"When you breath out the air is hot."

Interesting observation by my kids this morning.  Both Little Man and Princess were goofing off testing temperature of their breath.

They breathed in and out with their hands up to see if the air they breathed in was as hot as the air they breathed out.

Later in the day I suggested they 'purse their lips' and breath out.  Of course that made a nice cool breeze.

We talked about air flow, and how moving air takes the heat away with it making us feel cooler.

Princess also made a tiny fan to experiment further.

While searching for more details regarding why this works, I got a bit sidetracked on Kahn.  I love that his videos are always online and free.  BUt his science is a bit over the head of the kids.  I keep trying though.

Today I found out he has a TED talk, stopped over to listen and loved his 'bicycle' analogy.  Math in schools today tends to be like giving a kid a bycicle a lecture on how to ride, then later on testing them.  If they kinda manage to get the bike to go maybe deal with a turn we stamp them with a C average grade and then hand them a unicycle to ride.

Silly right?  We never really ask for mastery just C grades.  While Math is somewhat more like seeing a kid who can ride and turn, and then asking them to try a figure 8.  We still see in schools children who are getting poor grades because of one specific problem area (or several)  And rather than reviewing the problem areas, we pass them on to the next group.  Instead we need to give them more practice on turning, and maybe a giant figure 8 to work on.

Learning about the Los Altos test (not positive on name) where he set up a really interesting program to help teachers figure out what the students are listening to and working on, and modified so they can focus on helping the students learn, rather than on grading or paperwork.  Because the students get to work at their own pace, they often can make great leaps and jumps ahead.