Visiting from K-8: How did you incorporate science/technology in your homeschool?

[HappyGrace]

What did you do *right*? What would you do over again in this area?

 

I am NOT science/tech minded and neither is dh, and we're trying to brainstorm ways to make sure BOTH our dc get a good background in this, despite our weakness.

 

Dd11 is not sci/tech minded but we don't want to shortchange her, and ds8 seems like sci/engineering/tech may be his bent, but it's hard to tell because beyond Legos we don't know how to expose him to more!

 

They are doing Lego League and really enjoy that; that is what's making me realize I am shortchanging them in this area!

 

We are just starting to explore Scratch for some programming exposure.

 

I'd love to hear curriculum that you used, programs you participated in, or anything generally that you thought was helpful in science or technology or both. Thanks!

[Trilliums]

When my kids were in upper elementary, I started a science group for home schoolers. We met once a month and did a hands on science project. I had hoped families would rotate hosting the project, but I ended up doing most of them. Parents contributed supplies or reimbursed me. You can find tons of online resources and the experiments really do not have to be complicated.

 

4-H could be a resource for your family. Our local 4-H office is putting time and effort into supporting science and technology in clubs. We are starting a robotics club using the 4-H curriculum Junk Drawer Robotics (you can find samples online). 4-H is able to get grants for funding these kinds of projects from companies desiring more engineers and scientists.

 

My 9th grader (plans on going into physics or engineering) is taking Honors Chemistry and Intro to Engineering classes at the local high school. My 8th grader will probably take Biology and programming there next year. DH and I have graduate degrees in science fields but I am honestly relieved to have the kids take science at the high school (pretty high achieving school) so that they can get lab exposure and eventually take the AP courses. Of course this may not be an option for you (here students can dual enroll) but this is how we have solved high school science.

 

My kids also enjoy many online science courses from MIT and hippocampus. Plus they watch tons of science documentaries. They are getting Teaching Co. DVD courses in their stockings this year. :)

GL!

[Nscribe]

One thing I am far more grateful for in retrospect than I would have thought at the time is doing a variety of outsourced science and tech classes and camps during middle school. Museums, colleges, community colleges, private organizations offer them and some have been very good.

 

The other thing in retrospect that I have found paying off now has been keeping a well stocked set of various books and magazines around. Popular Science actually can stimulate some fun rabbit trails. I am still amazed by how much she absorbed from various almanacs, special topic books and so forth. We changed out things on the coffee table every couple of weeks and I often found them in piles in her room where she had chosen them.

 

On the tech side, I found it useful to have her create power points, animations, spreadsheets. Anything I was not comfy with myself, she seemed to figure out and teach me...which was fun. The For Dummies books are terribly underrated as well.

Edited December 12, 2011 by Nscribe
verb tense

[HappyGrace]

Thanks, so far! This is exactly what I'm hoping to hear about :)

 

Were your children science-minded to start, or did they become science-minded due to this exposure?

[laughing lioness]

Mag's are great. Science News is terrific- an overview of all the science mags big news of the week- so you get a good overview of what's going on in the science world.

My dh (a science geek) also looks at NASA and Astronomy web-sites with the kids almost daily. Everyone here is hooked on NOAA's site and can read most of the maps/sky as a result.

We've used tons of DVD's as well and go to museums every chance we get. Outsourcing.

I believe in the onion approach to education- layer the info.

[Julie in MN]

I believe in the onion approach to education- layer the info.

 

Love that quote.

 

I'm chiming in to expand on Lisa's idea, because so far, no one has mentioned much about homeschooling science. I want to put in that you can do science at home and still produce a child prepared for a science field.

 

Doing cool labs at a center with lots of supplies is fun, but not essential IMHO. Kids aren't going to really understand the science behind the cool stuff in elementary. Some will have their interest piqued which might stay with them over the years, and might not, or in worst cases might give wrong impressions about what science is.

 

(And in case you think it's "safer" to have an outside teacher do these *exciting* experiments, well, there was a boy in Minnesota who had his face completely burned in a middle school science experiment a week ago, so the news has been digging up all kinds of school science class injuries that have happened over the years. http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/dpp/news/must_read/burn-victim-recalls-science-class-gas-explosion-dec-1-2011 ) Anyways...

