Getting Chem labs done

[silver]

We have this kit:

https://www.thehomescientist.com/ck01b-main.php

Due to my kid being slow while doing labs, they take forever to get done. We're talking needing to set aside 4+ hours slow. So maybe halfway through the year, with only 1/4 of the labs done, I declared labs to be a summer project.

Well, it's summer now. And I'm going crazy having to supervise labs. So many labs. Which he keeps making dumb mistakes on and messing up. 

So, how do I salvage this? How do we get Chem labs done without breaking the bank and without making me want to jump out a window? This last year of high school was a mess. I regret not sending him to public school, and our relationship is too strained now from school to make frustrating labs be a part of it.

 

[cintinative]

How many labs did you schedule?

We are also finishing up labs for a variety of reasons, and I have cut at least a few from the list because honestly, we have done enough. I am sometimes surprised at how few labs the local university model school actually does.  

I have not used this kit, but in my experience, some labs just do take forever.  

When you say he is making dumb mistakes, is it because he is rushing? Nine times out of ten for me that is the reason I make mistakes. That, or being so tired I am not thinking well.  

[Zoo Keeper]

Video labs are a thing.  🙂

You can still write up a decent lab report, and no clean up after. 

It's beautiful.

 

whispering this....  Do all the labs have to be done?  Does this need to be a robust science credit, or just a check the box credit? 

 

[freesia]

Are you planning to do 31 labs?  That is a lot for a general chem class.  For reference, the online classes my kids took had about 13 labs.  I would do between 13 and 18 at the most.

[silver]

4 minutes ago, cintinative said:

How many labs did you schedule?

We are also finishing up labs for a variety of reasons, and I have cut at least a few from the list because honestly, we have done enough. I am sometimes surprised at how few labs the local university model school actually does.  

I have not used this kit, but in my experience, some labs just do take forever.  

When you say he is making dumb mistakes, is it because he is rushing? Nine times out of ten for me that is the reason I make mistakes. That, or being so tired I am not thinking well.  

Out of 31 one labs, he's now done 11. They have an honors kit with 39 labs, and he's using an honors level textbook, but we decided the non-honors kit was fine. 

The dumb mistakes are often from trying to speed through to get the lab done. Which is weird, because he also manages to make the labs take forever. For example, I'm guessing it's not supposed to take 30 minutes to dissolve 5g of sodium carbonate into 200mL of water.

[cintinative]

2 minutes ago, freesia said:

Are you planning to do 31 labs?  That is a lot for a general chem class.  For reference, the online classes my kids took had about 13 labs.  I would do between 13 and 18 at the most.

I need to hear this too. Even with our cuts, we will have 28 labs. Mind you, some of them were super easy (like make a 1 M solution of HCl), but still.  

My issue is I love chem lab and my kids would rather walk over hot coals.  LOL.  We're doing two labs this week and I am calling it. I did have them watch a video for one we skipped because I am sad we are not doing a titration but after looking at it more carefully, we don't have the equipment or chemicals to do it properly. 

[cintinative]

Just now, silver said:

 

The dumb mistakes are often from trying to speed through to get the lab done. Which is weird, because he also manages to make the labs take forever. For example, I'm guessing it's not supposed to take 30 minutes to dissolve 5g of sodium carbonate into 200mL of water.

This could be completely irrelevant, but when I assisted with a chem lab years ago the alcohol burners were a huge source of delay. Sometimes we just couldn't tell the flame wasn't very good, or it would run out of fuel in the middle and take a while to reheat the solution, or it was just "cold" in the kitchen we were working in and the quick time to boil was forever and ever.  

 

[silver]

13 minutes ago, Zoo Keeper said:

Video labs are a thing.  🙂

You can still write up a decent lab report, and no clean up after. 

It's beautiful.

 

whispering this....  Do all the labs have to be done?  Does this need to be a robust science credit, or just a check the box credit? 

 

He wants to go into STEM. He's leaning CS right now, but is still thinking maybe some type of engineering. Given the competitiveness of these programs, he probably does need a robust science credit.

I might need to look into video labs.

[freesia]

4 minutes ago, silver said:

He wants to go into STEM. He's leaning CS right now, but is still thinking maybe some type of engineering. Given the competitiveness of these programs, he probably does need a robust science credit.

