rock! I am really enjoying "Mistral Wind" and "Barracuda". Musically they are at least a notch above the Bangles and the Go-Go Girls - although Supriya likes the Bangles more.

What Expert?!

Here's an excerpt from this article about experts:

The book is Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know? by Philip E. Tetlock, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley. It summarizes the results of a truly amazing research project: Over seven years Tetlock got a wide range of experts and nonexperts to answer carefully constructed questions about the likelihood of specific future events. Tetlock then cranked all those numbers through every kind of statistical thresher, flail, and grinder you can imagine, and the result was clear: Experts don't actually exist. Specifically, experts were no better than nonexperts at predicting the future. They weren't even as good as computer programs that merely extrapolate the past. The best experts could not explain more than 20% of the variability in outcomes, but crude algorithms could explain 25% to 30%, and sophisticated algorithms could explain 47%. Consider what this means. On all sorts of questions you care about--Where will the Dow be in two years? Will the federal deficit balloon as baby-boomers retire?--your judgment is as good as the experts'. Not almost as good. Every bit as good.

Which is not to say that experts are no different from you and me. They're very different. For example, they're much more confident in their predictions than nonexperts are, though they obviously have no reason to be. For example, the members of the American Political Science Association predicted in August 2000 that a Gore victory was a slam dunk.

Experts can also give far more reasons for their predictions than nonexperts can. Their vast erudition lets them explain at daunting length why something will or won't happen. Not that all those reasons make the forecasts one bit better.

The Go-Go Girls

In my project to expose Supriya to female rockers, I got The Go-Go Girls in Central Park DVD from Netflix. They were fun to watch, but since I did not know any of their songs, it did not do me much. The drummer was great. She had this huge drumset in front of her and made full use of all that equipment. Next one up is one of my favorite bands: Heart - with the female lead and female lead guitarist (Ann and Nancy Wilson).

Incidentally Supriya wants to be in a rock band (but then so do I). And she wants to sing! We will see how that goes...

Flying Kites

It feels like early summer around here, and we went kite-flying on Friday (and on Saturday as well). Supriya's friend Duncan gave her a shark kite for her birthday, and they had a good time running around with their kites. It is interesting what kite-flying means to the kids. They think the whole idea is to run around with the kite, with about 10-15 feet of the string unwound. Supriya actually complained if the wind caught the kite and made it fly. I on the other hand believe in making the wind do all the work. When the kite is near the ground there is a lot of turbulence. As it rises the wind gets steadier, and that's where I like my kite to be. It's sort of like fishing in fact - I am standing there with the kite soaring, doing nothing in particular except the occasional adjustment to the kite! (Of course the string-tension thing is reversed from fishing - it's good when there is steady tension from the kite's pull.)

Aseem, Supriya and I went to the Great Blue Hill Observatory for a field-trip recently with a group of our homeschooling friends. It was interesting to see all the instruments and read about the history of the observatory ("Great Blue Hill is Home of the Oldest Continuous Weather Records in North America"). The best part of the trip was the kite we built. It's called the Frustrationless Flyer, and it does fly very well, much better than the kite we bought from Walmart.

Commander Toad in Space

Our friend Sue Landsman gave Supriya two books in the Commander Toad series for her birthday. Today Manisha read Supriya this one, and Supriya really enjoyed it. She loves puns and this book is full of it. Manisha also told me that Supriya read one whole page by herself. It was not easy, but she did it. I guess we will be getting the rest of the series also...

What a Swell Party it was!

We had Supriya's 7th birthday party yesterday. We rented the elephant "moon-walk" for the second year in a row (actually it was the Dalmatian moon-walk last year, but I digress...) and it was enjoyed by all. I probably spent less than 5 minutes in there and was totally winded. Yet the kids kept going for hours!

After the kids' portion some of our friends stayed on, Manisha went & got pizza and the party went on. In all the party started around noon and wound down after 8 pm. It was unanimous - it was the best party - kid or adult - ever! 

Listening to Alice in Wonderland

We recently listened to the books-on-tape version of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass in the van. This was produced by the BBC and wonderfully narrated in the understated way one can imagine Lewis Carroll himself would have. Supriya has seen the musical version before and was familiar with the story. She really enjoyed the wonderful narration and got all the jokes.

As I listened, my first thought was Lewis Carroll must have been high on drugs or something! Some kind of serious trip for sure. The Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" is supposed to be about LSD. AinW and TtLG are no less psychedelic. I wonder what they are about! (Wikipedia has an exhautive entry on Alice in Wonderland.)

The Bangles

My "pre-owned" minivan came with a CD player that has been deteriorating over the years. It skips too much and is not a lot of fun to play. In the spirit of making-lemonade-from-lemons, I have been digging up my old stash of cassette tapes, all of them from my student days in the late 1980s. We have been enjoying Billy Joel and the Eagles so far. Another big hit with Supriya has been the Bangles. Then I ended up getting a DVD of the music videos of the songs (The Greatest Hits album) from Netflix. And that has also been a big hit with the kids. Aseem loves the "Walk like an Egyptian" video in particular.

Karl asked me why I was so into the Bangles. I of course like their sound. Musically they are not in the league of Billy Joel or the Eagles, but their energy is very upbeat & infectious. I always feel like dancing to their music. The other reason has to do with providing a role-model for Supriya. It's probably no surprise to anybody that most rock-and-roll is all-male - the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Eagles, Billy Joel, Elvis. Supriya's personal "energy" is definitely rock-and-roll, and I wanted her to see all-girl bands in action. Hence the Bangles.

Supriya's CD

I am posting after quite a while. The last three weeks have been busy, in a good way. The weather is warming up. We are doing more hikes and more outdoor play. Supriya is becoming a good catcher with her baseball glove. We will be frequenting our friendly neighborhood public playground at Hadley Park.

One big project Supriya and I worked on in the last 4 weeks is recording her singing. I had the idea to record her CD to give away as a part of the goody-bags at her birthday party. The idea caught her imagination and we spent a lot of time singing the songs and working on them. Finally it's all done. The CD has 6 songs that showcase her talents - from the very silly to singing against my harmony. I am very proud of her, for what she has accomplished and also for the energy she put into the project. It was a big learning experience for her - from learning the songs to doing multiple takes to managing frustrations when the recording did not work as intended! This was real-life learning - the best kind there is. (I can send you a link to the songs if you are interested. Let me know...)