Gifted Homeschooling » free

Free Museum Day

Jon — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 21:16:19 +0000

Free Museum Day is coming Sept. 26th. Not all museums participate (list here).

Book introductions from the NIV Study Bible

Jon — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 21:28:26 +0000

The International Bible Society now has the book introductions from the NIV Study Bible available online. The introductions give the background and an outline for each book of the Bible. That can help understand who the author was, their intended audience, and time frame of each book. Note that most Bible study sources, including the NIV Study Bible, disagree with each other on some points, but this is a decent resource to start with.

Planarity Insanity

Ann — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 06:56:09 +0000

Do you get excited when your yo-yo gets tangled? Does your heart leap at the opportunity to rewind a gnarly skein of yarn? Planarity by John Tantalo just might be your dream come true! This incredible game is a great supplement to the study of planar graphs. The object of the game is to “untangle” the nonplanar graph by clicking and dragging the vertices around the playing area.The example here is the opening of a level 15 nonplanar graph. My husband and I are very competitive with this game. We have both gone far into the 20s, and probably will not continue because time is a real factor when you get to the really difficult levels. When you check this out, post a comment with your top level and time! Enjoy!

The Fantastic Contraption

Ann — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 05:11:09 +0000

One of our family’s favorite pastimes is solving puzzles and Fantastic Contraption captivated us from the beginning.

The goal of the game is to move a given object into the goal, a designated box. The object starts in a workspace where you build your contraption.

There are just so many different possible solutions that we’ve had great fun comparing ours. It is very important not to look ahead. After you’ve solved a puzzle, you will have the opportunity to view many different solutions from other users and rate them! This is much less frustrating than working the problems, and has proven to be quite humbling.

This is a great experiential site if you’ve been working with building Lego machines and although this is a completely 2-D activity, much can be learned about the gears, force, gravity, tension, friction, structure, and creative problem solving.

This game is addictive. Consider yourself warned.

http://www.addictinggames.com/fantasticcontraption.html

Free astronomy lessons

Jon — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 02:28:27 +0000

This site has an excellent interactive slideshow that teachs you to recognize the basic star constellations and navigate by the night sky.

Once you master those basic landmarks, Skymaps.com has full printable star charts.