Thinking About Science

Now that I’ve got a solid math plan in place (I went and bought the workbook for Teaching Textbooks 4 to skim through as we transition to the complete set for Teaching Textbooks 5) for Holden, my next dilemma is what to do for a core science program for Haylee for 7th grade next school year.

She has always done Sonlight Science and has loved all the Usborne books.  But she’ll be doing Core H next year, and Science H moves into Apologia Exploring Creation with General Science.  Now I remember how intense that program was and how it sucked the joy out of science for Hayden.  To be honest, it seems more like high school level science to me.  Haylee is not nearly as astute as Hayden was, so I can guarantee that it would be far too overwhelming for her.

The trouble is, I’ve never used any other core science curriculum but Sonlight, so I had no idea what was out there.  So on Friday, I went down to our local homeschool bookstore, Moore Expressions, and I chatted with the owner, Cherrie Moore, about what some possibilities could be.  She suggested that some of the Apologia elementary sciences would be entirely appropriate for middle school, and I’d have to agree.  She suggested that Exploring Creation with Anatomy and Physiology would be appropriate for 7th grade, followed by Exploring Creation with Chemistry and Physics for 8th grade.  I already own the Chemistry & Physics because I reviewed it a couple of years ago when it first came out.  But I’d have to buy the Anatomy for next year.  I was really leaning in that direction until I caught a conversation where someone on the Schoolhouse Crew was asking a similiar question about what to use for middle school science next year.

That conversation led to a discussion of something we reviewed just a year ago called Visual Learning Systems.  It had completely slipped my mind, and I still have an active subscription that will continue for quite some time.  Both Haylee and Holden really liked this program, which combines online video instruction with printable pre-tests, post-tests, video note-taking, vocabulary exercises, and experiments.  I looked through the modules they have available in the secondary level for middle/high school students, and they have a 32-lesson series for Life Science that looks perfect for Haylee to use for 7th grade, and then we could use the 32-lesson series for Physical Science for 8th grade.  Wonderful!  It lends itself well to our 4-day/week school schedule, too, and I now have the ability to project the videos from the computer to our new smart TV so she can watch it on the big screen.  Love it!

I also plan to supplement with the free online lessons from Science Fusion that I have listed in the post entitled Homeschooling on a Dime? FREE Resources. 

I’m so glad I got these two key subjects squared away for next school year!  It will be here before we know it since we start again at the end of June.

Happy Super Bowl Sunday to you and yours!