Secular Science Curriculum-are they out there?

[brookspr]

I was hoping someone might be able to point me in the direction of a secular science curriculum that I might be able to use for a 6th and 8th grader. I would like to find one that runs through high school so stay somewhat consistent in format and depth. Not too textbooky, but heavy on experiments and observations. I'd like to start with Anatomy and Physiology, since both kids have expressed an interest in the subject and I loved my college A&P class. Bring on the dissection!

 

I should mention that both my husband and I have chemistry degrees and we have strong science backgrounds so it shouldn't be hard for us to put any good curriculum into use. As a novice homeschooler, however, I think creating our own curriculum would be too challenging when we are still trying to wrap our heads around how the rest of it is all going to work. My plan is to use TRISMS History Makers and Discovering the Ancient World starting in January and complete them by the end of the "school year" in 2014. Although TRISMS does incorporate some science, because of our backgrounds we would love to have the kids study hands on science, since both kids are strong scientific thinkers.

 

Thanks for any help you can give. I will take any and all recommendations into consideration.

[Farrar]

CPO is secular.

 

Elemental Science is almost secular (supposedly they don't take a position and put evolution in there at the higher level but in a way that people can take it out or something), but it probably isn't what you want.

 

RS4K is also sort of secular (there are some mentions of things like "designed this way" apparently). Also probably not your style though - it's very vocabulary heavy.

 

Have you seen Inquiry in Action from the American Chemical Society? It's kinda cool. Also, free. That might be what you want.

 

Also, RSO is secular and coming out with middle school levels soon, though I don't know just when.

[SuperDad]

Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding (sorry, can't link on this device) will not take you through high school, but it is really worth checking out. It has the hands on that you are looking for and IMO is one of the *best* programs out there for developing scientific thinking skills. It is not a hold-your-hand type of program but can be a great guide as long as you are somewhat confident in your science teaching abilities and are willing to put in little extra planning effort.

Edited October 11, 2012 by SuperDad

[lewelma]

Welcome to the board!

 

You are probably not going to get a single curriculum that goes all the way through high school. Usually by high school, secular people grab the textbook that is the best for each topic: Conceptual Chemistry, Tarbuck Earth Science, Knight Physics etc.

 

Here are 2 more secular middle school curriculum (but more textbooky):

Singapore Science

Prentice Hall Explorer series

 

For high school, the modular books put out by Biozone have books on topics not usually found in high school like human evolution, anatomy and physiology, ecology, biotechnology, etc. http://www.biozone.co.nz/modular.php

 

I should also mention that you can use secular nonfiction books that are not textbooks, living books, or curriculum. And then add experiments on. We have used these:

How Things Work

The Way Life Works

The Cartoon Guide to genetics

The stuff of life

etc

 

HTH,

 

Ruth in NZ

Edited October 10, 2012 by lewelma

[NittanyJen]

Prentice Hall Science Explorer series is definitely secular, and they have many labs incorporated directly into the text (ie, demonstrate that muscles only pull, not push, by dissecting a chicken wing from the grocery store, all directions given right in the text).

 

I have been teaching my kids from this this year for bio, and it is going really well; this series forms our "spine" to plan the year. I teach/we discuss on Monday to introduce the week's topic; Tuesday the each have an assigned reading from which they take some notes or outline. Wednesday is lab day and we go berzerk designing experiments and practicing lab technique and having a lot of fun. Thursday they do extended reading (no notetaking) from additional sources on the topic of the week-- it could be websites, library books, additional books we have around the house, videos, finishing experiments. On Friday, (usually started by Wed or Thursday) they each pick some element of what we learned that week and read more about it, and put together some kind of presentation-- it could be a drawing, an outline, a chart, a powerpoint, any way they want to get some ideas across is fine. But by the end of school on Friday, they have to gather up the rest of us and "teach" us all about whatever it was that was interesting enough to them to learn more about on their own. For example, when we started out with classification, DS9 did an activity where he looked up different animals and traced down Kingdom>>>genus>species to see how closely related the animals he picked really were. He guessed first, then did the research to see how well he had guessed. In his research, he came across the poison dart frog. So, in our week learning about classification and the introduction to cells (cell membrane, cytoplasm, nucleus) he gave a presentation on the poison dart frog. DS11 could not wait to become an expert on cytoplasm, and ended up teaching us everything he learned about it.

 

This week we are looking at Kingdoms Protista and Fungi. I can't wait to see what they show me on Friday :). There is a lot of good material to choose from there!

 

I get lab materials to supplement the ideas in the Science Explorer books (there are 16 of them, but you can find them used for as little as $4 including shipping on Amazon-- $.01 plus shipping) from home science tools and kits like the Elenco Slide Making kit, Owl Pellets, the Sheep Brain and heart, cow eyeball, Magic School Bus World of Germs (sounds hinky, but it provided us with petri dishes, nutrient agar, antibiotic packet, sterile swabs, and more). We are looking forward to a great (secular) year of bio based around these books.

[dbmamaz]

i have used something different every year, but part of that is because its fun to find what you think is the best way to cover each subject.

