We're Moving!

When I left Kuala Lumpur in 1993 to pursue my undergrad studies in Penang (about 4 hrs up north by car if you ignore speed limits), I didn't realize that I'd be living in rented rooms and apartments the size of shoe boxes for the next 16 years.

Apart from the 6 years we lived in Singapore, most of the places we rented were very much on the small side and that always left me clamoring for space. But there were positives too: less cleaning time and heightened intuition on how to make the most of nooks and crannies LOL.

Now, it's confirmed. We're moving. To Tracy. Not exactly a very popular choice with Bay Area folks due to the 1hr-1.5hr commute to the Silicon Valley. But very much kinder on our wallets with a lot more space to indulge book collecting habits. And a yard! Yippee!

We had a longer escrow to deal with and there were some bumps along the way so I didn't allow myself to get too happy just in case we needed to drop out of the deal again. But it now seems that the way is clear and if all continues to go well, we should be moving sometime around the coming weekend. :)

I can't believe that packing boxes cost what they do over here. We used to be able to get them free very easily from grocery stores back in Malaysia and Singapore. If you are planning to get boxes, I found that U-Haul offers them a lot cheaper than many other places we looked. Or, just save all the old boxes you can; Our bookshelves looking the barest they have been for many years; Everything that can't be put in boxes finds a place at our dining table.

If you know me from the several lists I frequent or as a follower of your blog and have been wondering why I haven't had a chance to say hi for a while, it's because I've been packing. It feels odd to look at bare bookshelves. And the boxes are gradually robbing my already dark apartment of the little light we get. But it's all good.

The house we're moving to already feels like a home thanks to the great job the previous owners have done keeping it well maintained. I can't wait to begin unpacking and settling in. Perhaps I'll even be efficient enough to set up a little school room or school corner so that there will be a little less insanity each time we have company.

I'll share photos when I'm done :)

An Unschooled Summer

Last year, we began DS's Year 1 school year in June. The reason was mainly due to a loooong break we'd taken from about March till May. The previous January and February--after a nice long Christmas break with my sister here--hadn't been what I would call very productive either. So I got all gung-ho and prepared and excited about doing school "properly" in June.

This year, we've just decided to have a quiet, unschooly summer. It wasn't meant that way really. I had prepared a sort of a plan to get some stuff (read: our Ancient Egypt studies) wrapped up. And I had one or two online subscriptions that I had wanted DS to spend more time on (read: to assuage my guilt for paying for these programs). But it just so happened that DH had a shutdown and that of course means no "school" school gets done. Add to the fact that DS and I both succumbed to a very mind and body-numbing flu (hence, the lack of posts lately) and of course, preparing for our move (more in post to follow).

So we've just been having a nice, lazy summer filled with many unexpected learning opportunities and constant reminding of how much I'm learning with and from my rapidly growing young son. He's been filling his head on his own with lots of books as usual...everything from Peanuts and Calvin & Hobbes to a Chess manual and the math workbooks he adores. There's been lots of voluntary writing and doodling and journaling going on too and to keep it voluntary I've promised not to examine too much of what he's been writing and recording. He's also managed to complete two weeks of Schmahl Science camps where he obviously had a blast despite missing almost half the camp due to the flu.

Before the both of us fell ill, DS and I had an exciting week of Classic Science (Life), learning about recycling and why we do it. We recycled paper from our shredder, which turned out a lot prettier than what I expected and a little uglier than what he wanted LOL:

Clockwise from top left: Soaking paper in a mixture of water and cornstarch; Spreading blended pulp on a screen; Squeezing water from pulp with waxpaper; Dried and recycled paper sample gets a quality check.

After we got our breath and health back, we returned to one of our favorite regional parks, Coyote Hills, for a rejuvenating walk. I just love this place. You know how some places just can't help bringing a smile to your face? Well Coyote Hills really knows how to tug on my lips and make my heart sing. It's such a pretty, peaceful place to enjoy nature!

Clockwise from top left: We had to constantly keep one hand on our hats, it was just so windy; A beautiful mosaic of colors and textures; The boys bid farewell to tired ol' Mom and take a hike; Fluid perspectives at the marsh.

We've been having fun. And I am very excitedly looking forward to new beginnings coming very soon into our lives.

Hope you have a joyous summer dear reader!

