Mr Q's classical science

[coloradomomof5]

Anyone have experience with this? Thoughts? Ages you used it with?

[HomeAgain]

I have used Advanced Chem (age 14) and Beginning Life Science (age 6).

 

Chem - it moves very fast.  Your child needs strong math skills, preferably having had algebra 1 at the least.  The kitchen based experiments were very nice, but when we found the pace a little much we supplemented with a beginning chemistry book found on Project Gutenberg and Ellen McHenry units (also read the Good Eats books to reinforce some of the lessons being learned)

 

Life Science - not impressed.  It is not as well organized as advanced chem, imo, and the lessons were heavy on vocabulary, but the material was overly simplified.  My 6yo found it boring and I rather agreed with him.  We ended up dropping it and doing a long unit this year on insects instead.

 

 

[coloradomomof5]

Thx. What unit study did u go with? I am also looking at great science adventures

[HomeAgain]

I think we ended up with The Elements and Carbon Chemistry.  We'd do Mr. Q three days a week, Ellen McHenry; 2. We slowed the pace to half time while going through the units and then worked back up.  It took him much longer to finish the program but when he took it again at the brick and mortar school he aced the class, having had plenty of practice with the math that his classmates were just getting exposed to.

[Momto6inIN]

We used all 4 of the elementary ones with DD who was in 5th and 6th grade. We liked the life and earth science, but weren't as impressed with the chemistry and physical science. My favorite thing about Mr. Q is the lab report process with the ESP experiments, which has really helped me as a teacher with the scientific method. We're using something different for my younger DD now, but I still pull from the ESP experiments for her.

[wendyroo]

I used Elementary Life Science last year with my 4 and 6 year olds.  We enjoyed it, and the boys both liked the funny, conversational tone of the text, but I was glad we were using it at those young ages, because it was already a touch too simplistic for the 6 year old.  It had some great chapters that offered new, challenging concepts and vocabulary (organelles in the cell, for example), but it also had some chapters that were largely review even for the 4 year old.  We just skipped or skimmed the "boring" chapters.  Overall, though, I think it did a good job of ensuring the kids had a firm foundation of Life Science basics.

 

As Momto5inIN said, the ESP experiments were the most valuable part of the curriculum to us.  It was amazing to watch such young kids walk through the process of forming a hypothesis, defining independent and dependent variables, designing and conducting an experiment and then recording and graphing their results.

 

Obviously, I didn't need Mr. Q to take the kids through the process of conducting experiments, but it sure made it easier.  Every week we would do one or two of the activities or experiments that correlated with the chapter we had read, and in general we found them easy, fun and educationally relevant.

 

Wendy