The Competitive Edge

Spring 2024/Diane Helfrich Like many, I was lost when we began homeschooling, and I focused on recreating that brick-and-mortar school in our house. We were up at 7:30 for breakfast and began school between 8:00 and 8:30 with a prayer and a pledge. After that, we dutifully marched through every subject. That sufficed for about a year when we discovered science fairs—which significantly changed our thinking about what school could be at our home. Our co-op was starting a science fair class as part of the classroom day, and we joined it. The first-year project was meager, but we learned much as we attended the district competition and perused the sea of project presentations. We now had an understanding that the sky was the limit. A big fan of Myth Busters on the Discovery Channel, my son came up with a notion that he wanted to make a stink gun to send bad smells out toward his sister. In a similar timeframe, we were challenged by another homeschooling family to a potato gun competition. Our potato wimped out of the gun—rather anticlimactic! But we were learning. When it came time to decide on a science fair project, the ideas formed, and before we knew what we were doing, my son had launched into vortex physics. We had Plexiglas tubes of varying lengths, and we put balloons over one end. My son developed what he called a marble hammer (a marble attached to a stand with string) that could be consistently dropped against the balloon end of the tube. He loaded the tube with incense (the bad smell from the stink gun idea). He then raised the marble and released it to tap the balloon membrane. Finally, he measured how far the smoke ring (vortex) traveled based on the tube length. It was an exciting project not found in any textbook. I learned that you start catching on if you read enough physics journals. Some engineer friends advised us to help make sure we weren’t just “blowing smoke!” After the smoky adventures, my son turned to vortices in varying temperatures of water to simulate oceanic thermal layers. Long story short, he won the state science fair for two years and placed nationally in one of those years. What changed in our schooling? This project was all-consuming for several weeks. He had to research, design, test, research some more, and adjust, over and over, until he was ready for the final runs before the fair. What did he learn? He learned to do deep research and ask questions when he didn’t understand a concept. He had to write an extensive paper with a bibliography. He had to do a statistical analysis of the data he collected and analyze what it meant to come up with a conclusion. He had to practice presenting his project to communicate complex concepts clearly. He had to use his art sense to create an attractive, eye-grabbing display that clearly showed what he did. Everything else in schooling fell by the wayside during that time, but he was immersed in science, math, writing, and art. Was schooling by the wayside? Not at all! He was a fifth-grader! What he learned was profound because it’s what he wanted to learn. He went on for two more years with this kind of study and won the state science fair a second time. It was original research in an emerging field. That wasn’t the only competition we did. There were spelling bees, geography bees, math competitions, Envirothon (under the Soil and Water Conservation department), Latin competitions, chess competitions, speech and team policy debate competitions, volleyball programs (through NCHEAC!), and martial arts tournaments. Each one required deep digging to prepare. With Envirothon and debate, the preparation was highly time-consuming because of the depth and breadth of the information covered. In all cases, the amount of learning was significant. In hindsight, the best things that came out of the competitions were:

• An understanding of how to prepare well with hard work
• Research skills
• Writing skills
• Critical thinking skills
• Public speaking skills
• Thinking-on-your-feet skills
• Teamwork skills
• An ability to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences.

These skills are all things that benefit a person throughout life. I know many homeschoolers don’t embrace competition, and that’s fine. There can be significant anxiety as students start a competition journey. However, if it becomes part of their regular education process over the years, the anxiety diminishes; the focus is on preparing for excellence. One caveat to think about is how young is too young to begin competitions. You have to discern your child’s maturity level, how they will respond to winning and losing, and how they will respond to the work of preparation. Some kids will thrive competitively earlier than others. We didn’t start competitions until around fourth grade. Even that might be too young for some. Think about your child and make sure they won’t have emotional harm from starting too early. Finally, the further we went into competition mode, the less our schooling looked like anything public. Some days, we opted for beach time. Days leading up to a competition may have been ten to twelve hours of researching, writing, practicing, etc., to ensure readiness. No more were the days of 8:00 to noon, going over each subject and having play outside each day. Much like a work world, our days were consumed with what needed to be done, and we pursued until the necessary work for the day was finished. I didn’t have to push my kids to do these things. The topics were things they wanted to do, so they pushed me! As adults now, they are both very successful and thriving. Most of these competitions came through our co-op. I encourage you to join one if you aren’t part of one. Co-ops are great for group activities that create different kinds of learning. If your co-op doesn’t have competitions, and you want one, I encourage you to do the work to coordinate the event so it’s there for your kids and others. The efforts I put in to coordinate some of these were time well spent on my learning and organizational skills. The beauty of homeschooling is that it isn’t just the kids that learn. Let’s all learn and enjoy the journey!