3 posts tagged “lego”

Here's a beef that I have with *some* of the schooling NM has gotten so far: it has made learning a chore, a burden, an amazing hurdle he'd rather turn away from rather than tackle. Coming to the decision to homeschool, for this reason, was a "no brainer." We've tried to spend the last week just getting to know each other again, in terms of learning and hanging out. We've had a couple of rough days, but that's no surprise really.

One thing I am emphasizing to him, with the materials we are using so far, is that I really don't care if he gets it right or not. If he misspells "beginning" that's ok. I'm not grading him, I'm not going to test him. If he doesn't get 432-287=___ then that's fine. What we're after, I told him, is the attitude. If he makes a mistake, it's ok. "Use your eraser. Cross it off. Let's figure out how to get to the answer." It's more about developing a good attitude towards his mistakes, profiting from them and learning in general.

He's enrolled in a robotics class that uses Legos (no surprise?). A homeschooling mom and her teen aged boys are teaching the kids how to do it. I asked NM yesterday what they did in class and he enthusiastically explained to me that they were going to break into teams and build robots to compete against each other then the whole class would be involved in competitions. His voice, as he spoke, had a decidedly upbeat tone to it, unlike earlier in the day.

I told him something that I thought was a minor revelation to him, but it turned out to be a huge one: "You know that's your science class, don't you?"

"Huh? What kind of a science class is that?"

"Robotics! That's a major deal."

"What?"

He was just confused. "I don't know what you mean. You're confusing me."

I have to admit to being a tiny bit sad that he didn't consider what he was doing in that class to be of much importance. But I just told him that robotics is branch of science and it involves physics and engineering. He said it was too easy to be science so I told him he is just good at it so it's just that easy :D

I'm not sure he was convinced. But I hope we've gone back down the path of "learning really is fun" and not "learning is frustrating."

And Legos. Have a look-see: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=243039