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i am planning on keeping my children in seperate programs even though they are 16 months apart. i was going to keep them together in science , however. I won't be using the guides science til CTC probably so it seems this would be easier. BUT... even yesterday when we did a simple litle prject to show part sof blood , brother (who is the older) will barely let sister get a word in edgewise. i don't think it is a matter of her not understanding or it being to hard, i think her brother just doesn't give her time to think about it on her own.. Later she couldn't recall anything when i asked if she would tell her daddy about "science". again brother was juping right in and i think maybe she did know "something" but her brain just works a little differently and has to think about it.
So i am wondering if i should just keep them insepearate science too. or does any body have any ideas as to how to get brother to calm down a bit so that sister can really soak inthe science. i don't mind doing science separate or together, just seems easier together, yet if iam going to struggle with brother it might be better separate? They emjoy doing each other's stuff anyway, so i really don't mind if they were to do evething twice if each know s which one is "doing" their sicnec and the other one is allowed to participate but be respectful of the other . Does that make sense?

As a sidenote... my 2yrold (as of today) was doing her brother's LHGHG Unit17, Day5 science activity with him. Making the fire out of construction paper and then doing the Rhymetime. it was so cute. Brother was helping his little sis glue the papers on the white sheet. she isn't allowed to use even gluesticks by herself yet. it was so sweet to see them work together.

Thanks for any advice
JEnn D.

Whew i just noticed all those typos. sorry

My kids are a little farther apart in age (6.5 and 4), but we often have my youngest join his sister. In our case I ask big sis a question, then ask my little guy a question just for him. At first, big sis was trying to answer his question, but we have since trained her that when it is directed to little bro, she is to allow him to answer until the question is directed to her. So if you continue to do science together, I would suggest training the older one to allow the younger one time to answer the questions and to be sure to state a name at the beginning of each question. So at our house it would look like this:

"Big sis", name one part of the blood you learned about today.
"Little bro", what was something you learned about blood today?
"Big sis", what was your favorite thing you learned today?
"Little bro", what was your favorite thing you learned today?

By alternating and using their names, the kids know that they have an equal opportunity to answer and participate.

When teaching them together one idea might be that they can only answer if they are holding a special object. (like a ball or pencil or something handy) They can only talk if they are holding it. They can switch who's holding it at your determination. That might help them learn to take turns answering.
We have that same issue in our house! The older children talk over the littler ones quite often. We spend A LOT of time training them to listen as well as speak!

My kids do this, though they are in separate HOD programs - so they don't do it during school. But, they do it other times during the day. I guess if I were you I'd weigh whether it just might be easier in the long run to do 2 sciences for a year, just to get dd answering questions and doing the thinking more on her own. Otherwise, you could have them do the same science but do the hold the object thing - you ask the question and then give whoever you want to answer the question the object (that way they'll both hopefully mentally prepare to answer the question because they won't know who's getting the object). Also, one thing I realized when I asked my young ds to tell my dh about science at supper was that he didn't really know the word "science" very well. He just needed me to say, "Tell dad what you learned about the Seashore today, and about your playdough and water experiment you did." This seems like a simple thing, but my ds always had some type of an answer when I led into it with that rather than with the word "science" (same thing for "history" BTW ). But, my oldest ds, I can just say, "Tell dad what you did for science or history," and he's off and running usually. Maybe it's just an age thing?

In Christ,
Julie