Here's what we've been up to the last few days!

​English Language Arts (ELA): independent reading; finished audio book of C.S. Lewis' classic book, The Magician's Nephew; worked on spelling words in real life scenarios; reading maps and atlases for info; poetry reading; read the classic nonsense poem Jabberwocky together; public speaking to present before judges in taekwondo; helped younger students at Playful Performing Arts make up stories for skits; under public speaking/verbal directions skills... she saw a family trying to figure out Minecraft at the library and spent about 15 minutes volunteering to teach them how to play; librarians and parent of children all very impressed; she offered to librarians to come do some volunteer time teaching basic Minecraft skills; librarians took down her info to get back to her

Math: read several chapters of Life of Fred math together and played with the "Your turn to play" portions; recited a few times tables; watched Math's Mansions, a British fake reality tv show; cooking; baking; building in Minecraft

Social Studies: Decided to study exploration, maps, and navigation; got out library books on those topics; read a map reading book together; watched Once Upon a Time: The Explorers, the First Navigators on Youtube; watched Horrible Histories exploration show and exclaimed over how stupid and racist it was; returned to library and asked adult for guidance to adult reference section to look through atlases of old maps; looked briefly at maps of how people though the world looked throughout 20 centuries; poured over a book of American explorers and maps; used her new map reading skills to exclaim excitedly over where the explorers camped, or kidnapped people or spent winters; traced routes with her fingers; "Oh wow! Look mom! There was a mutiny right here!!" Our book on maps led her to look on google maps zooming in and out to see the difference in detail as scale changed; this led to being a virtual world explorer and amidst uncountable squeals of excitement she found France (unlabeled!) on the satellite map; zoomed in; found Paris; zoomed in; found the Eiffel Tower; zoomed in to street view; took a walking tour of nearby streets including INTO a Parisian cafe! Then she visited Ireland, Stonehenge England, Hawaii, Norway, India; discovered a temple site in India that looks exactly like an iPod from satellite view! She called up her Aunt to ask where her Puerto Rican side of the family is from; explored that area of Puerto Rico; and finally travelled to the city in Spain named after that side of her family; explored sites in that city; went to Minecraft to try to build some of the sites.
Also watched a Crash Course on Diseases through History. 
Also watched The Golden Age of Islam, a brief FB video.

Science: watched a documentary on sugar; we've been low on science in the last few days with more attention given to the current passion of geography/maps/explorers. That's ok - it all evens out within a week or month!

Health: made healthy meals, played outside with neighbors and alone; gave dog a bath; worked extra hard with extra classes and private help readying for taekwondo championship this weekend; stretched 20-30 minutes most days; daily meditation; hiking


Other: Minecraft, Legos, playing outside, playing with the dog, helped around the house, video games.... 

All in a day's unschooling...
​
Read Fashion Kitty
Meditated
Stretched 20 minutes while watching cartoons
Practiced taikwondo forms at home
Taikwondo private lesson: championship prep
Taikwondo class
Studied her spelling list (bc she wants to learn to spell better)
Played math multiplication games online
Played with Lego's
Did dishes and took care of the dog
Played with Little Bits electronics kit and made a sound activated light
Listened to an American Girl audio-book story all about Chinese New Year and another all about America's bicentennial
Discussed her business ideas
Figured out how much she'd make if she did babysitting, if she paid for snacks for the kids, if she paid for her own taikwondo lessons, if she put money in savings - all in her head
Found dates for Red Cross babysitting certification

As herbalists, we’re all quite familiar with the idea that bitter herbs or herbal combinations known as “bitters” are a strong digestive aid. But how exactly does this work? What occurs in the body from the first taste of a bitter to the end result of increased digestion?

The process begins with transduction: the epithelial cells of our taste buds translate chemical stimuli into action potentials received by the brain. Each of our approximately 10,000 taste buds, most of which are on our tongue - but a few located in the cheeks, soft palate, pharynx and epiglotis - contains 50-100 epithelial cells that register and respond to the chemical molecules in our food (Crash Course A&P 16, n.d.)

