Home Education. How We Do Science

We home educate, we’ve done it on and off for all our children for years, currently we are educating a 6 year old Mr I, 10 year old Mr A and a nearly 14 year old Mr K. One of the questions I get asked regularly is “How do you do science?” Even a few fellow home edders have a little shudder at how they will “do” science or how they should be “doing” it now. I love science, I mean really LOVE science, because science is everywhere. We all teach our kids science from an early age without even realising it, so I’m going to label it, bear with me and you’ll get my drift…

You’re singing “old Macdonald had a farm ” to your baby, the mooing and baba’ing is all biology!

You bake muffins with your 3 year old, the mixing and rising of the mixture, chemistry.

You look at stars with your 6 year old, physics.

Your 10 year old is planting a herb garden, biology.

Then puberty hits, ahem….whole lot of biology going on there! Lots to discuss, and isn’t it great that home educated children hear it all from us rather than playground banter.

You are making bath bombs using bicarbonate of soda, lavender oil and food colouring, chemistry.

Your child has pet, biology.

Get my drift, when you look at it like this you realise science is kinda hard to avoid! Children absorb scientific knowledge simply by living, if you want to ignite that spark then I strongly suggest buying a good magnifying glass, microscope, crystal making kit and planting a garden. Work books can be great to drive home the knowledge and open their minds to new ideas they might not have considered.

A great science day is a trip to the beach or the museum, I grew up wandering the halls of the Natural History Museum London, its worth a visit just to examine the amazing architecture never mind the dinosaurs!

The Science Museum London has a wonderful hands on approach, bringing science to life for kids of all ages. Launch Pad holds fond memories for me.

Another great place to visit to get your children into science is the Royal Institute they along with the museums all do wonderful tutorial days and events which are mostly free/low cost.

Science experiments can often be done easily and cheaply at home, fun with a torch and a cheap plastic prism is an easy way to demonstrate that white light is made up of the full spectrum, looking at onion skin through the microscope is a good example of plant cells, checking out snowflakes with a magnifying glass. I could go on and on and I’ll probably add to this list in time.

Making My Own Laundry Powder.

 

We go through laundry powder very quickly, last year we decided to start buying eco friendly washing liquid which costs us a little more but is ethical. Recently I felt brave enough to have a go at making my own big batch of powder. It was a great sucess the clothes come our fresh and soft.

Ingrediants

Soda Crystals Powder 1 bag 500g

Baking Soda 1/2 a small box @ 225g

Oxy Clean Stain Remover Powder 1kg

Bar of Soap- grated.

Some people like to add Natural Borax and use less soda, I mixed the lot in a very large pot and I use a couple of scoops in each wash, its useful for cleaning the cooker top and leaves sauce pans sparkling clean.

This batch cost me about £4.50 and last about a month, we are a large family doing about 15 washes a week so I got about 60 washes out of this 7.5pence per wash.

 

I got all the ingredients from my local Savers branch incase you were wondering where to buy these things.