Since Eric was off from school in May, I decided to start summer break for Johann then too. Usually when Eric is around, the last thing Johann wants to do is study. “My live action figure is home, time to play!!!” is more along the lines of what goes through Johann’s mind. But we continued to check out the maximum number of books the library allows every visit. We planted seeds. We raised painted lady buterflies again and added on two consecutive sets of pink ladybugs. We put the global puzzle together three times. We played the Noah’s Ark math board game. We attended storytime, went to the seaport and the aquarium.
Eric did one of his last lab experiments on viscosity with Johann. We bought a large plastic beaker, filled it with seaweed glop, and dropped different objects into it to see how fast they fell in relation to each other and compared the results with how the same objects fell in water and air. We talked about gravity and wind resistance being factors and Johann remembered Galileo’s gravity experiment and hypothesis that a feather and a mallet would fall at the same speed on the moon where there was no wind resistance. (Thank you again Grandma and Grandpa Heupel for that wonderful HBO video series “The Inventors”!!!) Eric and Johann played with magnet paper to see the patterns of magnetism. We continued to do science and art activities from our projects encyclopedia.
Before I knew it June was gone. We had spent our whole break doing school stuff anyway, with the exception of daily written assignments and me keeping a record of what we were doing in my journal. Whether Eric was in school or not, I figured for July and August we might as well start Shanti School back up officially. I was very proud of Johann a few days ago when he decided he wanted to do Shanti School, even though it was Saturday, pulled out his math workbook, and started working on his own. I was getting showered and dressed at the time and didn’t even know about it until I came out and Eric told me what Johann had said. If nothing else, we have definitely instilled in him a love of books and learning!
Title: The Inventors’ Specials 6 DVD Collector’s Set
Director: David Devine; Richard Mozer; Allan King; Don Mcbrearty
My Rating:
This is a wonderful series that brings the work of 6 inventors/scientists — da Vinci, Galileo, Newton, Edison, Marie Curie and Einstein — to life and makes their contributions to science accessible to a much younger audience. Our 6-year-old son loved the entire series. It was a great way to introduce him to each inventor as well as the historical time periods in which each inventor lived. The DVDs spurred lots of questions, many rich conversations, and an even greater interest in science.
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