I'm not really trying to beat the writer gene out of my children. I don't even know if all three of my children have it. But Lester is a former newspaperman and writer and I am a former newspaper gal and writer. Both of us now work "in communications," which is a euphemism for, "We have no math or science skills."
All respect to my fellow communicators out there, really! There's nothing wrong with being good at communicating; there's a HUGE need in this world for people who can read, write and convey thoughts in a way that people can understand. I totally understand that and appreciate it.
It's just that we want our children to:
1. Get out of our house one day.
2. Get out of our house one day.
And so, we want them to have the confidence and the ability to take on math- and science-related professions, should they so choose. Because that's where the jobs are.
We think that most likely, our kids will be inherently good at language-related stuff, because of their family make-up. My Mom's an excellent writer and a reader (nonfiction, mostly); my Dad's a poet and a voluminous reader (fiction and autobiographies, mostly); my sister Kadija would rather read books than do almost anything. She'll read anything you put in front of her. Tahira, the language arts teacher, is the exact same way. Reading is our common hobby. And there are no shortage of words in our extended family -- well, except when it comes to addressing difficult, inter-personal topics, but that is another story altogether.
Anyway, if our kids are anything like we are, we think we will have to work a little harder at getting them to love math and science, and feel comfortable and confident about their abilities to master those topics. I know when I go to board meetings at the Baltimore Urban Debate League, and the finance people start going over the financials, my brain shuts. off. I pretend like I have a clue what they're saying, or that I understand the confusing columns and rows of figures. But ummm. No. Not even a little.
So, I am really interested in what any of you science and math-y types do with your kids that I might not think to do, being a word-y person.
Already, we've started doing a few very rudimentary "experiments," which have gone over very well with the kids. They call it "doing a science."
One day we did the age-old trick of using food dye to change water in clear plastic cups different colors. Another day we put ice in bowls and watched it turn into water and talked about why cold things melt.
One fun one was putting M&M's in water and watching the colors of the candy leach out into the water, making beautiful colors (I considered this science and art). And then, if we were very patient, we could see the "M" float off into the water (or at least pieces of the "M"). Bonus: When we were done, we got to eat M&M's!
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| So sad that red dye No. 5 is so darn tasty. |
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| Dean said, "Mommy, it looks like a rainbow!" |
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| When the pack of M&M's was gone, Clair was beside herself. I think we've turned her off of science forever. |
But I'm running out of ideas that are simple and cheap and not dangerous or over their heads. And I also am not sure what to do to encourage their math skills, besides endless counting of objects. Are there math "projects" we can do with 3-year-olds?
What do you guys do to make math and science fun for your kids? Help me turn these kids into software engineers or venture capitalists or CFOs, please. Or else when they decide they want to be journalists (God help us!) and are still living in our house at age 30, we will blame YOU.
10 comments:
this was my fave as a kid: http://littleshop.physics.colostate.edu/Try%20At%20Home/goorecipeone.htm
this is tamanna by the way!!!
We've never done extra science experiments at home, except for the two week beach trip where we did some fun beach science stuff. I would say the bigger thing is making talking about science a regular conversation in your home. This starts to become big when they are 3-4 and ask a LOT of questions (average 4 year old asks something like 437 questions a day).
Simple example is why is the sky blue? So much science there. It's not blue all of the time. It's blue during the day when the light is refracting through the atmosphere at certain angles. But as the earth turns (rotation of earth!) daily, the angle of refraction changes and so does the light color (sunrise, sunsets).
Maybe the difference is that we have a scientific explanation in our house for every question? Who knows. All I know is it's good to get kids to experience everything and then let them follow their interests. Money <> happiness.
I'm going to check back for answers on this one. But it occurs to me that I was a math person not because my parents did any of this with me but because I JUST WAS. And my brother was a writer because HE JUST WAS (as a rule, Indian parents don't encourage that kind of malarkey, no offense). And my other brother was interested in science due to lots of trips to the science center, but that didn't translate into good science grades. Obviously, kids need the exposure, but after that? It might just be innate.
I'm with you. I was a reading and writing kid. Even now in budget meetings it's like they are speaking Greek. But, there is hope. Jordan was a creative writing student AND is incredibly good at math. They can be both. I'm not. But, I will cross my fingers that they will get both skills.
Some kids are definitely math kids. I used to have to give Ben math problems in bed at night for him to go to sleep. It got embarrassing when I had to write them out to make sure I was right about the answer.
It helps if you get the kids to use their counting skills for helping around the house: Five forks. Five napkins. Ten towels. When they are a little older I have about a gazillion math games they can play, especially Krypto (this needs a parent, but its amazing because the kids can beat the parent! And because you can start when they are just adding, and then add subtracting, multiplying, dividing and fractions as they get older.) And Yahtzee. And math scrabble, which is great until they realize that anything multiplied by 0 is 0. Then they hoard the 0.
Lessee... The boys are at the right age for math word problems; if Dean has 2 cookies and Cary has 2 cookies how many cookies do you have together? if Clair takes one, how many do you have left? This can be done with m and ms and turn clair on to math...
Also, pretty soon you can introduce the boys to negative numbers. And the concept of infinity. (That will keep them up at night.) When they are 7 or 8 read them The number devil. Actually, there are a lot of good children's math books, I'll look for a list.
The best way to introduce science is to find out what htey want to know and do an experiment. Also, they are the right age for making a volcano (baking soda, pour on vinegar, clean up resulting mess, I mean lava.) And diffusion--put food color in water, put in a carnation or celery, watch it turn a color, explain that the color went up the plant and that's how plants get water to their leaves.
There are a lot of good books with easy science experiments. And my all time favorite--take a baby tooth, put it in coke. Watch it dissolve ALL THE WAY. Guaranteed teeth brushing for a few weeks.....
(I'm a writer, but my parents were scientists...)
OK, so add this to the list of things that amazes me about Tanika: in addition to ALL that you already do, you're adding math and science experiments for your kids. Amazing.
So, naturally, I am at a loss here, but I'm writing this as a reminder to check this thread to see all the other suggestions.
Oh one thing that they did at Naomi's school that I thought was fun and had elements of math and science. All the kids had to bring in two different types of apples. They did a taste test, tallied the responses, made a cool chart of the results (math, science) and noted which were sweet, tangy, crunchy etc. (oops, language, but still good stuff) And then they made an apple crisp and apple sauce. As far as I'm concerned, you can't go wrong when sweets are involved. But knowing you, you've probably already done something like this!
give them legos = encourage engineering.
you can also have them cook with you and help measure things out, then yell at them for spilling flour all over the place and putting too much salt in by accident... or something
I was gonna say cooking and measuring. LOL at @bakebitehate! And the volcano-baking soda/vinegar thing. I want Deborah's list of math books! When I take the boys to the grocery store, I talk about how to figure out the unit price for things and what is the best deal. They work on counting money in Kindergarten. Understanding that 5 pennies = 1 nickel is a pretty big concept to master. When they get older, you can play Monopoly!
I have the solution! Rebrand yourselves! It goes like this: you aren't "writers" or "journalists" instead you are "Literary Engineers"! See, the trick is, just add "engineer" to everything because we all know survey after survey says that engineering degrees are in the most demand, most successful, highest paid, etc. So. there. Problem over. Eat your M&M's :)
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