God's Design Science?

[KerriF]

I've just started looking at this. I read somewhere that there weren't very many experiments. Have you found this to be true? How often are you doing experiment?

 

Thanks so much.

[Guest 4boys]

Bumping for you. I just received my GD science a couple days ago so although I'm not doing it, I have looked through it. There is an activity for every lesson but not every activity is an experiment, sometimes it's a crossword puzzle or worksheet. Hopefully someone with more experience will add their two cents. :) For the record, I am really really excited to begin God's Design. I love how it looks and my boys are already treating the books like read-alouds, wanting me to read lessons to them in advance.

[Zoo Keeper]

This is our second year using the God's Design series; last year was the life science books and this year is the earth science books, so those are the only ones I can speak for with any pretense of knowledge.:) (I have the whole series, so I could dig the other ones out if you need to know about the other books.)

 

We do 2 or three lessons a week (usually three) and there has been something "hands on" for every week. We have enjoyed them all and have had on hand in the house all we have needed for each activity (so far...). Some of the stuff we've done is: demonstrating solar eclipse with balls and flashlight, made solar panels with colored paper, baking sheet and ice cubes, using prisms/mirrors/water to see the colors in light, and other simple, yet effective stuff. When you say experiment, do you mean test tubes and making a mess in the kitchen type stuff, or are you looking for activity/hands on learning type stuff? There are more involved activites suggested in the text for older children. The books are meant to be useable by a wide range of ages; add in a science encyclopedia or two and I think there is enough meat in the books to make it very profitable for elementary and some jr. high science.

[irizarry4]

We too own the whole series. We just started h'sing this year, so we are in the first part of Life Science (plants). The books are not the kind that will make your dc open their eyes wide with wonderment. ;-) That may be partly because (wonderful as they are) plants are not the most exciting subjects of study for kids. ha, ha In their heads, science is about stuff that bubbles, gurgles, wires that spew sparks and such.

 

But the lessons are short, to the point, and so very doable. Anything more involved would not get done in my house and I only have 2dc. There is a hands-on activity for every lesson, which you can choose to do or not. Some of them we just skip.

 

Every week, I supplement their science intake by checking out of the library, Living books in the same/similar topic. I've used some educational youtube videos for them to watch. We watch Bill Nye videos, anything we can find so the dc will hear the science terms and concepts from many different sources. In fact, the teacher books have a wonderful list of additional resources in the back. We've planted beans and corn and written observations. And we've had field trips to the local nursery to classify plants. They know we're the ones who come in with notebook in hand, and always leave having not spent a dime. ha, ha All in all, it's been fun.

[HomesteadMommy]

I bought the set a few years ago after friends telling me how much they loved them. They are ok, but not what I thought. I find they are more geared to older children. I was having to reword most of the lessons for my children. I've used some of the projects to go with unit studies etc. I really like the series by Apologia better.

I know they updated the books but I haven't seen the newest edition. It might be better.

[maryanne]

Last year we used parts of 4 of the God's Design books: the 2 chemistry books and 2 of the physics books. Each book contains 30-35 lessons, and all of them have some kind of activity for each lesson. In the books that we did, most of the activities were hands-on experiment type activities; only a few of the activities were just pencil and paper activities. Most of the experiment supplies were easy to come up with. We skipped some of the experiments that had supplies that were harder to come up with, but we did at least 2/3 of the experiments. My kids love experiments so we usually did 2-3 experiments a week.

 

The Chemistry and Physics books are geared for 3rd to 8th grade, and I was doing them with a 3rd grader. Each of the books starts out easier and gets harder as you progress through the book. My ds didn't have much trouble comprehending lessons in the first half or so, but some of the later lessons went over his head.

 

On the other hand, I have been surprised at how much my dd (K at the time) remembers just from watching and helping with the experiments. I wasn't really even trying to teach her any of it.

 

I also supplemented some with the Usbourne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of Science because the 1st and 2nd edition books don't have a lot of pictures and are all black and white.

 

All the books I own are first or second editions. However I am definitely going to buy the new third editions if we use GD next year when we do Earth and Space (my current plan). I don't own any of the new editions yet, but I've looked at them at our local homeschool store. From what I can tell the main part of each lesson is essentially unchanged, but an easy section geared towards lower elementary has been added to the Life Science and Earth and Space books. Also color pictures have been added to the text, and answers have been removed from the comprehension questions in the books. I believe the answers are now on the teacher CD along with the ability to print all the worksheets and lab sheets that used to have to be photocopied.

[KerriF]

Thank you everyone for your replies. That answers my question. :)