I am super excited to share what we did at home for our Science subject. Just a bit of background: my husband and I are homeschooling our son. We started when he was in pre-school, stopped temporarily when he was in kindergarten, and then resumed again for Prep and now, Grade One. So far, I am loving the results: a curious boy who loves to move (gymnastics, fencing), solves problems (math) and plays music (violin) and prays with me every night (well, almost every night).
I just recently read a reassuring free ebook from SimpleHomeschool.net (or Jamie C. Martin. Just visit her site and you'll see a link to her free ebook) which includes an entry on the bare minimum for homeschooling: some math and a whole lot of reading. And not only that, she made me see that having my kids take the lead in terms of the curriculum is a great thing. We don't have to stick to a fixed schedule for him to learn...and love learning. The latter part is really important to me.
So, that made me relax. :-)
Amusement Park Physics
We are working on a long-term project right now for Science. He's building an amusement park on Minecraft (Pocket Edition) and he promises me that he'll make a map of it. He already has the tickets ready. I'm really excited to see his park. Anyway, just sharing the site that we used to research amusement parks and the simple physics behind the rides: http://www.learner.org/interactives/parkphysics/. It's absolutely awesome and it has some interactive pages where the learner gets to design his or her own roller coaster. This came about after a trip to Enchanted Kingdom.
Do-It-Yourself Labs
In the meantime, we were playing with a new free app that we downloaded called Piig Labs (we use AppsGoneFree to find out what apps are free every day). The volcano project was presented using a virtual environment. Badger was really excited to do it in real life. I was really happy to see him excited!
So, we did a bit of research. I didn't know that it was really easy to research! We did it before when we made a whirlpool from scratch (just two bottles and some electric tape). He loved repeating the experiment to get the same results.
So, here's the link where we got the volcano experiment: http://video.about.com/chemistry/Erupting-Volcano.htm. It's really easy to follow. Plus, the basics are: a plastic bottle, some newspapers (ideally, you should use clay or dough), baking soda, dishwashing liquid, and vinegar. That's it!
We had so much fun! Badger wanted to do it again. The enthusiasm that I see in his face when he learns about something that he is curious about is really fantastic.
I look forward to more adventures. And this time, I want him to continuously take the lead.
