Years Later … have you ever asked them what they remember?

I should add, for clarity, that when I did the switcharoo explained above I knew I had two students that were two years apart.  I modified everything to be age appropriate – just as you would do if you had multiple ages narrating in, say History, or another family subject.  I kept a fair expectation for their age.

It was interesting.  Ha ha!  Isn’t that the universal “ahem” of responses?!  They did recall quite a lot that they had studied.  Obviously, for time purposes they didn’t detail every little topic that they jotted down but if they did write it down it was one they knew (that was our set up).  I wasn’t crying after I saw what they wrote.

What stuck and why?  To this they responded along their learning styles – my hands on learner remembered better when he’d done things or had visuals.  The other liked it more when she’d written it out in note form or had done problems with it.  Both said they wished they had experienced more of the science in the real world.

I knew I had done moderate experiments in all three sciences- not great, not horrible.  I knew I had wished we’d spent many more hours in the field on all three too but that never seemed feasible.  I can’t afford to outfit a whole lab in my home (even the paired down lab set ups and materials often sited for homeschooling) and I never had the time in the days to devote to long labs that might have to be repeated (more time) when they didn’t go quite right.  I see now some real, hard evidence for science education with this component.  It clearly isn’t as good without it.

Then I asked them this:  “Did your study inform your world?  Did you find the science around you and were you impressed by that or not?”  To this they responded pretty lukewarmly … they weren’t that curious they said about the “why” of their world or they weren’t overly astonished at the facts when they learned them but instead just thought “ok, cool, that’s how or why that works or happens” … which I was dumbfounded by!  Really?  Geez, note to self – try to find ways to add curiosity to your kids!  😉

Interestingly, my son said “Mom, I don’t make those connections as much with science as I do with history.  Every time I hear of somewhere in the news, I think about the history behind those peoples and that area of the world.  Maybe I just love history more?”  That’s kind of an aha moment.  I’ve always known their preferences and the subjects they gave more attention to but it was neat to hear him verbalize it that way.

For what it is worth … this was a good exercise.  I recommend you take the plunge and see what’s sticking and what’s not.  Each kid gave me a lot of feedback on the texts, books, activities we’d done too.  Valuable information as I plan the new year.