I haven't posted for a while, but I was wondering what you are using for science. We used Apologia this year and my boys enjoyed it, but my DD is a talker. She was more involved in school as the year went on, since she was only in K. By the end of the year she wanted to be fully involved, but we couldn't get anything done in science. In Apologia you have to read large sections to the kids. My DD can't stop herself from asking questions or commenting every couple of sentences! It took forever. Eventually my older son just took the book and finished it on his own, and my younger son and I just gave up on finishing it. My oldest will do their next book on his own next year. But my younger son is not able to read it on his own. Does anyone have an curriculum that requires less reading but still involves some activities or experiments? Thanks for your help!
I used Christian Liberty for the little years. Then Apologia during the Little Guys' quiet time. We have the very same problem with our two youngers during our Mystery of History time. Good thing they're so cute!
For first grade I made little units out of things like library books, coloring pages, and pages I printed off the internet for free. I like Christian Liberty for 2nd grade. Each lesson is about two pages. Hardly any writing at all. I like R&S for 3rd and up. For third there's a Read Together section and a Read Yourself section, questions about the lesson, and activities at the end that you can either do, talk about, or ignore. There's a unit review, then a test if you want to use it. In 4th it changes to an A section with its few questions, a B section with its questions, maybe a C section (or not) with its questions. ... You can see samples at www.milestonebooks.com.
My youngest love the CLP Nature Readers. She finished them all by 3rd Grade because she loved them so much. The K and 1st ones are short reading times, it increases as the grade level increases. With the K, we'd read it together, talking about it during was okay. Then she'd draw a picture and trace a sentence about the animal we read. She loved it!
I would never put young kids in front of a book or anything formal for science. No reason to. Take them outside, look under logs, let them pick out picture books from the science section of a children's library, go to some children's museums, go to the zoo, visit a biological station, pop in a visually stunning nature DVD, look at the stars, look at pond water under a microscope. Mix up an acid and a base for them in the kitchen. Talk about surface tension and make corn starch goo. Go to the store, buy five bucks worth of dry ice and have an absolute blast doing experiments with it! Make your basement a foggy dungeon, put some on a piece of fly paper and see how many ticks you can catch in your yard (you'll be horrified, ticks love CO2), put some in hot soapy water, put some in a balloon. Fly kites and airplanes, go fishing, BUILD THINGS! Science can be all play in elementary. There is no reason to make it boring and tedious. Physical exercise breaks up the day and is a great tension outlet. Let science be fun and interactive!
Could the older son read aloud to the younger son? Or maybe he could read it and then narrate it back to everyone. His report would be shorter than the actual text. He'd be reinforcing what he learned while conveying the important concepts to his younger siblings. Then the younger one could ask all the questions she wants and test his comprehension, and you could get a break from answer them all yourself!
I used Considering God's Creation. It's multi-leveled, and my youngest was four at the time. We just needed to adjust for him. And when we went to plant flowers for my mom for Mother's Day, my dad came out with a bucket of liquid fertilizer to put on them. my youngest asked, "What's that, Grandpa?" "Oh, it's just plant food to help them grow!" "Oh, no, Grandpa! You don't understand! Plants make their own food from the sun!" (But I have to admit, I started out doing it like Crazy said! I did CGC when my oldest got to the place where I felt she needed "more"!)
We do tons of outside science, CLP nature readers, field trips etc. My boys just devour science! I love that they love to learn about it so that is why we are looking for more formal curriculum. My DS2 is going into grade 2, and he really wants do more experiments and dig into a topic. I will look at the 'Considering God's Creation' series. I have never looked at the R&S stuff, so I'll have a look. Thanks all.
There's a distance learning school here that will let us borrow resources and see what we like, so I have requested Considering God's Creation, but if it doesn't work, I think I can send it back, no charge.
