Science....grrrrr....(hitting my forehead with the palm of my hand)

[KrissiK]

I am so frustrated with science. Ok, two years ago I had a mediocre time with REAL Science Odessey with my boys. So, we didn't do another year of that. We did A Beka. Didn't like that. This year, DS1 is doing earth science as spelled out in TWTM and none, absolutely not one of the experiments worked. And I don't think he's learned much from taking notes from the Encyclopedia. DS2 and DD are doing.... I hate to admit it, RSO earth science. Why did I go back to that? Did I think I would like it? It's not going well at all. I am at my wit's end. I did buy DS1 2 of those Thames and Kosmos kits and I'm tempted to dump everything else and just have them work on those. But the other kids.... I'm out of curriculum money... I can't buy anything else right now, and I don't know which direction to go in if I did have money.

[Korrale]

Frankly my son gets the most from science by watching videos, reading books and discussion. And then we write a little "essay" at the end of the week. Frankly we don't do much with experiments. I know you are out of money now, but there are some science videos on YouTube that might meet your purposes. I know a lot of people enjoy magic school bus (we personally don't. My son finds it to be absurd and I find the content week) and many like Bill Nye. There is a series on YouTube called Make Me Genius, if you can get past the heavy accents and mispronounced words, the content is good.

My personal favourite for teaching science to my son is Peter Weatherall DVDs. He has a few videos on YouTube.

 

Pinterest has some amazing ideas for science lap booking or notebooking. It is worth checking out if you like hands on things.

[cjgrubbs]

There are some pretty good experiment books that your library might have.  Some of the Usborne books have experiments in them and my library has most of those.  Search your library database and she if you can find something.  My kids love experiments, too!  Of course, I'd rather just a read a book bc it's less clean up! :D

[Down_the_Rabbit_Hole]

Jan Van Cleve books at the library. She has one for every major science field. Most of the experiments use real common household things, are very simple, but are not lame or dull. You will see results. I use her books with any science I do now.

 

Another option, see if your library has the Magic School Bus chapter books. There is a web site with curriculum for the books that is free. http://yeeshallknow.com/science/

[DragonflyAcademy]

Are there book selections for the Van Cleve books to go along with the experiments she has?

[Down_the_Rabbit_Hole]

Are there book selections for the Van Cleve books to go along with the experiments she has?

 

I don't think so but each experiment explains the results. These usually explain why the results happen and other important info to help the child learn the science concept being seen.

[umsami]

Jan Van Cleve books at the library. She has one for every major science field. Most of the experiments use real common household things, are very simple, but are not lame or dull. You will see results. I use her books with any science I do now.

 

Another option, see if your library has the Magic School Bus chapter books. There is a web site with curriculum for the books that is free. http://yeeshallknow.com/science/

 

The MSB lapbooks are great.  Can't wait to do hurricanes, as we live in Florida. :)

[pitterpatter]

I don't know what the upper levels are like, but we switched from RSO to Evan-Moor ScienceWorks and haven't looked back. DD is doing first-cycle earth science this year and it's been a blast. I add library books and videos to ScienceWorks and we don't do absolutely everything, but the experiments are pretty much perfect.

 

Here's how we do it. I don't have our current unit's post up yet.

 

http://bluehouseschool.blogspot.com/search/label/Earth%20Science

[Hunter]

Being broke is often the best thing that can happen for science learning. Pick a topic each week. Go get some stuff from the library. Real stuff, not curriculum. Read, watch and play. 

 

If it doesn't come naturally, let go of the whole "practicing to be a scientist" method. More students become firemen then scientists, and we don't make students practice being firemen; we just teach some fire safety instead. For science, become scientifically literate is enough in my opinion, for most people, and definitely for the little guys.

 

Science Matters is a great book about scientific literacy. I bet your library has it.

http://www.amazon.com/Science-Matters-Achieving-Scientific-Literacy/dp/0307454584

 

SM along with Art Robinson's articles about teaching science as a hobby and spending more time on math, until late high school  was a breathe of fresh air to me, when I was struggling.

http://www.robinsoncurriculum.com/view/rc/s31p997.htm

[KrissiK]

If it doesn't come naturally, let go of the whole "practicing to be a scientist" method. More students become firemen then scientists, and we don't make students practice being firemen; we just teach some fire safety instead. For science, become scientifically literate is enough in my opinion, for most people, and definitely for the little guys.

url]

I like this way of looking at it. I hadn't thought of it this way.

[linguistmama]

All the BSFU books are available as $5 pdfs, http://outskirtspress.com/webpage.php?ISBN=9781432706104.  You can't print them, but they are cheap and work well if you have a tablet.  We decided to try interest led science with library books for my oldest this year and it is going well so far.

[Dmmetler]

www.spongelab.com is kind of like Khan academy for science, and does a pretty good job of linking useful stuff from Youtube and other websites.

 

 

[Embassy]

I'd also go the route of picking a topic and going to the library.  Get books and videos and experiment books related to the topic.  Then just have some fun learning science together.  Don't worry about paperwork or tests or quizzes at this point.  I've done this approach for several years and my child wants to be a scientist. 

