Shocking revelations!

One of the reasons I wanted to start home-schooling was the lack of science and math at our school. We were doing okay by the Chicago standards...but I was in grad school way too long to believe that the Chicago standards aren't nearly as rotten as our politics. I've had few worries about reading. My kids take to reading like ducks to water. We have to fine tune the grammar, and getting Hannah to write anything rather than draw it is like pulling teeth, but we're working on it. Spelling is a bit of a struggle--like grammar it's hard to make it fun. I've also never been good at spelling. Thank God for spell-check. History is a trip...and that's a good thing as we have been traveling like gypsies this year.

I've gotten better at math through the years, and I'm pretty confident that I've got a better grasp of at least the basics than some of the teachers the kids have had. I'm not so insecure, nor so secure in my math knowledge that I am worried about experimenting and trying new ways to solve problems. As I've gotten older I also find that I like math more and more because there is always a RIGHT answer. When you're analyzing a poem or writing a paper there's not always that distinction.

But my favorite subject turns out to be science. What I like most about science is that we can have fun with it. A lot of fun.

Hair raising fun!

Super-charged fun!

We used lots of fun equipment today. Batteries. Wires. Lights... We're studying electrical currents. We did experiments with static and batteries today with a short digression into what makes good conductors vs. insulators.






 Looking at this photo, I'm afraid that I might get shut down mistakenly as a bomb-making lab, but I swear, nothing exploded (apart from a balloon in a demonstration of what happens when you attach a 1.5V bulb to a 6V battery.)

I think the kids are having a good time. Not surprisingly, I think I'm the one having the best time.