Looking through a homeschooling catalog I found 13 pages on language arts materials but then 2 for math. 8 pages for history and then 3 pages on science (mostly biology). Why is it so disproportional for math and science?
What I want to find is a kit that we can use to learn about circuits, light a light bulb, flip a switch etc. I could make my own from components at Radio Shack, but I was also hoping to find something I’d seen once before somewhere, a kit that is a bit like a plastic jigsaw puzzle so the girls could play with it easily. Any ideas?
While searching, I found this site: Bizarre Stuff You Can Make in Your Kitchen
Earlier this week, through one of my homeschooling yahoo groups I saw this piece Homeschooling Is on the Rise: a 29% increase since 1999.
From another yahoo group I learned that Jay Mathews of the Washington Post wrote a follow-up column including responses from families all over the spectrum on homeschooling.
Much of what I thought about home schooling was wrong. The conventional wisdom about this rapidly growing dimension of American education is too simple, too stereotyped and too stale.
Chris O’Donnell also informed me that John Taylor Gatto has made his book The Underground History of American Education available on-line.
Ted has read Gatto’s book and it’s been on my list for a while…
1 response so far ↓
1 Katherine // Aug 6, 2004 at 8:11 pm
We have a great electricity kit which Jason had received as a gift one time and we actually used with our science curriculum this past year. It’s called Snap Circuits Jr., by Funology (see http://www.scienceartandmore.com/browseproducts/Snap-Circuits-100-Jr..HTML
or http://www.niftycool.com/elsnapcirjr.html [have to scroll to bottom right to see it]
or http://www.builditplayit.com/electroniclabs.html)