Hoagland Bio: Labs?

[Saille]

 

Exploring the Way Life Works was recommended on the textbooks thread, and I like the look of it a lot. I've already got a laundry list of things I'd like to do for Bio next year, but I'm wondering if anyone has used this as a spine, and if so, what you used for labs. I don't see any included in the program, but could be missing them, of course.

[asta]

I bought digital frog and had him do everything there (including the extra materials - wetlands, etc.). The labs are both visually on the disc (drag the cursor to "cut" the frog) and also .pdf print outs that are detailed questions and diagrams to color and label (gee... just like high school bio - blech).

 

I also went to the publisher's web site and utilized the links they had (some were broken, but - eh) to find interesting stuff. I used a standard biology lab write up format (you can find them around the internet, usually on some bio teacher's home page) and had kid learn to write up labs from scientific journal articles and/or virtual experiments he watched on the web.

 

We never did "hands on", real life stuff in bio simply because he hated the subject. He had also done over a year of botany, so I just wasn't overly concerned. He will be doing standard chemistry experiments (not virtual), so I think he'll be alright.

 

HTH

 

 

asta

[mcconnellboys]

This is a version of it that (I think) is written more to children:

 

http://www.amazon.com/Way-Life-Works-Mahlon-Hoagland/dp/0812920201#_

 

Here are online web links and exercises:

 

http://waylifeworks.jbpub.com/student_resources.cfm

 

I would contact the publisher to ask if you might have access to the connections website if you purchase the book since you'd like to have more supplemental activities.

 

However, there are questions at the end of the chapters and with the online exercises, you could make your own lab sheets. With all that (as well as supplemental reading lists), I'd say you have plenty of material.

 

There's no dissection or anything like that detailed in this book. When my son returned to private school I found that in our area, biology is not considered a lab science and they do little in the way of experimentation. Those who take anatomy do dissection....

[mcconnellboys]

There are also many other virtual dissections online. And there are some books out now, too, that have models of a frog, etc. so you can remove the plastic "parts" and really see how the organs fit together.

 

This also reminds me: for more in depth botany studies, Kym Wright has out a Botany Unit study that is very comprehensive. She's recently updated it so I expect it should be better now than before....

 

http://www.learn-and-do.com/

 

I've also heard that her Bird study is good, but I've never had a chance to take a look at it. I own the older version of the botany study and have done it, in part, with my child during our fifth grade biology sequence.

[Saille]

I'm bumping this thread. I just put a used copy of The Way Life Works in my cart at amazon, and I'm going to start going through it ASAP, but a couple of things jump out at me from looking at the index, and I wondered if anyone had any input.

 

Here are some things that I'm used to seeing in Bio curriculum at this age that I don't see in Hoagland:

 

•Taxonomy/classification

•Anatomy/dissections

•Food webs (as opposed to food chains)

 

It also looks like I'd need separate human body resources, but that's not a big deal to me.

 

Would you supplement? Use virtual online resources to explore anatomy? Partly I'd like to do some of these things and don't want to find that I've purchased a make-work spine, and partly I don't want ds to sit down with the ITBS later and find that we've got a great science background and a gaping hole in the hoop-jumping department.