I might need to look into video labs.

I would also try to find out how many labs schools around you do. I don’t know any where even honors kids are doing 31. 

[freesia]

I just googled honors chemistry and found syllabi from all over. The range I’m seeing is 11-19. 

[silver]

39 minutes ago, cintinative said:

This could be completely irrelevant, but when I assisted with a chem lab years ago the alcohol burners were a huge source of delay. Sometimes we just couldn't tell the flame wasn't very good, or it would run out of fuel in the middle and take a while to reheat the solution, or it was just "cold" in the kitchen we were working in and the quick time to boil was forever and ever.  

 

We had those same issues with alcohol burners in a previous course. I know it's less "official science", but I have been glad that our current kit uses a microwave to heat water instead!

[happypamama]

Would something like ExploreLearning work?  We were looking for a check-the-box credit, but we were super impressed with their Gizmos.

[cintinative]

Labster is another option for virtual labs. The last I checked they charge $99 for a year's subscription.

Honestly, OP, it sounds like you are so close to done.  😃

[cintinative]

1 hour ago, freesia said:

I just googled honors chemistry and found syllabi from all over. The range I’m seeing is 11-19. 

Did you find any with a list of actual labs? I am so curious as to what they do for labs. 

 

[freesia]

15 minutes ago, cintinative said:

Did you find any with a list of actual labs? I am so curious as to what they do for labs. 

 

Yes. I’m not good at copying links from my phone. I just googled honors chemistry labs and a bunch of links—some to pdfs popped up. One was Carmel High school if that helps you. 

[happypamama]

54 minutes ago, cintinative said:

Labster is another option for virtual labs. The last I checked they charge $99 for a year's subscription.

Honestly, OP, it sounds like you are so close to done.  😃

They went up. 😞 https://www.homeschoolbuyersclub.com/labster/labster-high-school-subscription/

On their main site, they say they don't sell to homeschoolers, so I guess HSBC is the only option. 😞 

ExploreLearning's Gizmos were a little pricier, $157, I think (and they gave me a full month trial that gave me access to pretty much everything), but what sold me over Labster (and this may not matter to the OP) was that they allow up to three students on an account, so I was able to use it to get some quick check-the-box labs for my 12th grader and will have it for the next year to use for my rising 9th grader, plus my 7th grader, since they have middle school as well.  I don't know how they compare to Labster, though.

Edited June 6, 2023 by happypamama

[Clemsondana]

For whatever reason, homeschoolers do a ton of labs.  In my experience, a full year of college (to go along wtih 2 credits' worth of lecture) would not do more than 30 labs.  There are only 18 weeks in a standard college semester, and labs don't necessarily meet every week (often they didn't meet during short weeks like Thanksgiving - it was school dependent).  At some places, they don't meet during the first or last week of the semester.  There is often a midterm and/or a final.  Some labs take multiple weeks in some classes.  The first day may be mostly introduction and lab safety.  I don't remember ever doing or teaching 18 real labs in a semester - it was usually more like 12 at the most.  

As somebody who spent years working in a lab (a year of undergrad research, 5 1/2 years of grad school, a couple of years as a postdoc) lab classes don't do a ton to prepare you for actual research.  Have your student do a reasonable number of labs, learn how to do the important calculations and how to lay out a lab report, and make sure that they can explain and calculate error.  Then move on if you want to.  When my kid did chem at home (and got a 4 on the AP), I think we did 8-10 real labs.  It's enough for kid to understand how they work, and the calculations are the same as the calculations that kid was doing in the problem sets.  We walked about error and mistakes and I let kid do the work alone so that kid could learn the importance of reading over the procedure and following directions.  It's similar to cooking in that respect.  🙂  

 

[lewelma]

2 hours ago, Clemsondana said:

In my experience, a full year of college (to go along wtih 2 credits' worth of lecture) would not do more than 30 labs.

In my kid's experience, their freshman year, university, 1-semester chemistry classes had:

MIT: ZERO labs!

UC: SIX 3-hour labs

Edited June 7, 2023 by lewelma

[lewelma]

For Highschool, my kids did

1) a two day 10-hour lab run for homeschoolers at the university. (variety of labs, no write ups)

2) 3 hour lab on ions with a 3 hour write up

2) a 3 hour titration lab with a 3 hour lab write up.

