All About Ears

We had some great conversations about ears today. When it was finished, we watched these movies, and then Hero(7) labeled a diagram and glued it into his science notebook. By the time we were done he seemed to have a pretty good handle on what happens in the ear.

Also, yesterday, I was listening to Susan Wise Bauer's lecture, "The Joy of Classical Education," and she was talking about the process and purpose of the grammar stage of learning. I don't have an exact transcript to quote from, but she talked about how difficult it is to think critically about a topic when  you don't have a solid foundation of background knowledge to draw upon. Building that foundation is the work of the grammar stage. And kids like repetition. She pointed out how you can read a favorite book over and over and over again (Dragon(3) likes "Should I Share My Ice Cream" by Mo Willams right now), and they not only never seem to get tired of it, but they thrive on it. Now that I'm watching for that, I'm seeing that with the way that Hero is dealing with science right now. He's discovered Bill Nye the Science Guy, and he loves to watch him for pretty much as long as I'll let him. He's some episodes 5-10 times now. The Water Cycle is a particular favorite. And as he gets comfortable with the content of the movies, now he's asking if he can reproduce some of the demonstrations they do in the show. It's very interesting. And he's interested in doing the experiments more than once, possibly with minor variations, but sometimes just the same, checking to see if it happens that way more than once. The repetition isn't boring to him. He's seeking it out. I find that just fascinating.


*Please note: Since I wrote this, I have discovered that Bill Nye is very anti-Christian, and that he has said that he'd like to lure Christian children away from their parents' faith. I have no desire to find that my children, upon realizing that a trusted childhood teacher figure thinks that Christianity is so much bunk, and even dangerous to society, start to question their faith. We no longer use materials created by Bill Nye, and Hero knows the reasons why.

"And also trust no one to be your teacher nor your minister except he be a man of God, walking in his ways and keeping his commandments."
-Mosiah 23:14

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