Pulling apart appliances is a great idea. I've had that in the back of my mind but pushed it back for too long. Thanks for the reminder.
This article reflects some of my own views. I moderate my kids' access time to electronic games very tightly. We have frequent group discussions on things we've seen, done, learned, etc. The conversations are really amazing and are a good lead-in to bedtime.
It shouldn't surprise me, but I often hear more intelligent conversation from my kids than I do from most media sources. In fact, we sometimes analyse places like The Verge for their prejudice as an exercise in critical thinking around flawed arguments and fallacies. We look at youtube for history, engineering and biology videos. We've developed board games, Rube Goldberg machines, flying craft, gone on bike hikes, looked at water safety...
If you live in the suburbs and you look in your local area, there are many free educational community activities too. We've looked at construction, robotics, software and sports activities to name a few.
We even make up our own learning activities. Eg. we went shopping together and discussed food priorities, food costs for equivalent items, set a budget, discussed buying local v/s imported food, etc.
There are learning opportunities all around. I feel that education on computers is over-rated and critical thinking outside of a computer is underrated. It just takes a lot of time and energy. I usually put in a weekend of planning about a month before school holidays.
I don't know, I opened up (too) many toys and appliances as a kid and the only thing I learned was how to open things up. As far as I was concerned, the resistors in there were lined up in a pentagram to summon the proper amounts of electrical current. Guided disassembly would have been much less frustrating for me (in terms of learning) and my parents (in terms of me not being able to reassemble everything quite perfectly... or playing bomb defuser)
My boys (3 & 5) love wrenching on old lawnmower engines. The trick is not to find something for them to work on, it's leading by example.
They will do what they see you doing, up to a certain age.
I have a sheet of paper from daycare, pride of place in my office, that reads "What do you want to learn this year? I want to learn about making projects"
This article reflects some of my own views. I moderate my kids' access time to electronic games very tightly. We have frequent group discussions on things we've seen, done, learned, etc. The conversations are really amazing and are a good lead-in to bedtime.
It shouldn't surprise me, but I often hear more intelligent conversation from my kids than I do from most media sources. In fact, we sometimes analyse places like The Verge for their prejudice as an exercise in critical thinking around flawed arguments and fallacies. We look at youtube for history, engineering and biology videos. We've developed board games, Rube Goldberg machines, flying craft, gone on bike hikes, looked at water safety...
If you live in the suburbs and you look in your local area, there are many free educational community activities too. We've looked at construction, robotics, software and sports activities to name a few.
We even make up our own learning activities. Eg. we went shopping together and discussed food priorities, food costs for equivalent items, set a budget, discussed buying local v/s imported food, etc.
There are learning opportunities all around. I feel that education on computers is over-rated and critical thinking outside of a computer is underrated. It just takes a lot of time and energy. I usually put in a weekend of planning about a month before school holidays.