Children’s Writer Takes Science Out of Lab, Into the Back Yard

In his budget address to Congress, President Bush said science should be emphasized in school. Irvine’s Jane Hoffman couldn’t agree more, especially since she has been preaching that with her back-yard science experiments for the past 8 years.

“I really don’t think our children are being educated in science, and they should be,” said Hoffman, who believes that her hands-on teaching is an effective way of motivating students.

Hoffman performs hundreds of experiments for children from ages 9 to 14, using such common items as balloons, paper clips, string, sponges, baking soda, Alka Seltzer tablets and magnets.

She said she is not bashful about her achievements, unlike her husband, Arnold, who markets computers.

“He’s very quiet,” she said. “I’m the craziest person you’re ever going to meet, but I consider myself an authority on science experiments for kids.”

Besides marketing, shipping, doing her own publicity and personally selling her three books--”Backyard Scientist,” “Backyard Scientist Series One” and “Backyard Scientist Series Two”--at $8.50 each, Hoffman lectures across the country, especially to home educator groups that teach children in the home instead of sending them to school.

Hoffman said she sometimes gets depressed, “but mostly because there’s too much work. I’ve never gotten organized on anything. It seems all I do is work, work, work. My mind is on overload. In fact, I’m beginning to ask myself why I’m doing all this.”

She has serious allergies and “my doctor can’t believe that much energy is coming from a person that can’t breathe. He says I’m only half breathing all the time.”

But despite her self-inflicted workload, allergies and the constant lecture trips (“You name the state and I’ve been on a radio station there”), the graduate of Woodbury College of Business said, “I’m really caught up in what I’m doing.”

Hoffman said it was her curiosity as a child and, more recently, her desire to help her son Jason learn about science that caused her to write the books.

“I was never exposed to science in school. So 10 years ago, I took my son to the library to get a book on science experiments and found when I tried them, they didn’t work. So I started doing my own,” she said.

So far, the three books have a combined sale of 30,000 copies, she said, but added that she really isn’t making all that much money. “I’m making some money, but that’s because I’m doing all the work myself,” she said. “I don’t have any employees to help me.”

Hoffman said she is pleased by the feedback she has gotten from her work. She said she once received thousands of letters after performing some simple science experiments on a syndicated television program.

“That really got me going, and I haven’t stopped since,” she said, adding, “I’d love to have my own television show.”

But knowing there are people out there who appreciate her work is enough.

“I got letters from 12 schoolchildren in a third-grade class in Missouri telling me about the fun they had using the experiments from the book,” she said. “That makes all the work worthwhile.”

Acknowledgments--The Irvine Ranch Water District was named Plant of the Year by the Santa Ana River Basin Section of the California Water Pollution Control Assn., and Jim Denton of the Irvine facility was named Maintenance Person of the Year.