Friday, March 30, 2007

Boomerangs and the Crusades




These two items do not usually go together ~ but, they have, this week, in our homeschooling.

Wednesday at Group Learning we continued with our topic of Medieval Times. The kids made mini catapults
(or trebuchets) for craft. I worked with the Seniors ( teens) on the topic of The Crusades.

We watched some of the movie The Kingdom of Heaven and discussed the historical accuracies and inaccuracies of the film. And I enjoyed looking at Liam Neeson and Orlando Bloom ( they are kinda cute. :-) ).

We read and talked about the Crusades - a definition, the different crusades, the Albigensian heresy.

I then had the teens break into two groups - Muslims and Crusaders.We formed a Muslim-Crusader Dating Service. Each group had to think of positive attributes of their group and of ways to put a positive spin on any negative attributes. I provided books for research...

Then, they made posters - trying to get the other group to date them!

There was a lot of fun and chatter and I hope the kids had a good time, while learning about the Crusades.

And the boomerangs? They were yesterday's activity.

Alexander is reading through a Physics textbook and I like to add in hands on stuff for everyone to do. I found the boomerang activity in the book Teaching Physics With Toys.

Students explore why a boomerang "sticks around."

The boys made the boomerangs and added in modifications after testing their flight path.They became familiar with the lift force resulting from the flow of air over a wing and with the ability of a force to cause the rotation of an object.

The spinning boomerang behaves very much like a spinning gyroscope, and the rotation is known as gyroscopic precession. The stability of the spinning boomerang against unwanted motions caused by small forces is known as gyroscopic stability.
You learn something new every day.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

You are so clever! What a fun study.

Leonie said...

Mary, we've had fun! Next week, we are working on Easter Vigil notebooks, for Holy Week...

Anonymous said...

Hey Leonie - I have that book!! I haven't looked at it in years, thanks for the reminder! Have fun with the notebooks, we're planning the same thing. I'm also preparing for the Liturgy of Light presentation at the atrium, so some of that will be incorporated at home...our Christmas candle will become our paschal candle with changes of the wax cut-outs ;-) and we've got to finish turning our Christmas tree trunk into a cross...

Leonie said...

Nice ideas for home and for the atrium, Beate..