Friday, September 5, 2014

Planning Time - Science

Science is the bane of my homeschool. I don't like science and I don't want to teach it. I also don't like how science is taught. (This is probably the reason I dislike the subject. I was public-schooled, you know.)

Emily doesn't have a science credit this year since she has nearly finished her three required science classes. She has a few experiments to finish from Chemistry that we have saved for her to do this fall.

Thankfully, I found The 101 Series. This is a DVD-based curriculum that gives a nice overview of the science topics for the non-science-oriented child. James will be doing Biology 101 this year since he is a freshman. I add a dissection lab to this curriculum to round out the content. (Anyone want to teach James dissection? I. Do. Not. Do. That.)

The structure I use for this curriculum is for the student to watch the DVD section of the current module and read the text pages.Suggested activities and readings are included with each module, so I usually assign some outside reading from the library and short reports to summarize the information. We complete most of the suggested activities and experiments. Sometimes a field trip is suggested. Once those activities are complete, I have the child re-watch the DVD lesson and re-read the lesson before taking the end-of-the-unit quiz.


Suzy will be doing some experiment and reading from the book Exploratopia. We are starting with some kitchen science experiments. She will be doing experiments twice a week and writing them up on the other days.

1 comment:

Wee Pip said...

I like your method of science! I never liked the way science is traditionally done (public and homeschool), either.