DVD Schooling and Academic Trade-Offs

I don't believe it, I actually got this blog set up, and it actually looks like a real blog! Some day I'll get really fancy and add cool stuff down the right-hand column besides just archives. Now if I can only come up with something interesting to say.

My homeschool pendulum is swinging away from feeling determined to stick to a homeschooling schedule that has some vague resemblance to an academic endeavor. This week, I'm embracing DVD-schooling. Or more specifically, Mythbusters schooling.

I recently bought Season 4 of the Mythbusters because I wanted to get the episode where they looked at the Mentos + Diet Coke Myth (it was confirmed, needless to say!) to show to our science club, which has recently tried this out. I hadn't ever seen the show before, but heard that it was a lot of fun and included some real science. We are now in the midst of a major Mythbusters film festival that has caused us to throw the rest of our schoolwork out the window. Is this good? Or bad? 

Yes, and yes, naturally. It is great when the kids get excited about science and see people thinking logically and critically about how to test something like one of these myths. My kids have been wracking their brains about what myths we could test ourselves or send in to their website, and have been thinking more critically about explanations for physical phenomena in these past couple of weeks. Tonight they spent about 45 minutes throwing a bin of plastic knights/princesses/dragons/etc. down the stairs to see which figures traveled the  farthest. They made a diagram of the stairs and recorded the number of figures on each stair over several trials. They noticed that there is usually one clump of figures on the top couple of stairs and another bunch all the way at the bottom. Then the began trying to figure out which shaped figure were more likely to make it to the bottom (the princesses--they are very round and don't have a lot of stuff like swords poking out). Then they figured out that they should be consistent in the way they throw them down the stairs so they started setting the bin at the top of the stairs and gently pushing on it until it tipped over. This is science!! This is good.

But here's what I'm worried about. Mythbusters has loud catchy music; funny nice-looking, hip,  young hosts; short scenes with lots of crashes and explosions; sarcasm and humor; fast pacing; and constant reiteration what they are doing and why. All this makes it really engaging and easy to watch, but will they still be willing to watch slower paced stuff that takes more thought after all this? Is their attention span dwindling? Especially 6-year-old M: his brain probably doesn't need a lot of loud electronic stimuli at this stage in his life, and in fact, might it be damaging? Interfering with neural pathways that promote focus and sustained attention?

Here's my solution. Mythbusters is great and I'm glad we're watching it. Balance is good. Tonight we took the night off from Mythbusters (for the first time in about a week) and actually did some spelling and math. What do you know--no complaints, no tears of frustration, no annoyed mom, but lots of laughter and goofing around, and we did actually get in spelling, math, and history for both kids, reading for M, and a nice long read-aloud. I have precious little time for actual homeschooling with the kids these days, so I need to make the most out of what we do. I don't have any doubt that laughter prepares the brain for learning, and lessons covered when we are happy and getting along stick better. Too much of anything makes us want a break from it, a chance to use a different part of our brain. I don't have time to do everything I think we should be doing academically, so I really can't waste time try to cram something into an unreceptive brain. Better to spend my efforts in making the brain happy to learn, and trust that life (and occasionally mom) will present many opportunities for learning the specific things that are important to learn.