This afternoon P and I were looking at descriptions of books on the Scholastic web site, which we may be able to order from as home schoolers. That led to looking for some of the books on the library web site, which led to reading a description of Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator on Amazon.com, which led to a question about what the "space race" meant. I talked about Sputnik and the Apollo program. We watched some video snippets from Apollo 11 on YouTube, which led to photo montages from Apollo 11 and Apollo 12. From there P spotted a video called "Cosmic Journeys: The Asteroid that Flattened Mars," which turned out to be 20 minutes about why Mars may be the way it is now, even though it was probably more Earthlike in the past. I stopped it at a few points to fill P in on things that had gone by very quickly. P and T were both riveted. There was lots of footage, both actual and artists' renditions, of various Mars missions. Then UnschoolerDad came upstairs from his office and said he'd just seen a graphic of all missions to Mars, including a large number of failed missions. The Internet is an amazing phenomenon.
I look forward to more of this kind of journey as we have more time. My guess is that next time P sees a book or movie about the space program or Mars, it will be more interesting than it would otherwise have been. And maybe next time we're in California, we can visit the USS Hornet in Alameda and check out the replica Apollo 11 vessel there. (I can't remember whether it's the lander or the part of the orbiter that splashed down.) I just queued up Apollo 13 in case we feel like a true-story riveting space drama sometime soon. It has some adult language, but I think P can handle it.
By the way, I refer often to Commonsense Media, which reviews many movies and other media that kids might be interested in. The site gives details about things that tend to concern parents, like language, drugs, sex, violence, the quality of the messages the film puts across, and things parents might want to discuss with kids who are watching a given film. If you haven't seen the site, I encourage you to check it out. They err on the side of prudishness, but I'd rather have more information than less, and parent reviews on the site often add additional perspective. Commonsense calls Apollo 13 "on" for kids 12 and up.
Not having children, I've wondered often how school has been effected by the advent of the internet. School projects, papers, book reports, random quizzes...its all so new now! Keep it up Mom and teach the rest of us too!
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