The Free-Ride family got its copy of the new CD/DVD set Here Comes Science by They Might Be Giants this week. The sprogs, who have been listening and watching, offer something kind of like a review.
Category Archives: Kids and science
Great moments in parent-teacher relations: back to school edition.
Dr. Free-Ride’s better half went to the Free-Ride offspring’s school for Back to School Night earlier this week. (I stayed at home with the sprogs to oversee dinner and baths.)
Dr. Free-Ride’s better half reported back that the younger Free-Ride offspring’s third grade teacher “doesn’t believe in too much homework”. (“She doesn’t believe it’s possible to assign too much homework?” I asked cautiously. “No, she doesn’t believe an excess of homework is a good thing,” my better half replied.)
And, she supported her stance with a page she distributed to parents summarizing recent educational research on the question of homework and student achievement.
I think we’re going to like this teacher.
Friday Sprog Blogging: classroom snake.
This school year, the elder Free-Ride offspring has a classroom teacher who used to be one of the elementary school’s science teachers. (Owing to budget cuts, both the science teachers have “retreated” to be general purpose classroom teachers, and all the classroom teachers have to teach their own science lessons.)
I’m happy about this because it means the science instruction the elder Free-Ride offspring gets in the classroom is going to be good. The elder Free-Ride offspring is happy about this because it means there’s a snake in the classroom.
One parenting mistake we are unlikely to make.
(From here.)
Not that we won’t make plenty of other mistakes, but they’ll run more to Nietzsche than Rand.
Come to think of it, the eternal recurrence test is probably just right for bedtime stories, isn’t it?
Friday Sprog Blogging: school supplies.
The Free-Ride offspring just kicked off a new school year. The start of school in these parts means a long list of supplies to find — stuff you’d expect, like crayons, pencils, binders and binder paper, scissors, and glue sticks, plus stuff for general classroom use like tissues, had sanitizer, disinfecting wipes, paper towel, and copier paper. The tighter the school’s budget, the more items get added to the “voluntary donations” list. (And we’ve heard tell that the donations aren’t always voluntary. If you don’t get crayons, your kid goes through the school year without crayons. This makes some of those color-by-numbers arithmetic assignments pretty hard to do.)
Anyway, one consequence of the abysmal state budget for the Free-Ride offspring’s school is that there are no longer designated science teachers (there used to be two). Now, each classroom teacher has to figure out how to work through the grade level science curriculum his or her self.
You figure some of those science lessons will require materials that didn’t appear on the school supplies lists that went out right before the start of school.
Today, the sprogs offer the school supplies list that they imagine they would request if they were teaching science this year:
Friday Sprog Blogging: camping.
This week, while I hunkered down for the start of classes, Dr. Free-Ride’s better half took the Free-Ride offspring camping.
They camped near Big Sur, which provided ample opportunities to hike near the ocean (and to swim in it). Indeed, on one of these hikes the first day out, they spotted some otters:
Friday Sprog Blogging: where does land come from?
Dr. Free-Ride: So, where do you think land comes from?
Younger offspring: Land comes from … I don’t know.
Dr. Free-Ride: If you had to guess …
Friday Sprog Blogging: Kids Day at SLAC 2009.
Thanks again to the generosity of Free-Ride friend LO, the elder Free-Ride offspring will be partaking in this year’s Kids Day at SLAC today. And, once again, the younger Free-Ride offspring is chagrined to be too young to participate. Since next year both sprogs will meet the age requirement, though, the younger Free-Ride offspring got to participate in this year’s review of the workshop safety information.
Dr. Free-Ride: You are workshop option B. So, the first activity: paleontology. Do you know what that is, younger offspring?
Younger offspring: Yes.
Dr. Free-Ride: What is paleontology?
Friday Sprog Blogging: rocks and erosion.
Yesterday afternoon, I attempted to talk with the younger Free-Ride offspring about erosion. It would seem, from our conversation, that it is not just rocks that can erode — recall of material learned in science class can also erode, as can patience.
Below is a rough transcript of our chat. I’ll see if I can clean up the audio and put the MP3 up as a SprogCast by sometime this weekend.
Dr. Free-Ride: I wanted to ask you what you can tell me about rocks. I think you learned a little about rocks in school, didn’t you?
Younger offspring: No.
Dr. Free-Ride: No? Did you learn something about different kinds of rocks?
Younger offspring: No.
Dr. Free-Ride: No? Am I thinking about your sibling?
Younger offspring: Yes.
In which the elder Free-Ride offspring channels Descartes.
At bedtime, after the reading of the stories, the younger Free-Ride offspring lay upon Dr. Free-Ride’s better half, and Dr. Free-Ride’s better half responded by making strangling noises. Of course, I called in from the other room to remind the children that homicide, whether intentional or accidental, is forbidden in the house.
Younger offspring: I’m not killing him! He’s pretending!
Dr. Free-Ride’s better half: Actually, I’m pretending to be alive.
Elder offspring: Pretending means you are alive. If you weren’t alive, you wouldn’t be able to pretend anything.
Dr. Free-Ride: Well played, child!