Thinking & Tinkering

My friend Kerrie posted about this great blog for great fun ideas about building stuff and how to be a kid engineer. Thanks Kerrie!

Kids Who Think

Mathematician Cracks 200-year-old Presidential Code

36-year-old Princeton, NJ mathematician, Lawren Smithline, cracked a 200-year-old code given to Thomas Jefferson by his coding enthusiast buddy, Robert Patterson.

DS was intrigued by this and I thought I'd bookmark it here for further reading. We were particularly happy that the article mentioned the Center for Communication Research.

The Wall Street Journal article by Rachel Emma Silverman here:

Two Centuries On, a Cryptologist Cracks a Presidential Code
Unlocking This Cipher Wasn't Self-Evident; Algorithms
and Educated Guesses

For more than 200 years, buried deep within Thomas Jefferson's correspondence and papers, there lay a mysterious cipher -- a coded message that appears to have remained unsolved. Until now.

The cryptic message was sent to President Jefferson in December 1801 by his friend and frequent correspondent, Robert Patterson, a mathematics professor at the University of Pennsylvania. President Jefferson and Mr. Patterson were both officials at the American Philosophical Society -- a group that promoted scholarly research in the sciences and humanities -- and were enthusiasts of ciphers and other codes, regularly exchanging letters about them.

In this message, Mr. Patterson set out to show the president and primary author of the Declaration of Independence what he deemed to be a nearly flawless cipher. "The art of secret writing," or writing in cipher, has "engaged the attention both of the states-man & philosopher for many ages," Mr. Patterson wrote. But, he added, most ciphers fall "far short of perfection."

To Mr. Patterson's view, a perfect code had four properties: It should be adaptable to all languages; it should be simple to learn and memorize; it should be easy to write and to read; and most important of all, "it should be absolutely inscrutable to all unacquainted with the particular key or secret for decyphering."

Mr. Patterson then included in the letter an example of a message in his cipher, one that would be so difficult to decode that it would "defy the united ingenuity of the whole human race," he wrote.

There is no evidence that Jefferson, or anyone else for that matter, ever solved the code. But Jefferson did believe the cipher was so inscrutable that he considered having the State Department use it, and passed it on to the ambassador to France, Robert Livingston.

The cipher finally met its match in Lawren Smithline, a 36-year-old mathematician. Dr. Smithline has a Ph.D. in mathematics and now works professionally with cryptology, or code-breaking, at the Center for Communications Research in Princeton, N.J., a division of the Institute for Defense Analyses. (link mine)

Read more here. And be sure to check out the Interactive Graphics tab for an intriguing look on how one brilliant man coded it and another other solved it.

Another Jefferson-related coding link here.

Geography For Dog Lovers

Little Lions, Bull Baiters & Hunting Hounds: A History of Dog Breeds by Jeff Crosby and Shelley Ann Jackson.

I can't remember if I've seen this on a fellow homeschooler's blog because I seem to remember that I may have (was it yours Christina?).

The book literally jumped out at me today from the library shelf. Thought it would make a good distraction for DS who's still not back to his usual self from his recent tummy troubles and bout of fever. Actually I didn't even thumb through the book at the library. I just judged it by its cover and picked it up with some sort of second sight that it was going to be good. My mind was more on getting home quickly to relieve the hubby (who is also feeling under the weather) from son-sitting.

So I get back home and we open the covers and I am enthralled. I mean it's probably not the best book out there on dog breeds but it's pretty charming as a picture book with a good level of text that's just enough to attract DS attention away as a break from one of his Murderous Maths titles.

I think one of the best things about the book, apart from the lively illustrations, are the little map insets describing where the breeds originated from. No intentional geography lesson here but I think it will make a wonderful, informal supplement to any geography curriculum. I'm still thumbing through the book but I'm sure almost every continent (Kerrie, Australia has her cattle dog featured here!) has been touched upon however briefly.

My one complaint: no Siberian huskies! Huskies happen to be one of my favorit-est breeds too. I was a little mollified by the one page on the Alaskan malamute though.

All things considered, this is a lovely companion for a dog-loving family.

Two Words & Tummy Troubles

Guess I'll get to the tummy troubles first.

