Once in a Blue Moon - A Homeschool Conversation

A typical homeschool conversation:

As we opened Christmas cards, the kids asked who one of the senders was. I explained that it was a parent of a old Girl Scout whom I hadn’t seen in many moons.

“Many moons. Why do people say that?” DS asked.

“It just means I haven’t seen her in a while,” I responded thinking that would suffice.

“Wouldn’t many moons just mean a couple of days?” He continued.

“No, they mean full moons, so they mean months.” Of course, then I had to add, “except for those blue moons.”

“Blue Moons. What is a blue moon?”

“The second blue moon in a month.”

DD piped in, “How often does that happen?”

“Daddy?” I had used up my knowledge of the moon cycles. He plugged “Blue Moon” into his laptop and came up with www.obliquity.com/astro/bluemoon.html“The average interval between Full Moons is about 29.5 days, whilst the length of an average month is roughly 30.5 days. This makes it very unlikely that any given month will contain two Full Moons, though it does sometimes happen.
On average, there will be 41 months that have two Full Moons in every century, so you could say that once in a Blue Moon actually means once every two-and-a-half years.” He read from the website.

Then we digressed into when the next blue moon was, why they are called blue, and other great astrological facts.

Then dear son brought us back down to his crazy thoughts, “Well, when will four blue moons happen in the same month?”

I thought for sure he had missed the whole concept of what we were just saying. I started waxing on about 29.5 days in a cycle, you would need more than 30 days in a month . . .DD added that we’d need more than one moon and have to be like on Jupiter. But no DS, explained God could cause a miracle and align the moon cycles to his desire. Ok, who can argue with that? I just rolled my eyes. . . “I guess you’re right!”

Now for those states that require reporting - where do you put such conversations? Should homeschoolers try to write all of their digressions down? This was not on our science plan for the day, but certainly is a valid lesson.

Update on Science Experiment

I cannot believe how much a plant can grow without light. DS had to grow seeds. One jar with water and one jar without in the light AND one jar with water and one without in the dark. I thought that it would teach him that plants needed water and light to grow, but apparently NOT. See the great thing about homeschooling is that even the adults learn with the kids. The seeds in the dark, wet setting actually have a much healthier looking root system and they actually grew first. I am actually now looking forward to continuing this experiment to find out what other tid-bits I may learn.

Applying Newton's Laws

Physics and the laws of motion can be interesting and fun. They can creep up at the strangest times. If you watched the Lego version of the Newton’s three laws then you are already familiar with the laws, so you may be able to dissect it better than I.

As we are doing our work up at DH’s office, DS pushed his chocolate milk bottle with his pen. As expected the bottle moved forward (little push = little motion) but then interestingly, the bottle took a little extra jump as the milk continued in motion after the bottle had stopped. Then it finally came to rest (inertia) having expended all its energy.

See this little experiment shows exactly what I say – lessons and learning are everywhere, you just have to be ready / interested enough to explore them. I’m sure bottle of milk are being pushed in cafeterias around the country right now. How many do you think are discussing Newton’s Laws?

Mythbusters Science

One of our favorite shows is Mythbusters. It is a great combination of Science and the explosions. A recent episode centered around a very simple idea that had been sent to them about the force needed to seperate two phone books that had their pages overlapping. Here is the viewers video that was sent to Mythbusters to spark the idea . . .



This is a great project to test your kids with because it just seems impossible. It can be a great jump off for conversations about force and friction. While I don't recommend trying to rip it apart with cars, you could make for a very interesting tug of war.

What have your favorite Mythbusters episodes been? Have you done any great experiments after the fact with your kids?