Combine two nearly twelve year olds, a tremendous love for Harry Potter and his world, a pile of Hogworts science kits, and insatiable curiosity, mix in free Harry Potter soundtrack music curtesy of Amazon Prime Music, stir for a few minutes, and then watch the magic happen.
Science these days has been absolutely ruined by people who have no concept for the love of discovery and digested into unimaginative steps that ruin the joy and frankly block great discoveries. Nearly all great discoveries in science were made either by accident or by active play.
The scientific method, as touted by so many, is really an extension of engineering practices into pure science. It is an important tool to use once the discovery is made, but that is all it is: a really boring engineering-type tool to determine the conditions used to recreate your discovery.
So the bottom line is we have a ban on the scientific method in our household, it is a process that my kids understand. It is a childishly simple process that does not need practice. It is a matter of applying simple logic (which is more important to learn anyway) and following directions.
Those are ideas we practice in our homeschool as part of other subjects.
For applied science lessons, we play.
We imagine.
We tinker.
We experiment.
And we have great fun.
And today, we “did science” Hogworts-style.
