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graciefaith
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| Posted: May 28 2014 at 12:32pm | IP Logged
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Hi! I'll admit that science is my weak area. Next school year I'll have 2 middle schoolers. Right now we're using Apologia and it's okay. We'll get through it but i'd like to find something different. Kolbe suggests using Holt's Life Science. Does anyone have any feedback on that? I can't seem to find much reviews from homeschoolers on it. Also, what did you use for the middle school years, if not this particular program? Thank you!
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Blessed wife and mom of 3 girls, Sept. '01, Dec. '02 and Oct. '07
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pumpkinmom
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| Posted: May 28 2014 at 1:16pm | IP Logged
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I have used the CHC Behold and See series and those are good. My oldest is not the kind of kid who can learn science from a text book (even the good ones like Behold & See) so I didn't fully use them with him. My youngest will be using them though. We tend to fill in with living science books as we find the B&S books easily can be completed in a year. We don't do the workbook pages in the student workbooks, but instead do narration after the readings.
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Cassie
Homeschooling my little patch of Ds-14 and Ds-10
Tending the Pumpkin Patch
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CrunchyMom
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| Posted: May 28 2014 at 1:34pm | IP Logged
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Both Ambleside and Mater Amabilis use the Paul Fleisher Secrets of the Universe series, supplemented with other science books as well.
I know many who like NOEO science through middle school.
Bernard Nebel has a Middle School program now, but I have only seen his elementary book. I like it a lot!
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Lindsay
Five Boys(6/04) (6/06) (9/08)(3/11),(7/13), and 1 girl (5/16)
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[URL=http://mysymphonygarden.blogspot.com/]Lost in the Cosmos[/UR
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Kelly
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| Posted: May 28 2014 at 11:09pm | IP Logged
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This might be too radical a departure, but ... Does one really need to do Science at that age? One of my hs-ing friends -who is a teacher by training- decided to completely ditch science until highschool. She and her family focused instead on a thorough grounding in reading, writing and mathematics-figuring that the all highschool science would basically build on THOSE skills rather than on random science terminology and concepts that kids might have been exposed to in younger years but not really understood.
Initially, I was scandalized by this proposal! Otoh it made sense-especially if you include "living science" in the reading foundation. My friend-who is a very responsible homeschooler, I might add- has homeschooled all her kids this way. In 10th grade they've started "regular" school with ZERO problems. One kid got a perfect sat score and was accepted at very school-including all the Ivey league schools! another is in law school, all have excelled.
Following this experiment, we decided to do it, too, with a couple of modifications in that I usually put mine in a co-op biology class or intro physical science class @8th grade to ease them into science-speak, so to say. Although I haven't had any perfect SAT scores yet  we haven't had any problems either! They have all gone to some sort of "regular" school for science (highschool, dual-enrollment at local college or boarding school) in jr or sr year, and have all done wellin science. In fact, they all love science (except one, one of the older kids, who ironically DID do a lot of middle school science haha), 2 are in engineering, 3 more want to be engineers!
Anyway, it may all just be anecdotal, but I thought it worth mentioning. I know I used to beat myself up over science-I'm NOT science-y at all except in biology. And I agonized over "gap-itis" ... Still do! lol However, I think it's good to remind ourselves that we don't have to check off a box on our Planning Books ("Science-Check!") to in fact prepare a kid for highschool science. Does this make sense?
OK enough random late-nite rumblings from a tired, homeschooling iconoclast  Kelly in FL
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SallyT
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| Posted: May 29 2014 at 8:35am | IP Logged
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The last time I did middle school science, we used -- wait for it, because it's not a popular choice at all -- Michael Spear's All Creatures Great and Small, for a two-year life-science course spanning 6th and 7th grades. This is about the least living, least inspirational-looking book on the planet, at least in its earlier editions, and I had bought it more or less out of cluelessness when my oldest (who hated it) was that age. My second child, who's now a rising 11th-grader and taking college-level science, ADORED that book and credits it with his love of biology . . . you never can tell what's going to turn people on, can you? :)
So, last time what I did was All Creatures over two years (6th and 7th), and then 8th grade was kind of a "random scientific topics" year, with lots of science literature covering various concepts. He went straight into college bio in 9th grade, his readiness for which I do have to attribute to that boring-but-thorough All Creatures book!
