We hear it all the time for the elderly: Exercise increases cognitive abilities and staves off Alzheimer’s. We hear that exercise makes us age more slowly over all. But what about young people? What about people with ADHD or other cognitive “divergences.” The answer, like everything else in science, is “it’s complicated,” but it’s also …
Justus Liebig (1803 – 1873) was a German chemist that not only did groundbreaking work in organic chemistry and biological chemistry, he also transformed chemistry education and universities to be more inclusive of a variety of topics . The Man: Justus Liebig Justus von Liebig was born in 1803 in the south-central of Germany in …
As a homeschooler, can you use interactive journals effectively for your school? Interactive journals are huge right now. But, if you’re just coming across them, you might be asking yourself, “How do I use interactive journals effectively so I’m not wasting time and money?” The goal of all educators is often not to “just educate.” It’s …
While yes, we are going to be talking about water purification, it helps to know how the water gets clean in nature first. And that, of course, starts with the water cycle in it’s full complexity. The water cycle is a huge, global sized system where water makes it way around the planet. A single …
Since the dawn of semi-organized education, pedagogy has been explored. The methods of teaching are wide and varying with varying degrees of success. Our favourites happen to be those based on more or less natural learning styles: Project Based Learning (PBL), Problem Based Learning (PBL), and Inquiry Based Learning (IBL). Let’s be clear on something. …
Mulberries are often written off as a scrub tree, growing along and in fence lines, out of the side of other trees, and often too close to house foundations. They get in these unlikely and unwanted places because birds feast on the fruit in June and July when it’s ripe, spreading it’s seed wherever they …
It’s 10pm on a Tuesday and suddenly you remember you need an activity for the local group get together. When you look around you realise you have enough to make slime, but a different mom did that last week so you want to do something different. Pull out the construction paper, pencils, rulers, scissors, and …
Thermal expansion is the tendency of matter to change in shape, volume, and area in response to a change in temperature. It can really put a damper on how you expect things to work if you’re not expecting how the materials will react. We expect eggs to inflate and expand while being baked – that’s …
Every winter snow brings snow drifts. Silent, soft snow drifts that wait for the playful spring of a puppy or child to send flakes flying. They can be a few minutes of joy until the play is worn down from exhaustion or a disaster lurking on the roads. The reality is we overlook a simple, …
Magnets just work, right? If so, why doesn’t any piece of metal stick to the refrigerator? Now, what makes a magnet a magnet, not just a piece of metal? The answer lies in the spinning of electrons in each atom that makes up the metal. Any time electrons are in play, we also need to …