Heart-to-Heart about the SWE

Grace has been a bit down lately about her schooling. It isn't her "academics" per se, but something does seem to be missing from the menu. I did what any homeschooling mom would do--had a heart-to-heart talk with her about what she is "intellectually curious" about. 

The answer surprised me: 

Engineering!

We now have plans in place to purchase an updated LEGO Mindstorms set for her so she ca build robotic designs for a "Sumo bot" competition this summer. 

I have also added several online sites to peruse, including "Discover Engineering" and the Jason Science project.  Carl and I have yet to talk about this, but I'd like to finally help him make his secret workshop space a reality so that he and Grace can do woodworking, mechanics  and other tasty morsels of fun, sequestered away from both the world and the dog...

She did have a very good day today. She started off by learning about engineered water filtration systems and I gave her a bunch of equipment, Apollo 13 style, and asked her to build me a system only using that equipment. It worked very well: 

She came up with three different designs on paper, and then carried out what she thought would be most successful. She then poured cinnamon and some soy sauce in a cup of water to "dirty it" and, sure enough, the water came out clear at the other end. It was still a bit brown from the soy, but nowhere near as brown as it had been. She told me that we need to look into getting some sand for n intermediate step between the charcoal filter and the panty hose. ;) 

She also read her Ben Franklin book, reduced some fractions, Drew an "art deco" woman:

 and learned about heat transfer and convection/diffusion, with a very sweet result: 

Finally, she had a 6 hour playdate, which was the absolute icing on the cookies. 

I love homeschooling. 

Forte