I’ve talked  generally about this same topic in another article but I think bears a closer focus.   What do we think of when we think of Adventure? Some people probably think of things like skydiving or mountain climbing. Some people probably think of hiking or scuba diving. I’m sure there are many more examples that we use. Why those and not knitting? For the record, I don’t have anything against knitting. I think it’s a pretty cool thing to do if you like it. But most people don’t associate it with Adventure. That’s all I’m saying.

It’s because we associate the idea of adventure with the feeling of adrenaline. Anything that activates our fight or flight instincts feels like Adventure. That’s why we see so many high school kids do things like car surfing or illegal road racing, which are clearly unsafe and have no real benefit. They are  readily accessible ways to have the feeling of Adventure. And in those cases it probably also has something to do with the fact that we’re not supposed to do them, so just participating gets our adrenaline going. We could get the same feeling from shoplifting, which is clearly a bad thing to do.

I guess I should stop and state clearly that incorporating science into shoplifting activities is not the preferred method to make science an adventure. Obviously. Now back to more productive things.

We need to choose activities that are exciting. Young kids can get their  adrenaline going just by pretending. It probably won’t make it adventurous for you as a parent or teacher, but hopefully with a little practice your acting skills will be up to the task of convincing your kids that it does.   If not, then maybe a little more practice will do it. Depending on how bad an actor you are or how suspicious your kids are, you might take a different approach than the pretending route.

You could actually do exciting things with your kids, like hiking, mountain biking, kayaking,  fishing, hunting, getting out your telescope to look at Jupiter or… You get the idea.

The important point here is to find a way to get your kid excited about doing the things they love to do and you love to do with her, and then, in the middle of all of that positive emotion,  introduce a few of the most amazing (and somehow related) science facts you can find. Even if you can’t teach a whole course on them, all you are really trying to do is get your kids excited about the topic. Once they are excited, our job as teachers becomes much easier.

So get out there, be creative, be exciting, and have fun adventuring with your kids!

 

Good Luck Adventuring!

Kelly