 

To me, the most important "skills" to work on (vs. "interest-piquing") are observation and thinking.

 

The elementary years are great for nature walks and magnifying glasses and general looking. Not every kid likes nature journals, but they can help you get an idea as to whether the child is really looking at the details. I mean, there's looking and then there's looking - KWIM? It's a skill that can take a long time to develop.

 

And thinking about why something works the way it does can help prepare students for the kind of thinking that science really requires. Cool experiments are "demonstrations" and not true "experiments," so they don't usually allow a ton of scientific thinking, such as what factors might have skewed the results. A science fair exhibit is a good way to get kids thinking through those things.

 

My oldest son is in a sciency-field (does the planning and problem-solving for natural gas wells) and he didn't have any amazing science background before college, since our local public schools are pretty lame. We of course did things at home, such as getting out in state and national parks, and various activities at home, but no experts were hired :) Also, as we've watched a lot of the "teacher intros" on science lectures with my youngest, I noticed that rarely did those scientists have a sciency-childhood. Sometimes it wasn't until the middle of college that those lecturers found their niches. And biographies of really great scientists that we've read often described kids who enjoyed experimenting *at home* with their own ideas, but almost never have we read about one who attended science classes in elementary school.

 

So that's just to say that "outside experts" aren't the only ones who can lead your kids towards a science career. IMHO :)

Julie

Edited December 12, 2011 by Julie in MN

[ErinE]

:lurk5:

[Nan in Mass]

I seems like there are three things that you want to accomplish with science/technology:

 

One is getting the basic skills and content down somehow, another is learning how to learn in a fairly intense textbook/lecture/lab situation, and the last is learning to be curious and innovative and inspired. The reasons for the first are obvious and it can be accomplished via a classroom approach or via a looser, more project-oriented interest-led approach.

 

The student needs the second if they want to go to a conventional college. My children needed help learning this, but it seems like many students çan learn it on the spot, when they arrive at college. On the other hand, my youngest, who is taking intro chem at the community college, is in a class full of public schooled students who are complaining because the professor only explains the hard parts of each chapter in the lecture and then spends the rest of the lecture answering questions and going over any problems people had doing the excersizes. They don't appear to be incapable of reading the textbook and are entirely reliant on the lecture to aquire the information. This is a problem. College doesn't work that way (or at least good classes don't). The classes move too fast for all the information to be presented in the lecture. The student is supposed to be able to aquire some of the information on their own. I worked hard with my son to make it so he would be able to read a fairly dense technical textbook and pick out the information.

 

The last thing, the inspired, creative part, is rather at odds with the textbook approach. If you have ordinary students, is hard to find time to do the first two and the last. The last takes oodles of unstructured time. You may have to protect that time from other things - deadlines for other schoolwork and the temptation to spend lots of time playing video games with friends. You have to offer enough resources that the student has something to be inspired about and something to create with, but not so many that the student doesn't have to be innovative. Necessity is the mother of invention and all that. You have to balance the administrative need for documenting one's work and the need to create good scientific habits by requiring proper documentation and scientific method with the need not to interrupt the creative process with lots of writing. (Once the writing/drawing/scientific method part comes more easily, this is less of a problem.)

 

Figuring out how to do all three of these things is tricky. I did it by compromising and not doing any of them really well. Sigh. In 6th grade, we worked on basic science content and skills and some textbook skills using Singapore's Intensive Science (or something like that). In 7th grade, we continued this with Hewitt's Conceptual Physics. In 8th grade, we continued this for half the year with the first few chapters of Conceptual Chemistry and then worked on reading non-textbook science, drawing, and writing the rest of the year (it was a big writing year). We worked on a bit of the basics of natural history along with getting writing, reading science, drawing, and thescientific method part down the first year of high school using MODG's Natural History (heavily supplimented). The second year, we worked heavily on the reading non-textbook science, the scientific method, and the creativity part. During all those years, he went to my father for hands-on training in repairing, woodworking, and electronics. This was very important because it increased his basic practical knowledge and handiness. He also, in high school, has had his own laptop with unlimited access to the internet. This (the third year), those have come to a screeching halt while my son deals with learning how to learn science during a class and gets the basics of chemistry down. Next year, he will take physics at the community college. We are half way through the third year now and I am seriously worried about how little my son has done for science and technology other than study his textbook. He is finding his class inspiring, though, and he very much needs to get those basics down, so...

