Granted, I am teaching it to a first, third, and fourth grader. A wonderful benefit to homeschooling is that I get a second chance to learn things that didn't interest me or I was never taught when I was in school. I actually enjoy teaching them the subjects I never cared for in school more because I am learning along side them and am more patient, allowing for a learning curve. Whereas, I am decidedly less patient when I know the info like the back of my hand and they aren't getting it immediately. On top of that, I forget to teach steps sometimes that I took for granted because I have been doing it forever. The areas this comes out in the most are math, sewing, and other crafts.
Back to physics, we are using Elemental Science this year which requires doing experiments in Gizmos and Gadgets, Physics Experiments for Children, and a Kinex Gears Kit. Brian helped me pick out the more important topics for them to do this year since the whole curriculum would have been too much. We have made hovercrafts, an "Inertia Zoom Ball," a catapult, and a dart launcher so far. Then we have done the first simple gear project in the Kinex Simple Gears Kit that I bought.
 |
| Genna's got the marshmallow catapult here. |
 |
| Hannah has a super serious dart launching face on, right? |
 |
| This is about as focused looking as Genna gets, EXCEPT when she is on the balance beam in gymnastics doing dips. |
At first glance this experiment seemed too fun to teach us anything, but in the end I really understood how simple fans worked. I especially liked the part where we change the size of the driver gear and the driven gear to change the speed of the fan. I normally don't think too much how things like this work, so I was impressed.
No comments:
Post a Comment