I don’t like fun things
So I ordered Teaching the Trivium; I hope it will arrive in a timely manner so I don’t keep Elly waiting too long. :)
While I was looking for someone to borrow it from (I only found people who liked it, wanted it, but didn’t have it), one friend said, “One of the most impressed issues that hit home for me that I got from the book…Before age 10 if they don’t get math, it’s OKAY” (it was email, so it is a direct quote). I can sympathize with that. How about if one never gets math? Is that still ok? How about if one is proud that her last math class was pre-calc 2 at 16, and 4-year-degree-and-all? Just one, generic, somebody…nobody-in-particular. :)
So can someone tell me which book I can get that will tell me science is unnecessary? A book that’s not an unschooling book? Tell me the book that says “science experiments are stupid and unnessary.” I’ll buy it. I’ll subscribe to its methodology. My mother didn’t make me disect anything, and I am truly grateful to her. My mother didn’t make me mix vinegar and baking soda or any other household chemicals, and I still turned out ok. Didn’t I? :)
So, while we’re on the subject of methodology and pedagogy, can someone tell me who can validate my distaste for experiments? :)
Personally, I have never disected anything, and have yet to run into a situation or even a quiet moment in which I thought “Hmm, I wish I’d disected a frog in high school!” In fact, should I die at a ripe old age without ever having disected a frog – it probably won’t bother me. I did take a Chemistry class with an attached lab once – got to burn things, mix things, etc. Mostly I just remember trying to pull off a piece of steel wool and deeply cutting my thumb. That and shattering a petri dish or test tube. I say a home schooled child can just wait for science experiments and full-color scale models of the solar system until… some other time. If you want to find it in a book though, I have no useful information. :-)
I love Science! However, I hated it until I got into college. But the basic stuff I did in grade school, are probably some of my clearest memories of school. When I went to Christian school in forth and fifth grade, I made a volcano, I wrote a report on dolphins, and I learned about plants. Even in homeshool, my mom taught me baking, and I took some classes from a tutor who had us take the iron out of cereal so it was floating in the milk, we disected a owl hair ball (the don’t poop, they puke up their food). I t really is facinating stuff! In college you learn about diseases and how to protect yourself, and about genetics, it goes on and on! It’s so important, beacause it tells you how and why everything happens. You use what you learned on some small scale every day! Math I can live with out, I never use anythig beyond what I learned in grade school, but, science! Science teaches us about this awesome world God created for us, and how to be good stewarts of it. (But I may be biased, considering my major was pre-nursing)
Hey now, I’m not totally anti science experiments! It’s just that I don’t want them in my kitchen! Last fall the boys made a volcano out in the back dirt yard where it belongs. There or in the science lab.
I’m afraid Mystie, you’re just a little too much like your mother in some ways. I love Amy’s enthusiasm for science and all the experiments and projects. But as a hs mom, I just can’t get enthusiastic about making more messes in the house on purpose. Besides we have all kinds of science lessons going on naturally every day if you just look around. How about those ants that find their way into the house each spring and find a gold mine of food particles in the toe kick of the lower cabinets. Or finding where the yellowjackets’ hive is. Or, my favorite, how many river rocks could there be in my yard and why?!
Mystie! This is a great thread!!! It has made me smile. I too, as a HS mom, did not like messing around with hands on science…I did not have the patience and hated the mess, especially when I can look at the pictures in a book and glean the same information. I am not a hands on learner, and am quite content with reading it in a book. But my girls absolutely loved it. I too hated science in the first 12 years of school, but loved it in college and ended up with a Bachelor of Science degree….I found it absolutely fascinating and still do (I love the medical shows on TV).
Also, regarding math….I have two right brain learners in my family, and math was not hard, but not rememberable until they were almost 10! It is okay! Alli was doing Physics calculations for fun by the time she was 14, so when it “catches” it happens VERY quickly. I also HATE math…and have NEVER used anything beyond basic elementary stuff in my whole 51 years, except when forced to in school!
The main key is being aware of your own children and their learning styles and interests, and then planning the course from there.
Just a note – I did love science, I just didn’t really feel any desire to actually DO any of it. :-) Like Connie, I’m quite content to read about it in a book. But I can see doing some at-home projects if they’re small and convenient enough – growing sugar crystals and bean plants and that kind of thing.