Generally, I suppose it has been successful. The kids seemed to learn and enjoy our activities, but there were also a couple of failures. The failures have mainly been mine for poorly understanding an activity we attempted. One was trying to gather earthworms to compost in the house. The three worms we found didn't last and very soon we realized we needed more research. We found out, of course, that you need special red wigglers and you need to be careful about buying or constructing a worm bin. We are likely going to proceed with getting the right worms since it is a way to compost indoors in the city, but we felt silly for putting time (no money - thank goodness) into something without research. The other failure, while not much wasted time, made me feel really stupid. We tried to make a rainbow using the sun, a mirror and water, but failed miserably. It seemed to be such a basic activity, but we couldn't figure out what we did wrong. Fortunately we saw a rainbow in the sky a few days later near our house, no need to take the bus to Niagara Falls!
As the teacher of my children, I have spent the past several days back and forth on the implications of some of these failures of activities. To an extent, I feel that "all's well that ends well" - nothing really bad or really great - end of story - move on. In other ways, I am very worried that I am setting a poor example for my kids regarding preparedness by not testing the activities before introducing them or not doing enough research before jumping into something. Still in other ways, I think I may be setting the exactly the right example by showing that science and life is trial and error and that you continue the exploration and pursuit of truth no matter what happens. I would like to comfort myself that this this precisely the point of homeschooling, but I am not sure when I will stop wrestling with this. They are 5 and 4 now, won't this dilemma get worse as they get older? What do you think, success, failure, or no big deal? Have you had experiences like this?
We did a compost project a year ago and just used worms out of the woods by our house. Worked like a charm. But everything you read does tell you to use a specific type.
ReplyDeleteBlessings
Diane
I got intimidated when the ones we got behind our house did so poorly so fast. Perhaps you have different ones near you since you mentioned woods or perhaps I did something else wrong. I am glad to hear that yours worked.
DeleteI think it's real life, and thats the best example. (by the way, we just like seeing rainbows in the mist of the water from the hose when I water the garden. no mirror required!) If it bothers you as the teacher, then by all means, take a few minutes to be better prepared. But alot of it could be slanted as teachable by "what did you observe from this?" and then let them come to the conclusion about what may or may not have been "wrong" or could have been done differently. I've had experiments go awry in hs. It really is just life!:)
ReplyDeleteThe more I talk to people and hear from people it seems that it is just life. Hopefully, this will make my kids bounce back from failure better than I did growing up. With the pressure of conventional schooling, I went out of my way to do everything right to avoid failure and I am not sure it helped me with later challenges. Thanks so much!
DeleteWould you rather your kids saw you as the all-knowing, never wrong, font-of-all information?
ReplyDeleteOr wouldn't it be more fun to empower them to find their own answers to things? Problem solving is a very valuable skill. When things go wrong it is a wonderful opportunity to let them see you trying to solve it (as you did!). You won't always get things right, and you won't always be able to solve their problems - but you can teach THEM to take charge, research answers to problems and solve problems for themselves. Even not finding the answer is ok - you usually learn something anyway.
Things always go wrong at some point. But by being a great role model you are teaching them much more than the successful experiment would have!
That is a good point especially with all the evidence that school kids (and people of all ages) don't know how to problem solve. Thanks for your encouragement!
DeleteI agree with Julie's comment. I think teaching them to be unafraid of failing and figuring out what went wrong is a great lesson in itself. My own kids have our family's perfectionist gene. They hate to fail at something. But without failure, nothing new would ever arise. Failure means you are trying something different, stepping out of the box, learning a new way of looking at things. Have them read a biography of Thomas Edison, who famously said "I have not failed, I just found 1000 ways that won't work." If you can teach them to be unafraid of failing, of learning from their mistakes, they will be able to accomplish any goal they set their minds to!
ReplyDeleteI agree also with what has been written above about trying experiments to see what happens. The past year, I've had some work and some not work well. How my daughters see me react to the situation - of being willing to see if we can find out why something didn't work, and not giving up on the tactile-hands-on experiences - is (to me) important. I want them to know that just because something didn't work the way they anticipated, that they shouldn't give up. They just try a different way...or try something new.
ReplyDeleteThat makes sense too. I am not sure I handled our experiments that didn't work all that well in the moment, but we did continue on with more hands-on things after that showing that we would continue to try new things. I sounds like my longer term attitude is fine, but need to work on my in the moment reactions. Thanks so much for sharing your experience!
DeleteLiz - like everything, great homeschooling comes with practice. The fact that you have said that maybe your 'in the moment reaction' wasn't as good as it could have been, shows that you have learnt from it - and I am sure you will handle it differently next time. That is a great attitude to have. It takes something really special in a person to be a homeschooler - and you have it!
Delete