Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Sun studies





Allegra writes: Last week, during the public school spring break, I attended a four-day science workshop on solar energy. This supplemented our home studies in Science & Technology and provided a much-needed break from in-home school.


This program innovatively blended science, art and humanities to create a very well-rounded experience. We discussed how the sun was formed and its importance to Earth, the mythology of the sun, and how we can use the sun in ways other than just collecting its energy through solar panels. We supplemented all of this with hands-on activities, including building and using a solar oven, making “photographs” with shadow-capture paper, and building a spectrograph that reveals the spectrum of colors when pointed at white light.


Workshops such as these can count as both science and art studies. If you take advantage of public school breaks by attending educational programs, you can make homeschooling easier and more meaningful, and maybe even shorten the school year.