Geocaching

 

A new hobby for the new year… why not try Geocaching with the kids?

Geocaching is an outdoor treasure-hunting game in which the participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers (called “geocaches” or “caches”) anywhere in the world. A typical cache is a small waterproof container containing a logbook and “treasure,” usually toys or trinkets of little value.

Start with Geocaching.com.

via Mental Floss

The World Clock

For any parents who have had to answer questions like “How many babies are born every second?” and the like, comes the World Clock…

Click here for a “world clock” (by http://www.poodwaddle.com/) that constantly updates the total number of, well, lots of stuff: births, abortions, deaths of different types, prisoners, marriages, divorces, extinct species, gallons of oil pumped, and computers, cars, and bicycles built. You can choose to display it by how much has happened in the last year, month, day, or even from a moment, like right… now.

via Sociological Images

Oldest board game: Senet

This weekend we made a visit to the Chicago Field Museum, using our brand new family membership that we got for Christmas.  We knew we had the whole year to see the entire museum, so we slowly went through just a few exhibits:

• Animals, Plants, and Ecosystems
• Sue
• Evolving Planet
• Ancient Egypt
• Hall of Jades

I think we had the most fun at Ancient Egypt.  We ran across a display of the Ancient Egyptian board game, Senet, purported to possibly be the oldest board game.  We played the online version at home afterwards which was great fun.  We are considering making or buying an offline version.

Home Chemistry Blog

New blog discovered!!   Great for homeschoolers and unschoolers doing science at home, the Home Chemistry Blog is written by a homeschooling parent of a 15 and 12 year old.

The Home Chemistry Blog posts experiments they are working on, information about chemistry in general, and more.  They’ve even posted on the GeekDad blog.

Family Game Night: Quelf

Here’s a game that looks like great fun that I haven’t run across before.

Ages 12 & up / 3-8 players / 60 minutes to play

Quelf is insanity in a box! With this hilariously silly party game, you will have outrageous fun with your family and friends. Quelf will inspire you to use your creativity, wit and sense of humor in ways you’ve never imagined.

As you move around the game board, as one of eight quirky characters, crazy things start to happen. Your friends start talking strangely. Your mom’s face is wrapped in toilet paper. Your dad is acting like Dracula. And you are reciting a poem about your armpits.

Each game of Quelf is a new journey into wackiness. When the dust settles and someone crawls away the winner, you realize…you’ve never had this much fun playing a board game in your life!

Perfect for: family get-togethers, rainy day entertainment, teen parties, youth groups, ice breakers and curing cabin fever.

Contents:
- 550 Quelf cards in five categories
- Game board
- 8 character game pieces
- 2 pencils & pad of paper
- Sand timer
- 1 giant invisible harpoon (it’s invisible for a reason, use it wisely)

via Escape Adulthood

Online game: Untangle

The game Untangle challenges you to simply fix the lines so that they do not cross. Simply? Ha!

It starts out simple, but gets trickier and trickier.

via MentalFloss

Mastering math and science learning

Pickthebrain directs us on how to master math and science learning.  The strategies include:

• Get comfortable with your formulas.
  • Start off by keeping a special section of your notebook specifically for formulas. As you learn new ones, write them down. Review your formula list as often as possible, at least a few times a week. You don’t need to spend a lot of time — it’s more important to review frequently. The idea is to build familiarity.
• Do problems
  • They only way to get this knowledge is experience.

You’ll also find that memorizing important formulas and working through problems will improve your understanding of the broader concepts and how they fit together.

via LifeHack 

More time to think for you or your child

Lifehack has a post today on “11 tips to carve out more time to think.“  I think this could be applied to those of us in the unschooling/homeschooling life.  The suggestion is to take just one hour of your week to focus entirely on thinking, without distractions.  The lack of distractions alone could be the most difficult part, but assuming you’ve managed to get past that…  here are some of the suggestions on making use of your thinking hour:

• Think about what you want to write about.
• Set goals for your thinking hour.
• Write or type your thoughts.
• Record yourself talking.
• Go for a walk.
• Mindstorm twenty ideas.
• Meditate.
• Explore your problems.

Extended Rebus Puzzle

You and your kids may be familiar with Rebus Puzzles (aka Frame Games or Word Picture Puzzles), which are word puzzles that use pictures or words to represent words or parts of words.

A common example would be:

HEAD

HEELS

…. which translates to “head over heels.”

Additional examples of Rebus puzzles:

• NIEHS Brainteasers and Riddles
• Fun with words
• Rebus from the 1700’s
• Bifaloo
• Google “rebus puzzle” for more – there are millions of these things.

Anyhow, I always liked these but found them to be a bit tricky sometimes.  Today I ran across this extended version:

The answer to this puzzle is here.
via Futility Closet 

Fun chemical reaction experiment (Briggs-Rauscher Reaction)

Here’s an known as the Briggs-Rauscher Reaction, which looks really cool. Basically, when several clear liquids are combined, the mixture quickly changes colors — back and forth — over and over again. The experiment was perfected by high school science teachers in 1973.

What’s happening?

Several reactions take place at once. One of them produces iodine, which gives the amber color. Hydrogen peroxide reduces other chemicals into iodide ions. Along with normal iodine, the charged particles interact with starch to create it a blue-black color. The speeds of those transformations are constantly changing. As one overtakes the other, the color suddenly changes.

Here are directions on how to perform the experiment.

What You’ll Need

• Three 2 liter beakers
• Gloves
• Hydrogen peroxide – MSDS warning
• Potassium iodate – MSDS warning
• Sulfuruc acid (H₂SO_{4) – MSDS warning}
  
• _{Distilled water}
• _{Malonic acid – MSDS warning}
  
• manganese sulphate (hydrate) – MSDS warnings
• soluble starch (cornstarch)
• A magnetic stirrer. These can get pricey, so look around. I did find an air operated turbine magnetic stirrer, which looks like it can be operated with a normal aquarium air pump, and eliminates and danger of sparking.

Be aware that some of the chemicals involved are dangerous, as specified in the above linked MSDS’s. Use caution and protection such as goggles and gloves. Also note that I am merely bringing this experiment to your attention and am no science expert of any kind. Try this only if you know what you are doing.

via BoingBoing via The Wired Science blog