Family Science Together
Even at is nascent stage, CrossWired Science already had so much information and appeal. We have been enjoying it as a fresh, fun approach to family Science learning with a Christian worldview.
One of the sentences that appealed to me on the CrossWired Science site was, “Our prayer is that learning about the beauty and wonder of the world God has lovingly made would be a journey whole families could go on together.”
There are printable worksheets for the lessons. We like to do these all together because it opens up the ideas for learning discussion. The kids can watch the video solo and complete the quiz by themselves, but it’s much more fun to do it together and follow up the video with some discussions.
Once I had finished about half of the videos on my own, I decided we would go back through the Core Videos together during our lesson time. We gathered around the computer and watched the video. Every so often I would pause the video and ask the children to answer a question or two from the worksheet. We were having a great time watching them together, so I decided to try to work on filling out the worksheets while watching with the children.
We continued through each of the videos until all the questions were complete. Yes, sometimes we were rewinding so the children could hear the answer to the question, but we got the work done. In hindsight, I think I preferred watching the videos on my own to make sure I was confident of the answer prior to watching with the children. So, going forward, that is the way we are going to schedule our time with CrossWired Science.
We are really enjoying the exciting, fact-filled videos. They are fast paced (one of the reasons I had to keep pausing and backtracking to answer the worksheet questions), and very informative. They alternate between an older man and a younger woman discussing the topic, the young woman talking to us on her own, and videos which are a combination of animation, photographs, and text with audio voiceover.
I wanted to focus on using CrossWired Science for group learning as well.
For this approach, I sat down with the boys and we worked through the sound unit together. We watched the videos together and then my older children would take turns reading the quiz questions. Each child was allowed to have their input on which answer they thought was correct. If there was a disagreement, we would go back and rewatch that section of the video. Most of the disagreements occurred over small details – like the length of the vocal cords in an elephant.
CrossWired Science is in the process of growing and creating, so we got to see the progression of the program…which is really exciting. The core lessons are intended for ages 4-18, but CrossWired strongly encourages families to learn science together.