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Self contained chemistry curriculum for third grade?


SamanthaCarter
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So we've been using Elemental Science chemistry for over 2 weeks now and I'm pretty much hating it. It's terribly disjointed and set up in a very boring, tedious way. It's a little too much writing and hunting for pages for my third grader. He asked specifically to do chemistry this year, and I loved the idea of Elemental Science, but now that we are working with it, I feel it's just not well executed. I don't like having to find the answers for him because they aren't obvious in the reading, which I'm having to do. I feel he's learning nothing but to lose interest in science!!

 

Can you suggest something for an 8 year old very interested in chemistry, but not with the writing and study skills needed for Elemental? More open and go? I don't mind experiments, especially if I can buy a supply kit to go with the curriculum. 

 

Newby here! Please be kind and don't abbreviate.

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We really liked the Magic School Bus Chemistry Kit. Everything but some basic household things are in the kit.

 

I combined it with ideas from The Well-Trained Mind - writing out the steps to the experiment, looking up definitions, and drawing diagrams.

 

My daughter would do one of the experiments, fill out an experiment page and I'd choose a few words for her look up (usually taken from the MSB experiment card) in the encyclopedia and make a definition page. She had a lot of fun that year.

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Another REAL science odyssey fan here! We did the same as you - started off with Elemental Science and it just wasn't working. The presentation In RSO chemistry is a lot more fun and my kids were not fans of all the writing required in ES.

 

Now that we are about half way through RSO I've been incorporating a little bit of the Elemental Science, because we have it and my son wanted to do more experiments, but RSO is definitely a self contained curriculum since you don't need to buy any additional books.

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For experiments, we are greatly enjoying these. There are simply student response sheets for each experiment. Ingredients used are common household products...a lot of corn syrup, cooking oil, alcohol, food coloring and water.

 

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http://www.carsondellosa.com/products/0742427463__Hands-On-Chemistry-Experiments-Resource-Book-0742427463

 

http://www.carsondellosa.com/products/0742427471__Hands-On-Chemistry-Experiments-Resource-Book-0742427471

 

We are using these as our primary texts. The last two are series. Also, Bill Nye videos.

 

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I have a schedule written out that I need to type up on my blog.

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