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Archives for 5 May 2020

📸 PHOTO CHALLENGE – May 2020: “COVID-19 Pandemic” and “Sensors”

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Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-05-photos

Calling all homeschool photographers! One of the independent projects we recommend to homeschool students is the monthly Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge. The May challenge is now open and the announced themes are “COVID-19 Pandemic” and “Sensors.” You can see sample photos and learn how to submit an entry here:

The Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge encourages people to take and submit high-quality images for the public Wikimedia Commons database — the source from which most of the images in Wikipedia are drawn. Once you’ve registered and submitted an entry, you can also participate in the selection of future themes and in the voting for the best entries each month.

A sample entry for the theme “COVID-19 Pandemic” from this month’s Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

If you have talented young photographers in your home academy, why not encourage them to sign up and submit an entry. Working on a specific theme over a period of a few weeks is a great way for students to develop both their technical camera skills and their visual composition skills. And if you submit a number of entries over time you can build up a personal portfolio page to show off your work — that would be good experience in how to create a professional presentation of yourself for future employment or college admissions.

You can find more ideas for independent homeschool projects in a wide range of scientific and scholarly fields on our River Houses Lunar Society page (riverhouses.org/lunar).

What photographic, artistic, and scientific discoveries have you made in your homeschool this Leo Term? 😊

❡ Explore more: Your recommended world almanac (riverhouses.org/books) has a long list of famous artists on pages 177–180, and that list includes famous photographers. Why not pick out a name or two to research each month, either online or on your next visit to your local library — it would be a great way to give your students a little extra photographic inspiration! 📸

❡ Stay in the loop: This is one of our regular “Lunar Society” posts about the many independent projects we recommend to homeschool students. Add your name to our weekly mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🗞

📚 LEARNING THE LIBRARY: The Artistic 700s

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Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-dewey-700

(Are you locked out of your local library at the moment due to the current pestilence? See our note below on Dewey Detectives at Home for some timely alternatives.)

Tuesday is our regular Homeschool Books & Libraries Day in the River Houses, and on the first Tuesday of each month we invite you and your young scholars to explore one of the major Dewey Decimal classes at your local library. If you start at the beginning of the River Houses year in September and run until July, you can “adopt” one major class each month and survey the whole of knowledge (!) in a year.

The class for May is the 700s, which covers Arts & Recreation. (The Dewey system is grouped into hundreds, so “the 700s” means the numbers running from 700 to 799.)

Here’s what you’ll find at your local library in the Artistic 700s:

  • CLASS 700 – ARTS & RECREATION
    • 700 – Arts (General)
    • 710 – Area Planning & Landscape Architecture
    • 720 – Architecture
    • 730 – Sculpture, Ceramics, & Metalwork
    • 740 – Graphic Arts & Decorative Arts
    • 750 – Painting
    • 760 – Printmaking & Prints
    • 770 – Photography, Computer Art, Film, Video
    • 780 – Music
    • 790 – Sports, Games, & Entertainment

Each of these “tens” divisions is subdivided further of course. For example, in the 750s (Painting) you’ll find works on Techniques (751), Color (752), Symbolism (753), History of Painting (759), and so on.

So if you’ve got a future architect in your homeschool, the 720s are the place to go this month. A future photographer? Head for the 770s. A future musician? Try the 780s. A future high-stakes gambler? Go and explore 795 (or maybe not). 🎲😊🎲

When you’re learning the library with your students, be sure they understand that any library collection that uses the Dewey Decimal Classification will be arranged in the same way: the numbers run from 000 to 999 in every Dewey-based library, so if you’re interested in, say, sculpture, you’ll find it in the 730s in both the small-town library near you and in the big-city library across the country. If you have an opportunity to make field trips to multiple libraries over the course of the year you’ll be able to demonstrate that in practice and get your students accustomed to orienting themselves by reading the numbers aloud as you walk together down the ranges: “710 … 720 … 725 … here it is, 730.”

Mastering these library basics will help your students become independent life-long learners and will ensure that they’ll feel right at home in any library they visit.

❡ Dewey Detectives at Home: Are you locked out of your local library at the moment? You may be able to continue your Dewey explorations at home with a host of hidden Dewey numbers you may not have noticed before. Almost every modern book is published with “Cataloging-in-Publication” data on the copyright page (usually the back of the title page). Here’s an example (from a language textbook) of what CIP data look like. This week at home, pull down a bunch of books from your shelves on any subject and see if you can find the CIP data. Embedded in the CIP data is the recommended Dewey classification for the book: in the example I just linked, it’s 429.82421 (see it?), which puts this volume in the Linguistic 400s (naturally enough). If you have our recommended homeschool bird guide, you’ll find the CIP data at the end of the volume, and it recommends a Dewey number of 598.297 in the Scientific 500s (of course). Why not have your students go through your whole home library this month and find the Dewey numbers for your entire collection — there’s an activity that will keep your junior librarians busy for hours on end! 📚

What delightful decimals and textual treasures have you discovered in your library lately? 😊

❡ Make it a tradition: Why not spend a few minutes during your first library visit each month and devise a little Dewey tradition of your own. Read the title page of one book in the 700s, one in the 710s, one in the 720s, one in the 730s, and so on. Find the very first book in the class (the lowest 700) and the very last book in the class (the highest 799). Find the thinnest book and the thickest book in each class. Make a list of your three favorite numbers in each class. If you follow a simple pattern like this month-by-month, over the course of the year you’ll be surprised how much information your students will absorb and how many academic skills they will develop without even realizing it. 🔎

❡ Dukedoms large enough: Have you found all the local libraries in your area? There may be more than you realize, and there’s no better homeschool field trip than a field trip to a new library! The WorldCat Library Finder will help you find all the library collections near you — public and private, large and small — and the WorldCat catalog itself will help you locate the closest copy of almost any book in the world. 😊

❡ When in doubt, go to the library: This is one of our regular Homeschool Books & Libraries posts. Add your name to our free weekly mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 📚