Hi Jackie, Welcome to my wife's world She flunked out of a dental hygienist program because she could not pass biology or chemistry. She is a wonderful English teacher, however. I would do the co-op. Kids like to work with kids and, if you can swing the $200, student will benefit from the class. The labs can be done independently. If you do get stuck, Apologia has a wonderful helpline staff -- but I think kids learn better in the group environment of the co-op. I lived about 1/2 mile from where Gertie stood when I was growing up. My parents can remember hearing the sound of the metal twisting. Hope that helps you make an informed decision. God Bless, Steve
Thanks. I know what you mean about working with other kids. Last year, I enrolled her in a Grammar/Composition class taught by a retired English teacher. He spends his whole day Wednesdays in a church, teaching about 5 different classes. I'd been hearing about him for years from a friend. Rachael HATED writing, and nothing I could do would make any difference. Remember, I'm the language person. To me, writing is like talking. You don't "learn" how, you just "do" it! She was the youngest he would accept (age 12), but pulled a 97% from him. She submitted one of her stories for him to a writing competition, and won 2nd place for Middle School Fiction! Part of it was a wonderful teacher, and part I think was being with other students. I'm leaning toward the biology co-op for next year. I mentioned it to my DH. I learned long ago when it comes to curriculum that if I only ASK his opinion, he'll give it, lol! Since then, he's been more involved in curriculum choices. Do me a favor and see if you can find an old thread on microscope choices. I'd love your opinion on that, too!
Hi Jackie, As an Apologia employee working the Apologia helpline, I would tell you to see the microscope pictured in our catalog www.apologia.com or visit Nature's Workshop Plus http://www.workshopplus.com/ who supplies all Apologia's microscopes. As a subscriber to this forum, I would tell you to not purchase a microscope. What I have done in the past is rent one from a medical supply store and borrowed one from a doctor friend in my church. Four years ago, I set up two microscopes in my garage, had a cohort of 16 kids come over to my house for a week in August before school started. We did all the microscope labs in one week, including writing a formal lab report of one of the investigations. I split the kids into four groups of four: had eight working on the two scopes and eight finalizing their lab notebooks (and writing their formal report) at our kitchen table for 90 minutes each day that week, then we rotated. My wife is an English teacher, so she helped them with their reports while I worked the lab bench questions. The 16 students finished all the labs, had the labs documented in their notebooks, and had formal reports graded by us by the finish of "summer biology lab camp." The microscope cost us $50 to rent for the week and one was donated. We made $1600 from the tuition, which paid for our summer beach condo rental Hope that helps. I can't believe someone rated this thread as a 1 ... Ouch ... That hurts seeing I am giving up my free time to try to help folks with their science. Maybe some of you who have benefited from this thread could chime in. God Bless, Steve
I usually don't even rate threads, so I never even pay attention to that! I'm sure we'd all rate it higher than that! Thanks for your help, it is VERY much appreciated!!!
Thanks, Deena. I just did not want to continue the thread if people were not finding it helpful. If the content is so poor that people rate it a "1", then it is not worth my time to continue the discussion. As long as I can be of service and contribute helpful stuff, then I will keep the thread going. God Bless, Steve
I appreciate you, too!!! Some of this stuff really isn't relevant to me yet, but some is, and your knowledge is helpful.