So 16 hours total in lab with 6 hours of lab reports = 22 hours for a year course. 

I just asked my younger son, and he said that the above highschool experience was plenty to do well in the labs in his freshman university chem class. 

Edited June 7, 2023 by lewelma

[cintinative]

OP, thought of you today as we grumbled through another lab (which didn't work as written--sigh).  One more to go (for us). 

[EKS]

19 hours ago, silver said:

Out of 31 one labs, he's now done 11.

The Home Scientist Kit is nuts.  I know because I owned it and found it completely overwhelming.  (Note that I have a degree in biochemistry and worked in a chemistry lab for several years.)

My opinion is that you only need 10 or so labs.  Good ones, I mean.  Ones that demonstrate the range of physical concepts that were covered in the course.  So I'd add maybe 3-5 more, choosing carefully to try to get this range, and then call it good.

FWIW, I think that science labs as they are generally done in high school are mostly a waste of time.  Frankly, they're mostly a waste of time in college as well.  And I suspect that most actual scientists would agree with me.  It's college admissions folks who for the most part have no idea about what is important when it comes to a science education that think they're necessary.

[Alice Lamb]

When I taught freshman chemistry at a 4-year, mostly science and engineering college, we had about 24-27 labs for the whole year. Each was scheduled for 2 hours in lab plus reports written as homework.  Some "reports" were simple forms to describe what occurred; others required extensive data analysis, graphing and a formal written report.  We actively taught computer skills for data analysis and the desired format for the reports.  I would expect slightly less from an AP course because very few high schools or home-school families have the more expensive laboratory equipment.

[lewelma]

7 hours ago, EKS said:

 Frankly, they're mostly a waste of time in college as well.  And I suspect that most actual scientists would agree with me. 

Older ds's university must agree with you. It doesn't run little 3 hour weekly labs in science courses, rather the science majors require a full lab class. For physics, ds was required to take a experimental physics class worth a class and a half. The expectation was 18 hours of work per week for 15 week term, and ds said it was all of that and more.  There were no lectures and no tests or exams.  There were only 3 labs and 3 write ups.  So each lab and write up was expected to take 90 hours. My ds says it was the most difficult undergrad class he took. You can't take it until Junior year so that you can do some very hard stuff. 

 

Edited June 7, 2023 by lewelma

[Clemsondana]

10 hours ago, EKS said:

 

FWIW, I think that science labs as they are generally done in high school are mostly a waste of time.  Frankly, they're mostly a waste of time in college as well.  And I suspect that most actual scientists would agree with me.  It's college admissions folks who for the most part have no idea about what is important when it comes to a science education that think they're necessary.

Yes, yes, yes!  There are things that are cool - if you do good dissections, they can be informative.  Getting a feel for metric measurement is useful.  My students use bulbs, a micropipet, and balances to learn to work with volume and mass.  It's not an actual experiment, but it's good to help them see metric scale.  I love the egg osmosis lab because it makes it so easy to visualize what is happening - it works!  And it's a great tool for teaching graphing, independent vs dependent variables, etc.  For a lab that only costs 3 eggs, a bottle of vinegar, and a bottle of karo syrup - it punches way above it's pay grade.  For chem labs, it always felt like if you've done one titration you've done them all.  Don't add too fast or your measurement will be wrong.  Then do math.  

I always said that the most useful thing that i learned in labs in K-12 was that hot glass looks the same as cold glass.  Our teacher told us at the time that it was the most important thing that we'd learn that year, and having burned my hands on hot flasks many times over the years that I worked in labs...it's true.  🙂  

I took oodles of labs as a biochem major, but nothing really prepares you for lab work.  We were required to do senior research in a lab, and I probably did 15+ hours/week at a minimum.  

[MJmom]

One of my kids is in public school and the other homeschools. The public school kid just finished honors chemistry. They had 2 labs all year. I am not saying this is good. I’m not happy about it, but it was a wake up call as a homeschooler. I had been intimidated to recreate high school labs, but knowing what actually takes place is an eye opener. So, maybe consider what is important and know that it’s totally fair to call it when you’re ready.

Edited June 9, 2023 by MJmom