It feels odd blogging at 11.40 in the morning on a Wednesday since I do most of that in the night or on weekends. But the kiddo has come down with a sort of a tummy bug possibly tied to his slightly sore throat yesterday. After a morning spent mostly with his head over the sink, he's snoozing peacefully after a spoonful of crushed Dramamine in honey (he still won't swallow pills and I can't say I blame him). No one is a pretty sight throwing up but the kiddo seems to have fully inherited my wallowing-in-misery-when-sick genes as well so maybe you know how draining that can be on the receiving end.

So now, it's so quiet. His forehead isn't as warm. The hummingbirds are chirping away, fighting for a drink from our feeder. And the chicken soup is bubbling happily on the stove and after watching him sleep so peacefully after being so fitful all morning long, I thought I may as well write something here.

I think I can blame it all on the events that are related to the two words I wanted to tell you about.

The first is "mangkuk" which translates literally in Malay to "bowl" but actually means being illogical or just plain not there if you know what I mean. And the second is "kiasu" which any Singaporean worth his/ her salt will tell you means "always win". So I've been both a mangkuk and kiasu these past few days. The rather unnaturally cool early summer weather we had in the last 2 weeks blinded me to the fact that driving the kiddo to a science summer camp in a rather hot area of San Jose and (please notice the italics) sticking to all the other classes he enjoys and doing a quick dash of 30 miles to the east bay once a week was going to lead to some sort of a break down either for me or him or the both of us.

I don't take to hot weather very well (I guess my 30+ years in Southeast Asia should have prepared me for it but it didn't) and I don't know what I was thinking signing him up for the camps on top of classes. Yeah, well, he wanted it too but I guess I should have put my foot down. Instead, I was just so glad to know he was going to get some science exposure and socialization time while I had my head wrapped around our impending move. Oh yeah, we're moving too. So can you see how much of a mangkuk I am right now?

If you don't hear from me for a while it's only cos I'm trying to figure out how not to be so mangkuk in the next few weeks. I'm giving up on the kiasu for now.

See you soon dear reader. Hope you're having a cooler summer!

Geometry & Trigonometry Books

The DH has had some requests recently from DS to explore trig in more detail. Up to now, dad and son have been playing with triangles and the ratios/figuring out of tangents, sines, cosines of various angles. But to provide more consistent help, he needed some books which up to now we haven't started collecting.

As usual, I was very fortunate to receive wonderful suggestions from the various groups, such as Living Math, and the superb regional homeschooling lists I belong to. Here are some of the titles that the great folk here have recommended. Having lists like these on this blog are of great use to me because I know I won't be lost when DS displays one of his sudden "I want more math to play with" moods. I hope they are of use to you too.

As a note, most of these books are of the livelier sort...not your dry mathy textbook because there's no way DS would even look at one if he could help it.

Murderous Maths titles:

Vicious Circles and Savage Shapes
The Fiendish Angletron

Instructional guides and living books:

Mathematics Made Simple: Sixth Edition by Thomas Cusick -- more of a "what to discover next" sort of guide than an engaging reader or activity book.
Geometry (Teach Yourself) by Paul Abbott
Teach Yourself Trigonometry by P. Abbott and Hugh Neill
Who Is Fourier?: A Mathematical Adventure by Transnational College of LEX
Flatland (Illustrated Edition) by Edwin A. Abbot
The Annotated Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Ian Stewart
Flatterland: Like Flatland, Only More So by Ian Stewart
Sphereland: A Fantasy About Curved Spaces and an Expanding Universe by Dionys Burger, Isaac Asimov, and Cornelie J. Rheinboldt
Snowflake Bentley (Caldecott Medal Book) by Jacqueline Briggs Martin and Mary Azarian
Howard Eves' Mathematical Circles books
A History of Pi by Petr Beckmann
Trigonometry (Math Success) by Rebecca Wingard-Nelson
Trigonometry by I.M. Gelfand and Mark Saul (also, check out the Algebra title by Gelfand)
Trigonometry, The Easy Way by Douglas Downing (also, check out Algebra, The Easy Way) -- a fantasy story-based trigonometry

Curriculum/ videos/ more help:

Geometer's Sketchpad or from Key Curriculum Press here. And activities for young learners.
AIMS Geometry books
GEMS Build It! Festival
Teaching Company's High School Geometry
Teaching Textbooks
Thinkwell (professors on video)
Life of Fred
The excellent Geometry (K-7) Booklists at Subadra's Library of Books, Links & More blog.
Norman Shapiro's Geometry Through Art

My very grateful thanks to all who suggested titles/ tools.