Mudspark Life Learning

Science: MinutePhysics http://www.youtube.com/user/ minutephysics?feature=watch  NationalGeographic http://www.youtube.com/user/ NationalGeographic/videos  TEDEducation http://www.youtube.com/user/ TEDEducation/videos DiscoveryNetworks http://www.youtube.com/user/ DiscoveryNetworks/videos  AnimalPlanetTV http://www.youtube.com/user/ AnimalPlanetTV/videos Sick Science:  https://www.youtube.com/user/ SteveSpanglerScience Videos and cool science experiments from Steve Spangler and SteveSpanglerScience.com Crash Course Chemistry: https://www.youtube.com/ playlist?list= PL8dPuuaLjXtPHzzYuWy6fYEaX9mQQ 8oGr Crash Course Astronomy: https://www.youtube.com/ playlist?list= PL8dPuuaLjXtPAJr1ysd5yGIyiSFuh 0mIL SpaceLab:  https://www.youtube.com/user/ spacelab Can plants survive beyond Earth? Can proteins observed in space reveal the mysteries of life? These questions and more get answered by SpaceLab, a YouTube channel cre...

I just finished reading Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen. I highly recommend it to everyone, but especially teachers and homeschooling parents and teens. Most of the book discusses how US history high school textbooks focus on white ethnocentric nationalism and heroism rather than teaching real, balanced history (not even close) and why they do so. It also gives a more complete picture of Columbus, Thanksgiving, slavery, Civil Rights, and the Vietnam and Iraq wars. He discusses how to make history more engaging by igniting curiosity and asking questions of young scholars. In the Afterward, Loewen present five questions students should ask when facing a source, be it a textbook, museum exhibit, or other source (pages 360-361, second edition). While these directly address history, I think they could be used similarly for any source. Students then learn to discern and think for themselves. I will paraphrase them here. 1)...

My nearly-five-year-old son is really, really into Pokemon. He's the kind of learner who goes deeply into something for a long time. When he was a baby, he loved bears. And bugs. As a toddler he discovered trains, and we learned a lot about Thomas' world and real trains. Then it was super heroes, and the world of good and bad, helping people, and team work. His latest obsession is Pokemon. As an eclectic homeschooling mom, I am fascinated to discover what he learns about the world through Pokemon. Lots of online sources will tell you how Pokemon the card game teaches statistics and algebra, but my son is just learning to read, so that level of the Pocket Monster world is not part of ours yet. But by engaging with and encouraging his interest, I see myriad layers of learning going on. Math Pokemon creatures are often combinations of real life creatures, like Bulbasaur, who is a cartoon dinosaur with a bulb on his back. As he evolves, the bulb sprouts into a bud and then an...

One of our more central homeschooling activities is reading aloud. Over the past year or so, my daughter and I have enjoyed my reading to her Grace Lin's novels , the Ramona Quimby books , and (currently) the Little House books .  While reading Lin's books, we ate Taiwanese food and discussed the differences and similarities between Taiwan and China, and (since my daughter is 7), Japan and China and other Asian countries. We wrote to Grace Lin and entered a giveaway of hers, and received a hand-written post card and bookmark from her. It sits proudly on the refrigerator. The Ramona books inspired us to make slow cooker beef stew of all random things. We examined how the books had been written over a period of thirty-five years, and discussed how certain things hadn't changed between my mother's childhood, mine, and my daughter's. Other things have changed, like phones. In Ramona, they have one phone in the hallway, attached to the wall. No cell phones, no computers....