Does anyone use old PS textbooks as their "spines?"

[eloquacious]

I was thinking specifically for a science curriculum - any recommendations on cool old books to buy? Also History/Social Studies, and possibly music or art?

[Dmmetler]

I wouldn't suggest music-at least in the last 20 years or so, every major curriculum has been set up with so many parts and pieces that finding enough to make it usable would be tough. At minimum, you'd need the teacher's guide, a student book (and in K-2, those are often big books designed to be used in a group, not individual texts) and the audio CDs-and the teacher's guides and CD sets are often next to impossible to come by. The student books are almost worthless by themselves. I do like the piano accompaniment books-but that's just an anthology of songs-and won't include any of the music literature listening or most of the ear training. Everything else is completely worthless.

 

I do have a set of the student Scott Foresman Reading texts on my shelf that my DD's former school was discarding. I like these because I can download the workbook pages and LA/writing pages to go with each story online. My DD LOVES them because they're "Real school books!" and because they're something she can read and do at one time, rather than the more drawn out Sonlight books which often take several weeks to read. So we do one Scott Foresman story a week, plus our usual Sonlight reading. I don't consider them my main LA program, but I do like my DD being able to do some comprehension and word study work without my having to be quite so involved, and I like the writing prompts.

[lollie010]

I think it would depend on what level. I have some old social studies and science textbooks for 1st-2nd grade. There is just not a lot to build on. Maybe in the upper grade levels you would have something to work with.

 

I did pick up a few math textbooks at different levels that might be a good supplement at some point.

[PenKase]

OP, your question couldn't have a come at a better time. I was just wondering the same thing myself. Since this is our first year homeschoooling, the transition from ps to hs has been slow and steady. So far, science has been put on the back burner. I am not what one would call sciency so if I can find an inexpensive resource that will act as a general spine, I'm all for it. As it happens, our local ps district will lend homeschoolers their curriculum materials for use in the home, as we deem fit. My dh was all over this, but I was skeptical. We picked up the materials anyway, and currently in my possession, I have their 2nd and 5th grade science texts published by Harcourt. Admittedly, they are not too shabby. I've only perused the texts (so take this with a grain of salt), but they seem very user friendly. Topics covered are Life Science, Earth Science, and Physical Science. In addition to the lessons, each chapter features a "People in Science", an "Investigate" (experiments), chapter reviews, and test prep sections. My dd10 also happened to mention that she enjoyed working through the texts. Her only qualm was that in school, they never got a chance to work on the experiments. So again, fwiw, it seems (to my untrained eye) like a good resource that will help science get done. Everything is in one place and I really don't mind using the same ps sequence.

 

DH is in education and often brings home goodies (i.e. books). Among some of the recent books, were Macmillian/McGraw-Hill science texts that are very similar to the Harcourt texts I described above.

 

My plan is to go over the texts during our holiday break, collect needed materials, give it a go in the new year, and call science done. If either dd expresses deeper interest, additional experiment/lab resources and supplemental reading will round things off nicely. Right now, we are intently focused on history (we all LOVE history here) and it will most likely be the core of our homeschooling. For science, I think my plan will be more than sufficient, yes?

 

HTH!

 

Also wanted to add that as I have a logic stage child, a texbook approach for 1-2 subjects would be good exposure for late middle and high school levels where, as I understand it, it is not uncommon for the coursework to get more textbook heavy than in earlier stages.

Edited December 3, 2010 by PenKase

[Hunter]

Science Matters is my favorite science spine.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Science-Matters-Achieving-Scientific-Literacy/dp/0307454584/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1291387772&sr=1-1

 

The articles and outlines in World Book Encyclopedia are my favorite spines for literature and history and many other subjects.

 

Cheap math workbooks and test prep workbooks work as a spine to supplement with free worksheet downloads and picture books and manipulative kits.

 

I have tried using old textbooks and had some success when I had nothing else to use, but for very little money, I found the above resources to be better.

[DragonFaerie]

My DD8 (3rd) is using Scott Foresman Science this year and she's liking it so well that I bought the 4th grade edition for next year. She reads the lesson (about four lessons per chapter and about four chapter per unit), copies down the vocabulary words and definitions, and answers the three questions at the end for her regular assignment. Then she also reads through all the experiments and chooses one from each unit to do for her "project." (The Life unit's experiment was setting up a self-sustaining pond snail habitat.) Lastly, she goes online and uses the resources there as part of her assignment (usually two per chapter). She is a strong reader and can do everything independently, however we do discuss the lesson if she's having trouble with something or if she doesn't answer a question correctly or thoroughly. She is also learning how to study for tests as I use the chapter reviews as tests for grading purposes.

