This is why I love my kids being educated at home (or sometimes ‘educating themselves at home’). My wife, Philippa, blogged the following today:
When I woke up this morning, I could hear the rain on the windows and I was actually quite pleased. It’s a funny sort of sound; comforting in it’s way. It meant we wouldn’t really want to go out. I got all prepared to set the children down to their maths when I realised they were collecting rain water in the puddles and setting up their own little filtration project. It wasn’t working very well. The water was coming out as brown as it started with maybe less stones in it. After about an hour they had a 4 level filtration system set up. There were cloths with little round holes in on the side and sand on the table. Well I suppose you have to accept some level of chaos for genius to happen!
An hour or so later, we have slightly brown water. They then ask:
“Can we drink it?”
Well only if you can get it clear and we boil it first.
“Why?”
Well imagine the discussion. We covered filtration, coagulation, aeration, disinfection, third world water problems, baths (yes they wanted to filter the bath water!) and lots of other talk. We didn’t get on to the maths, but then they have learnt a whole lot!
What a great learning experience!