Homeschooling and Unschooling Parents Make Science Fun!
Lynn is a mother who decided, a year or so ago, to “unschool” her daughter, and her blog, A Life Worth Living, tells her readers how this is unfolding for her family in the UK. Last April, Lynn found our link on a friend’s blog, clicked on it, and discovered us! ” . . . I went onto a website I had found that had a link to Steve Spangler Science, and found lots and lots of new experiments to do. . . some I have heard of before, some I haven’t. I also like the fact that you can watch a video clip of quite a lot of the experiments.” Thank you, Lynn, for your kind words about our website!
When the phone rings, we never know quite what to expect. The phone rang and on the other end was a senior producer at the 
Let’s see… what could you watch on your new video ipod? Episodes of NBC’s “Office”… ad-free music videos… or some guy in Denver who teaches you how to do cool science demos. Hmmm… that’s a tough choice between Office and the music videos. I’m pleased to let you know that many of our science segments from television are now available as a podcast through Apple’s iTunes. Even if you don’t have a video iPod (oh, please Santa, please), you can download the segments into your iTunes application (what? no iTunes? just download it for free). 
A popular guest on the Johnny Carson Show, Don Herbert was truly an inspiration to an entire generation of science enthusiasts. I remember watching him as a kid and being impressed by the fact that while he was amazing, he didn’t have a laboratory or wear a lab coat. He just looked like a friendly guy who did amazingly cool science experiments in his garage… what a great neighbor! In contrast to television today, I was struck by the fact that he would allow an experiment to fail. Why didn’t they edit it out? Because he believed that failure was so important for children to see. In 1991 I was approached by NBC television to host a 3½-minute science spot in a program called News for Kids. Remember, this was pre “Bill Nye the Science Guy” or “Beakman”. As we planned the look and feel of the segment, something inside told me to call Don Herbert and get his advice… so I did. Here’s what Don Herbet said, “Don’t’ let them put you in a lab coat if you don’t want to look like a doctor or research scientist… just be yourself… and “… never let …
