I am giant

I understood knowing this, for I knew what it was, salt spills on the table,we arrive required to love,oh I would be nothing without  you holding me up,now I`m strong enough for both of us, both of us,both of us.I am giant stand upon my shoulders damn know my true scene I am giant we`ll be breaking boulders underneath our feet cause I am,I am,I am,I am giant cause I am, I am,I am,I am,I am, I am,giant
Don`t hide your emotions you can throw down your love,because we can be who we are,well you told me something,freedom is ours, well you told me live in it,I am giant,   

Howard Carter`s discovery

November 1922, Egypt 

When I woke up today I thought that it was going to be a normal day looking for Egyptian artifacts
 like we normally would but I didn`t know that it was the start of me becoming famous worldwide. It all started when I discovered a little fragile step dug into the ground, like a big brick that had been buried the for a million years or so, for in the state that it was. Me and my team of archiologists kept digging steps for what seemed like a very long time until we reached the bottom of the stairs, exhausted of all the work that we did all the other days and nights but as for me, I found something that looked like a door then I noticed that on the there were some heiroglyphs . "I wonder what they might mean" I muttered to myself and then it was that I noticed that I probaly I could open it and see what is inside.I entered a mysteriosly silent room full of priceless treasures with a  smell of old metal filling the it . All along the wall there were thousands maybe even hundreds of thousands  of heiroglyphs each one painted by hand with an unbelievable amount of delicacy and precision on to each one. Then I noticed the actual tomb in there as well it was covered in beautiful gold that was the shiniest thing/object that I have ever seen in my whole life. A few days later we put it to be open to the general public.

By Howard Carter

20180705 Sound and Waves at Chilton Primary

I had a great time at Chilton Primary School talking about sound and waves. I was there to talk how sound waves propagate in things and the kids told me about sound as vibrations, waves and that in space you don't hear it. And that to hear the sound from a table vibrating you need air between your ear and the table.

If you missed the session, this video and this page are great. And short.

 We SAW sound waves from this brilliant film from NPR (national public radio) (forward to and repeat from minute 2:00): https://goo.gl/images/3Eahng .

 And last but not least, I talked a bit about Chladni plates (discovered by the 1780s musician Chladni), which led us to actual hands on activities about sound with Mrs Deacon and Mrs Young. It was great that I did not need to worry too much about translating what the salt and plate were about because they all had done something similar with a surdo and rice a couple terms before!

 You can show the plates to your parents in this episode of Physics Girl: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYoxOJDrZzw

Sand Castle: Friv

I recently learned about a website with lots of games which my little one heard about from his friends in school. It is an aggregator site with very many games called FRIV. I can comment on some pros and cons I found:
+ it is great because it has no advert links.
+ it has many games at several levels.
- there is no educational programme behind it so don't expect that from it.
- it's not curated for violence/ violence reference (lots of shooting games).

All in all, it's peaceful and non-commercial enough for a parent controlled gaming session. I recommend Sand Castle as it has a bit more than hand-eye coordination training with a realistic aiming exercise. Follow the images below to find it in the page (the clickable icon for the game is the one circled red and yellow below).

Fractonio's Pizzeria (pizzas and fractions) - purplemash

Fractonio's Pizzeria is a neat game,  the player needs to serve mixed topping pizzas upon customer requests and avoid a queue building at the shop. It's a game to practise fractions, but not to learn about fractions from scratch. It comes in 3 levels of difficulty and I thought interest on it would wear out quickly but I see it being used quite often by the little ones - I think the time challenge makes it interesting.

Factoroids - Purplemash

Factoroids is a great game. Remember Asteroids? Just that instead of a spaceship versus asteroids it's a calculator versus number blocks. You can shoot at them, but they will only break if the bullet is a factor of the block. Great time pressure cum motor skills cum times table knowledge! It has a couple levels to choose from.

Buckets of Reasoning: NRich

I was looking for maths activities to go beyond mental maths skills and was referred to the Nrich website - a really cool 20-year strong website with really loads of material. Baby steps first, I went to Stage 1 & 2 and then from there Features > Reasoning > Identifying Opportunities (task) > Eggs in A Basket, where you'll find the notes for the delivery of the activity and the actual activity. Below is our (father+son) Sunday afternoon version of the activity (in Portuguese).