This time what I'm trying, with my current rising 6th grader, is a book I found free online: Common Science, by Carleton Washburne -- it's a book from an early-1920s series of science books from World Book. It's rather charmingly written (and in the first chapter, on gravity, he basically inadvertently describes life on the International Space Station!), with regular thought exercises that would work well as narration prompts, plus experiments -- some of which, like playing with mercury, you would not want to do now! But others would be easy to do at home with things you just have lying around.
It's basically a physical-science book, covering gravity, levers and pulleys, questions like why ships don't sink, etc. I'm scheduling it over at least a year and a half, and focusing far more on reading and discussion of ideas than on projects/output.
In tandem with this, I'm also using a nature book from the same series: Trees, Stars, and Birds.
My rising 5th grader will be reading Jean-Henri Fabre's Story Book of Science, again over about a year and a half, plus Trees, Stars, & Birds. From there my idea is that she will move into Common Science, which for both children I plan to follow with some kind of life science (All Creatures &/or something else, plus living books) as a pre-biology foundation. I don't know that they'll be ready to, or want to, take on the Belmont Abbey biology department as their older brother has done, but I'd sure like to lay enough groundwork for that to be an option.
Anyway, we don't do science formally at all until middle school, but this is the kind of outline we follow . . .
Sally
PS: A huge governing principle for me this year, besides wanting books with "living" literary merit, is that they be as close to free as possible. I downloaded both the books I mentioned above as free .pdf and Kindle books, for my kids to use on their Kindles.
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Mom21
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| Posted: May 29 2014 at 8:39am | IP Logged
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I agree with Kelly! We're a Seton family, son just finished 7th grade. Honestly, Seton's science was a lot of busy work. The last chapter in the science book was chemistry and it was a bit over DS's head (and mine, too). This past year DS and dad did the science together in the evenings and DS was responsible for doing one experiment each week. That was plenty. I agree with focusing on the core stuff.
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Kelly
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| Posted: May 29 2014 at 11:34am | IP Logged
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There are so many ways to skin the cat in homeschooling!
Sally, thx for the reminder about the the Fabre book! thats one i want to read myself:-)
Kelly in FL
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ekbell
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| Posted: May 30 2014 at 9:43am | IP Logged
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My oldest daughter (who loved Science) just used a copy of Usborne's Internet Linked Science Encylopedia as a spine for her science exploration. It worked well and she has had no problems taking a 'proper' science course provided by our school board this year.
My second and third daughters are following CHC's Behold and See for middle school science using the both the texts and workbooks (a fair amount of the workbooks are 'show what you know' pages but there are exploratory and experiment pages as well. We've enjoyed all of them except _Behold and See 4_( -the Mater Amblilis equivalent is *much* more interesting).
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knowloveserve
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| Posted: July 01 2014 at 12:05am | IP Logged
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Sally, I love those sources. I had planned on the Secrets of the Universe books but it's nice to have free backups if I overspend on more pressing items! (Like IEW...)
Thanks!
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Angel
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| Posted: July 01 2014 at 4:31pm | IP Logged
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Ambleside Online just revised their science recommendations for Year 6 and Year 7. (You have to scroll down to get to Natural History/Science and Science Biographies in Year 6 and Science in Year 7.) I just downloaded the app they recommend for Year 6 and my 11 yo has spent a happy day fooling around with it, digging through our chemistry books, and trying to start his own elements collection.
I've also just picked up Bernard Nebel's Middle School book that Lindsay linked to above... and it's good. If you haven't been following his program though (with all its flow charts) you'd probably also need Vol II and possibly even Vol I, just to make sure you've hit the concepts you need for the lessons in the middle school book (which are pretty meaty). I'm thinking of copying some of the lesson descriptions for my high school daughter to use as a guide to molecular biology this year, since they're written to give background to the teacher.
I've also had an "engineering" request, so we're going to use some of Jen's suggestions from her "Boy Meets Machine" list, which you can find on this page. She has it listed as 4th-6th grade, but it would be easy to add to it if you needed to for a 12 or 13 year old.
I've also realized that with my current crop of boys, we have neglected to do any learning about the human body so far beyond what we would talk about at the dinner table. So I'll be using some of the resources from the Winterpromise 4th -6th Human Body and Forensics curriculum, because I own. Winterpromise also has a human body and forensics curriculum for 7th -12th grades, too. Like most things Winterpromise, though, I would be more comfortable using that curriculum with grades 7-9 than in the older high school years.
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Angela
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Three Plus Two
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4Real Forums : Exploring God's Creation in Nature and Science
Topic: Science Suggestions for middle school?
