A few months back, there was talk on various message boards about whether or not homeschoolers adequately covered science. I can’t speak to long term experience with either an abundance of science or an embarrassing lack thereof, because I’ve only been doing this for a couple of years, but I can say that my girls love science. They love it just because it’s so HANDS-ON. Because when it’s time for science, it means (more often than not) that it’s time to DO something. To touch. Test. Collect. See. Find. Smell. Taste (yeah, sometimes).
And for the same exact reasons that they love it, I often find myself…avoiding it. Because they’ll touch. test. collect. see. find. smell. taste (yes, sometimes.) And every maternal instinct in me wants to tell them
DON’T!
Don’t touch that. Don’t test me that. Don’t bring that in the house collect. Must you stop and look at that right now see? Do NOT put that in your mouth. Whaddaya mean you smell something??? What did you do??? You found something? WHERE? Whatever it is, don’t touch it until I see it.
When I hear of homeschoolers who say that they just never get to science, I wonder if the reason isn’t so much that other “more essential” work must come first, but that rather it’s just that science can be a bit of a bother for us mothers (and I include myself here, because last year I, too, found myself shoving science away into the no-man’s land of maybe next week.)
Because let’s face it. Science isn’t easy for us. Oh, at this age, it’s a breeze for the kids. But for us, science means MESS. And science on top of a neglected pile of laundry and stacks of dishes can be daunting. Doing science INSTEAD of dishes and laundry requires concentrated effort.
But it’s worth it. It’s so worth it.
This autumn, find yourselves a little patch of woods. Just a little one. And get yourselves a notebook and some pencils and a plastic bin. And go out there with juice and cheese and crackers. And touch. smell. find. listen. collect. see. breathe. sketch. photograph. dance. taste. be.
It’s not nearly as messy as you think.
I think that it is nearly impossible NOT to be learning science all of the time! A lot of people do not even realise that they are doing it as they really do not think about it!
Before we started to homeschool, I was guilty of this in a big way. Because I never really thought about what the children were learning, I saw science as “high school in the lab” type stuff. Now we absolutely love it! Everyday brings a different experience.
DB asks so many questions that lead to conversations in the car. For example, one day he piped up with “Mum where does all the poo go when you flush the toilet?” “Mum why are all those ships lined up along our beach?” “Mum, Why do they want to take the coal? Whats it for?” And on an on it went.
I don’t know how you could possibly not “do science” in homeschool!
Great post and pictures!
The kids have unscheduled science every day by just playing and observing in the outdoors. I love to do science projects with the kids but it is an effort to set aside the time and plan for them. It always seems like we need something for the activity that we don’t have.
Science is all around us every day if we just look for it. Cooking is great science to do with kids…I’m also very, very thankful for all the awesome shows on Discovery, PBS and Animal Planet…
Love the photos-the new camera is great!
On the value of science:
Did you ever have someone write on a whiteboard with permanent marker? It won’t come off. (Hence the name “permanent”.) This happened in my office many years ago and I really didn’t want to have to order a whole new whiteboard and take the other one down, yada yada yada.
Enter my colleague, Michael. Apprised of our dilemma, he simply picked the white-out up from my desk and swabbed it liberally on the offending characters. A couple of wipes with a towel and voila, like magic, our whiteboard was pristine again. He had some scientific explanantion for why and how this worked, but more impressive to me was that he knew it would.
Science rocks, and it’s everywhere.
-RegularSis
bee u ti ful. And so true. I avoid science projects like the plague. My kids live for them.
Great post! And I’d like to point out that the school teachers are also “not into the mess” and don’t do enough science - so it’s not just the homeschoolers! Labs are chaos in a classroom, and many teachers just do “demonstrations” to avoid the issue altogether.
Good point, Sara. I agree.
In fact, one of my most poignant memories of public school science was how the boys used to play with the alcohol burners in 7th grade. Whenever the teacher had to leave the room for whatever reason, they’d run to the back of the room with an alcohol burner, dump the contents into a sink and toss in a match. The alcohol would ignite in a single giant FWUMP! If it worked right, they could be back in their seats taking studious notes off the board by the time the teacher came back in the room.
Ahhh…memories.
The only other thing that stuck with me from 7th grade science is the definition of miniscus. Don’t ask me why.
You crack me up. But you right. I went and bought a human boday figue from Wal-Mart on sale. It’s cool and not a mess. Last year we went fossil hunting and my son found that arrow head and got $800 for it. (keep that in mind) LOL! But, yes, the mess does make me stray away at times.