Challenge Board #4: Animal Cryptarithms & The Great Wave

Previous Challenge Board: Challenge Board #3: Gardens

Fairy Storyboarding

Two challenge boards ago, fairies appeared in our fairy houses and wrote the kids encoded letters, which the kids then had to decode. Each student then wrote an encoded letter back, and we also built a more permanent house for our little tenants. Now our fairies have written a letter back, and they need the kids' help!

You can read the fairies' letter here, then read my co-conspirator's letter, mentioned in the letter.

In the letter, we learn that the fairies need help finding new fairy passages to Fairy Land, thus the "Storyboarding" challenge. We'll be photographing our fairies looking for the way home and turning it into a storyboard. And until our fairies find the way home, they are stuck using human snail mail to send letters to their friends overseas in Japan, thus the letter challenge and some of the other tie-ins to Japan. 

Of course, even if you don't have fairies visiting your classroom, you can still use these challenges without the "story" behind them. But if you do want an excuse to communicate with, say, a classroom overseas, here is how we're doing it:  My co-conspirator/writer/teacher and I have secretly purchased copies of the same small dragon figurine, so the figurine can appear to travel back and forth, but without the cost of shipping our little guest each time. For Ichigo's big arrival, my husband is going to place the figurine out while we're out of the house. 

Skelley and Buri, the skeletons who sent our fairies a letter, are on Instagram! My co-conspirator's adorable photographs are definitely an inspiration for the fairies and their letters, and I'm using these photographs to help explain storyboarding and inspire my kids.

Animal Cryptarithms

These animal cryptarithms come from Camp Logic: A Week of Logic Games and Activities for Young People (Natural Math) by Mark Saul and Sian Zelbo. Innovative math challenges like this are my other inspiration for the Challenge Boards! I've used pretty much every activity in Camp Logic for my classes in the homeschool community, and now my kids are old enough to tackle some of them themselves.

Example: W + O = O F

For each of these algebra-like problems, one letter equals one single-digit number. Letters next to each other are 2 and 3 digit numbers, so HEN would be a 3 digit number. Problems are not related, so O can equal 5 in one problem and 9 in another problem. Here's a great example of how to solve them using deduction and elimination, and you can google for more cryptarithms.

W + O = O F

Answer: A one-digit number plus a

one-digit number = two digits. The largest possible is 9+9=18, so O =1, but the two numbers you add must be different numbers because they are different letters. The answer is 9+1= 10

P+P+P=I=G+G

Answer: I must be divisible by 2 and by 3, so I=6

HH+HH=OOT 

Answer: OOT must be even because dividing by two gets you HH. Knowing that, try a few double digit numbers for HH, like 11, 22, 33, etc., and see which equal a three digit number. The three digit number must then have two digits the same, and one a different numeral. The answer is: 55=55=110

Good luck!

Paint The Great Wave

We'll be painting waves inspired by Katsushika Hokusai's The Great Wave off Kanagawa (Japanese: 神奈川沖浪裏). We'll be following these instructions by deepspacesparkle.com, but I also think paintedpaperart's instructions look good!

To go along with our painting, we'll be reading Hokusai: The Man Who Painted a Mountain by Deborah Kogan Ray. 

We'll also watch Hokusai: Beyond the Great Wave by ArtFundUK - Warning: this shows a brief clip of art with a completely bare breast (context is breastfeeding). I love how this video mentions Hokusai's influence on European painters, giving a sense of the time period and the interconnectedness of world history, while still keeping it short. 

Write & Mail a Letter

To go along with our story, I addressed an envelope as if my co-conspirator had sent us a letter, sealed it, and used a letter opener to show that the fairies had opened it. The kids are using the envelope to copy down my friend's address to send a letter back. We've sent her letters before, but this is their first time addressing the envelope themselves.

Read & Present...

For my two youngest, we are looking up the word Ichigo and translating it into languages they are interested in. My oldest is learning hiragana and writing Ichigo (いちご) will be fun practice for us both.

