Summer vs. Science (Spoiler: entropy wins)

After a dismal few months of headlines such as "Seattle Crushes Rain Record", the heavens finally opened up this past Monday and poured forth sunshine and warmth. All day long, my children stalked the outdoor thermometer display, with minute-by-minute updates: "It's already 3.6 degrees warmer outside than inside! Only a minute ago is was 69.9, and now it's 70.1!  Mommy! Mommy! It's 79.6 degrees!" Yes, we even hit the unbelievable 80 degree mark by the close of day.

Nothing is perfect, however, and Monday was but the first day of four weeks of school remaining to the students of our district. As mostly-homeschoolers (my kids go to classes Tuesday and Thursday but are taught at home the rest of the week), we have a greater measure of freedom than many other families. But I felt I should at least make a show of finishing strong, and sat down after breakfast to churn out weekly assignment schedules for my kids.

I succeeded in planning out enough math and language arts to avoid absolute truancy. Then I looked over what remained of our ambitious history schedule, mapped out with great care and intention last fall. I felt profoundly unmotivated. Watching history videos together during lunch would be just fine for this week, I decided. I erased the rows in the girls' assignment schedules for history reading and projects. Finally, I pulled out our girls' physics curriculum and started looking through the week's plans. They required me to pull together materials and supervise a series of labs involving the three classes of levers, fiddly measurements, and critical thinking.

All at once, I was done. Physics just didn't matter anymore. Resistance force, effort force, ideal mechanical advantage, identifying how many and which kind of levers go together to make a pair of scissors - those things were important to me last week. But suddenly, as I sat at the computer and warm, sweet air drifted through the open window, I couldn't care less.

This is more of what I had in mind.

But I wasn't ready to completely abdicate my role as a responsible educator. I erased the girls' science assignments and substituted the task of selecting a science kit from our cabinet and putting it together.

The girls were thrilled at the change, and after a very unfocused day of plodding through basic schoolwork while running outside and checking the temperature every few minutes, they chose a make-your-own-hand-crank-flashlight kit. "Score!" I thought. "Electricity! It even correlates with physics!" I wasn't excited enough, however, to read them the little educational book that came with the kit. I tossed that aside and asked them to just look at the directions and put the flashlight together.

A half hour later, it became clear that the kit components were unbearably fiddly and kid-unfriendly. I made a valiant effort to help the girls get the flashlight working before I released us all from our labors and drove them to their cousins' house. At least, I reasoned, I used the scientific-sounding words "completing the circuit" several times as we struggled with wiring. That was something. Check for science.

Later that evening, Luke picked up the girls from their cousins' house as he drove home from work. Luke is gifted with both a scientific mind and a passion for understanding how and why things work the way they do. His insights and explanations add great depth and clarity to what we study in homeschool, and he was ready to engage the girls in conversation. On the short drive to our house, he asked the fateful question: "What did you learn in school today?" They chose to tell him about their attempts to assemble the flashlight. And succeeded in shocking him deeply.

"The girls know NOTHING about electricity!" Luke exclaimed soon after entering the house, as I dished out our supper. His voice did not carry anger, but rather a combination of shock and sadness.

"Well," I sputtered defensively, trying to sound a little less like a slacker, "we were focusing on - uh - engineering instead of science basics - on putting things together and problem-solving." I regained my verbal footing and executed a brilliant switch-the-responsibility tactic. "But you could explain electricity to them. You'd do a much better job than I."

We sat down to supper, and Luke spent a few minutes valiantly attempting an overview of electricity, beginning with electrons and flow and moving on to---. I'm really not sure where his explanation went after electrons, because I got distracted by the evening sunshine filtering down through the leaves in our backyard and stopped listening. Occasionally, Eliora tried to interject a sentence about her day, but was told to wait until the electricity lesson was over. I was recalled to the conversation by Luke's voice, both incredulous and appalled, declaring, "These girls have absolutely NO interest in electricity!"

At that point, I abandoned any pretense of actually caring about electricity myself, and pleaded the sunshine and impending summer break as excuses for our appalling lack of scientific curiosity. I'm not sure Luke thoroughly understands and accepts this, but he loves us anyway.

On the bright side, the next few weeks of our homeschool may be a brilliant case study of the scientific concept of entropy. I believe Monday marked the beginning of this irreversible process, and I am more than ready to relax into it.