What is the subject area that fascinates and excites most young students? You guessed it, science! Kids are born naturally curious about the world around them and intuitively seek to explore it. They love learning about nature, volcanoes, planets, the human body, and all kinds of animals and plants. They get extremely excited watching science demonstrations and participating in science experiments. If given the opportunity, most kids would dive into science activities all day long.
It’s August, and if you’re like many home school moms you’ve started off the year “science strong.” “This year, we are going to work through this science experiment book. My kids are going to love it. We’ll have so much fun.” Mom spends time gathering a beautiful, amazing spread of science materials, living books, hands-on materials, lap books, projects, and more. The dining room table is laden with this year’s science plan and everyone is stoked.
It’s September, and you’ve started off strong. You’ve managed one science demonstration a week so far and you surprised yourself that you kept your cool when your preschooler knocked over the entire experiment. “This is going so well,” you say to yourself. “I got this.”
It’s October. Your enthusiastic science plans are morphing into chaos. You really are having trouble finding good time, space, and energy for the real deal. There’s so many other things you need to do and instead. Now, when you start science, it takes over your whole school day. No problem, right? You posted about your science mayhem on social media and all your well-meaning homeschooling friends rightly encouraged you by saying things like, “Don’t sweat it. Learning WAS taking place. And school schedule, phst! Isn’t this why we homeschool? To do what we want when we want it? Don’t be too rigorous. Enjoy your days, have fun.”
And….they’re right. But as the person responsible for their education you know you can’t always have mayhem over the attempted amazing science program that turns into an all day disastrous affair. Once or twice of week of that is enough to put any mom in the looney bin, on top of not being able to get other fun things and necessary things in.
Now it’s November. You’re exhausted. You’ve got several kids of different ages and just managing the core of their education is proving to be enough of a task in and of itself. Science is the first thing to go. In desperation, you log into Facebook and start posting in all the homeschool groups. Help! I feel guilty! I’m not doing my science. My kids are begging for science and experiments and demonstrations. We’re barely getting through language arts! You receive several helpful suggestions such as, just follow their interest and read through all the library science books. Watch Magic School Bus videos, etc, etc. But still, these require a little more than you feel like you can even give this point. But, you try…. you make it three weeks with the new science plan. You bring all the kids to the library. Interest led science books. Again, mayhem. Books everywhere, kids everywhere. They change their interest led category fifteen times before checkout and before you know it, you’re heading home with 32 books from the science section. Still not reality enough? Over the next two weeks you read maybe 5 of them.
By January, you’ve simply given up. You tell yourself they’ll learn some science this summer. Or, that they’ll eventually learn science in highschool when they’re forced to sign up for a class somewhere, or forced to endure the boredom that is a dry, science textbook approach. But what else are you to do? As a home educating parent, you’re in charge of everything! How can you possibly do everything? Well, you can’t. And sometimes you just have to leave it at that. But sometimes, when it comes to things like your kids really wanting to do science and explore, and engage, and do hands-on activities, you don’t forget it, and you don’t try to be in charge of it yourself. You reach out and try something different.
At The Classical Academy your child will receive a big, wonderful dose of all things science in our science classes taught by Mrs. Cheryl Tomas. Students will enjoy a rich science class every week at school, full of demonstrations, hands-on activities, and much more! Mrs. Tomas will also plan at-home extension lessons for 3rd-6th graders as optional ways to increase science learning based on what they learned in class. She will also provide a full collaborative program for your 7th-8th grader. But the best part? Your students receive a full year of science requirements for their grade level and all the messy, lab material, hands-on science will happen at school! Your kids will love you for it!
There’s still time to sign-up in time for the new school year! Have questions? Reach out to us on our contact form!