Hi Everyone, I have been really busy with end of semester grading. Sorry I have been out of touch lately. For those of you doing Apologia Biology, Module 8, here is a great little vignette on pedigrees. Pedigrees are the way we determine dominant/recessive traits of our ancestors. Here is an example: http://www.highschoolscience.com/images/pedigree.gif This pedigree is for humans, concentrating on the ability to roll their tongues. Squares are males, circles are females. If the circle is filled, that represents someone who cannot roll his or her tongue. If the circle is empty, the person CAN roll his or her tongue. Which is recessive, which is dominant, and what are the genotypes of the parents? The answer would challenge Sherlock Holmes. Look at the parents on the left. They both can roll their tongues. However, one of the children cannot. What does this mean? It means that not rolling must be recessive. After all, to express the recessive trait, you must have 2 alleles. Thus, there MUST BE one allele in EACH parent for the trait of not rolling the tongue. However, neither parent expresses that trait. If it were dominant, then the parents would HAVE to express it if they each had one. However, they each have one but do not express it. That means the inability to roll the tongue is recessive. We will say that the ability to roll the tongue, then, is R, and the inability is r. This means both of the first parents must be Rr and Rr. They each carry a recessive trait, but they do not express it. That’s the only way it is possible. The male of the next set is easy. He expresses the recessive trait. Thus, he must be rr. Finally, the second parents produce offspring which also express the recessive trait. Thus, the mother MUST have one allele for it, or no offspring could express it. However, she does not express it, so the only possibility for mom is Rr. If that did not peak your interest, then have a look at this wonderful tutorial on pedigrees: http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/units/addiction/genetics/pi.cfm Hope that helps with your module on Genetics. God Bless, Steve
Hi Everyone, Just a quick note today. I will try to post a mini-lesson tomorrow or Thursday. For those of you using Fire Fox and Safari who had problems using the links on my web pages, the problem has been fixed. I had to remove some of the advanced graphics of Word 2007 and replace it with older table-enabled links to make the web site Fire Fox and Safari compatible. Now FF & S users can also use the helps on my course pages, which are linked below. Enjoy! [sm=hug.gif] God Bless, Steve
Thanks Steve! We're a bit behind, but when we get to Module 8 we'll be looking at those sites! VERY cool!
Ask him what? He just wrote a message about the Biology! Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh, do mean the Chemistry for dd? Okay, STEVE! My dd10 (~6th grade) is going through the Christian Kids Explore Chemistry book. She's absolutely loves it, and told me this morning that she wants to do Chemistry forever! I know that will probably change at some point. But while she has such an interest, I want to find her good Chemistry "stuff". Do you have any ideas or suggestions on this? It can be higher level, as long as it's understandable and has some good, not "baby" experiments with it! Thanks for any ideas you might have!
Dear Deena, WOW, are you blessed or what! You have a dd that is interested in chemistry at this early age. You better begin thinking about veterinary medicine as a possible career path. The problem is that your dd now needs to start broaden her horizons a bit. I would consider starting one of the many fine curriculum programs which pace dd through a variety of science topics and substitute one or two of the labs in the standard curriculum with a science fair type chemistry project. That way she still gets to do chemistry, but is also moving forward gathering the knowledge she will need for a career in medicine or science. Here are some great science fair project sites. There are others available by just searching "science fair projects." http://www.ipl.org/div/kidspace/projectguide/ http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0471460435 If you carefully help dd select her projects, you can match her project with what she is studying: she is studying geology and doing a project on the chemical composition of rock. You can also use the chem as a reward for mastery of the other materials: get an "A" on your weather investigation and you get to do this wonderful chemistry lab. You have it made, sister! God Bless, Steve
Thankyou Steve! She's going to balk at moving on to anything else, I know. But I do realize she needs to study other topics, so she has a broader base to draw from! Problem with veterinary medicine is that she can't stand the sight of blood! She used to talk about that, but when she found out she may have to do surgery on animals, she backed away from it. Now she says she wants to be a chemist. Not sure exactly what a chemist does. I s'pose that could be pharmaceutical in nature, if she wanted to head that direction? Science is NOT my thing, but I so want to encourage her in it! So I don't know how good I would be at subbing in chem. stuff! Thankyou for the ideas you posted! Question: Is there one other field of study that would lend itself to coordinating with chemistry more than others? I mean, what would be good to go to next that would help keep her interest up? Any suggestions? Thanks again VERY much!
I was a research chemist and medical technologist for 23 years. I made my living by helping to design new medical diagnostic systems (HemoVac) and by designing baby diapers (Huggies) during my pre-teaching career. If I had to do it over again, I would have gone into chemical engineering or research agronomy, both of which use chemistry. Hope that helps. Steve P.S. Working for Huggies was a very "absorbing" field of study Sorry, I just could not resist.
When I was in college, my best friend had an internship with P&G. He told me he'd probably be working on diapers or tampons. I told him which I felt were the best tampons on the market at the time. He got all excited because they happened to be a P&G product. He was in Chemical Engineering.
