Science in The Ancient World without SITB?

[Slache]

Can we do this? We've done all of Apologia except for Earth Science, so I feel like we've covered all of this. Science in The Ancient World also looks much more interesting.

[Servant4Christ]

Yes you can skip SITB and start with Ancients. 

[caffeineandbooks]

Yes you can.  Science in the Beginning is kind of stand-alone in this series: it's arranged topically into light, air, water, plants, animals, human body.  Science in the Ancient World is the first one to look at the discoveries of particular scientists.  We didn't love it though: because it's chronological by scientist, it jumps around all over the place, and the early lessons included some math focussed lessons that were over my youngers' heads.  We were leaping dizzily from a single lesson on a botanist, to another single lesson on a physicist, to yet another on an astronomer.  In the end, I picked and chose: we did lessons on a few scientists such as Archimedes and Galen where there were more than one lesson on the person, but skipped more than half of the book.

[Slache]

23 minutes ago, caffeineandbooks said:

Yes you can.  Science in the Beginning is kind of stand-alone in this series: it's arranged topically into light, air, water, plants, animals, human body.  Science in the Ancient World is the first one to look at the discoveries of particular scientists.  We didn't love it though: because it's chronological by scientist, it jumps around all over the place, and the early lessons included some math focussed lessons that were over my youngers' heads.  We were leaping dizzily from a single lesson on a botanist, to another single lesson on a physicist, to yet another on an astronomer.  In the end, I picked and chose: we did lessons on a few scientists such as Archimedes and Galen where there were more than one lesson on the person, but skipped more than half of the book.

And you feel that skipping around was just fine? I'm really looking at this as more of a history book, and being able to skip things would be beneficial.

[caffeineandbooks]

1 hour ago, Slache said:

And you feel that skipping around was just fine? I'm really looking at this as more of a history book, and being able to skip things would be beneficial.

Yes, the lessons still made sense - if he was referring to something from an earlier lesson, he always gave a recap.  I really loved the first book, and the idea of chronological science, but it turns out I prefer something more topical.  I did like the emphasis on science as a human endeavour, not an infallible answer that drops out of the sky, and that this curriculum genuinely works for family style science, but I wouldn't buy the book again.  There would be other ways (for instance, we LOVED Shoo Rayner's Archimedes: The Man Who Invented the Death Ray, and some other picture books like The Librarian Who Measured the Earth and What's Your Angle, Pythagoras?)

[Dianthus]

45 minutes ago, caffeineandbooks said:

Yes, the lessons still made sense - if he was referring to something from an earlier lesson, he always gave a recap.  I really loved the first book, and the idea of chronological science, but it turns out I prefer something more topical.  I did like the emphasis on science as a human endeavour, not an infallible answer that drops out of the sky, and that this curriculum genuinely works for family style science, but I wouldn't buy the book again.  There would be other ways (for instance, we LOVED Shoo Rayner's Archimedes: The Man Who Invented the Death Ray, and some other picture books like The Librarian Who Measured the Earth and What's Your Angle, Pythagoras?)

Does it include a booklist?

[Servant4Christ]

10 hours ago, caffeineandbooks said:

Yes you can.  Science in the Beginning is kind of stand-alone in this series: it's arranged topically into light, air, water, plants, animals, human body.  Science in the Ancient World is the first one to look at the discoveries of particular scientists.  We didn't love it though: because it's chronological by scientist, it jumps around all over the place, and the early lessons included some math focussed lessons that were over my youngers' heads.  We were leaping dizzily from a single lesson on a botanist, to another single lesson on a physicist, to yet another on an astronomer.  In the end, I picked and chose: we did lessons on a few scientists such as Archimedes and Galen where there were more than one lesson on the person, but skipped more than half of the book.

This

10 hours ago, Slache said:

And you feel that skipping around was just fine? I'm really looking at this as more of a history book, and being able to skip things would be beneficial.

Same here. By going in chronological order, you hit multiple areas of science in a year instead of only focusing on one and you continually circle back to the topic as new discoveries are made and as Caffeine said, there's usually a decent recap if you've skipped the previous lesson on it. If you find a topic of interest along the way, you can just grab a book from the library or Google for more info. That's my plan.

[Slache]

4 minutes ago, Servant4Christ said:

This

Same here. By going in chronological order, you hit multiple areas of science in a year instead of only focusing on one and you continually circle back to the topic as new discoveries are made and as Caffeine said, there's usually a decent recap if you've skipped the previous lesson on it. If you find a topic of interest along the way, you can just grab a book from the library or Google for more info. That's my plan.

I've been working on this (and many other history ideas) for the past 2 hours. If you only do the biographies from the 4 books it's 171 lessons, so 1 year. We are finishing Story of the World and I want to do History of the World so I'm looking for fun stuff in between.

[Servant4Christ]

34 minutes ago, Slache said:

I've been working on this (and many other history ideas) for the past 2 hours. If you only do the biographies from the 4 books it's 171 lessons, so 1 year. We are finishing Story of the World and I want to do History of the World so I'm looking for fun stuff in between.

Looking forward to seeing what you come up with 😁

[Slache]

4 minutes ago, Servant4Christ said:

Looking forward to seeing what you come up with 😁

Yes, I am problematic. I still want to do Our 50 States. I can do Our 50 States and A Concise History of Us in 2 years.  So 2 years of American, a year of science, then History of the World. Maybe. I really love the idea of History of the English Speaking Peoples.

[caffeineandbooks]

13 hours ago, Spirea said:

Does it include a booklist?

No, those were my own finds.  We used it alongside SOTW 1 and I wanted biographies of just a few important people to help my kids remember them.  

[goldenecho]

We skipped SITB and had no problems.  In fact, we picked and chose between chapters and did ok.  As long as you don't go out of order on the chapters covering a single individual, at most you will have to tweak a sentence or two that refers to something previous (and always from the same volume...I think it did mention SITB once or twice but it said "If you've read SITB you may remember about such and such..." and then explained it, so it wasn't an issue. 

[goldenecho]

On 5/18/2022 at 7:45 PM, Slache said:

And you feel that skipping around was just fine? I'm really looking at this as more of a history book, and being able to skip things would be beneficial.

We used it to supplement history.   It's great for that but it does deal more with the science than the history.   We also used "The Story of Science" (without the book that has the experiments and stuff).   It was great but a lot of reading and I just picked parts from both (we were in 6th so it was perfect for that age).  The Story of Science talks more about the history and how the science affected that history, and tells more of the life story of the scientists, but doesn't really explain the science itself as well as Science in the Ancient World does).

It also included more scientists, including from places outside of Europe, which I liked. 

And SOS talked more about the relationships between the Greek scientists, which I thought was great...who taught who, who studied the books of other scientists we learned about, who got into debates with each other.

The explanations of the scientific concepts were so clear in Science in the Ancient world...and SOS it wasn't as focused on that (though maybe the workbook would have had explanations...again, we only bought the main book of both).    SINAW would be much better for younger kids though.