 

I started homeschooling in 8th grade (my older boy)

 

We started by using Dr Art's Guide to Science, through amazon - it was just a fun, light intro to science in general.

 

then, since my son wanted more 'life science', i bought an old, well-reviewed Campbell bio textbook. We did the first half in 8th grade, bringing in videos from Discovery Streaming

 

10th grade we read Joy Hakim's Story of Science (2.5 books, didnt quite finish). We didnt do any 'work' with it, just read them, but i felt like that would be a good first peak at physics

 

this year we are using Chemistry Matters - which is what the above poster called singapore science - its sold on the singaporemath.com website. I like the text, and luckily I love chemistry, because it is really designed for classroom use. I was planning on using the lab book without DOING the experiments, because it is not recommended for home use - i was just going to look for youtube videos - but i lost the book somewhere in my house! anyways, there is no answer guide for the textbook, and no explanation for the workbook answers, so its somewhat challenging to teach from.

 

My assumption was that, for physics, I would use Kinetic Books.

 

There are a few lab kits which people rave about, which you guys would probably be comfortable with.

 

One of my favorite home school high school science resources is the blog of a woman who has documented the courses she has done for her son and a friend: http://quarksandquirks.wordpress.com/ across the top bar, you can find chemistry and biology.

 

But no, there is no home-school oriented secular science company which provides science all through high school.

[AimeeM]

Oak Meadow

i have used something different every year, but part of that is because its fun to find what you think is the best way to cover each subject.

 

I started homeschooling in 8th grade (my older boy)

 

We started by using Dr Art's Guide to Science, through amazon - it was just a fun, light intro to science in general.

 

then, since my son wanted more 'life science', i bought an old, well-reviewed Campbell bio textbook. We did the first half in 8th grade, bringing in videos from Discovery Streaming

 

10th grade we read Joy Hakim's Story of Science (2.5 books, didnt quite finish). We didnt do any 'work' with it, just read them, but i felt like that would be a good first peak at physics

 

this year we are using Chemistry Matters - which is what the above poster called singapore science - its sold on the singaporemath.com website. I like the text, and luckily I love chemistry, because it is really designed for classroom use. I was planning on using the lab book without DOING the experiments, because it is not recommended for home use - i was just going to look for youtube videos - but i lost the book somewhere in my house! anyways, there is no answer guide for the textbook, and no explanation for the workbook answers, so its somewhat challenging to teach from.

 

My assumption was that, for physics, I would use Kinetic Books.

 

There are a few lab kits which people rave about, which you guys would probably be comfortable with.

 

One of my favorite home school high school science resources is the blog of a woman who has documented the courses she has done for her son and a friend: http://quarksandquirks.wordpress.com/ across the top bar, you can find chemistry and biology.

 

But no, there is no home-school oriented secular science company which provides science all through high school.

[Shelsi]

We use BFSU and love it but like the previous poster said it won't take you through high school. It can be difficult to find secular homeschool science materials. I'm not sure if my ds will homeschool through high school but if he does I'm planning on using BFSU through to 8th grade, then find something for 9th & 10th and then hopefully he can move on to community college courses (or perhaps even for 9th and 10th?).

 

The only thing I don't like about BFSU are the typos. They drive me nuts. Typically I have a hard time trusting any text when it appears they didn't even run it through a spell check before printing off a billion copies - however we've been using BFSU for 1.5 yrs now and we're really enjoying it. I'm "science-y" and close to getting a B.S degree and my 8 yr old is very science-minded as well. It's the best fit we've found.

[Lily_Grace]

We're using Mr. Q after going through Noeo for a few years. Noeo uses living books and doesn't take a stance one way or another. Mr. Q looks to be very secular so far (we're using the advanced chem). It's challenging, maybe too much for a 6th grader, but he has a basic science set for 7-12yos. His biology pdfs are free, too.

 

Intellego has unit studies that last approximately 10 weeks, but quite a bit of the work involves sitting at the computer. Ellen McHenry has units, too, and if you want just a general science you could go with Moving Beyond The Page's 11-13yo science package.

[kiwik]

I'm using the first mr q with my five year old. It is fun and definately secular so far. It's probably a bit easy for a sixth grader but it is worth looking at. You could do the elementry course quickly the go on to the advanced course ( only advanced chem is available now so you would have to start with chemistry).

 

The elementary life science and the advanced chemistry can be downloaded free.

Edited October 11, 2012 by kiwik

[Laura Corin]

The website is here. Come back to me if you need purchasing information outside of the UK. It stops at about age 14, however.

 

Laura

[Alessandra]

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has a number os science series. You can get many Houghton Mifflin series through Saxon Homeschool. Kolbe Academy sells some Harcourt Science. Ordering directly from the publishers amy also be a possibility, although some items are restricted.

 

CK12 has free online textbooks, beginning at middle school level. But actually printing these would cost a fortune! You would probably want to use them on an iPad.

 

Check homeschool publications carefully -- some say that they appeal to a wide range of beliefs, but are not really secular -- for example, they might advocate intelligent design, that sort of thing. There have been a number of threads on this.

[Spy Car]

RS4K is creationism/intelligent design pretending to be otherwise. The author has a hidden agenda. It is not secular.

 

Bill