Students completed the outside of their sarcophagi in our morning class, adding the "egyptian eye" symbol and a door for their mummy's Ba to come and go. 

You might enjoy playing this as a family at home.  It's not as easy as you think!

To think further about measurement we began our afternoon class by reading Is the blue whale the biggest thing there is?  This book encouraged us to think about size creatively. 

Next we made a list of ten things that we would each measure with our own cubit. Then we set to work, recording our measurements on a chart. When we were done we found that we had different measurements for some things, especially the length of the room. This led to some interesting observations about the importance of using the same unit of measure. 

We wonder whether the Ancient Egyptians had any problems using digits, palms, and cubits to measure things?

with Sally Zeiner

Violet, the title character of our final book, has mismatched eyes, blotchy skin, and hair that can't be brushed. Her gaze is direct and unsettling. There are many ways that she defies the stereotype of a princess, and these will play an important role as the story unfolds. In class we considered these differences, and then worked to define beauty. This led us quickly to inner beauty, which all agreed is much more important. 

Together we generated a list of virtues:

1. Love
   
2. Kindness
   
3. Caring for others
   
4. Niceness
   
5. Friendliness
   
6. Hard working
   
7. Determination
   
8. Happiness
   
9. Willingness
   
10. Self sacrifice
    
11. Thoughtfulness
    
12. Forgiveness
    
13. Intelligence
    
14. Listening
    
15. Modesty
    
16. Honesty
    
17. Encouragement
    

Students then broke into groups to work on organizing this list, grouping things together and defining categories. Over our winter break they should stay in touch with their group via email and complete their group process, writing definitions for their set of virtues, and providing examples from literature as well as life.

Please continue reading Iron Hearted Violet as well, reading at least to Chapter 49. We will see what virtues Violet possesses, and where they will lead her!

Have a wonderful holiday!

with Rich Piscopo

For our class of December 9, I began the lesson on what makes something precious, and we began to establish criteria for preciousness. One student brought up the idea of a trusting friendship as an example of something precious. It was discussed that true friendships are rare, thereby fulfilling one of the criteria of preciousness. It was agreed that we just can't be friends with everyone.

Then a second student, in a clear, pure voice asked, "Why can't we be friends with everyone?" Silence. The rest of us were stumped. After a moment, the first student said there just wasn't enough time. Another said many people were closed-minded and judgmental, and were therefore difficult to trust. The second student persisted in her query by asking, "Why are humans like that?"

I asked her if she was asking why people aren't more openhearted. She answered, "Yes. Why aren't people more like children? When children who are strangers meet, they become instant friends and immediately start playing together." She then went on to say that people close up. The first student added, "We build a cocoon around ourselves." I asked if all thought we build walls around ourselves because, as the other student had said earlier, people tend to be judgmental and we don't want to be hurt. All agreed. To pursue the original inquiry, I repeated, why does this happen? Why do people "close up"? 

I asked if perhaps our educational system had anything to do with this phenomenon. I referenced my experience of teaching children who were generally much more closed up in the public school system. This led to a discussion on home schooling. The first student said, "Kids are not going to learn if they don't want to learn." He went on to question the curricula of public schools in general. He also cited the huge challenge of teaching millions of children the same material, so that our culture may be passed from one generation to the next. Another said that in many public schools the teachers push their students to rush to judgment. The first student said teachers should guide their students, not push them. I reiterated the saying, "You can't force a plant to grow by tugging on its leaves!"

The comment about students being pushed to judgment brought us back to the phenomenon of people tending to be judgmental. I referred the class to the Bertrand Russell quote on this topic, 

I also referred them to John Dewey (with whom Matthew Lipman had a relationship). Dewey said we should always be open to new evidence. Maintain a working hypothesis until new evidence presents itself, and then be prepared to abandon the old hypothesis in favor of the new. Don't jump to conclusions. Suspend judgment until more evidence appears.

I also told the class the Zen story of the professor who goes to visit the Zen master. Perceiving the professor is presumptuous, the master invites the professor to tea. The master serves the tea. He pours the tea into the professor's teacup. The cup fills up. The master continues to pour. The cup is overflowing and the professor can no longer restrain himself. He proclaims, "The cup is full! No more will go in!" The master replies, "Just as this cup is full, so are you also full of your own assumptions and preconceived notions. Empty your cup and let me show you Zen."

If we can resist rushing to judgment, continue to seek the truth, keep our hearts and minds open, indeed, keep our cups empty, then perhaps the clear, pure question of a child asking why we can't all be friends will bring us to our senses.

Thank you, all. Thank you for your intrepid spirit in supporting Philosophy for Children. 

