Science Day

The school shall have their Science Day on the 17th March next week. In conjuction with that, there is a Magic Science Competition held for the students. We were given out this booklet detailing the competition on the 4th March and we have 10 days to submit an invention. According to dear son Ilham we MUST do something !!! In my opinion, since it's a competition, only those who are interested shall do it right?



Anyway, now let us see what is the requirement of this competition :




Requirements :-

• Invent a device that will solve a problem


• Details of the problem it solves


• A drawing of the invention


• Labels of different parts


• How it works


• Make a poster and/or build the model

Very challenging and we have 10 days to complete. When I checked with Ilham what kind of inventions he learned in class, he said none. Further queries reveal that they did not even read/study about inventions in the class. That surprises me. The students do not learn anything in class and yet they are expected to come up with an invention in less than 2 weeks, with the help of parents of course. This is where Home Learning comes in I suppose.


As I understand it, on Science Day there will be displays of these inventions among other things, for the parents to see. I was looking forward to see what my child is learning or making in Science, but now I feel disillusioned. I do not want to see something that the kids do at home, I would like to see what the kids are doing in school !!! Afterall, we pay a lot of money for it, it's not free !!! Am I too demanding and not rational ?? Why am I feeling this way?


When we were at the ISA, when Ilham was in Grade 2 last year, he learned about invention in one of the unit of inquiries. It took them 7 weeks to complete their study. They learned about Leornado Da Vinci, the Wright brothers and so on. They learned how certain inventions had and are still having impacts on the world and how some of them solve our daily problems. They guided the kids in completing their inventions and at the end of it, they had a convention where parents were invited to come (see Invention here and here). Most important of all, they teached and nurtured these kids on how to think like inventors. But what does British School teaches my child about this?


Lucky for us we have the previous work at ISA to guide us, and Ilham have some ideas of what he wants to do. I wonder how other students are doing... or am I the only one complaining ???