Creek Edge Press Task Cards-Chemistry for 3rd and 4th grade? Too young?

[TheAttachedMama]

My daughter (8) will be going into 3rd grade.   My oldest son (9) will be going into 4th grade.   I typically combine them for contest subjects because they are only 16 months apart.   I also have a 2-year-old (almost 3) who is making teaching my older children very difficult.  :)  He is very needy.

 

Once per week, we are going to meet with friends to complete a chemistry lab from RSO Chemistry 1.   So I have the "hands-on" portion of my science scheduled for the year.  (And there will be accountability so it won't be skipped!)   But we are a bookish family, and I would like to supplement the RSO program with some reading and research.   (I recently started a related thread about independent reading in history and science.)   I want to start to teach them HOW to learn independently.   I want to teach them to reach for books when they want to know more about something. 

 

I am still completely undecided on how to roll out this new (for us) independent reading in science.    Part of me thinks I should keep it light and purely interest driven:   Schedule 20 minutes of reading in science from any topic they want and then ask for a narration.    But part of me is also drawn towards more structure.   Maybe I need to teach them HOW to read to learn?  

 

SO--I find myself looking at the Creek Edge Chemistry Task cards this morning.  Are my children too young to really appreciate them?   Will they just cause me MORE work than they are worth?   Is this something people buy and then never use?  (Every review I can find online seems to be a TOS review---and I never trust those completely because I have never read a negative review.)    

 

If I purchased them, I was thinking of rolling them out in a phased approach:   We would start the year off just reading science books and asking for an oral narration or copywork entry in their notebook.   Then, we would start to phase in tasks from these cards as the year went on.   

 

Also, if I go with the task cards, do you think it would be better to ask each child what they are interested in?   OR, do you think it would be better to choose chemistry and dive deep in that subject?  (If I ask the kids, I know they will pick life science.   We have studied it every year in some capacity because they like it. hahaha)

[TheAttachedMama]

Bump

[shadah]

I noticed you didn't get any replies so I went and looked specifically at the chemistry task cards. Dd will be third grade next year. She could do these either with some help getting started or giving her longer time to finish each card. Either way would, for us, be feasible. Couldn't you try the sample activites and see if they could do them (or wanted to do them which is probably more important).

We already have a plan in place or I would be tempted with a few of their products. Dd would love to do a thinking tree journal and some task cards or maybe the recitation guides.

[SanDiegoMom]

Bumping because while we are planning this for fifth (not third or fourth!) and haven't actually done them yet... My kids are very excited about the idea:-) We are doing physics. Or life science. When they make up their mind.

 

I am planning on making some required and some optional. I just know I'd be setting us up for failure if I tried to expect everything.

[Kathleen.]

👂

[kalusignan]

I'm wondering if anybody here ended up using these task cards this year.