Branching out, hoping for Nobel prize

We've been following the K12.com curriculum pretty closely for literature, grammar/mechanics, and spelling. It's worked out so well for us, and TH has even figured out how to go to the Website and check in the morning for what "they" expect us to do that day. As I've mentioned, it's helpful to have a "they" around to keep a little distance between me, the teacher, and what I'm teaching. It's not all coming from me, you see. I've got "them" to blame, too.

But in some ways, as we've settled in more, I've started to loosen the leash and branch out away from their defined curriculum. We do that all the time in small ways, stopping to google this, map that, investigate over there. These have been fun forays, and just one example of how the flexibility that homeschool allows can keep the interest of a child like TH.

And we've now made some longer-distance forays. Math is one. I've abandoned the K12 book in many ways, using it only as reinforcement as TH works through multiplication of two-, three-, and four-digit numbers and mastering his 0-12 multiplication tables. He's just a boy who benefits most from repetition, practice, and the most straightforward ways of doing these things, so that's how we're doing it. And it's working well.

Naturally, we also have gone afield when it comes to science. TH "does" science pretty much all day long, walking around with his nose in a book about sharks or dinosaurs or insects or reptiles, regaling me non-stop when we're in the car or on the hiking trail with his various--and always accurate--facts and figures. This is a child who only today, as I was trying to remember the third period of the age of the dinosaurs, informed me that the periods were the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous. He then proceeded to tell me which species were around in which period. Boy's obsessed.

Given this sort of preternatural affinity of my son for all things sciency, I decided to stretch his brain a bit today. I perused my shelves for a college bio book--I have dozens of these, as we get review copies all the time--and chose Tobin and Dushek's Asking About Life. The edition I have opens with one of my favorite stories in biology, the tale of the scientist who tested on himself his hypothesis that H. pylori was responsible for ulcers, rather than stress-induced acid excess. In the face of derision from other experts, he proved himself right...after some stomach biopsies and other discomforts, and much to the chagrin of his wife.

In spite of his success and resulting new guidelines for ulcer treatment, doctors well into the 1990s were still treating ulcers with antacids, rather than antibiotics. And I note that ultimately, many other studies backed up his findings, failing to reject the hypothesis. That, my friends, is the practice of science. But I digress.

This edition of the book was published just before Barry Marshall (and his collaborator, J. Robin Warren) were awarded the Nobel prize for their work. So after TH finished reading the hair-raising story of the discovery, I had the pleasure of telling him that Marshall had won the Nobel in Physiology or Medicine for his adventures. I happened to mention that, in addition to being the highest award in science, it also came with a bit of monetary reward, too.

TH was immediately taken with this idea and quickly laid out his Nobel-related plans. First, he's going to make a major scientific breakthrough this year. Next, after learning that people must often wait years before the significance of their work is clear enough to merit a Nobel, he determined that he will have to wait until he's 18 to win the prize. Finally, he's going to keep half of the award money and give us, his loving parents, the other half.

While I sat there, torn between admiring his hopeless ambition and his newly manifested ability to plan something, I also was grateful that he, in his youthful generosity, was so willing to give up several hundred thousand dollars to his needy parents. I can't wait to go to Stockholm in 2020 to watch him receive our retirement fund his prize.