For my two oldest, we're researching why Japan has earthquakes and how an earthquake caused the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. My oldest was just sharing with me something he learned on his own, about how nuclear power is safer than coal, so this is a natural tie-in for us and a great excuse to look into it further.

Tsunami! by Kimiki Kajikawa

Meltdown! Earthquake, Tsunami, and Nuclear Disaster in Fukushima

Ready for the next challenge board?

Challenge Board #5: Owls & Who Dunnits

Review: Timelines of Everything (DK Smithsonian)

Explore an illustrated history of the world through more than 130 timelines for kids. From dinosaurs and Vikings to the history of cinema and espionage, discover incredible world history in this lavish collection of timelines.

Jam-packed with surprising facts and amazing details, such as the most bloodthirsty pirate of all time and the first crime to be solved by studying fingerprints, Timelines of Everything will take you on a whirlwind journey through an illustrated history of time, from the Big Bang to the modern world.

More than 130 timelines give you all the general knowledge you need - and even some surprising trivia you don't! Must-know topics and alternative history are showcased with beautiful, detailed illustrations and straightforward, easy-to-read text. Whether you want to know key breakthroughs that set the Industrial Revolution in motion or defining moments in the history of fashion, you'll find it all here. With timelines on a diverse range of subjects, Timelines of Everything is the ultimate guide to history for kids.

https://amzn.to/2VnpMBR

My Review: 

We recently picked up this book for our history-loving 10yo and love it for the amazing visuals that bring history to life. My 10yo already had a good overview of world history and a special interest in WW2 and WW1, which are both covered in the book along with lesser-known wars. Despite his previous knowledge, he still found this book fascinating, gaining a new perspective on how to piece all that knowledge together.

I'm always impressed with DK's layouts. I'm not much of a nonfiction person myself and still love their books.

Review: The First Drawing by Mordicai Gerstein #Homeschool #History #Lascaux

The First Drawing by Mordicai Gerstein asks your child to imagine if they were the first person to invent drawing, way back when the woolly mammoths walked the Earth. A wonderful concept with great execution.

My second-born has always been highly imaginative and sees faces in the ceiling, so he connected with The First Drawing.

If you live near the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, get your hands on this book now and then attend their PaleoPalooza event (This year it's Nov 14th, 2016)! Last year they had a display talking about Lascaux Cave in France, as well as an area where kids could make their own 'cave drawing.' Perfect!

Also worth mentioning:

Mordicai Gerstein also wrote How to Bicycle to the Moon to Plant Sunflowers: A Simple but Brilliant Plan in 24 Easy Steps. (You can take a breath now!) This book is as silly as it sounds and my kids laughed every single time we read it.

Visit Mordicai Gerstein's website to learn more about the dozens of works that he has written and illustrated.

Review: Boy Were We Wrong About the Human Body by Kathleen V Kudlinski

We found an awesome series of science history picture books, Boy, Were We Wrong by Kathleen V. Kudlinski. This series presents a nicely summarized history of scientific discovery centered around different themes, all with the purpose of showing readers that our knowledge of science is based on educated guesses. The best part about these books is that they tell your child that THEY might be the next scientist who makes a big discovery that changes science.

The books we read are:

[Boy, Were We Wrong About the Human Body!]

[Boy, Were We Wrong About the Solar System!]

[Boy, Were We Wrong About Dinosaurs!]

There's one more:

[Boy, Were We Wrong About the Weather!]

I particularly liked that the Dinosaur book explained that many textbooks, films, and other books feature already out-dated information about Dinosaurs. There have been several discoveries in the last few years that negate what I learned as a kid. Did you know that triceratops and torosaurus are the same dinosaur?

Or that they thought Brontosaurus did not really exist, and now they've changed their mind again?

And, of course, the Solar System book talks about Pluto being a dwarf planet. My four-year-old loves to tell me that Pluto is indeed a planet, just a dwarf one. Poor Pluto!

You can also check out [Kudvinski's website]. She has written many children's books about science and history.