Hands On Science at OnlineScienceMall

My name is Nancy McNamara and my husband, Mike McNamara, and I are the owners of OnlineScienceMall. Since he was little, my husband has loved science. He still treasures the science encyclopedia his mother bought him one volume at a time. On the other hand, I grew up on a farm and although "science" was a part of my life, it was not emphasized in our school at all. There was not such thing as hands on science. It was taught out of a book. As I like to say, I can read a book on electricity, take a test and get a perfect score but I cannot rewire a lamp or build circuits. We have one child, a boy who is now 19. We found his curriculum in his school lacking in science but when he took his ACTs his science scores were high and significantly better than his other scores. We attribute that to years of doing experiments with him and his friends at home. He never liked school, even science class, but he loves science!

When we do a workshop, we will ask the children how many of them have ever planted anything or owned a fish. Often no one will raise their hand. We ask if their parents ever did and a few raise their hands. We ask the same of grandparents and few more hands go up. The world has changed and what we consider basics, often has to now be taught. Imagine trying to learn how to keep a plant alive only out of a book. One of our favorite experiments is to have children grind up the cereal that they eat for breakfast and pull the iron filings out with a magnet. We then discuss nutrition, our food sources, fortifying food and scientists who have worked in that area. There is nothing we like better than to have a child say they hate science and when we are done say they love science and want more. Science should be about thinking not memorizing, especially in elementary school. If you do not develop the love of science in elementary school, it will not carry through to higher education. The hard courses will fall in line when your child wants to learn and discover. Our goal is for evey child to think of themselves as a scientist. We want them to ask WHY and then figure it out!

Homeschool Science Education

Homeschool Science Education Good Day!!!! Welcome to the homeschool science education blog site sponsored by onlinesciencemall.com.

I will serve as your moderator for the blog site. My name is Donna and I am a homeschooling mother of five. Our oldest child is pre-med at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia and our youngest will be as he puts it "doin K5" this year.

There is much about homeschooling that can be confusing-science and how to provide a complete and comprehensive program being one issue. As I travel around the country to the various homeschool conventions, I find the subjects of science and math to be two areas of concern for parents. Why is this? I would like to open the blog with the following question: What was your experience with math and science in your jr. high and high school years? Please post as much info as you fell comfortable providing including how you were educated (public,private or home school). I will start the conversation:

I was a 100% public school eduated child with the exception of learning to read. I was the 6th of 8 children and born after an 8 year gap. All of my brothers and sisters were in school and we lived very far out in the country. My mother was a busy country wife. When I was about four I asked her to play school with me. Using a piece of paper a pencil and the Bible, my mother (who at that time had about an 8th grade education-she went on to earn her GED at 63 years of age but that is another story) taught me to read. When I entered school at six, my teacher was critical of my mother because "she is so far ahead in reading that I cannot teach her a thing" . I ended up reading aloud to the entire class from the Bobsey Twins series for at least an hour every day while the teacher "caught up". Math was very easy for me as well. I could understand the concepts and applications and had little trouble moving through the various busy work pages assigned to me. I remember asking lots of questions and only rarely receiveing what I in my infinite 6 year old wisdom thought was a good answer.
To those of us who grew up on farms, many aspects of what was later presented to us as science were just everyday things that were a part of our life. I do not remember for instance, not understanding the basics of reproduction as it related ot our animals. We all knew they had babies and had a basic knowledge of how that happened. Pollination,fermentation,plant growth, weather and the seasons were other areas that we knew about and I guess "absorbed" along the way as we helped our families survive by growing our food. I never realized how smart my father was in Physics until I took the course and realized that many of the "laws" were put to use in our barn, mainly to allow one grown man and 4 sons who were in various stages of development to do the work!! Basic animal anatomy was also a given as we performed many of our own vet tasks. Just a few years ago I went to visit a much younger cousin who was not farm raised, but has since embarked on a back to basics life style including homeschooling. She was proudly showing me her very pregnant goat. The old farm girl in me just could not resist an external belly exam -learned at the side of my father when I was about eight I think. After a good prod and feel, I told my cousin that this was going to be a twin birth. She was excited but could not understand how I could think that from the outside without even a stethescope. I told her that you just learn to feel the difference and sure enough I got a call from her about three weeks later announcing the birth of twin goat babies. I was glad that all my years away had not cost me my "baby goat hands" as Daddy used to call them. It was as much a part of our life as breathing and watermelon in the summertime.
That is why I found it so strange the way I was taught science in school. We were given books with isolated topics, seperated from each other and not much fun to read. When we asked questions or made comments related to what we knew about the topic, our city bred teacher often did not even know what we were talking about!!! As I grew older, I attended our local high school which of course was focused on agriculture. Here I learned more about "real" science, but still never quite saw why concepts had to be seperated when I could easily see the interrelationships in my everyday life. Biology teaching dissection of a frog fit as much into pond life and insect cycles to someone who had seen frogs in their natural habitat and as part of the cycle needed to control insects. Later on, I went through a nursing program that often made me laugh at both the instuctors and the students. Imagine having to teach somone how to lift the head of an elderly patient to feed them or give them a drink. Why I had done it a thousand times when one of our elderly relatives lived with us!!! One of my strengths in helping patients has been my ability to improvise and help them make do in health care related situations with what was available to them. This is not because I have an advanced degree in nursing or biomedical science, but because I grew up with very practical solutions being made to everyday problems.

When I talk to homescooling parents, I find that they are either very comfortable with science or totally scared to death by it and my "hypothesis" is that it relates to how much exposure to scientific principles they received not in the classroom, but out side of it. I teach science classes for homeschoolers and I can tell you that my groups get as much hands on real life appliccation of what they have learned a they do the "book learnin" side of the equation. A great example of this is incline planes. I teach them the principle behind them and the mathematical calculation to determine the effort needed. Then we get a chair with wheels and go outside and determine how many people can be pushed on one chair up the handicapped ramp . This makes what they have learned have life and that to me is what all science, even the most advaned levels pertain to!!!
TELL ME YOUR EXPERIENCE AND LET ME SEE IF MY HYPOTHESIS IS CORRECT!!!!