Toys - Experimenting and Making

In the last few days the children have been experimenting with different toys and the forces that act upon them to make them move. We found out that many toys we own operate by stretching or squashing springs.

We made an elastic band powered boat.

We compared springs to elastic bands and made a car catapult.

We also tried letting cars roll down a slope to see how far they went. We changed the type of car first whilst keeping everything else the same.

Next we kept the slope and car the same and added weights to the car to see what effect this had.

Lastly we used the same car and changed the angle of the slope. The children recorded and graphed their results.

R worked on a course from FutureLearn: Begin Robotics whilst L used her craft skills to make a peg doll and a thaumatrope. R has also been attending Lego robotics workshops.

Lego Robotics

The children made a timeline of toys from the past. Find the resource (and others) here.

They tied out this Bayko building set toy from the 1960s. it's not as easy to construct the models as it is with Lego! We also had a game of marbles.

Online Learning

R using Open2Study

Lately we have been trying out lots of different websites for online learning. We have found that those aimed at children are almost universally full of idiotic cartoons and dumbed down beyond belief. There are however a couple of exceptions:

Maths Online is a subscription based website for maths that we have been using for several years. It covers maths from K to year 12 with explanatory videos and interactive questions. They also do a home education 60% discount.

Another free website we have been using is Big History. This covers history from the big bang all the way up to the present day, featuring videos, articles, quizzes and a teachers guide for further activities.

The free Khan Academy is another website that has been around for a while. Aimed at older kids and adults it mostly covers maths and computer programming with a smattering  of the other subjects.

Perhaps the best website for children that we have found is Scratch. This is a free computer programming site used in UK schools, you can download the software for free.  There's also a teachers guide with several lessons and links to programs you'll need. We have also found a fabulous book at our library with more programs and activities to do with Scratch.

Here is an example of what the children have made with it so far:

By L

By R

There are several websites that offer free courses aimed at adults. Some of these courses are also suitable for children and benefit from the lack of patronising graphics and dumbed down content.

Our favourite by far has been courses from the Open University (UK) on FutureLearn. You can see what we got up to on their basic science course in these previous posts:

Here
Here
Here
Here
and Here

There are many other universities offering free courses on FutureLearn, some suitable for older children.

L using Khan

For free courses from OU Australia try the Open2Study website. R has been enjoying the chemistry course.

More free courses of all different levels can be found on Coursera, which has everything from science to music, art to maths, computing, history, languages and more.

For free courses and tutorials in computer software you could try GCF. This website covers Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, and more.

There are many other providers of online learning out there, but the quality varies enormously. I've given you links for those I consider to be the best providers. Enjoy your learning and please share below if you find any other websites worth exploring.