Incogneato: nope not too harsh!
Kriston - total child-led learning. I can't force anything on my stubborn kid if I wanted to. If he's not interested, it ain't happening.
To give an example. DH thought I was setting the TIVO to record WWII documentaries. I thought he was doing it. DS, then 6yrs old, was waking up early, scanning the TIVO guide and setting up shows on History channel and military channel and setting them to record. He decided he wanted to learn about history. ONe day he sat down and read the Usborne History Encyclopedia from the end all the way to Roman times. He came up with this joke. "when does a tortoise have more than 4 legs? WHen it's a Roman tortoise."
He watches NOVA Science Now, any NOVA show, loves anything about Einstein, Big Bang theory, neutrinos, Ancient History ... I don't think you can hot-science a love of those topics in a 5yr+ old.
For his science fair project this year, I thought he'd do something fairly typical, mainly a demonstration. Nope. He came up with the question "Does hot water cool down at the same rate as cold water heats up." he used our temp sensors with our LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT brick and wrote the program to monitor the temp and did the experiment. Now, he's only 7 so we did help him export the data to Excel and graph but he drew his own conclusions from the graph. DH did alter the graph to include only the temps they had in common which altered the conclusion and showed that his hypothesis was correct. My FIL (also a Ph.D. in chem eng) explained it to DS in engineering terms and I was shocked that the next day, the next week even, DS could explain. He could also extend it by drawing graphs to show what it would look like at different temps and why. I guess it's those types of things I see with him that make me go WOW rather than an IQ test. Sadly though, he doesn't get this level of creative thinking at school nor do we have time to do it at home. tonight he took 2hrs to do homework which should have taken him 20min. SIGH......
He wants to do a K'nex club which will be run by parents and engineers/scientists in the area. He'll be the youngest I think but it'll be great for him to be around older kids that share his passion for science/engineering. He'll have to do much better on his homework though to continue....
anyhow I'm having a brain dump....sorry.....
