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Can you make the simple complex?
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Can you take a simple children’s book and use it to teach a more complex lesson in Science? The information is what it is afterall. How do you add rigor to a Science concept? Have you done this? Do you “write” your own Science curriculum?
Just curious in light of other posts! 😉
Hi Claire, missed you at the retreat in May.
No way. I am all for simplifying not complicating. I love living science books and use them a lot, but I am not about to reinvent the wheel! If a children’s book explains aomething well, then i leave good enough alone. If there is furtherinterest then the kids can explore during their free time. Bunny trails are not your friend and do nothing to help the habit of attention.
Charlotte herself used textbooks when needed. We use conversational texts and living books, but by jr high and high school I expect the majority to be text. I can add biographies, etc., but I see no need to complicate things.
Hey Christie,
Oh, I missed you all too. More than you can know! Particularily with our move last year to this new area. I miss my happy Florida CM friendly world some days terribly.
I understand your points about this idea too. I don’t mean to take this to the “rabbit hole” land. I wasn’t thinkign of that at all.
I was thinking more of writing/designing your own curriculum (choosing materials, books, experiments, etc.) and using a variety of books and materials – some even simple children’s books – to do it versus buying a ready made curriculum.
I am attempting to do something as you describe Claire. I will start by reading a story from Among the ____ People then read the corresponding chapter in A Handbook of Nature Study. The handbook also has some really great observations that we could do and make a notebook page out of. I also found a poem for each of the subjects I have picked to do. This will be spread out over a week or so. I plan on doing some land animals, sea animals, plants, and basic geology this year. The only subject I will need to get some other books for is the geology studies. I was thinking basics like volcanoes, earthquakes, gems and something else I can’t remember now.
I haven’t read the “Among the ____ People” yet, though we have them… how do you determine what the corresponding chapter is in A Handbook of Nature Study? Is there a guide? Or are you selecting them yourself? This sounds like fun for nature study! Are you using anything else to help guide you or to give you notebook pages – or are you doing all this yourself?
A friend of mine and I created a Science rotation last Spring that I’m implementing this year. I design the whole curriculum using mostly free sources, books – of course, some scope and sequence references, grit and imagination! The rotation we created is what I’ve pretty much done for the past year or two, but we got it organized and made sure it covers all the major areas of Science that we knew we wanted. It wil be tweaked i’m sure … over and over.
Maybe one day I will not want to do it at all and use a purchased curriculum. I’m not hard core on either side of the road. I was just interested in 1) if folks did this and 2) if they took books meant for a younger audience and advanced them. Not sure if that makes sense.
Coordinating materials, creating lessons, setting goals, etc. is really not as hard as it sounds. It just takes a little gumption! And research too. You’d be suprised at what is free out there for the taking. And the allowances to really, really learn a topic is super. We don’t have to stop at the two page spread on whatever. I can take it deeper, in a different direction or even do some cross curriculum work with it.
Short answer – Yes. 🙂
Long answer, get your children’s book(s) for your spines. Divide the reading of these throughout your year. Get the individual topics you’d like to explore in greater detail from the spines, and add in books & resources where you need them. Add in experiments in the same manner. If you prefer, just get a text so that you can add in content from that as necessary and grab experiments from it as well.
Rebekahy- I am just picking animals right now based on what we have seen around here. We just moved and there are new critters about that we haven’t seen before. I just looked at the indexes and found bats, moths, birds, etc. and found what matched up with them. I plan on changing it up every year to cover most of the basics and get a general knowledge of the world we live in.
Thanks for sharing Ruth! Don’t you have a blog? I can’t click on your Avatar to get to it, I’d love to follow it, if you’re going to be posting about this. I’m sure I can figure it out on my own, but with baby five soon to arrive I MUCH prefer to gleen from the brilliance and creativity of my favorite SCM forum friends!!! (I just printed off all of Christie’s Superstar Schedule, hole punched it and slipped it into my 9 year olds binder – LOL!!! Not REALLY, but I do rely heavily on Christie’s research because I know we have similar goals and styles of teaching/learning.) AND I know you and I have read LOTS of the same books, so we’re being influenced by those in similar ways!
Blessings,
Rebekah
No I don’t have a blog, though I would like to have one some day. I enjoy seeing what others are doing and would like to share what we are doing as well. I didn’t print off all of Christies’s pages, but most of them. I actually got the idea from another blog that was posted on this forum. I will have to see if I can find it again. I just decided to add the use of the Handbook of Nature Study and some poetry.
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