[ShellLou]

We use Elemental Science & this year was Biology - I would say 98% of the experiments worked & mostly these came out of the Van Cleve books. that Down the rabbit hole metioned. 

Most of the required items I had in the house & have had to buy very few things to complete experiments.  There are enough experiments/demonstrations in the book to make choices based on what you do have in the home.  Most libraries hold the Van Cleve books so you could check them out of the library & decide if they were a good match for you & if you thought you would use them heaps then look at purchase or just borrow from the library as needed.

For reading alongside our encyclopedia (which was really only good for really introducing the subject imo), I just picked up a couple of books on each topic from our local library & read those aloud. 

 

 

 

[OneStepAtATime]

Sometimes Aurora Lipper of Super Charged Science has free experiments that are lots of fun.  Sign up on her mailing list.  She is a NASA scientist and has created an entire science curriculum, but it can get pricey.  E-Science, her curriculum available on-line is cheaper but still can add up.  However, signing up on her newsletter you sometimes get free items and video based experiments where she teaches the child and you just supervise the experiment.

 

Definitely you tube videos have a been great at our house, along with mini-unit studies we have found, some even free.  The mini-unit studies gave us a chance to delve more deeply into a topic so there was actual mastery of the concept, not just a brief overview, but we didn't have to stay with it for months on end, either.  I just do searches on sites like Curr-Click and homeschooling blogs and usually can find something.  Teachers-Pay-Teachers sometimes has something I can use, along with Pin-trest.

 

You might seek more suggestions from hiphomeschoolmoms.com or Highhill Homeschool.

 

Have you looked at The Happy Scientist?  Sometimes you can get access to his materials through Homeschool Buyer's Co-op for about $10 for the entire year and he has lots of videos and information.

 

The Van Cleve books sound interesting.  I will definitely check those out.

[Hunter]

Have you looked at Evan Moor Daily Science?

https://www.google.com/#q=evan+moor+daily+science&tbm=bks

 

There are threads here about the series.

[melbotoast]

Subbing...so far we have tried Elemental Science and Mr. Q life science. I've been thinking about BFSU...

[Garga]

We watch one Bill Nye the Science Guy a day on youtube and the kids learn a surprising amount from that. We also use BJU science for the 6th grader.  My 3rd grader reads library books on a matching topic.  But I'm always surprised that Bill covers the same material in the books and makes it soooo engaging.  The kids remember it when they see it on Bill Nye.  I think it's the way his show repeats the same phrases over and over in little sound bites.  

 

If I had no money for a text book, I would use Bill Nye The Science Guy as a spine until next year.  I'd figure out from the titles which ones were on similar topics and watch them in a group.  That's what I do currently.  LIke he has one on the water cycle and one on rivers and one on ocean life.  I'd group those 3 together and watch them over a period of a week or two.  Then, I'd get a bunch of library books about that topics and read them.  I'd have the little ones draw a picture of one thing they learned from each book.  I'd have the older ones write 3 facts of what they learned from each book.  Whatever struck their interest would be fine.

I'd look through and figure out which words would be "vocabulary words" and put them on index cards for them to remember and I'd refer back to those vocabulary words from time to time.  Isn't there a website that'll make a crossword for you on whatever words you enter?  I might make them a crossword puzzle of the vocab words, or some such thing, if I could find a website to do that.

 

Each Bill Nye episode suggests experiments to try at home--you may want to do some of them, or just what you might run across in the library books.

[Dana]

If you go with BFSU, they've got a pretty active yahoo group for book 1 and 2 and Dr Nebel posts often as well.

[threedogfarm]

I really liked Hunter's post about not "pretending to be a scientist".  We do a fair amount of BFSU here but the lessons go so quickly and to be honest, seem a little forced.  I have finally figured out that we are just teaching concepts and discussing vocabulary terms and I'm OK with that.  So science is more of a discussion around here.  I also realized that I'm doing a lot more science around here without even realizing it.  I assign "science" as part of independent work.  At first it started out as just nature journal (using the Nature Connection book as inspiration along with Naturally Curious (which was written by a local author--aren't we lucky?!?) and then I veered off into individual topics when then nature journaling seemed to get stale. . .

 

My son is now reading an old book called "The History of Geology" and I assign reading pages and then drawings, addn'l reading in the encyclopedia, diagrams, explanations, etc.  

 

My daughter loves all things nature so I am continuing her nature study with Margaret Waring Buck books (which can easily be found at the library or used--the drawing are BEAUTIFUL and accessible!).  She is given assignments to find certain leaves, certain weeds, draw birds, we'll be making a birdhouse, etc.  

 

The "assignments" that take me only about 10 minutes to create at the beginning of the week.  

 

So is this "real science" as it would be pursued by curriculum?  No, definitely not.  But my children are getting exposed to things that they are interested in, they are learning to do more open ended, independent work and I am easily able to tailor it to their interests since I don't have an agenda.  History is sooooo much easier because it isn't as open ended.  But if you take Hunter's words to heart I think you will feel much better about not buying a curriculum and just choosing a spine that will last a few weeks and seeing where it leads you.  Really, this is not time consuming nor is it expensive.  But it is very satisfying, both for me and my children.