[DragonFaerie]

Oh, I forgot to mention that we are also using Harcourt Math, Grade 3 for DD8 and I have Grade 4 for next year. Can you tell DD is a "textbook" sort of kid? LOL

[Farrar]

I've wondered about this as well. The problem, I suspect, is that the majority of textbooks aren't written with the best way to learn in mind. Or the best way to present information. They're written by committees and they're so politicized. Whether you agree with the agenda of the various sides or not, there's so much back and forth about most of them that the product ends up so watered down. Even if the textbook producers are high quality, they also have to please the competing standards of different states - most of which are utterly politicized as well. That makes me wonder if any of them are really worth the time. I'm guessing that the products that are used in schools that are better are things that homeschoolers already know about - Saxon, Spectrum, etc.

[Carol in Cal.]

We used Science Explorer in 7th and 8th grades. It was great! The Readers' Digest books suggested for logic stage science in the older WTM edition were fine for 5th and 6th, but DD needed more of a challenge in 7th and 8th.

 

DD attended kindergarten at a Lutheran school, and when I pulled her out to homeschool first grade I thought she might go back. So I tried to get mostly books that they were using for that grade--Saxon math and Scott Foresman reading. Saxon was very successful for us, but SF was so complicated, with so many parts, that I never could seem to get my arms around the full intent of the lessons. I switched happily to WTM suggestions, Junior Great Books in a coop, and 100 EZ lessons for LA, and never looked back. I looked at the Concordia science books and didn't care for them. I never could find science textbooks that I liked very much for under 6th grade. We used Ms. Frizzle, nature studies, living books, tadpole raising, garden planting, chemistry and weather experiments at home, and lots of hanging out at science and natural history museums for grammar stage science.

 

Children's history textbooks are sometimes pretty good, though. Our state history standard text is great. Still, the living books curriculum that we followed for history, along with SOTW, was better.

[Susan in MO]

We use a science textbook (not public school though) successfully as a resource for my daughter's research paper that is due each week in her CC Challenge A program.

 

We found that one of the most difficult skills for her was/is narrowing down information. One day I picked up a science text off the shelf, hoping it would assist her. The text was a hit because the information was already paired down. She was then able to start small and research other materials for further details.

 

Depending on the textbook it could work fine as a spine, or jumping off spot, researching further to flesh out the material.

 

A word of caution would be to look at the content of the textbook before using it. I have found that in some cases textbook writers don't just state the facts. They add in bias and have an agenda that is being pushed.

 

Susan

[JenninMN]

How old are we talking here? There are quite a few old texts on Google books. There are quite a few nature reader type science texts. I have more trouble with the history texts, sometimes because the accepted terminology for people groups has changed over the years. And sometimes it's more than that. . .

 

If you're talking within the last 10 years or so, don't forget to check the publishers' websites for any interactive or printable resources. Sometimes you almost don't need the book!

 

Jennifer

[2cents]

I'm doing it with a brush up on US History. The class is free and online via UC Open Access ( http://www.ucopenaccess.org/course/view.php?id=82 ) and the text is 'The American Pageant' by Kennedy, Coben and Bailey, Houghton Mifflin Company 2002. We are also using k12 Human Odyssey for world history. I also use Science Explorers for some of our science.

[Violet Crown]

We've used some verrrrrrry old textbooks quite happily.

 

I like the Standard Service Arithmetics series for arithmetic (which we teach separately from and in conjunction with "math"). They're from the 1920's and teach how to do fast and accurate crunching of very large numbers without (obviously) a calculator. The early grades teach different methods of arithmetic that make juggling numbers in your head easier: "adding by endings"; "the Austrian method of double carrying"; etc. (As a special bonus endorsement, the NCTM president once singled out SSA as an example of "bad old days" mathematics.)

 

A homeschooling friend swears by Builders of the Old World (1946) for elementary history.

 

I have gotten good service out of The Elements of Composition (Canby & Opdycke, 1925), and Twenty Lessons in Reading and Writing Prose (Davidson, 1955).

 

Finally, for religious studies we use early twentieth-century parochial and diocesan textbooks.