May you have a peaceful, loving, and joyous Christmas holiday.

with Angela Harris

Our last NaNoWriMo class on December 16 was spent sharing and discussing our partner's feedback on the first two pages of our novels. Since most students are still working on their novels, we just addressed the first two pages so that we could practice revising for content, and later proofread and edit for punctuation, spelling, and grammar. We then took a break and enjoyed finishing a fun Christmas writing prompt which our New Jersey students may remember from their 2011-12 Creative Writing class. They were so cleverly written, I offered to publish them here for all to read. We hope you like them!

Merry Christmas from the Mosaic Texas students and families!

Prompt: The alert came over the radio -- "Emergency! Santa Claus trapped in chimney. Christmas will likely be canceled." As soon as I heard it, I knew I would have to do something -- and do it fast. I quickly gathered my gear and headed out the door...

with Leigh Ann Yoder

This week’s class was probably the most challenging of the semester. We continued our study of Finite State Machines, also known as Finite State Automatons – FSM or FSA for short. 

First, we tackled the Airhead 2000 homework by drawing out the FSM together. Some of the students struggled with the homework, but I believe most understood after we reviewed.

Next, I pushed the students beyond their comfort level by illustrating two FSM’s. One was used to add two binary numbers, and the other was a parity checker. The purpose was to cycle back on topics we covered in the beginning of the semester, but now focusing on how the computer is actually instructed by the programmer.

After those mind-boggling examples, we took a break by officially defining an FSM and went on a virtual treasure hunt. The students were pirates and had to take imaginary boats between islands. They were successful when they found the shortest route to Treasure Island. When the students completed the activity they realized they had created another FSM.

With a firm understanding of FSM’s we discussed their applications in Computer Science, specifically in the following areas: the lexical analysis part of the compiler, text editing, computer networks, and string searching within a word processor. 

Finally, we had a brief discussion on artificial intelligence and how a computer can appear to understand and respond appropriately. Think Siri.

We covered a lot of material! The students should be proud of themselves. Grasping the concept of an FSM at such a young age is truly an achievement!

I wish all of my students and their families a blessed holiday. 

with Michelle Cameron

Today being the last day before the holiday break, we had some fun with our writing.

First, riffing off The Nightmare Before Christmas, everyone was given a Christmas character – from well-known ones such as Santa Class to less-known (and frankly imaginary) ones, such as the Candy Cane Kid and Lenny the List Maker.

Then we combined them with other holiday characters, such as the Easter Bunny or the Valley Girl Valentine.

While almost no one finished their stories, we had some great starts. I hope some of the kids will finish these off over the break – but they don’t have to.

After that, we played a TWC-creation – Plotfoolery, a writing board game. The kids rolled the dice to determine the order in which to start, but then they got to take a turn whenever they were finished writing a part of their stories. There are some off-beat and whacky plot twists that they landed on (including being trapped in a sand castle) and everyone had to write the number of sentences based on their roll of the dice. Again, we had some very weird and wonderful (and to borrow their phrase, random) stories that emerged. 

With the holidays up and coming, homework is light. I returned most of their submissions for the online journal. Those that I didn’t will be returned via email by next Wednesday. I ask that they make the editorial changes by 12/23, so I can got our online journal up and running by the time we get back.

In addition, they should decide what they want to read for our end-of-session reading. Rules: up to four double-spaced pages or three poems. It does not need to be what they submitted to the journal, although it can be. 

And please do let me know if you plan to attend the reading – family welcome!

Happy holidays, everyone!

with Sally Zeiner

In class on December 2, we began by discussing the prior week's homework -- refining our criteria for friendship. For most of our philosophy students, a friend is someone whom you enjoy being with. Aristotle proposed that for someone to be your friend, the feelings should be mutual. He also defined three types of friendship: use, fun, and moral guidance. Our students agreed that friendship should be mutual. We also considered the Little Prince's friendship with the flower, and his reasons for leaving the planet. Has your child ever felt that they could not be friends with someone who lied or misrepresented themselves, as the little flower did to the Prince?

The  adventures the Little Prince had as he traveled from planet to planet raised interesting questions, especially about authority and ownership. The king says he rules over everything, but does he have any real authority? What is real authority? Where does it come from? We talked about authority in the contexts the students are most familiar with: a parent's authority, teacher's authority, and coach's authority. Our philosophy students determined that authority can come from the responsibility to take care of someone, or by voting, or through force.

The businessman says that the stars belong to him. In class, we began a chart comparing and contrasting the authority and ownership of the king and the businessman with that of the Little Prince. In two weeks, we will begin discussing our final book for the course, Iron Hearted Violet. This is a long book. I highly recommend it as a family read-aloud, or even on audio, for students who may find the book challenging. As we have done all semester, we will begin class each week by working on a simple story map to make sure that we all understand the reading before we begin our discussions.

We began class by discussing our homework from last week, comparing and contrasting the Little Prince’s concept of authority and ownership with that of the king and the businessman. As we talked, it became clear that we needed to clarify the difference between authority and ownership. We applied this to our own lives, where we can understand it best, in relation to our ownership and responsibilities for the animals in our families. We can own and take care of pets, such as chickens or cats, without having any authority over them. However, for Ava, who is raising a seeing-eye puppy, it is very important that she does have authority over him.

