Science, it can be the vice ore the virtue of your homeschool. We have tried some very popular curriculums; some text books, some notebooking options. My oldest son who is a visual learner absolutely thrived with the textbook approach, but my second son who is a kinestetic (hands on learner) treated his lessons from the science textbook with the same regard as a root canal. And while many girls love notebooking, my boys are practically allergic to paper and writing utensils.
After 2 years of unfinished notebooking projects followed by 2 years of stubbornly insisting that we “get through” a textbook, I finally just decided my kinestetic learner could just be an auto mechanic and we’d just skip the things that would allow him to choose college.
However in my heart, I wasn’t really at peace with that idea. I had always loved science and had visions of “little Edison’s” from my house winning the local science fair. But Edison never learned science from a textbook; in fact Edison’s’ mother found herself in very much the same predicament as myself. She had to educate a boy who had been kicked out of school and declared to be “addled and unteachable”. (I think that just might be an old fashioned phrase for ADHD.) This difference between Mrs. Edison and me is she never considered giving up on her son, she bought him a chemistry set and let him loose with it on her porch…and how we know that home educated kid as one of the greatest scientists of his century! I want to be more like my hero Mrs. Edison.
Anyway, during our sabbatical from science education I continued to Google “science and homeschool” and search all the popular homeschool curriculum websites and catalogs for some magic pill. I am glad to announce now, to anyone who is interested in listening, we have found a solution to our science woes. The best thing about it is that I don’t have to teach it! My kids’ get to learn practical, high-school transcript-worthy science in the Edison fashion, from an actual rocket scientist turned mom (and no I am not making this up).
Aurora Lipper has become my new homeschool curriculum hero. (I will have to blog later about the other awesome people who have gotten me through other homeschool crisis’.) She has spent literally hundreds of hours writing about and recording her homeschool science campls and experiement ideas and demonstrations. We subscribed to her site and have everything we need to cover science for my 2nd grade inventer of turtle traps all the way up to my Jr. in High School, who wants to major in Physics when he goes to college.
I can’t imagine how much time went into creating her site, let alone recording hours upon hours of videos. We are really loving her resources this summer. I guess I should say my kids even more that me, since my stairs and living room were covered with “roller coaster” tracks from their physics experiment. I am glad they can easily roll the whole thing up like a garden hose and save it for later.
I am also glad to announce to my readers that this particular experiment is one of her freebies on her website. If you try it out too, please tell us what you think. I hope you will get inspired and enjoy some fun science in “Edison fashion”.