This is what we did the other morning. My daughter saw worm holes on a cartoon and asked what they were, if they were real, and how they would really work. She didn’t believe what she saw in the cartoon, though she knew she’d heard of worm holes in other venues (like Star Trek, and the jump gates in Babylon 5). We discussed several theories concerning worm holes, including the space travel theory, and so, the road into a physics lesson was opened.
You’ve heard a lot recently about unschooling. We’re more of an eclectically homeschooling family. We do a mix of parent guided and child guided education. What this means is, while we have lesson plans and a guided curriculum, my kids never hear “you’ll learn about that later” or “we haven’t gotten to that yet”. If there is a topic they are interested in, we stop and explore it, or we turn it into the next unit if it’s convenient.
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An example of this happened with my son’s current science unit: Chemistry. We’ve been studying the Civil war all year, in depth. The first half of the year consisted of Civil War science; the physics and chemistry of cannons, medicine and disease and how the Civil War advanced those fields, period photography, Steam engines and railroads, etc. We also read "Dragonsdawn" this winter, the Pern book that encompasses the humans' arrival on Pern and the discovery and alteration of dragons. I thought this may lead into Biology, but he’s been playing Spore for years and has researched biology and experimented with altering species on his own. Not that we won’t get to Biology, likely next year. No, what he wanted to know more about was HNO3, the chemical they use to burn thread. Add that to the chemicals and chemistry we learned about in the Civil War Science units and… in January we started on Chemistry.
The topic was child lead, but I found the Chemistry book and am guiding him through websites with more in depth information, experiments (he wants to play with explosions, but we’re not set up for that right now.. so he has to be content with videos and myth busters for that), etc. Our methods are not exactly unschooling, but not traditional either, more of a hybrid. It works for us.
Back to string theory… it may seem odd to teach string theory to a 9 year old, but she’s REALLY interested in science. And how else do you explain how a wormhole may, in theory, shorten the space between two points in a way a 9 year old can understand? Granted, her Science unit she’s currently working on in her workbook is on Plants, but there’s no reason you can only study one thing at a time. We take advantage of those moments; encourage the curiosity and the love of learning. In some instances that means sending them to do research on their own, in others it means taking that change of topic and running with it, guiding them to the answers, depending on the complexity of the topic and their ability.
For my daughter and string theory, this meant we talked about theory and the scientific method, though we've already covered that pretty extensively in the past, so it was mostly a reminder and a reinforcement that string theory was not proven yet, as we don't have the capability to get to black holes or form worm holes... yet, but that we were hopeful we would be able to some day. We also didn't go into the math, as she's only in 3rd grade and just finished multiplication, scientific algebraic equations are a bit beyond her yet. Keeping such lessons on the ability of the child is VERY important here, you don't want to create more confusion and frustration so the rest gets lost. I think what made the most impact (and this is how she explained it to her big brother later on) was her father taking a piece of yellow rope from our hurricane kit and making a circle. Then he showed her how to get from one point to another, you had to travel along the rope. He then explained how, in theory, gravity could squish the rope circle (his hand was gravity) into more of a ball of rope, which then meant you could jump from point to point in the circle where it touched, no matter how distant from each other in the original circle it was. A very very BASIC version of string theory, but enough to give her an idea of the concept at the level of her ability, and that she would understand and retain it, so when she runs into it later when she's able to grasp the rest, she'll have a starting point.
We still do our parent guided curriculum, otherwise my daughter would not have mastered multiplication this year, and my son would have foregone Algebra completely. They both have, to some extent, my math disability issues and neither of them would voluntarily have done any this year. I believe it’s important for them to learn, and so, we take that choice from them. I do give choices where I can. For us that means working with their interests to guide my curriculum choices in some instances, in others it means spending a day on string theory instead of plants. Sometimes it means guiding them to a web page or video, or tv show, other times it means handing my son the laptop and saying “ok, good, now do some research, then you can teach me.”
Homeschooling lets us cater our children’s education to their level in each subject. It means they don’t sit bored through lessons they already know, and extra time is spent when they are struggling. It means I don’t have to worry if they are being bullied by other kids or teachers. Homeschooling means I don’t have to rely on someone else’s judgment of what is appropriate for my kids to eat or drink or learn. You would not believe the number of teachers who have told my son that he should drink milk because it was good for him, never mind he’s allergic to it (Newsflash: if a food makes you ill, it’s not good for you). It’s about choices that we make for our family. Homeschooling goes on every moment my children are awake. They learn about life, they learn skills to succeed in life, not just in an office or school. That means budgeting, cleaning, taking responsibility for one’s actions, compassion and empathy, problem solving, things every one of us does every day. For us that’s what homeschooling is about. Homeschooling is flexibility, and learning together, all day, in everything we do.