Summer Enrichment
Summer is a great time for kids to explore, create, and have fun with family and each other. Learning doesn't stop; it just takes a different form. Whatever summer courses we come up with, they have to meet several criteria:
- They have to cause you to ask more and more questions, and big questions;
- They have to twist your mind into knots so that you think creatively, like a kid:
- They require students to make monumental (huge and significant like the Washington Monument) mistakes;
- They have to have a mystery component -- kids love being detectives;
- They have to allow for plenty of recess and running around;
- They have to give students a vocabulary about the subject so they can feel comfortable talking with experts -- words like black hole, supernova, thermodynamics, and relativity; and
- They have to be fun!
Among the courses we are considering are:
- Taking toys and objects apart to see how they work (e.g., cell phones, clocks, microwave ovens, radiocontrolled toys, more)
- Horse behavior (they are prey animals, you know), digestion, mechanics, and vulnerabilities -- including daily horseless horse shows
- Making models of Leonardo daVinci's machines, including things that fly
- Using computers to control toys, models, model airplanes, and derricks and cranes
- How things work: grown up physics for kids
- The math that underlies video games
