Science in the community

One thing I can really appreciate about living in the area I live in is the many opportunities available to homeschoolers.  A friend sent me an announcement by email for Science Saturdays which were being held at our local community college.






The program allows 6th - 7th graders to explore STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) related topics.  The class my younger girls participated in explored forensic biology.  They learned how to test for body fluids, extracted DNA from a strawberry, practiced hair analysis, did fingerprinting, and delved into the topic of chromatography.

Pumpkin went kicking and screaming.  She just couldn't understand why we had to "do school" on a Saturday.  By the end of the 3 hour class she was all smiles and enjoyed what she learned and for $20 mom was all smiles too. 

In the Spring, there will be a mini med school which is a series of 4 anatomy classes with hands-on experiments and dissections.   I never do science justice so I am glad these classes came along for us to participate.

I also got a chance to look around the community college as I had never been to this campus.  They recently opened the science building we were in so having the biology class in a real college science lab was icing on the cake.