Science

Above is pictured the science curriculum we are currently using. Last year we were blessed to be a part of a wonderful co-op for science class ... there the girls learned SO much more than I would have ever taught them on my own. This year it didn't work out for us to be a part of that group so we are 'going it alone'. But the problem with that is that I move through the topics at such a slow pace with the girls! We had planned to tackle one unit per month - but instead we've only just finished our second unit for the year! This is one area that I am trying to step it up a little. Science has NEVER been my thing - although it does fascinate me. But the girls absolutely LOVE it. And so I'm working on making it more of a priority. I will say though, that even though we've only tackled two units - the girls read tons of great books about all kinds of animals, insects, sea creatures, shells, etc ... We are blessed to have a large amount of resource books in our home and they love looking through them, writing up little reports, etc. I love that they do this without me even asking, to me that shows how much they love learning about the world around them and the things God has created!

So, anyway, this book is wonderful, it has enough information that we will probably use it for 2-3 years. We ordered the student book - which has worksheets that you are able to make copies of for multiple students - and the teacher's guide which gives the step by step directions for what to teach. Both books together cost me $30 - not too bad! It's done in a way that you can easily adapt it to many grade levels. The topics covered in the book are:
1. Creation
2. The Universe, Stars and Planets
3. The Earth
4. Non-living things: Rocks and Minerals
5. Weather
6. The Plant Kingdom
7. The Animal Kingdom
8. Animal Anatomy & Physiology
9. Man: Made in God's image

Some of these topics were covered last year in our co-op - but I'm sure we could go over them again and learn even more. So far this year we've covered insects and weather. Our insect study was actually found in another book of curriculum that a friend gave me for free! It's called 'Christian Kids Explore Biology' by Stephanie L. Redmond. In this book the following units are covered:
1. Biology Basics: Creation, cells, taxonomy, the biosphere, food webs
2. Plant's in God's world: photosynthesis, plant reproduction, fruits & veggies, trees
3. Birds of the earth: taxonomy, bird diets, bird structure
4. Mammals in the wild: monotremes & marsupials, canids, felines & bears, monkeys & apes, aquatic mammals
5. The Human Factor: the human body, our five senses, human reproduction
6. Reptiles all around: snakes & lizards, alligators & crocs, turtles, tortoises & terrapins
7. Insects high and low: butterflies & moths, bees & wasps
8. Water creatures: mollusks, sharks, crustaceans, freshwater life, amphibians

SO, between these two amazing books, we have a wealth of information that will last us a couple years. We usually tend to get a lot of books from the library as well when we're working on a unit. And since I'm a big fan of lapbooks, we put all our materials, worksheets, ideas, etc into a file folder or 'lapbook' for each unit.

Now, as I said - I don't do enough with the girls as far as science goes. I'm trying to be better about that. So in the last couple of weeks we've done a couple of 'hands on' projects. They were actually very fun and the girls loved them. I know I need to incorporate more of this kind of stuff into our teaching time.

Here we made windmills as we've been talking about weather and wind lately ...

Another day we experimented with creating water vapor and 'rain'. We started with some ice cubes in a pan - then heated them up ...

The more the ice melted, the more vapor was created ...

It's very hard to tell, but that is vapor rising ...

Then, by holding another pan above the vapor - the steam begins to collect just like it would when a cloud is formed ... after enough vapor has gathered on the pan above, it began to get heavy, and eventually fell back down like rain!

So that's about it for science. We haven't done much yet this year, but I'm working on doing more.