Interest driven education and *real* tea-time

[Porridge]

18 hours ago, Lovinglife123 said:

I love this… but how do you guide them on topics?  For example we are studying early American history soon, and I’d love to do more interest led, but what  if they don’t know what they want to learn about..?

It might be helpful to have a resource that serves a spine — you can find topics of interest for further study from a good  spine. 
 

also- what local resources are available in your area? You could build further study off of field trips to nearby sites.

[8filltheheart]

22 hours ago, Lovinglife123 said:

I love this… but how do you guide them on topics?  For example we are studying early American history soon, and I’d love to do more interest led, but what  if they don’t know what they want to learn about..?

(It always gives me a jolt when old threads of mine resurface.  🙂  IIRC back when I wrote this thread, my 23 yod  was in elementary school and was really into ornithology.  She is now a college graduate (with degrees in Russian and French and getting her masters in library and information sciences.  Literature and languages definitely reflect the interests she had as she grew older and chose to pursue during middle and high school.)

You don't have your kids' ages in your siggie, so my response has to be fairly generic.  First, I start by asking different questions.  When they are younger, my question wouldn't be what do they want to learn about early American history.  When they are younger, I ask them guided questions with options.  It is the answers to my questions that would lead to what topic we would study, not how to study it.  If early American history has already been selected, then all of the options/plans for studying it would be selected by me.  Their input would have lead to selecting early American history, not my just making the decision.  I would have asked them about different things they might want to learn about--clipper ships, pirates, Native Americans or a different history topic altogether and then let them choose.  If they chose early American history, I would make sure to include the topics I mentioned that led to that choice within the greater context of what I covered in general.

For science, similarly I give them topics to choose from and then give them a choice of books to read.  

By the time they are older, my kids have all been full of opinions about what they want to study.  Some topics have to be covered simply  bc they are required for high school graduation per my homeschool goals. But, when they are older, they have far more input into the hows (like selecting the books for a subject), etc.  

Edited April 26, 2022 by 8filltheheart

[Lori D.]

42 minutes ago, Lovinglife123 said:

... For science… I definitely would like ideas to present him...

Life Sciences
- anatomy (human body) (systems, 5 senses, germs, tooth care, nutrition, health...)
- zoology (animal kingdom) (mammals, reptiles, birds, amphibians, insects, fish...)
- botany (plant kingdom) (kinds of plants, seeds, leaves, seeds, flowers, stems, roots, photosynthesis...)
- marine biology (sea kingdom) (food web, levels of ocean/types of creatures...)
- ecology (life cycle, water cycle, food web, protecting the environment / pollution, biomes...)
- forestry, gardening, horticulture, hydroponics, rot, fungus, composting, earthworms...
- life cycles, habitats, food chain, the zoo, the farm...
- marine biology
- animal speciality: equine science (horses); ornithology (bats); herpetology (reptiles/amphibians)...

Earth Sciences
- geology (rocks, formations, earth layers, tectonics, volcanoes, earthquakes...)
- erosion, glaciers, soil and soil layers
- geography (physical aspects of Earth, landforms, measuring & mapping, latitude/longitude...)
- biomes ("climate zones": desert, arctic, jungle, tundra/prairie, forest, mountain, pond, seashore, river...)
- meteorology (weather -- wind (air), sun (heat), water, weather station & forecasting...)
- types of weather: tornado, hurricane, snow, rain, water cycle, rainbow...
- astronomy (solar system & objects; deep space & objects; space exploration; cosmology)
- oceanography (tides, currents, waves, geology of sea floor...)

Chemistry
- matter (states of matter, mass, density, elements, atoms & molecules, periodic table, compounds...)
- reactions (thermodynamics, equilibrium, catalysts...)
- solutions/mixtures (water, solubility, suspensions, acid & base, pH...)
- plant chemistry (photosynthesis, how people use plants, organic chemistry overview...)
- biochemistry (people chemistry) (food for energy, metabolism, cycles, DNA, proteins, enzymes...)
- kitchen chemistry (edible reactions, solutions, mixtures, thermodynamics, etc.)

Physics
- light/sound
- energy/forces/motion
- air (pressure) and water (adhesion & cohesion, floating & sinking, density, surface tension)
- electricity/magnetism
- electronics/computers
- nuclear energy/forces
- simple machines ((gears, pulleys, levers, wheels, screws...)
- rocketry/flight
- building structures/engineering

other topics
- the scientific method / Science Fair project (see past thread: "Scientific Inquiry" by @lewelma)
- 4-H: join a project for animal husbandry, plants, rocketry, etc.
- First Aid & CPR class and certification
- biographies of famous scientists or inventors
- forensics
- paleontology, dinosaurs, fossils
- specific animal units (horses, bats...)
- use of microscope

[8filltheheart]

8 hours ago, Lovinglife123 said:

Well we started with sotw, and studied ancient and Middle Ages. My oldest(11 next week) has also read a lot of American history so I’m not sure there’s a huge interest in any particular time period or topic.  He feels like he knows everything.  He’s happy to read more, and go more in depth.  Maybe I need to ask him more questions.  For science… I definitely would like ideas to present him.  I own all the apologia science books and he’s gone through a couple of them (he likes them enough).  I let him choose and don’t require much output.  We try to explore things that come up that with him.  He doesn’t love it though. He’s never liked nature.  He likes experiments which we do.  Mystery science.  Kits from the library. 

One difference is that I don't use textbooks.  My kids read from whole books on topics whether biographies, topic specific books, etc.  For example, for American history at age 11 we might read books on Roger's Rangers and the French Indian War, Washington, Jefferson, Paul Revere, the Declaration, the Revolution, James Madison, Barbary pirates, the Louisiana Purchase/Napolean, etc.  Reading whole books on topics covers all sorts of interesting side topics and integrates the bigger picture in a way that is missed in textbooks.

For science, it is similar.  No textbooks.  We read whole books on topics.  If they don't have a specific desire, I'll find a list and offer choices.  NSTA has a great list of children's books that can help spark some ideas.  Here is last yr's winners' list OSTB 2021 | NSTA For example, I showed my dd a list of books last yr (when she was a 5th grader) and one she chose was  All In A Drop: How Antony van Leeuwenhoek Discovered an Invisible World  We collected water samples and other things for her to look at under our microscope.  It was interesting and informative.  

When they are in 5th grade, their writing assignments get pulled from their history and science reading and I assign topics that I want them to learn more about/remember. 

[Servant4Christ]

I stand by my thought that there needs to be a school of 8! Or maybe just an option where 8 gives us a list of questions to ask our children by grade/age level with a corresponding list of book titles to read and what projects, writing assignments, and possible field trips or videos to include based on the answers we receive. I can already envision this in both physical book format and in an interactive website database format. It would be glorious!

[8filltheheart]

1 hour ago, Lovinglife123 said:

I agree, I think this just comes naturally to some people 😂. Trying this more and more, but the “textbooks” keep us accountable and coming up with ideas.  That book about water I’ll be checking out to read, I like their lists too.  But I wouldn’t have thought to do an experiment with it.

Trust me. If you read the book, it WOULD occur to you. But, for the most part, we rarely do demonstrations prior to high school bc I hate them.