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AIG God's Design for Life
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I bought God’s Design for Life to use as a spine for grades 1-8 science.
For those who use it how do you make it more CM? Do you use the activities or worksheets or just read the text aloud and do narration? I plan to add some living books but am not sure about the other parts.
I’m anxiously waiting to hear the answers to your question.
The men at the AIG booth at the convention said that they expect all three books (Plants, Animals, Bodies) to be done in one year. That’s three lessons each week. (Not counting the special focus that is there every so often.)
Last year, my girls were in 4th grade, 2nd grade, K, and pre-school. Last year we did God’s Design for Phsyics (The red books). It took us about 15-20 minutes to read through each lesson (me reading aloud, girls asking questions and discussing and narrating). We did the worksheets, if I thought they’d make nice additions to their portfolios (we live in PA and have to turn in portfolios). We did the experiments – my girls really enjoyed them. So, if there was a worksheet and/or an experiment, the lesson took 30 or more minutes.
I did add some living books – mostly biographies – that we just tucked into our day somewhere. By times, though, depending on life, we skipped the lessons and just kept up with the living book that we were in the middle of. But, between life happening and trying to fit in the living books, we only got through one book of the three in the set — and I skipped about 5 lessons in that book!
In regards to the recent thread on “doing hard things” – Apologia Science, mothers skipping science, etc., I’m am just in a quandry as to know how to manage science. Doing 3 lessons per week seems like a lot to me. IS it okay to move that fast? It feels fast to me – and yet I know that we need to be covering more science than what we’ve been in the past.
I’ll share my plan but remember, we’re going to be new to God’s Design this year. Our oldest will be in Apologia’s Physical Science. The younger 7 children (4th grade and younger) will do the blue books in God’s Design. Here’s the basic plan:
– Read a lesson 3 times each week. Have children who are old enough narrate. This can be oral, written, drawing, etc.
– Ignore worksheets. I may print them up and stick them in our coloring drawer if they have pictures or things to color or draw. This would just be adding to the atmosphere of our day, letting children discover pages if they were in the mood to color.
– Activities/Experiments will be done usually. However I’m flexible on doing them right away or slipping them in to a later part of the day. We will see what works best.
– Living Books – For us this will come in the form of a book basket. I’ll toss good books in there from our shelves and the library that fit each month’s topics in God’s Design. Children can browse any time. I’ll read one aloud every so often, most likely over snack. They will probably grab a book out of here during quiet time if they’re looking for something to read.
– Apologia for deeper exploration. Anyone who wants to go deeper in a topic will be welcome to check our Apologia Elementary Exploring Creation books or others on our shelves. I know Joseph (4th grade) will do this, he is so excited to be doing Our Universe and loves the Apologia books. Astronomy may live on his bed if he get’s any say in the matter. 😉
One last thing: Just because the book is ‘supposed’ to be done 3 lessons per week doesn’t mean we have to stick to that schedule. Remember, teach the child, not the curriculum. If we get to a part we want to linger in we will! If we do one or two of the blue God’s Design books and then decide we want to do one from another set (green, red, etc) then we will!
We did do the 3 lessons a week except for Chemistry year, when there were only 2 books. My kids would have done it every day though. We did all nontwaddley student pages and activities. If they were twaddle we just skipped. We did add in extra stuff, books, websites, videos, etc. as appropriate and as we had time. We liked these very much.
Thanks ladies! This is very helpful.
Karen, for science we used to do three days a week one semester and two the next, due to history being the other days. Once I switched to family history and science(except high school science) we did science and history daily so we could stay with the older kids.
I started science daily at 6th grade.
Keep in mind that many real life events count as science, so you don’t have to necessarily do three lessons per week in the curriculum to call it science class.
Many things like watching a repairman and asking questions are science, as well as the Krispy Kreme machine, and on and on.
I plan to start nature study weekly this year too.
I bet if you think about it, you did more science than you think:)
🙂 That’s encouraging, retrofam! Thank you.
We do live on a farm – so we’ve seen our fair share of live births, miscarriages (at various stages), and other miscellaneous natrue-y type things.
I think I’m going to try the 3 lessons per week route this next year. Part of my worry about 3 lessons being so fast is that I want the girls to have time to think and ponder and wonder about things. I’ve noticed, though, that too much time in between lessons and the lessons lose their draw – like the girls have forgotten how fun it was to learn this or that. So. I’m turning over a new leaf! Next year, we’re shooting for 3 lessons per week.
I was told that one book would be done in a year making it once a week! So, I am glad this was brought to my attention, I will have to re-evaluate;)
I have dd7 and ds4 right now. I bought God’s Design for Life – Plants for this year. It’s supposed to take 1 term, but we are doing one lesson a week. Reading one day and the activity the second day. This is our first year adding science to our nature study and nature journalling, and with a younger group, this is working well for us. I will certainly consider doing more of the books next year if the kids both like them and the year continues to go well with the one we are trying out.
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