I was chatting with the science teacher and he described how he tailored the topic of magnetism to each age group. What he described for the K kids (getting them to experiment with what it sticks to) just sounded way too basic.
Mr W (4y2m) is learning the periodic chart. I am teaching him what each element is and what the nomenclature means. We work on a new element every other day. It started out of a discussion of what fire was.
He is also asking how plants grow so the chart obsession fits right in. When I got to the part about photosynthesis he was able to grasp that is the opposite of fire because CO2 is split back into C and O2.
I do not think that things should be dumbed down for kids. Dumbing things down destroys the connections between things that allow their minds to grow.
