Have you met The Happy Scientist? Robert Krampf is a former museum geologist and instructor turned science showman. His special million-volt tesla coil is the star of his traveling show, and he has taken his show all over the country, including the Discovery Channel and David Letterman. You don't have to travel to see Krampf light up the stage, however. His site, The Happy Scientist, delivers online science lessons right to your computer. Divided by subject matter and also organized by state science standards, the videos and experiments on this site are kid-friendly and homeschooler-approved. Let your science-happy homeschooler off the leash in this site and be prepared to lose them for hours. Here are some links to just a few of his free videos. Members have access to all the content on the site, including many special members-only areas and features, and membership is only $20/year.

• Contagious Yawns
• Square in the Grass
• Insect Hunting
• The Hole in Your Hand

Free experiments:

• Sorting Salt and Pepper
• Light from a Lifesaver
• Broadcasting Radio With Your Socks

What I like best about the site, though, is the Science Photo of the Day. This is not just a "Look at this interesting bug" or "Here's a neat nebula." Krampf engages his young readers daily with a question to think about, a problem to research, a mystery to dive into with every post. Everything from "Have you ever eaten one of these?" to "What strange thing happens when you put a sponge in a blender?" When I first came upon this site, I must admit I got very engrossed in clicking around for the the daily answers.


Checking the science photo of the day every day is a great way to integrate science into your homeschool schedule in a fun way that will expose your child to a ton of different topics and ideas without overwhelming them in reading. It's always something to think about, but sometimes will spark a train of thought or inquiry that will take your child deeper into a specific topic. Who knows where it might lead?

Labels: happy scientist, homeschool science, online learning, online science lessons

If you're a fan of Right Start math, you may be interested in checking out this new online curriculum: Dreambox, for K-2 math. Sadie is working her way through Right Start's kindergarten curriculum, using lots of visuals -- tally sticks, an abacus, counters and manipulatives. When we started playing around with Dreambox, she found many of the exercises comfortably familiar, as Dreambox uses these same tools, but in the context of Flash animation and games. Dreambox encourages kids to visualize numbers and think in blocks of five and ten, just like Right Start, and we've just found that the two systems dovetail extremely well.

Dreambox's online math curriculum is very interesting, in that it progresses at a variable speed, based on your child's performance. If something seems easy for the child, the software skips him/her along to something more challenging. If something is too hard, the software pulls back to spend much more time on that skill. This quality means that it's *super* important for you as a parent not to help your child. The software is meant to be used by a child independently, because it customizes itself to the student's strengths and weaknesses. I did make the mistake of directing Sadie a bit too much at first, and that resulted in her being skipped ahead too much. Dreambox fixed it for me, though, and now we're back on track.

Here are a few screenshots of the software:


This shot shows the three sections of the Dreambox world -- the house, the adventure park (where most of the math games are played), and the carnival (where the less academic, more fun games are played). Kids earn tokens in the adventure park which they can "spend" at the carnival to play and unlock games. In other computer math systems I've experienced, there is more difference between the "work" games and the "reward" games, with the reward games being purely fun and the work games being more purely work. Dreambox mixes it up a little -- the work games are contextualized in narrative and have little cartoons and characters to play with, and the reward games are also teaching math concepts. Here's a shot of the carnival. Yes, Sadie's avatar has purple hair -- a harbinger of things to come, no doubt!



You can play for free for two weeks, and then it's around $10 a month, depending on how many months you buy at a time. If you have a strong internet connection and a K-2 child who likes computer games, Dreambox is a great way to teach without worksheets, without pencils, without lectures. The learning is intuitive, the rewards are integrated, and the software is fun!

Labels: curriculum, curriculum reviews, dreambox, homeschool curriculum, math, online learning