Joy Hakim's Story of Science

[My3girls]

I plan to start Aristotle Leads the Way after Christmas with Dd12. Has anyone used this? Are the teacher and/or student guides helpful, necessary, a waste of money? The teacher guide is more expensive than the actual text and I don't want to waste my money, Kwim? Thanks!

[Momling]

We bought it for the first book and actually found it to be too much for us. It'd be awesome for a classroom, but just more than I needed to teach my own daughter. We loved the books though!

[kiwi mum]

I have a 12 year old using Aristotle Leads The Way this year. He is really enjoying it. I didn't buy the teacher guide but we are using the student guide. I have skipped some of the assignments if they overlap with what we have already covered in history but I would definitely buy the student guide again. He works on this independently. I just assign either a chapter to read or an activity from the student book.

[lmrich]

Does anyone have a blog that discusses using this?

[Chrysalis Academy]

Miss Moe blogged about using Newton at the Center with the Quest Guides.

 

IMO - and it's not a universally held opinion - the Aristotle book is really more a history book than a science book.  Me, I like that - we like to talk about the history of ideas, I like to make connections between history, science, lit, math, etc.  But if this is your science for the year/semester, it might end up feeling kind of light, as science.  As history, either stand alone or as a supplement to Ancient/Medieval history, it's great!  But better, I think, as a read together and discuss than one they go off and read alone - if the ideas part is why you're really interested.  When we did this, we were also doing several other things for science.  It took less than a semester to go through, too (but we do science every day).

 

I have mixed feelings about the Quest guide.  It doesn't really turn it into a science class, I don't think.  There are a couple of experiments and several nice math activities.  But it's also a lot of answering questions that I prefer to discuss orally, and some kind of silly makework activities.  For the price, I'm not sure if it is worth it for one kid at home.  For a class or coop, sure.

 

We're using the Newton book now.  It's definitely more of a science book than the first one, for sure! Which makes sense, because it covers the time period when actual scientific methodology and experimentation was developed.  Again, I have mixed feelings about the Quest guide.  A couple of the activities have been great, but a lot of them feel like either busywork writing assignments or just straight demos of historical "experiments" that you've just read about - so you know just what "should" happen.  That kind of project drives me nuts.  I'm supplementing it heavily with better activities- we're using the Stop Faking It Force & Motion Activity book, for example, right now to study Newton's laws.  And we did a whole trimester on Astronomy using other resources.

 

But I have found with this book that when I send my 6th grader off to read it on her own, she doesn't always get the main points.  It really is a better read and discuss together book, I'm realizing.  Your son is older, so this may be less of an issue, but I think the Newton book is really challenging for a 6th grader to do on their own.

 

I like these books, I do.  I'm not sure if the Quest guides a worth it, though, and I don't think they stand alone as a full science curriculum.  They are what they are, which is a really unique and interesting approach to the history of scientific ideas and discoveries.  If you go into it knowing that, I think you can get a whole lot out of them.

[Chrysalis Academy]

I agree completely! I hate how busy the text is.  My only consolation is that Shannon is getting practice with how to read a busy text . . . strategies for managing boxes, picture captions, definitions, sidebars, etc.  

[minuway]

I bought the books it to have around, but am not using it as a spine, just a supplement to our science books.  I think they are great resources as such. I assign a few chapters a week for my oldest (8.5) who is accelerated and usually wants more to read on science topics. She reads them on her own, narrates/ dissusses with me and might  do a notebook page on what she read or put something on her history timeline if appropriate.   I agree that they are a bit  more textbook-ish than narrative than I'd like, but at least they are secular and its not terribly boring, or super expensive. I do believe they are trying to be narrative, if that makes sense. My library had all of them so I was able to check them out first to see if we liked them. Most of what I've read online says that the workbooks are not worth using - not well related to the text, more suited for classroom use, and generally lame - but I have no personal experience with them.

[Chrysalis Academy]

Ok, I just realized the other thing I hate about these books - they are written in the &$%#@ present tense!!!  I find myself translating it into the past tense as I read.  What a weird authorial choice. It's annoying.

[My3girls]

I was planning on using this as a supplement to world history. The science and math in it are just a nice bonus. Looks like it will be a read and discuss with occasional written narrations then. Thanks everyone.