My 11 year old dd is making me crazy! I started Abeka 6th grade science with her and she absolutely hates it! She freaked out because of all the bugs and spiders and "things I hate!" It is no fun for me to teach her science at all. I'm thinking about getting her an online program so she can just do it herself. Has anyone else had these problems? Girls just don't like creepy crawly things. I'm not crazy about science myself but I don't want her to be ignorant. It probably might be better to just get her online, right? Help!!
Id skip over the creepy crawlies and go on to things in science that she likes,, like maybe cute fuzzy bunnies or something other creature type things, maybe study turtles? I have had to step back when my ds studied them too! YUCK! , lol I feel for your dd!
I have three boys and this girl thing makes me crazy sometimes. I really can't blame her but I thought if she learned neat things about them, she wouldn't get so freaked out. She finds NOTHING neat about any of them.
lol, I am sorry, I hate spiders wiht a purple passion. I can handle snakes and snails and puppy dog tails but not spiders and not creapy crawly insects other than 'lether jackets" ( mosquito eaters) and rolly pollies, and lady bugs! Lady bugs a cool cause they take care of all the aphids on my rose bushes!
non of my workbooks contain creepy crawlys! And if my younger girls knew,.. it would be,.. thats not fair. they love bugs for some bizzare reason, we even collect a magazine called real life bugs and insects that comes with a free bug cast in a resin/plastic substance and there is nothing my 2 year old likes more than holding/playing with these and singing songs like incy wincy spider. regading your daughters dislike,.. id skip that section for now and move on to a part she may find easyer to handle you can always reaproach at a later date.
My ds14 is doing Biology this year, and is going to dissect a worm with Dad tonight. DD11 said, just this morning, "I don't EVER want to take Biology, that's gross!!!" Have you seen the Christian Kids Explore series from Bright Ideas Press? DD did the Chemistry one last year and loved it! She wanted to do Chemistry again, so we are doing NOEO Science Chemistry 2 this year. For this age/grade level I'd go with things they're interested in and not push anything she doesn't like! There are a lot of other sciences she can work on, you don't have to do bugs! The goal is to get her excited about learning, so see what she REALLY likes and go with that! My dd prefers the actual books and hands-on stuff, so we don't go with on-line stuff. But that's just us.
Ems has a deep passion for creepy crawlers but she gets it from me. We collect spiders and insects for specimens. Ems will hold a dead black widow without a problem. I do not allow her to hold them when they are alive. I have yet to master this part myself. So as of now, I will only hold one when she isn't harmful. Deena, how did your boy enjoy dissecting a worm? Sounds interesting!
oh! btw, I do like worm disection that was okay, I didnt care for cutting things when I was a 13 yr old doing biology though cause tht was just too gross for me. But I did all the diagrams for the projects and got my partner and I an A!
:lol: I'm such an atypical female! In high school I took chemistry just so I could take advanced biology, which included dissecting a worm, a starfish, a frog, and a fetal pig. I took animal anatomy in college and had to dissect a pregnant cat (no fun because I love cats.) Anyway, not ALL girls will hate science and creepy crawly things. I'd try to find what she is passionate about when it comes to science and do as much as I could around that subject for now. Maybe wait until she is high school age and more mature and reintroduce her to insects, reptiles, etc. Best wishes!
AHHH! The infamous cat dissection. LOL Every year around the time of dissection, there was always some parents who made a stink that their student shouldn't have to dissect the cat if they didn't want to. So my high school finally started assigning large reports to be done in place of the dissection for anybody who didn't want to dissect the cat. Those who had to write a report wished they did the dissection afterwards because the topic given for the report was always difficult.LOL
From what I understand the cats we had were euthanized shelter cats. If that's true, and they were going to be killed anyway, it didn't seem like they were being 'wasted' by having vet med tech students learning with them. But, when my lab partner and I got to her uterus we found out our cat was pregnant with one tiny, perfectly formed kitten. And, she looked almost exactly like one of my own cats. Double whammy... which made dissecting her pretty tough. Still, I would choose a dissection over a report ANY DAY! :wink:
In 7th grade my science class had to dissect a worm and then a frog. I was so upset about it and so sure I could not do it, that I deliberately chose a male student to be my lab partner. We agreed he would do the dissecting, and I would do all of the writing. Well, come dissection day, he got sick and nearly passed out when he did the first cut on the worm, and so I had to take over and I actually found it to be really fascinating and it's now a very fond memory for me. I went ahead and teamed up with the same guy for the frog and spared him the horror of the cutting parts by doing the entire dissection myself. At least he had neat hand writing =)
I love snakes! I am facinated with a lot of freaky animals but spiders, no thanks! I can even put my own nighcrawlers on a hook to fish! heheh
My 10 year old DD strongly dislikes science as well. She's doing a bit better this year. We're using Apologia Zoo 2 as a family and she & I are doing Real Science 4 Kids Physics (& we have Chemistry too). I go the RS4K because it's SHORT chapters and SHORT books. Each is for 10 weeks (they have BIO too but she hates that area so we're starting with the 2 and see what happens). I also disguised some additional science by buying A Child's Geography. While it is geography in a sense, the first volume is really more science because it talks about the year itself before the other volumes (which aren't all done yet) delve into actual countries. We just finished the layers of the atmosphere and DD10 BEGS me to do Geography:shock::shock: She cringed when I brought home some used Abeka science texts though. I got them cheap and though my middle DD would love them just to read (she's my science kid). Hang in there! Rhonda
I like snakes but I can't stand mice; that is if they are wild. Mice from a store are tolerable but still not my favorite thing to be around. Rats on the other hand do not bug me as bad.
I don't know if I could dissect a cat or not. That would be strange (although I do agree that if they're from animal shelters who were going to be put to sleep anyway that it wouldn't be bad). I wanted to do the frog in biology so bad once (I was on a jag of wanting to be a zoologist in h.s.) and I ended up sick and missing that day. Everyone swore it was on purpose. I don't think we'd have any problems now though. In fact, when dh hit that bird a few months back it would have been cool to dissect it, since it was already dead. Anyway, I'm not morbid, just think things like that are so interesting.
I dont mind wild mice if they stay out of MY washing machine! lol! when they tore up the feild near our home to build houses we had a suprise visit from a "mickey". I was walking otu to get the laundry going opened the lid and some how in there was a feild rat/mouse it was kinda mid sized and feildy looking but it made me jump from the floor up through the doorway two steps away!@ the kids were sitting in the room by garage doing school and wide eyed looked at me.. I said... to my oldest ( he was bout 9?) There is a Mickey in the washer... then I phoned dh about how to get it out of there Lol! Ds was brave enough to open the washer but I would not let him and we just locked the garage door untill dh could come home Lol :lol:
Oh the worst part of disecting at schools is the firmaldahide thye put them in, the smell of IT got to me more than the cutting, cause it was like cutting rubber nothing big ...
