The S.T.E.M and Arts blog by Aurelius Raines II

The S.T.E.M and Arts blog by Aurelius Raines II
"Producers, not Consumers"

Sunday, February 3, 2013

Boldly Going

(Here is a post that was originally intended for the February 3rd.)

This week, Dialectic Class 1 and 2 learned about the relationships between science and nature. We learned that scientist are sometimes inspired by the life sciences. Bacteria to make our cheese tasty, fungus to help us fight infection, and machines that fly like a bird. All of these inventions are but a small flavor of how what happen in God's creation inspires us spiritually and scientifically.
Grammar Class 6 began their education on the solar system. We learned that there are only eight planets, that we measure distance in the solar system by A.U.'s, and the difference between rotation and revolution. We made a hanging model of the solar system and we look forward to annotating the model with the things we will learn about each planet. The million dollar vocabulary words for the week? Aphelion and perihelion. Ask your child what those words mean and watch them spin!
Next week:
We will be taking a different route in science. We will discuss some of the more philosophical applications . Since we've done a lot of work on the interaction between science and society, we will be reading Issac Asimov's "A Feeling of Power." A story about a world where basic math skills have autotrophed in a world of computers. This will also serve as a reading comprehension, vocabulary, and writing exercise.
We will be learning about how the movement of planets effect the season's.
Students use mobile devises to see virtual overlays of the space above their heads.
Joli hangs her version of Jupiter in our model of the Solar System