 

That probably isn't terribly helpful. Is that what you meant by your question? There have been some really good science threads discussing this in the past few years. Maybe you can search and find them?

 

Nan

 

ETA: If you aren't technically minded as a family, things like Lego League are very important. You will need to find things like that to supply the basic technical/practical skills, mentors, examples, and demonstrate the possibilities. At some point, I found an older teenager that was doing the things I wanted my son to be able to do and using that as a model, tried to work backwards from there. The older one, for example, had made himself a little solar panel that attached to his backpack strap and charged his ipod. When I was driving this pack of teenagers someplace, they chattered and whenever they wondered about anything, he pulled out his laptop, dove into the internet, and had the answer in less than 30 seconds. He had customized his laptop so that he could talk to it and it dealt with a dual operating system. And so forth. I had a definition of geek in my head, being from a family that alters and costomizes everything we touch, but it was very useful to have a living example of a real live modern 17yo geek. I worked backwards from his skills and figured out what my son had to do in order to arrive there at 17. This helped me make decisions like whether to limit access to the internet, when to give a laptop and ipod, and what practical skills to encourage (like soldering lol). My son at 17 is his own self, of course, and that is fine. I knew he wouldn't be the same as the model LOL. The model's family is out of our league. But some of the elements I aimed for are there.

Edited December 13, 2011 by Nan in Mass

[HappyGrace]

I am so, so happy I started this thread-the ideas here are helping me so much! I would not have thought of any of this on my own!! It really gives me a good starting point.

 

Off to talk to dh about working with ds on "handiness" skills :auto: I would never have thought of that as part of sci/tech-but it makes so much sense when I see it written out like that!

 

I'm also going to look for those old threads too-thank you!

 

Thanks for sharing your wisdom!

:D

[Nan in Mass]

I am happy somebody else is finding the information useful. I agonized (and still agonize) over the question of how not to let down my technically minded homeschooler. It would be nice if all that work and worry benefited more than just one child GRIN. Have you ever read The Wonder Flight to the Mushroom Planet? I loved it in third grade and found a copy for my own children. Rereading it as an adult, I was struck by what a good picture of a future STEM (science/tech/engineering/math) major's upbringing it presented. (It isn't a spectacular book, but it is fun.)

 

The biggest thing you can do to not short-change your STEM children is to make sure their math is strong. College professors say this. Engineers say this. Scientists say this. One good math path is Singapore Primary Math then the old Dolciani algebra series then outsource calculus to your local school system or community college (if they are good). It seems to lead to mathematical thinking. There are other good paths as well. You need a program that focuses on the concepts, not the algorithms, and contains lots of word problems, ones whose wording varies and who have multiple steps. A program whose word problems all sound alike and all use only the concept presented in that particular lesson are not challenging enough. Aim for calculus senior year. That means algebra in 8th grade. It is easy as a homeschooler not to do enough math. Good public school students see math twice a day - once for 3/4 hour at school and then another, depending on the age, 30 minutes to at least an hour at night doing the excersize on their own. It is the rare child who can be handed a math book and told to go through it themselves. I went over any of the last night's problems that the children got wrong, read the math book lesson aloud, then solved the example problems for them in writing, talking my way through them, then assigned problems to be done later in the day. That way, they saw the math twice a day and it stuck better. It also gave them a chance to practise working through problems on their own, without me sitting right there with them. This system had the further advantage of forcing me to keep up with their lessons so that I could answer any questions. I've done the math before, but I don't remember it. Reading the lesson aloud and writing out the example problems was enough that I could then help my children with any problems. I farmed out precalculus and calculus because I wanted my children to have a chance to get used to learning math from someone else, in a classroom situation, before they went off to college.

 

-Nan

Edited December 14, 2011 by Nan in Mass

[Capt_Uhura]

Thank you thank you thank you Nan!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[HappyGrace]

Nan-you're the best, thank you! Just ordered Mushroom Planet-he will LOVE it!

 

THANK YOU for the idea to do the math 2x per day. I am going to implement that. I have recently read over the Robinson Curriculum website just for fun and I was struck by the fact that he had them working on the math so much on their own. Not that I think it's right to just throw the math book at them and leave, but I did think by reading that that there would be some merit to having them have to puzzle through some of it on their own. (And we do use Singapore with my STEM guy.)