I'm sure she'll be thrilled to know she could work with tampons! I'm not going to tell her that! It'd gross her out at this age, and she'd not want to do chemistry anymore! :lol: There are a lot of possibilities I'm sure! And even if she goes on to something else, this can only be good for her to dig deeper into something she's enthralled with right now! Thanks ya'll!
Hi Everyone, Those of you getting ready to attack the global warming issue in your Apologia studies, please read this vignette. It is easy to say, "Lets decrease the worldwide CO2 concentration by 20%." However, are we really ready for what such a decrease would do to the world's population? You might be asking yourself, "What is the risk to global population growth if we curb CO2 growth?" Isn't decrease worldwide CO2 levels a good thing? I mean isn't CO2 the main culprit in global warming? Let's start with the last question first. Putting aside the environmental lobby's agenda and rhetoric we hear from Al Gore, here is a series of web sites which clearly show that CO2 is not the environmental Lucifer it has been made out to be. The follow is the best website on global warming, showing that the scientific data is squarely against the global warming hypothesis: http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p36.htm Here is the MOST ACCURATE data on global temperatures (those gathered from satellites). You can see for yourself from the data that there is no warming going on, despite the fact that atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations have been rising substantially since about 1960. http://www.ghcc.msfc.nasa.gov/MSU/msusci.html The latest research even indicates that the warmest period in earth's history was in the MIDDLE AGES: http://www.dailytelegraph.co.uk/new...lim06.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/04/06/ixhome.html Other references include on this topic include: http://web.archive.org/web/19980525144333/http://www.cse.org/surveyenviroreg100897.htm http://www.marshall.org/subcategory.php?id=9 http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/Index.jsp http://www.globalwarming.org/ Okay, so the evidence points against the CO2 -global warming link. But what harm would decreasing the concentration of CO2 gas do? I mean it is just carbon and oxygen, right? The key fact in determining the harm of decreasing atmospheric CO2 is that world population has grown enormously and food production has kept pace with it. In 1975, the earth's population was 4 billion, today it is 6 billion. That's 2 billion more mouths to feed in just 25 years, and they are in fact fed. The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization's per capita food production indices vary with weather, natural disaster, and civil unrest, but they are basically constant. Production has increased 50% in 25 years. A miracle, the green miracle of global food (also shelter and clothing) increase has occurred. Moreover, population growth, while slowing, continues, so we must figure out how this green miracle has happened and keep it going. There is evidence that atmospheric CO2 increase is a significant contributor to this greening effect. If we don't want a worldwide shortage of food, then we don't want to do anything to reduce, slow, or stop the rise in CO2 levels. The risk is potentially enormous, including starvation on a global scale. There is abundant evidence that CO2 increase is one of, if not the chief, contributor to the green revolution -- theory, experiment, and observation all concur. Here are some great web sites for you that support this argument: http://www.bydesign.com/fossilfuels/greening_benefits/miracle.html http://www.bydesign.com/fossilfuels/greening_benefits/greening_theory.html http://www.bydesign.com/fossilfuels/greening_benefits/green_technology.html http://www.bydesign.com/fossilfuels/greening_benefits/policy.html http://www.bydesign.com/fossilfuels/greening_benefits/policy.html http://www.bydesign.com/fossilfuels/greening_benefits/usda_hole.html So why all the push to decrease CO2 levels when there is some pretty good evidence that the increased levels are doing no harm, and may even be beneficial? Does anyone find it strange that the same people that are pushing the global warm issue are the same ones leading the charge for abortion rights? I am not a conspiracy freak, but I just question the motive of those wanting a "world village" and at the same time advocating the killing of the children and potentially the people of that village. It certainly gives me a reason to pause and ponder while I am waiting for Jesus to return. Hope you found this thought provoking. God Bless, Steve
Steve, what do you think would be a good all-around science program before taking Apologia General Science? My middle one is a bit slower at picking things up than my older one. She doesn't work as well independently. She's 11 now (6th grade, will be 12 in May), and Science isn't my strong point. We did Considering God's Creation a while back, and was pleased with it overall. My oldest went straight from that into General Science on her own. I'm looking for a program that will be a good overview. I figure when we get to Apologia, I'll probably have to sit down and read/discuss it WITH her.
