field trip
our friends invited us to the natural history museum today.
we saw the brain exhibit. you first entered to a dark room strung with wires and threads that were flashing bright white and many colored lights, representing neurons. it was very effective as i immediately began thinking about how my brain was processing everything. about one third of the way through the exhibit, i had to turn to my friend and say, "my brain is unable to grasp any more concepts with the loud dialogue of the movie we just watched continuously playing in the background." they had an ongoing movie explaining how the different centers of your brain (brain stem and cerebellum, limbic, cortex, pre-frontal cortex) worked to help you learn and remember; using as an example a young person rehearsing for a dance audition. it was a lovely demonstration . . it was just . . very loud. however, we persevered, and after an hour and a half the children came back to us and said, "you aren't even half way through! there's still many more rooms to see!" my favorite station was the one in the picture above. they had five native speakers of mandarin, igbo (from southeast nigeria), russian, english and spanish, on a screen teaching how to say certain words. the speaker would say the word and the sound waves would appear on the screen. you could then repeat the word or phrase into a microphone and view how similar your sound waves were. you could also play it back and hear your voice. of course my friend and i chose igbo (we had never heard of igbo before) and we practiced saying, "fetch the water." it was fun, and i would have liked to spend more time at this station, but a large school group was approaching, and we had to leave in order to have some lunch and attend a study group at the christian community center. before we left, we both noticed how we tended to think and do things in a way that was comfortable for us, and it was good to branch out and try new ideas and new actions . .
it was in the 40's today. we had a nice lunch outside before heading to the meeting where we are beginning to read _the recovery of man in childhood_ by a.c harwood. the older children sang songs and played "button, button, who's got the button" with the younger ones while the parents talked.
our friends invited us to the natural history museum today.
we saw the brain exhibit. you first entered to a dark room strung with wires and threads that were flashing bright white and many colored lights, representing neurons. it was very effective as i immediately began thinking about how my brain was processing everything. about one third of the way through the exhibit, i had to turn to my friend and say, "my brain is unable to grasp any more concepts with the loud dialogue of the movie we just watched continuously playing in the background." they had an ongoing movie explaining how the different centers of your brain (brain stem and cerebellum, limbic, cortex, pre-frontal cortex) worked to help you learn and remember; using as an example a young person rehearsing for a dance audition. it was a lovely demonstration . . it was just . . very loud. however, we persevered, and after an hour and a half the children came back to us and said, "you aren't even half way through! there's still many more rooms to see!" my favorite station was the one in the picture above. they had five native speakers of mandarin, igbo (from southeast nigeria), russian, english and spanish, on a screen teaching how to say certain words. the speaker would say the word and the sound waves would appear on the screen. you could then repeat the word or phrase into a microphone and view how similar your sound waves were. you could also play it back and hear your voice. of course my friend and i chose igbo (we had never heard of igbo before) and we practiced saying, "fetch the water." it was fun, and i would have liked to spend more time at this station, but a large school group was approaching, and we had to leave in order to have some lunch and attend a study group at the christian community center. before we left, we both noticed how we tended to think and do things in a way that was comfortable for us, and it was good to branch out and try new ideas and new actions . .
it was in the 40's today. we had a nice lunch outside before heading to the meeting where we are beginning to read _the recovery of man in childhood_ by a.c harwood. the older children sang songs and played "button, button, who's got the button" with the younger ones while the parents talked.
Not here, it's so cold! No green grass in sight!
ReplyDeleteaaahhhhh . . robyn from my fair isle has been posting photos of all her snow in newfoundland . . no green grass there, either. i love the snow and wouldn't mind it be around for a longer time. however, the snow we have now is very dirty. we really could use a good strong rainstorm to clean the streets and sidewalks.
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