Engineering

Both mine and my husband's degrees are in engineering (technically, mine is Engineering Science, and his is Engineering and Computer Science) as that is how we met.

One of the benefits of home educating is that we can follow our children's interests, and up to very recently, their interests haven't followed ours.  Since DD1 has started school, she now loves maths and has realised she's quite good at it (duh! No surprise to me, she's always been good at it, but hasn't seen the point of doing it so refused to be pushed).  Since the summer, DD2 has decided she wants to be an engineer, prompted, probably, from watching youtube videos from Mini Gear or The Q.  I think had DD2 developed this interest earlier, then DD1 would have discovered a more practical use for maths, but it wasn't to be. I'm just glad she no longer hates it.

So for Christmas this year, being the good parent I am (last Friday excepting), not only did I buy DD2 some engineering books, I bought her a load of cardboard too.  Totally forgetting that almost everything arrives in cardboard, so now our conservatory is overflowing with the stuff!  I also bought her a robotics kit and last week, with Daddy, she made her first robot.  This robot is on two wheels and rolls forward at speed.  Our floor, however, is too shiny/slippery and the robot can't get a grip and ends up rotating ridiculously fast, but is fun to watch.

I have to admit, that when I saw how much fun she was having, I have ended up buying a load of other motors, wire, connectors, switches, and lots of other geeky stuff that I hope she will end up using.

Today DD2 and I started making a hydraulic arm together.  It is actually surprisingly hard following directions from a youtube video.  I would much rather have some written instructions, rather than the continual play, pause, rewind, play again, oops missed it, start again process that we are having to go through.

DD2 is actually being really helpful.  I was worried that I would end up doing it all (not that I mind in reality - it's actually quite fun), but she has been measuring and cutting out the cardboard, getting the next pieces ready, helping glue etc.  I have used the glue gun and the drill myself, though tbh even that I think she could have done. We have stopped half way through (we've actually gone slightly further than this pic, because we have started attaching the syringes for the hydraulics), but after a good few hours, both DD2 and I were ready for a break.
It's looking good so far!