Making your own science

[AustinTea]

Let's see if I can word this correctly, Has anyone made up there own science course for 9th grade instead of using a text book? Could you tell me what you did and how you did it? Or is this just a bad idea and one should just stick with text books at this grade?

 

Thank you

[Blue Hen]

For the younger grades I always made up my own science program, pulling together lots of different books to cover the topics in the order that I wanted. As my older one reached Jr High though, and since he was quite advanced in the sciences, I turned to textbooks. The reasons for switching to textbooks were numerous including the workload coming up with our own science course placed upon me, pulling all these different books together, coming up with the course outline and some means to measure whether and what he was learning is time consuming to say the least. Textbooks were an easier means to reach our ends.

 

Sure it can be done and I wouldn't tell anyone it is a bad idea it's just a matter of priorities for us. I had too many other items (Dad in stage 4 cancer was a major item) that were pulling at my time so turning to a science textbook was an easier thing for us. I do supplement the textbook topics with additional science-related topics; Science Olympiad is one.

 

Carole

[Nan in Mass]

We did Natural History for 2 years, using MODG's syllabus as the basis and adding in lots of extra projects and reading. Natural history is fun, applied, local, and lends itself very, very well to "make up your own science". Just don't be surprised if in the process you discover that you wish your own knowledge of chemistry were better GRIN. I had to borrow my sister's biology book in order to explain certain things, and I called my mother and sister (bio majors) over and over to get them to explain things to me so I could explain them to the children. There are many fun real books out there. If you make your own course, no matter what subject you pick, you will be able to read them. It is always better, I think, to teach your children how to make their own experiments and keep a lab notebook. That isn't very complicated and children are much more interested in science if they try the things they want to try. My older one has been waiting for the lake to freeze solidly enough that he try to correlate the force of his bow and the distance of his arrows. We're doing physics this year with a textbook, but he is used to making his own experiments, so we've done a number of them. The egg drop was particularly fun. We did ham radio one semester. And we did human anatomy another. I sort of made up both of those. For anatomy, we did a few experiments, The Anatomy Coloring Book, and the anatomy sections of Prentice Hall's Bio textbook. We did an electrical kit, read "Now You're Talking", and got our ham licenses for the ham radio one. Lots of homeschoolers do this. Most of the people on this board use textbooks for science so you aren't getting an accurate picture of homeschooling science in general. If you are labelling something like biology or chemistry, then you probably want to check a high school textbook to make sure you are covering all the bits.

-Nan

[Anna]

Has anyone made up there own science course for 9th grade instead of using a text book?.... Or is this just a bad idea and one should just stick with text books at this grade?

 

No way would I make up my own science courses for high school. It would have been a horrible, terrible idea for us.

 

Fwiw- I currently have my youngest as a hs junior/part-time cc student and oldest is second semester, full-time college.

[Jane in NC]

Has anyone made up there own science course for 9th grade instead of using a text book?

 

Text books may present more complete information in high school science, but let's face it: many high school science textbooks give real scientists heartburn! Dull books turn kids off to science. There is a movement underway to rethink how science is taught, moving from dry texts to inquiry based methods.

 

Nan is on to something with what she did, in my opinion. But as Carole pointed out, it is a heck of a lot of work.

 

We use text books, but we supplement. My son reads articles in Discover magazine, for example, so he learns about new research. We subscribe to ChemMatters magazine from the American Chemical Society. The February issue has an article on The Forensics of Blood--Is it blood? Is it human blood? Whose? The chemistry of the analysis process is explained. Later today he will assist with a bird necropsy. The bird rehabilitator asked us to bring our microscope to examine some pelican feces. Does the bird have worms? It is eating but not gaining weight.

 

I think that the key to science is observation and learning how to ask the right questions. Text books are useful in that they can teach systems and laws and help students connect the dots. But nothing can beat hands on--when the student is led on the journey.

 

My son has been an active participant in Envirothon competitions for several years. In his material he has read about water quality. Measuring for the amount of dissolved oxygen, nitrogen, etc. in the estuary at the end of our street before and after an intense rain is ultimately more meaningful. The text book lays out the concept--the hands on solidifies.

