Still, The Magic School Bus did show my son real-world science issues that address topics he and other kids might be curious about. Sure, my son didn't understand everything that was happening, but he was never bored, and that's saying a lot. I mean, it's a half-hour long and has to incorporate an entertaining plot, so there's only so much educational ground it can reasonably cover per episode. The show alone is clearly not an adequate replacement for science education in school, or even for the interaction of science play and reading science-type books at home. Did The Magic School Bus School My Son?Īll said, I was pretty impressed with the science my son learned just by watching The Magic School Bus. The same thing as a hen's." And there we had it. He said: "Mommy and Daddy's parts work together. My son said this was his favorite The Magic School Bus episode yet "because I like experiments and all the hen stuff." With the subject of the birds and bees so close at hand, I couldn't resist wading just a little into that treacherous territory, so I asked my son how a human baby is made. Clearly, though, he learned the basics of who is required to make a chick. I don't feel he really grasped how the rooster fertilizes the egg, because the show didn't delve into those details. Of course, if the show had revealed the gory details of human reproduction, I probably wouldn't be happy - that's a discussion I want to have with my children when they're ready.Īccording to my boy's explanation of the episode, the mother has the "egg" and dad has the "baby." He recalled that the yellow part of the egg is called the "yoke" and the outside is the "shell." However, he claimed he knew before the episode about eggshells. Reproduction in its various forms is certainly an important part of nature, and discussing it in simple terms in a children's show about science seemed reasonable to me. The episode revealed just enough information to make sense without going into too many details. Although the show came close to stepping into taboo territory with the discussion of reproduction, I feel it handled the subject well. My son remembered from the show that a chick is made by the hen and rooster "doing their parts." I don't think he truly understood how reproduction worked to create the chick, but to my knowledge that was the first time he'd even learned that a male and female were necessary to make a baby. "Cracks a Yoke" dealt with the incubation and hatching of baby chicks. The final episode of The Magic School Bus we chose for this science experiment hit a little closer to home than I'd anticipated. The show is entertaining and well done, mainly because of the quick pace and interesting topics, but it's still a kids' show and I'm a busy mom who doesn't have a lot of extra time to spare for chilling in front of the screen. The trickiest part, in all honesty, was me paying attention while he watched to quiz him later. My son was eager to watch the show, with no prodding required. To ensure my son wasn't just parroting back to me what he'd heard on the show, I'd ask him to explain to me how the science worked. I'd ask him about specific science concepts introduced as part of the show, and whether he'd learned these previously elsewhere. I'd hold the experiment by showing him three episodes of The Magic School Bus he'd never seen before, and ask him questions after each episode about the show and what he'd learned. I decided to conduct an experiment to see if my son could actually learn science concepts from just watching The Magic School Bus. So I decided, since my boy loves science, that I'd let my son watch The Magic School Bus to learn science. Frizzle's class, it might work for my kid, who's in a pre-kindergarten program. On these field trips, the students learn in a fun, first-hand way about the inner workings of the natural world. The show, based on a book series, involves field trips to fantastic locations such as the inside of a human body or outer space. Frizzle and her class, was an old favorite show of his. The Magic School Bus, which follows the learning adventures of Mrs. Since I'm not a fan of science, but am a fan of kicking back with a glass of wine while my son's occupied for an hour or two, I figured maybe TV could teach him science for me. In addition to science, my son also loves TV. He wants to be a marine biologist, for crying out loud. We have video of him saying "Pachycephalosaurus" (a dinosaur) when he was barely 2 years old. Fortunately, my 5-year-old son didn't inherit my aversion to this brainy specialty. The only thing I'm sure of when it comes to science is that it's not my best subject.
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