I know you aren't supposed to compare your kids.
I know this. I do.
But you know what you do when you have multiple kids? You compare. It's human nature. It's practically law.
Teaching both kids at the same time, I've had to work hard not to compare. I shouldn't compare. Calen is in 6th grade, Camden is in 4th grade. What is there to compare? Calen is a natural wizard and self-educator in all things. Camden needs more one-on-one visual learning and a lot of review. I shouldn't compare them. But like every parent in the world, I do.
This school year we are working on Weather as our science unit. This is incredibly fitting as over the summer Calen got about 2/3rds of the way through his Weather merit badge for Boy Scouts. The teachings are basically the same, but of course each kid has a different level of work and writing to go along with it. This makes it a little easier to not compare, but not really.
Because I always try to make things more interesting, I was scrolling Pinterest while the boys were reading their books on the French-Indian War, (or something, I suppose I should pay attention to what they're learning too. --Just kidding, I do. Kind of). I found a neat and easy science experiment that visually shows air pressure that only involved the stove, a pan, and some empty pop cans with a bit of water in them. Count me in.
We put the pop cans (with a bit of water) in the pan on the stove and waited until they boiled. When they reached boiling, You take some tongs and flip the can upside down into a bowl of ice water.
Note: My tongs apparently are slippery tongs. I could not get a good grip on these stupid cans. So I covered the tongs with packaging tape and then wrapped them with thick rubber bands to give them a "grip".
When the can sits upside down in the bowl, the can instantly (and I mean instantly) crushes itself! Why? Because when the tiny bit of water in the can boils, it turns to steam. Steam is a gas and not actually oxygen. When you flip the can into the ice water (so that the can opening is submerged), the cold water instantly turns the gas back into liquid, leaving nothing (not air, not gas, nothing) in the inside of the can. The air outside the can pushes into the can and squashes it like a bug!
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| Back in my day we would just step on cans to smush them and didn't need stoves or tongs or ice. |
To prove that the kids paid attention to this experiment, I had them write a diagram showing why this experiment works. And this is when we have to try to not compare.
Calen, with his nice handwriting and his wonderful artistic ability, draws a beautiful two-page diagram of the experiment, complete with neat, legible labeling, careful illustrations and a clear cut explanation of how the experiment worked. Of course he's two years older, but when he puts his mind to it he always does careful, meticulous work. Of course as a bonus he will also verbally point out and elaborate on every.single.little.detail for a full forty minutes without taking a single breath. The kid has a word quota he needs to meet every day, before noon.
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| Nicely drawn, careful captions, easy instructions |
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| Two pages, even |
Camden, on the other hand, is a bona fide Picasso. He has a vision, a great vision, but his execution on paper is come sort of cross between someone writing calligraphy with their foot and a minor gas tank explosion. It's all there, the diagram, the drawings, the labeling, the arrows, the explanations, but more like how those fancy artists stand 6 feet away from their canvasses and sling paint at it. That must count for some sort of Social Distancing 2020 extra credit, right? Verbally, Cam knows exactly what every scribble means, and translates it very well. It's kind of like a corn maze. You can try to go through it yourself, or you can ask for a map and then the picture it's trying to make is crystal clear.
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| What the hell exactly is going on here? |
I feel like these illustrations accurately depict each of their brains. Calen - methodical, clever, detailed, organized. Camden - chaotic, exciting, mysterious, and fills up every inch of space available.
Whatever, you both get A's. I told them to draw a diagram, not to draw a masterpiece that would be framed in the Alaskan Art Museum. Though, if that were the case, Camden's almost certainly would have won, because museums like that weird abstract crap.
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