 

Jane

[Tina]

I'm working on that using TWTM biology suggestions, but wondering about the lab portion. She doesn't show any lab for the high school science classes. I have found lots of experiments online, and I want to include microscope work and at least a virtual frog dissection. Can anyone give me a hand here?? I really don't want to do lots of dissections as ds is not into that kind of thing, nor is he a science major in any sense. Just wondering what we need to do to include a decent lab portion in the class.

[Nan in Mass]

The hands-on part is really important, but for most children, it can't all be hands-on. Most children will have trouble correllating the concepts with their experiences unless they receive some help. This is where the work for the mother comes in. It is easier for me to do this with natural history than narrower subjects like physics, so with physics, we're doing a textbook. Well, we're doing a textbook along with anything else they think of. For chemistry, I'm sending them to cc LOL. But my experience (and hence my desire not to teach it) with chemistry is what we are trying to avoid. When I took chemistry, I just didn't "get" it. I got A's easily, but it didn't seem to have anything to do with real life (other than renaming things like salt or pointing out that ice melts, something I knew before I took chemistry), and I didn't retain any of it. It wasn't until we began doing natural history that I realized that chemistry is at the bottom of everything else. I'm hoping that when my children take chemistry, their years of natural history will keep them from having the same problem. I ought to teach it myself and make it real as we go, but I just plain don't want to.

 

It is probably worth giving some thought to which activities are a demonstration, an experiment, a curiosity, taking a principle and designing an experiment to demonstrate it, giving a child a series of activities meant to force them to come up with the underlying principle themselves (sometime a good idea and sometimes forcing them to reinvent the wheel), aquiring science vocabulary, or aquiring science skills (usually familiarity with measuring devices of various types), and making sure the child knows which they are doing so they know why. I don't mean to make doing your own science sound more complicated than it really is; I just want to point out that many times an activity is meant only as a curiosity or to learn some science skills, and you need to have more than that if you want to do a mostly hands-on science. That would take some careful planning. If you are mixing reading and hands-on, it is much easier. That wasn't very clear, but hopefully you can figure out what I mean. The activity is more meaningful if the activity is designed to make the child come up with a principle for themselves (difficult) or the activity comes after the principle has been explained (fairly easy but may seem like a waste of time to a teenager unless they came up with the idea themselves) or the activity has a real life purpose, like saving the life of a bird.

 

HTH

-Nan

[Jan P.]

I tried to come up with "living books" for my dd's 9th grade physical science. I actually came up with a list of books that I felt would correlate to most "state standards". However due to lack of funds and time I didn't get to coming up with a syllabus or course of study. If you are interested in something like the physics/chemsitry type class then I could try to send you the list of books that I came up with.

 

Jan P.

[Pam Wilhelm]

I hope we never use a Textbook for Science..... there's just so much to do out there..... River Studies, gross morphology, classifications, behavioral observations, weather study and predictions, etc. I'm sure we will eventually use something for references..... and that includes textbooks..... but I do not want to use one as a spine...... just a tool. I guess what I hope for is to find their interests and then approach it as a unit study/real life experiences..... does that make sense?

[happykids]

You could use Experiences in Biology by Castle Heights Press. It was written especially for the homeschool and can be used with any biology program or books. They also have labs for Chemistry and Physics.

 

~Sabrina

[AustinTea]

I tried to come up with "living books" for my dd's 9th grade physical science. I actually came up with a list of books that I felt would correlate to most "state standards". However due to lack of funds and time I didn't get to coming up with a syllabus or course of study. If you are interested in something like the physics/chemsitry type class then I could try to send you the list of books that I came up with.

 

Jan P.

 

Yes, I would be interested in the list of books you came up with. Thank you.

[AustinTea]

Thanks to all of you for all the good information.

[Jan P.]

Here are websites that I obtained lists of science books to use.

 

http://charlottemason.tripod.com/hisci.html

 

http://hedgeschool.homestead.com/sciencereads.html

 

http://www.pennygardner.com/sciencebks.html

 

http://www.nsta.org/publications/ostb/

 

http://www.krampf.com/experiment_vid.html

 

A Students Guide to Natural Science (Guides To Major Disciplines) (Paperback)

by Stephen M. Barr (Author)

 

Building a Popular Science Library Collection for High School to Adult Learners by Gregg Sapp (OUP)

 

On the Shoulders of Giants: The History of Science series (OUP)

 

That's it for now.

[Jan P.]

I'm sorry I meant to type (OOP) for Out of Print. Disregard (OUP).