High School Science

Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 21 total)
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  • lisawith2
    Participant

    Hi, I am preparing for high school, my son is going into grade 8. I have been using a CM-Waldorf approach up to now. My son is wanting to pursue a career in the sciences. Is there any other science recommendations besides Apologia? For personal reasons, I would prefer not to use it. Can anyone recommend anything else?

    Thanks
    Lisa

    greenebalts
    Participant

    We used a Master Books Science course at the high school level…

    http://www.nlpg.com/homeschool/high-school

    I also built my own chemistry course based on suggestions by Barb at Harmony Art Mom…

    http://harmonyfinearts.org/homeschool-curriculum/

    If you scroll to the bottom of the linked page, she has course ideas for nature study, robotics, chemistry, and astronomy at the high school level.

    Nicole Williams has lists of living science books on the right side bar of her blog at…

    http://www.sabbath-mood-homeschool.com/

    Hope that helps,
    Melissa
    http://reflectionsfromdrywoodcreek.blogspot.com/

    sheraz
    Participant
    Misty
    Participant

    We have decided to use Khans Academy with added books.  We started with Apologia in HS but it just wasn’t sticking or working.  So we switched and the videos are sticking with the boys and they are understanding now what is being taught.  Just thought I’d throw it out there as we took a different approach.

    lisawith2
    Participant

    Thank you Melissa and Shiraz for your recommendations, I will be sure to look into those. Misty, how easy is it to use Khans Academy? My son has dyslexia and responds very well to audio-visual teaching. I have actually been looking at on-line curriculum and wanting to supplement with living books.
    Thank you for the replies. Any suggestions for on-line science?

    Misty
    Participant

    Khans is very easy!  I know that Biology, Physics and Chemistry all have over 115-145 videos.  So we basically divided them out and figured out how many to watch a week and a day based on how many were in each set.   Then we added some great living books to go along with them.  My 15 yr old is very audio-visual also.  Apologia was killing him and he hated it.  He couldn’t do the summaries or really narrate to me cause he couldn’t wrap his head around the ideas and concepts.  Khans is so much easier for him.  He takes notes, can give me narrations daily and he does not complain about doing science anymore (can I say happy momma here).

    Now I’ll be honest my kids (at least the ones in HS science are not college bound kids.  They are skills/trades type kids.  They learn better hands on vs books.  I don’t know how these would work if your child is college bound so I just wanted to give a heads up as I can’t attest to that.

    Science is tough.  For us we wanted our kids to at least understand the concepts vs just read through them.  This is working for our family.  Good luck Lisa I hope you find something that works for your child.  BTW the other nice thing is it’s FREE!  Also, if you know a techy person (like I do) and don’t have unlimited internet (also, like me) they will know how to download all the videos to a media player through YouTube (all legal) and you will have them on your computer no matter where you are and no matter if you are connected to the wide world web.

    Happy searching

    Misty
    Participant

    Oh I meant to add, some videos are as short as 5 minutes others are as long as 22 minutes.  Also, obviously you can start and stop at any point, which is good for my one that gets distracted easily.  He can start and stop and come back to a video when it’s quiet in the house (ha ha when is it quiet with 7 kids) 🙂

    retrofam
    Participant

    We use ACE biology, etc.  I get the Paces and lab dvds. You can buy specimens and dissect with the video instructor if you like. I would consider it college prep.

    An FYI on the Physics course, it is dated. They show a clip of a Radio Shack store with Tandy computers! I hope they update it soon.

    I chose ACE because of cost and failure with Apologia.  My kids like it, and have done well with it.

    My dd is using Apologia Advanced Biology, because ACE doesn’t have that course.

    nebby
    Participant

    I’ve been following this thread too. I will have two in HS next year. For ym son who is 9th this year I got DIVE biology and have been having him do the lectures and tests. I hated their internet textbook readings though and came up with ym own list of readings, mostly from living books. He is goign to do a two day Landry lab intensive in spring too. I’d like to do something similar nexty year — piecing together living books, video lectures and labs. We haven’t been crazy about DIVE. I will look into some of the others mentioned. I tried to look at ACE but didn’t see a video component? Anyone have  a link for them? I like the idea of Khan academy and will look at that. I was also considering a Great Courses series for the video part.

    I have really loved the living books I’ve had him read this year and really don’t want to give up that bit. That’s mostly why I’m not looking at whole curricula but rather piecing things together — so I can use books I like without overwhelming him with essentially doing two different curriculums for science.

     

    Nebby

    http://www.lettersfromnebby.wordpress.com

    retrofam
    Participant

    Aceministries.com

    I went to the store and then science category.  There are two dvd products for each highschool course. I only use the lab DVDs,  along with the Paces.

     

    Misty
    Participant

    Nebby that’s why I did the Khans.  The lectures are there and wonderful, but we fill in with things that interest my boys using the living books.  For us it’s been the best of both worlds.  It’s like Khans is the spine and the books add to make it more appealing to the child.

    lisawith2
    Participant

    Thank you Misty for the information on Khan, it sounds great. I also see that MIT Open courseware offer High School level courses for free. I really like the sound of putting together my own thing with living books and videos, but like you say the problem comes in piecing everything together to make a college acceptable course?! Hmmm, I will keep at it. Thank you everyone for all your input. I will take a look at all the options. Has anyone looked at time4learning? I see they do High School. I wonder if you could just register for one course?

    Kristen
    Participant

    If I may ask;  What did you finally decide?  I will have a 9th and 10th grader next year.  I am hoping to use the same science for both of them and have been looking around for ideas on old posts.

     

    Harterhouse
    Participant

    Has anyone used the Sabbath Mood Science courses for high school?

    retrofam
    Participant

    Highschool Biology in Your Home is another option.  It is research-based, which mine don’t like, so we are going with Masterbooks.com offerings instead. Master Books has a new chemistry curriculum on preorder that looks good.

     

    Guesthollow.com is another option.  We may use that combined with Chemistry 101 dvds.

     

Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 21 total)
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