In the taste buds, type 2 taste receptors join with G protein gustducin thereby detecting bitterness on the tonuge (Maehashi et al, 2008). In turn, phosphodiesterase is released activating secondary messengers of diglycerides (DAG) and IP3. IP3 is a molecule that transmits signals. Due to these secondary signals, potassium ion channels are closed, and a build up of potassium ions in the cell leads to the release of neurotransmitters to the brain (Maehashi et al, 2008 & Jacob, n.d.).

The neurotransmitters carry signals which are in turn received by the 7th, 9th, and 10th cranial nerves: the facial, glossopharyngeal, and vagus nerves (Crash Course A&P 16, n.d.). The gustatory area of the cerebral cortex makes sense of the bitter taste and begins to release digestive enzymes in the saliva and gastric juices in the stomach (Crash Course A&P 16, n.d.).

From an evolutionary standpoint, bitter foods were often poisonous. Even some of the bitters we eat have small amounts of phytochemicals that could be poisonous in larger amounts. For example, spinach, wood sorrel, chocolate - and in general many nightshade and cruciferous plants - all contain minute amounts of oxalic acid which at much larger amounts of 10-30 grams can cause kidney failure (CDC, 2014). Perhaps because of this potential for poison, bitters stimulate more production of digestive acids, saliva, bile, and digestive hormones and enzymes than other flavors (Mase, 2013). Additionally, bitters can lower blood sugar and signal the body that it is full. (Weil, 2014).

Specifically bitters stimulate the liver to produce bile. The production of bile not only allows the liver to function more thoroughly in cleansing the body but also helps to break down fats and make fat soluble nutrients more bioavailable (Weil, 2014).

From sensors on the tastebuds to secondary messenger molecules that stimulate neurotransmitters; from processing by the gustatory cortex to nervous system messages sent back to the digestive track: bitter flavors work along a complex pathway to stimulate digestion.


References:

CDC (2014). Oxalic acid: Immediately dangerous to life or health concentrations (IDLH). Retrieved from: http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/idlh/144627.html


Crash Course A&P #16. Taste & smell. Retrieved from: https://curiosity.com/paths/taste-smell-crash-course-a-p-16-crash-course/#taste-smell-crash-course-a-p-16-crash-course


Jacob, Tim (n.d.). Taste (gustation). Retrieved from: http://www.cf.ac.uk/biosi/staffinfo/jacob/teaching/sensory/taste.html

Maehashi, K., M. Matano, H. Wang, L. A. Vo, Y. Yamamoto, and L. Huang (2008). "Bitter peptides activate hTAS2Rs, the human bitter receptors". Biochem Biophys Res Commun 365 (4): 851–855. doi:10.1016/j.bbrc.2007.11.070. PMC 2692459. PMID 18037373

Weil, Andrew M.D. (2014). Why bitter is better. Huffington Post. Retrieved from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-weil-md/bitter-foods_b_5206909.html

All in a day's unschooling! We spontaneously drove up to the lake and discovered that the amphibians - frogs and newts - were newly awakened.

Helena built a warmer pond for the newts and carefully noted what they looked like. We were trying to figure out if the bulge on the bottom of them was part of the male anatomy or an egg sac or what it was... 

Laying on the dock she found a frog still in torpor. We couldn't remember the correct term and came home to look it up! He hopped away when she took him out of the water, but he was very slow and sluggish and in the water she could touch him and he didn't move. He was just floating with his little head up, soaking in the sunshine, thawing and awakening from his long winter's rest.

Back at home, we looked up the lifecycle of the Eastern newt and were surprised to realize they live for 10-20 years. The sac, we discovered, is a cloaca and is part of both male and female anatomy. It is Latin for "sewer" and contains the outlets of the digestive and urinary systems and the reproductive organs. We also watched a few brief videos on amphibians.