 

Your posts were so thought provoking. It is SO so helpful to have advice from those who have btdt! THANK YOU!

 

One other thing I thought of-I'm going to have dh teach ds chess this winter for the critical thinking. I also just ordered The New Way Things Work for him to pore over. So this thread is really juicing up my creative planning on how to incorporate more daily scientific thinking for him! The math is a great tip too, thank you! :)

[Nan in Mass]

The chess is a very good idea. So is that book. You might also check out Make Magazine when he is a bit older. There are a number of books of the hack-your-electronics or backyard-ballistic or explosions-are-fun variety that appeal to future STEM majors. You might check out ham radio, also. Once these guys get a bit older and really get going, mentors seem to crawl out of the woodwork and you will be all set. Many STEM majors seem to be really, really happy to share their obscure interests with somebody. Have fun!

Nan

[tex-mex]

Former K-6 schoolteacher. :D

 

Used to work as a District Mentor and County Committees for Science for elementary grades. Once I stopped teaching and began homeschooling, the planning for one child was easy compared to a classroom of students at all levels.

 

One thing I learned to do as a schoolteacher and being on planning committees -- was to begin a scope and sequence for the years ahead. I began planning science, math, and history in this manner using what I used in my home state of teaching. No need to make it complicated -- just a simple grid of what you want covered by grade level. Use it as a quarterly or semester goal sheet to check off as you do lesson plans. Keep a copy of it in your purse when you go to a library, bookfair or store and see a DVD or book and realize it may be great for a future lesson when your child is older. Or see a tv show that would help cement understanding and you scribble it down on the grid box in your scope and sequence to buy/record in the future. But don't go crazy with overbuying supplies, either. ;)

 

One of the nice things about a scope and sequence is you can use it as a "spiral" method or "linear" method. I personally prefer spiral method as I like to introduce the concept in the lower grades and reintroduce the concept once again after 8th grade in a longer, more intensive study. SOTW, for example, is like this for the younger ages and HOAW is perfect for older grades to begin intensively study history.

 

WTM directs you how to teach math and science in a scope and sequence. But you can do your own using any curriculum -- it is a lot of planning during the summer.

 

In our home, we do not like textbooks. But LOVE hands-on learning. I made sure at the elementary levels and junior high levels were lots of interesting experiences. I loved AIMS Science as a teacher and used it with ds when he was younger. I did lots of unit study. Lots of science with the 4H club we were involved in. By the time he was in junior high, I began a LEGO Robotics club for 3 years. I had no clue what I was doing -- we had LEGO Mindstorm kits, a lot of engineer dads who came up with fun experiments, and family science nights. And field trips to places where friends could give us private tours of how things were made like video gaming.

 

Be prepared to revise if you find the curriculum does not work for your child. If you are leery of science -- have you considered Apologia for the younger ages? It is very easy to teach and you can incorporate many extra science (hands-on) activities to make it fun like Janet Van Cleave experiments, AIMS lessons, DVDs or unit studies.

 

Math is a whole different ball of wax. What works for one person may not work for another. Before planning, why not do a simple learning skills assessment of your child to determine how they learn best? Then using that style, plan your next 3-4 years of math/science with that in mind.

Edited December 16, 2011 by tex-mex

[Beth in SW WA]

:bigear:

[Guest martiii]

Hey, I like when my children are learning by themselves, and the internet is full of educational web sites, I am help my children finding interesting content on web. Recently they are interest in Antarctica, and yesterday I found a cool website with photos, movies and games- all connected with the Antarctic and krill which guides threw the content is so funny. It is called KrillFacts - www.krillfacts.org :001_smile:

[Beth in SW WA]

I am happy somebody else is finding the information useful. I agonized (and still agonize) over the question of how not to let down my technically minded homeschooler. It would be nice if all that work and worry benefited more than just one child GRIN. Have you ever read The Wonder Flight to the Mushroom Planet?

-Nan

 

Nan, thanks for this tip! My dds listened to it yesterday during our long, dark, NW rainy afternoon. They loved it! (Found the audio version at the library.) :)

[HappyGrace]

We have the book here too-about to start it! Looks great-thanks for recommending!