My chemistry buddy
On Wednesday mornings a homeschool dad brings his daughter over to my house so she can do science with my boys. We take turns presenting the experiment for the week.
Now I know what you're thinking: "You wrote a book on science education and you still need help teaching science?" No, of course not! And ChemBuddy, who has a master's in chemistry, knows what he's doing too.
So why do we band together to teach our children chemistry? For moral support, I suppose. Partly it's because some of our kids (sadly) don't want anything to do with chemistry, and doing it as a group helps change their attitude. Partly it's because ChemBuddy has a garage full of chemistry equipment that allows me to do a lot more exciting experiments than I could otherwise do.
But I think, more than anything, it gives the two of us (me and ChemBuddy) an excuse to have fun. This realization struck me just a couple of days ago; we were busy torching sugar and steel wool to prove a point, and of course both having a blast. Since we wanted to make sure that everything was thoroughly burned, so we kept torching and torching. And then I realized that the kids were bored. Uh huh. But I didn't want to stop and neither did he.
Ah well--you either have it in the blood or you don't. One thing's for sure. This year's science program is a lot more satisfying to me now that I have a chemistry buddy.
Now I know what you're thinking: "You wrote a book on science education and you still need help teaching science?" No, of course not! And ChemBuddy, who has a master's in chemistry, knows what he's doing too.
So why do we band together to teach our children chemistry? For moral support, I suppose. Partly it's because some of our kids (sadly) don't want anything to do with chemistry, and doing it as a group helps change their attitude. Partly it's because ChemBuddy has a garage full of chemistry equipment that allows me to do a lot more exciting experiments than I could otherwise do.
But I think, more than anything, it gives the two of us (me and ChemBuddy) an excuse to have fun. This realization struck me just a couple of days ago; we were busy torching sugar and steel wool to prove a point, and of course both having a blast. Since we wanted to make sure that everything was thoroughly burned, so we kept torching and torching. And then I realized that the kids were bored. Uh huh. But I didn't want to stop and neither did he.
Ah well--you either have it in the blood or you don't. One thing's for sure. This year's science program is a lot more satisfying to me now that I have a chemistry buddy.