We connected this to the story of the Little Prince. One student suggested that it was as if the flower had authority over the prince, even though the prince took care of the flower.

In Chapter 20 (XX), the Little Prince encounters a flower just like his. The Little Prince says, “I thought I was rich…; and all I had was a common rose.”

We considered the relationship between beauty and friendship. Can we find someone or something more or less beautiful if we know them better? What is the relationship between friendship and responsibility? We will continue to explore the themes of beauty, authority, and friendship as we read Iron Hearted Violet.

In class I asked students to read the first five chapters of Iron Hearted Violet for next week, and then write a paragraph or more answering the following question: How does the friendship between Violet and Demetrius compare to your criteria for friendship? 

Have a great week!

with Kim Rodgers

On Monday we talked about using algebra in the real world. Many students had thought about it during the week. One even had a list of professions which use algebra that was a page long! 

Professor Arbegla had been talking about this topic with her students in the college class she teaches, when she realized that algebra was used when she remodeled her bathroom. She was planning on tiling the bathroom floor. She knew the dimensions of the floor (6’ x 7’) and was ready to pick out tiles. Since they were so expensive, she wanted to have an idea of how many tiles she should purchase before going to the store. That’s where our class came in. Each tile was one foot square. The students spent some time figuring out how she could know how many to buy. Some drew pictures. Some knew intuitively that multiplying the number of rows by the number of columns would give us the number of tiles. We discussed why multiplying works and how finding the area of the room could help her with her project. We assigned the letter “l” for length and “w” for width and came up with a rule for area to put on our toolkit.

We also talked about the terms we use when discussing area. In this specific case each tile is a foot square so we call that square feet. We contrasted that with perimeter. Perimeter is a linear measurement, so we just use “feet” as the measurement. The students came up with a few ways to express perimeter:

• The students were then challenged to write as many equations as they could where the dimensions of the room equaled an area of 36 square feet. Those who finished early were further challenged to come up with dimensions of the room that weren’t whole numbers! After coming up and sharing nine possible equations using whole numbers, they mapped each one out on graph paper. In the midst of this, it came up that each room had a “partner” room, or a room which had the same dimensions but switched as to the length and width, except for a room with the dimensions of 6’ x 6’. We talked about the area of the partner rooms and if they were the same or not. Shapes with the same size and shape are called congruent shapes, which led us into discussing the commutative property of multiplication: 

• a x b = b x a which we recorded on our toolkit as well. 

Next week we continue discussing area and planning spaces to be used for particular purposes. How does its purpose affect how we lay out the area of the enclosure? What’s the best set up for the enclosure? Some students were interested in pursuing the area of triangles and circles, so they decided to look into that for homework to share with the class next week. I look forward to letting them teach the class a thing or two!

Students spent the remainder of the period working to complete their mummies, canopic jars, and sarcophagi.  They painted gold masks on the plaster mummies they had prepared several weeks ago and continued to craft and paint their canopic jars.  Those that had completed a mummy began to prepare a sarcophagus which we will decorate and fill next week to conclude our unit on mummies.  Because we are making our sarcophagi out of shoe boxes, they will really look more like rectangular tombs or coffins.

Next week we will add hieroglyphics, images of gods and goddesses, egyptian eyes, and any other decorations the students would like.

Trinkets and treasures:  Please have your student bring in any small treasures they would like to place in their sarcophagus, such as coins, buttons, small plastic or stuffed animal, toy food or utensils, etc.
Word search:  Last call for any student that wants to complete the word search and bring it to class for a small prize.  Here is the file to download and print in case you did not pick one up in class.

Enjoy the snow!  See you all next week!

What do Pharoahs and pencils have in common? Neither one make a very good unit of measurement!  

The ancient Egyptian cubit was a measurement based on the distance from the Pharoah's elbow to his fingertips.

with Leigh Ann Yoder

We wrapped up our unit on Algorithms today with a game focused on Message Routing. The students were modeled as the Internet and acted both as computers and routers within their own local networks. Their goal was to simulate sending and delivering messages. They discovered that without an algorithm this task is harder than it appears!

Next, we began our third unit, Telling Computers What to Do – Representing Procedures. Now that we have a solid understanding of algorithms and can even put them into words, we will focus on giving the right instructions to the computers. The students will shortly discover that it is not as easy as it sounds!

Today we used a variety of games to introduce a simple but powerful tool called a finite state machine. The finite state machine is not really a mechanical entity, but an abstract set of instructions, which a computer can be programmed to follow precisely. The goal was to teach the students to model the behavior of common items and situations using this tool.

This concept is one that is taught in college level courses and sometimes not until graduate level. Hopefully, by using a variety of hands-on activities and instruction all the students will acquire a general understanding. We will continue this topic for at least one more class.