Acorn Math.

It's fall! The leaves changing their color and it's time to use the nature's beauty for our learning time and art projects.
I like to be prepared for our homeschool learning time, kind of plan the day out, think in advance about the project to do with the girls, prepare supplies so that we don't waste our time looking for them when a quite time is so precious before the baby wakes up and then I end up holding both Evan and Milana and trying to help the girls with their stuff.
But when the momentum arises and the spontaneity gets the reins I like these times even better! Because even though I do put a special emphasis on the girls learning how to follow the instructions and self discipline with our learning time, I do treasure the moments when they themselves come up with ways to learn, discover and experiment.

Today we have experienced another moment like that. While playing outside we started collecting the acorns. This year is the year of crazy acorns. They are huge, and numerous. The ground is simply covered with a carpet of acorns. We even had to get used to the constant loud noises coming from above that almost sound like a shot gun. The acorns fall with such a might from the high branches and produce this amazing "puff" on the roof that resonates in the house.

And then the girls started sorting them out. We pulled out our mini scales and added more fun to our activity. They would take turns putting the acorns on the scales and then placing them in the rows according to their weight. We were able to find the biggest acorn, weighing 9 grams, and the smallest one was crushed and dried up and weighed 2 grams. Then we got excited and wanted to find one acorn that would weigh 10 grams and were hoping to come across the smallest at 1 gram. No luck, though. But the observation and statistics proved that most of them weight at about 7 grams.
And that is just another example that living is always learning. And learning in various ways keeps the fire of curiosity to discover for yourself burning hot. Compulsory "Education in a box" squishes kids' individual ways of learning and discovering, thus poring cold water over the hot fires of curiosity.
So that was our math lesson for the day. Maybe tomorrow we'll bake cookies and call it "math and chemistry lesson".