To me the sweet spot of homeschooling happens when activities with friends collide with hands-on learning, current events, and the child's personal interests. This sweet spot occurred for us over the last seven days.
On Thursday, Jack and I had a date to go pick out a new LEGO set for him for meeting a personal goal. We arrived at Target and he promptly picked out a Ninjago set. But as we walked to the front of the store he changed his mind...
We went back to the LEGO aisle and after much debate, he chose the Batman Space Shuttle. I initially tried to talk him out of it because of the price, but he pointed out that a deal is a deal. And he was right. So I acquiesced and we left with the shuttle.
He spent the rest of the day building it (it was almost 700 pieces with an instruction booklet of 100+ pages). By Saturday morning, he had completed the entire set (he would have finished on Thursday, but I made him take breaks for pesky things like school, chores, and eating).
The following day, I had made plans for us to meet up with some friends at the Challenger STEM Learning Center at UTC. Sometimes our Friend Fridays are purely fun, sometimes they have a nature focus, and sometimes they are more learning centric. This day was the latter.
I had no idea that the Challenger Center even existed on the UTC Campus. Evidently they host field trip days for local schools, special homeschool days like what we attended, and also camps.
The day we were there was for kindergarten through third grade. When we arrived, we found our friends and then everyone who was there was divided into two groups. The groups rotated through three classrooms with hands-on STEM learning.
In the first room the kids learned about satellites and had a chance to put together items to make 2D models (flat) for the younger kids, and 3D models were built by the older kids. I'm pretty sure Jack could have handled the 3D model, but he still enjoyed his project.
The second class taught the kids about the difference in reflecting and refracting light and how that works in a telescope. And then a prism was used to show the kids how concave and convex mirrors can change the path of light. After this demonstration, each child was given a telescope and we went outside to use them in the parking lot (with a stern warning not to look at the sun!).
Finally our group was taken on a shuttle simulator. Jack was very excited to buckle into his seat with a buddy. The main screen told us that the Challenger was taking off and heading for the International Space Station. There was a count down, the seats rumbled, and few minutes later we had "landed."
At the "International Space Station" the kids were taught that astronauts did research while they were in space. Then the children were tasked with completing various research at stations of their choosing.
Jack chose to weigh items, and then worked on connecting a battery to a circuit to make a light bulb work. He also had to figure out what kinds of materials would conduct electricity (this was his favorite station).
Isaac found a station where you had to determine which of the provided items would sink or float. He had great fun putting all of the items into the water tank at one time.
The entire day was hands on, and two hours was the perfect amount of time for this age group to try various experiments and also learn from the instructors. It was $10 well spent for a field trip. I think we will look into their summer camps as well.
After our visit to the Challenger Center, Jack was even more engaged in his Batman Shuttle. He had a better understanding of how it would launch into space and what its purpose was.
Then on Tuesday, I heard on the radio that SpaceX, the first private rocket created by Elon Musk of Tesla, would be doing a test launch into space. While we waited for Jack's PE class to start at the YMCA, we looked up a demo of the launch and talked about the rocket. I immediately stuck a reminder in my phone with the launch time to make sure we had a chance to watch it live later in the day. To be honest, I was probably more excited than Jack.
The launch ended up getting pushed back twice due to wind issues, but around 3:45pm on Tuesday afternoon, we stopped everything we were doing to watch the launch stream live on our television. If you missed it, you can watch it here.
All I can say is, "Wow." I had no idea it was possible for rocket boosters to come back to earth and land vertically after a launch like this. You can watch them land here, and read more on Wired. It was truly amazing.
So how does this tie in with Jack and our sweet spot? Well after watching the SpaceX Test Launch, Jack has been acting out the launch with his Batman Shuttle. He shows us how it launches, how the boosters come off of his shuttle and fall back to the ground, and how the third booster falls off at the end. He is obsessed.
He loves LEGOs, but typically builds something and then it ends back in pieces in the LEGO box. Not this time. Yesterday he accidentally dropped his shuttle and it broke into pieces . So he took the entire thing apart and rebuilt it, partially with the instructions and partially from memory.
I'm so glad that we have school days and weeks that look like this.
If you've been following along, here are our previous Friend Friday adventures this school year:
August: Coolidge Park
September: Creative Discovery Museum ⎮ Greenway Farms Picnic ⎮ Chattanooga Zoo ⎮ Big Soddy Gulf
October: Reflection Riding Center (Monday Friend Day) ⎮ Charlotte's Web
November: Creative Discovery Museum ⎮ Pioneer Days at Audobon Acres
December: Christmas Cookie Party ⎮ Christmas Cookie and Bird Ornament Party
January: Creative Discovery Museum ⎮ High Point Climbing Day
