Monday, September 26, 2011

Simple machines....I never want to see you again!

Simple machines....I know all I want to know about simple machines.

Man, trying to come up with ways to keep this kid interested is a bit tricky.
We have done all the research and he understands how they all work which is great.

How to present that information?  Well, we did a series of experiments and took pictures. Then, we my brilliant child used MS PhotoStory to create a presentation ALL ON HIS OWN!!  My kid did fabulous work narrating all of the experiments as we went along.  That MS PhotoStory is an amazing piece of free software.  Loving it.

Today we are finding pictures of all different kinds of simple machines and we are creating a poster board AND we spent some time looking at Rube Goldberg's website.  If you haven't checked out some of his stuff, it's super funny.  He has cartoon strips of machines to do ordinary tasks....that don't really need machines.

This boy then created his own little cartoon strip with a machine on how to turn your computer on.  He's a clever dude.

He and his dad are going to create a complex machine which involves two simple machines and I think we'll have covered all of the information in one way or another.

Tomorrow we might do one experiment from the textbook itself.

On to bats and immigration.  He sent a series of 5 questions to Gramma about her immigration to Canada and now that we have the responses, we're not sure which direction to take it to make it interesting......


2 comments:

  1. Does she have pictures that he can make into webcomic style or something? This is an example of a webcomic (from John's nephew) http://searchingtobe.com/2011/09/20/thinking-thats-all

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  2. Webcomic.....VERY INTERESTING!!! I think we can do that with ComicLife software that we haven't downloaded yet.

    I think my kid needs his own laptop.....

    GREAT IDEA!!

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