Deep Dives

Optional, but awesome

We don’t require homework — but we want to support students who want to go deeper. (And so many of ours want to!)

So we create our “Deep Dives” — ten-page booklets full of videos, trivia, and more. We send them out after each lesson.

(Note: starting in Fall 2023, we’ll be adding on some new and exciting “orienting tools” to each Deep Dive. Stay tuned for an upcoming announcement on that.)

After each Big Course lesson, we send out a “Deep Dive” — a PDF that…

  • solidifies the most important concepts

  • extends them with great YouTube videos

  • offers an experiment to try out as a family

  • suggests a book (or sometimes an app) to go even deeper

Part 1: good videos

The first part of every Deep Dive is a collection of three YouTube videos, carefully curated to be accurate and safe — and to extend what they just learned in the lesson.

They’re usually fairly short, and we choose them to be fascinating — enjoyable enough to watch as a family, and talk about at length.

We indicate when the videos come from especially good channels that you may want to subscribe to. (A well-cultivated YouTube algorithm is a beautiful thing…)

Part 2: good trivia

The second part of every Deep Dive is a re-cap of the most important concepts they learned in the lesson. We give it as three pages of punchy questions and answers.

The goal is to help your kid clarify what they just learned. Students can cover up the “answers” column and quiz themselves on it, or you can quiz them on it.

(Some families have fun letting the kids quiz the adults on it, too! It can be a delight to discover that the adults around you don’t know everything…)

Part 3: good books

We love to connect kids to good books. We’re addicted to reading, and, frankly, want to spread the addiction to kids.

Part three of each Deep Dive is a recommendation for a good book — a living book that kids may fall in love with. We typically choose books that are likely to be found in your local public library.

But it’s not enough for us to assign a book. (Ick!) We spend time pitching kids on why they might care about the book… and then shoot a quick video with advice on how to taste the book in just five minutes.

Part 4: imaginative labs

We don’t do typical labs.

A lot of “labs” just make you follow steps blindly and try to get someone else’s answer.

Ick.

The goal of our labs is to really see what you learned in the real world.

In “Black Holes”, you learn to spot the location of the nearest black hole in the night sky. In “Wind” you learn to imagine the convection current of the air at a beach — bouncing up 10 miles above the sand and crashing down out offshore. In “Chocolate” you learn to form perfect crystals of chocolate.

But wait, there’s more!

For each lesson we also offer memory cards and orienting tools.