Oak Meadow Science?

[TKDmom]

Can anyone tell me more about this?

 

I was looking at the samples, and it looks like something I'd like--nice clean pages with a good narrative and activities that wouldn't require elaborate preparation on my part. I want secular science, but the busy pages and educational jargon in textbooks make me cringe.

 

What do you like or dislike about OM Science?

 

I'm looking at this for a 5th grader, but I'm leaning toward the 6th grade book because I'd really like to do biology this year.

[Murrayshire]

So happy I saw your post!:001_smile: I have a 6th grade life Science book from Oak Meadow that I'm thinking of using this year.....I look forward to hearing comments on it as well!

[Caitilin]

We used OM life science in 6th grade for my dds. They really liked it--the format was "quiet": no colored boxes to sort through, etc; the questions were designed to encourage thought rather than regurgitation, and allowed for various learning styles:write an essay, draw a poster, make a movie, do a presentation, etc.; it is secular, which was important to me; it is written to the student, so it was something they could do largely independently. We used the 8th grade physical science book this past year, and they like that one even more. They enjoyed the mathy aspects, really felt they were learning new things, and had their feeling validated when they consistently knew the science answers in their quiz bowl questions. If you have a very science-oriented child, OM is probably not enough, but if you have a science-interested and verbally oriented child, I think it's great. :001_smile:

[saja1029]

We used OM life science in 6th grade for my dds. They really liked it--the format was "quiet": no colored boxes to sort through, etc; the questions were designed to encourage thought rather than regurgitation, and allowed for various learning styles:write an essay, draw a poster, make a movie, do a presentation, etc.; it is secular, which was important to me; it is written to the student, so it was something they could do largely independently. We used the 8th grade physical science book this past year, and they like that one even more. They enjoyed the mathy aspects, really felt they were learning new things, and had their feeling validated when they consistently knew the science answers in their quiz bowl questions. If you have a very science-oriented child, OM is probably not enough, but if you have a science-interested and verbally oriented child, I think it's great. :001_smile:

 

:iagree:Especially about the format and the variety of things to do - my son really enjoyed it:)

[NanceXToo]

We used Oak Meadow 5 last year and science was my daughter's favorite subject.

 

We did things like burying objects in our backyard and digging them up later to see which decomposed and which didn't, starting a simple worm bin, a small organic garden, different water conservation and air pollution experiments, lots of drawings and coloring re: life cycle, habitats and so on, we did a four week biome observation project, made a multi-media forest mural and so on. There were some writing assignments, some supplemental reading- none of it was dry or textbookish. It was fun and we liked it, but people who want something very "rigorous" might not think it's "enough."

 

We're doing 6th grade this year and I've been told it is "meatier" than 5th grade was, but we haven't actually used it yet so I can't yet say what we like best about it, dislike etc.

 

I have a much older edition of the curriculum- Basic Life Science with a copyright date of 1998- but I do have it here accessible and flipping through, it starts out in lesson 1 by talking about "science and the scientific method" and describes controlled experiments and the steps one owuld take and so on.

 

It has a "conversational" kind of lesson several pages long- not very dry or textbookish which I like about OM in general- and then it goes into having them do their own experiment which involves taking two identical growing plants, a ruler, classical music, rock music, and has you measure the height of each of the plants and record it. They then have to place one plant next to the classical music and one next to the rock music and play it for several hours a day. They have to guess which plant will grow fastest and they keep observing and writing down their results, until at least one of them has grown an inch.

 

Then they have them come up with their OWN idea for a controlled experiment that they can try.

 

Then they give a choice of 9 different projects for the student to choose from- another thing I like about OM is that it always gives several different options of creative activities, writing assignments, etc, and lets the student choose which one they want to do.

 

In this example, they can choose to make "oobleck" (and they have to observe its properties, write things down, pose a scientific question about it and write their hypothesis etc).

 

Or they can choose from a couple of different writing assignments (one of which is a creative story type thing).

 

Or they can play a game that deals with the "power of observation."

 

Or they can do "animal observation" with a pet at home.

 

Or there's one about clay boats, where they make it and try to form three in different styles to see which float or sink, making predictions first and so on.

 

They can choose one of those or if you and they want, they can do more than one thing.

 

OM is usually pretty hands on and interactive like that- but simple as in not tons of complex preparation and materials required....

 

Hope this helps some!