How to Help Your Child Get into Science and Technology

How do you get your family interested in science and technology? More importantly how do you get your kids interested? It all starts with your perspective on science and technology. Most houses have more than enough materials and equipment to involve your entire family in a learning experience and science project every week. Here are some interesting and great ways for you and your children to get involved, everyone contributes to the project, and you all learn something about yourselves and the world.

Here's what you need: A digital camera, pen and paper, magnifying glass or binoculars, a computer with Internet access, and time to spend together. Something struck me one day while my children and I were watching Steve Irwin on television. It looked like his whole family was having fun going places, interacting with animals, and having adventures. I thought to myself, "Why can't we do that? We all love animals, we love the outdoors, and we love spending time together. We got our video camera, our binoculars, and headed out to our local nature park. We spent all day video taping each other talking about the animals, the flowers, the trees, and each other. It was so much fun and we started to see each other's talents and personalities. We became a family of wildlife warriors.

We decided to take it to the next step and now have a digital camera with video capture ability. That way we can take photos and video. I did research online and saw the potential of blogging. We always involve our kids in science projects and nature, so it just made sense to start our own family adventure blog. The kids get excited about taking photos, writing descriptions of our adventures and helping design the blog pages. We all share in researching the animals, places, and science behind our trips. It becomes memories that we share forever and are part of their home school curriculum as real world experiences.

The kids have learned how to compose photography shots, digitally develop and store them, how to research topics online and in books, how to write reports about different subjects, how to design media publications, and present information in an informative manner. They have learned a lot about the computer, the internet, how to upload files and photos, and how to manage a project from start to finish and on a continuous basis.

We have spent more time as a family than ever. We see our kids developing talents we never imagined they would have at such early ages. We are proud to know that we are teaching them a sense of responsibility for their environment and a value placed on learning.