Name: Thrive! NCHE Homeschool Conference
Start: 2025-05-22T00:00:00-05:00
End: 2025-05-24T23:59:59-05:00
Location: Winston-Salem, NC

This topic has 11 replies, 8 voices, and was last updated 13 years, 6 months ago by Wings2fly.

Viewing 12 posts - 1 through 12 (of 12 total)

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November 3, 2011 at 5:28 pm
Sue
Participant
My children, 11yo dd and 12yo ds, are just balking at the idea of doing any more science. We just started Apologia’s Zoology I, and we’ve only gotten through the first few pages. That was our first session with it. They were just overwhelmed by the whole “Kingdom, phyllum, class, order…..” etc., etc., and even the mnemonic they offered didn’t help nor interest them. It kind of bogged me down, too.
Now, they don’t really want to do any more of this. Especially, my son (who reads at a 2nd-3rd grade level, so I read it out loud) insists he doesn’t want to do this science book. I think I had heard that it gets easier and more interesting when you get past the first chapter. Any ideas how to get through this and how to make it work? I don’t have the money to invest in another science curriculum or other materials, and if I had to pull together science curriculum myself, we probably would fall far behind due to lack of sufficient prep time.
Any ideas?
Thanks,
Sue
November 3, 2011 at 5:39 pm
momto2blessings
Participant
Yes, it does get easier! Maybe you could skim those sections and then move onto more interesting ones to see if that captures them more? Gina
November 3, 2011 at 5:42 pm
Tristan
Participant
It does get easier, you’ve just got a foundation to lay first in that book.

What I did with my daughter when we did that lesson was make it a card game. Write each on an index card (Kingdom, Phylum, etc) in different colors. Go ahead and make 2 or 3 sets if you are up for it. Now, with the first set you want to just practice putting them in order over and over. Then with the other 2 sets you can do Go Fish.
November 3, 2011 at 5:45 pm
Tristan
Participant
Oh, a quick tip, for the putting them in order card game I included one index card that had the correct order – but I only drew colored circles. That is why each word was a different color. Then my daughter had to use the color order card the first few times to put the words in order before I turned her loose with remembering it herself, AND every time she played she had to correct the order if she messed up and read them out loud in the right order twice. Make sense?
November 3, 2011 at 6:17 pm
thepinkballerina
Participant
I found these classification cards you can print out for free:
http://www.guesthollow.com/homeschool/printables/printables_science.html
I’m always making charts and posters to help us visualize how we classify animals but we aren’t learning about kingdom, phylum just yet! We are using 106 Days of Creation. OR if something is over their heads, I say “We’ll learn it in more detail later, for now I just want you to understand _______.”

Tara
November 3, 2011 at 7:30 pm
morgrace
Participant
We’re in the same boat! It took us 5 1/2 weeks to get thru lesson one, reading short sections at a time. Which in hindsight i wonder if it made it worse by making the material more choppy and losing the flow. I had attributed it to the fact that this is our first “offical” year and I have a first grader. He did much better with a hands-on activity for classification, we sorted some animal pictures we had in the house, although animal toys or stuffed animals would have worked too. Physically moving the animals himself helped some, enough to get the general idea of how animals are sorted into groups, but I know classifcation details and the menomic didn’t “stick” at all. As Tara said, we’ll get next time around!
We’re on lesson 2 now and it’s more interesting. But honestly, we are still struggling and my son is a HUGE bird lover, which is why I chose this for science. But still, he’s not as interested in the material as I thought he would be. On the other hand he’s really excited about the drawing birds book, bird-sound book etc. that I’ve checked out from the library for him. These titles were listed in the notebooking journal “extras” page with lesson 2. I cannot change course materials either and have to find some way to make this work or come up with an alternate plan.

November 3, 2011 at 9:24 pm
suzukimom
Participant
morgrace – have you guys read the Burgess Bird Books? he might like that better for first grade. I found a great blog with LOTS of resources for that book… if you decide to do it instead, let me know and I’ll find that blog again.
November 5, 2011 at 2:16 am
Sue
Participant
Thank you for the suggestions, especially the card game ideas. That might help some. I just might have to bribe them (mostly my son) to get through the first chapter and into the second.

My son keeps telling me he wants a science curriculum where you get to “blow up stuff, like volcanoes.” *Sigh* I guess I’ll just have to stock up on vinegar and baking soda!
November 5, 2011 at 3:15 am
suzukimom
Participant
Oh, if that is what he wants, you will need to buy the book “Naked Eggs and Flying Potatoes” by Steve Spangler. All sorts of fun stuff like…
Using a hair dryer (or leaf blower) to send TP flying… How to put a straw through a potato, crush a pop can with heat and water, making a lava bottle (like a lava lamp), making a soap souffle, making a naked egg that you can fold, the secret to diapers, poking pencils through ziplock bags filled with water, make a baloon scream, and of course the mentos geyser. That is just from a quick flip-though… there are other things too.
Most of the experiments are with things you have around the house…. I just haven’t been brave enough to do them with my kids yet…..
November 5, 2011 at 3:32 am
JenKeithley
Member
I have been using the Mammal book with a co-op this year. They have had difficulty with parts of it. However, I’m finding that if I take the topic and use living books from the library to explain it, they like it better. I read one paragraph or two out of the book itself and then read the library book. It is definitely taking me longer, but the kids don’t seem as overwhelmed and are enjoying camping out on specific animals. In fact, they are narrating really well. Also, I don’t have to spend a lot of money or look for ideas about putting together my own curriculum. It really does provide a great outline.
November 5, 2011 at 3:56 am
Sue
Participant
Yippee! Two of my local libraries have copies of the “Naked Eggs” book available. Time to put my patron card to work! Maybe I can make a Friday afternoon experiment conditional on getting the week’s Zoo 1 lessons done.
One of the benefits of living in the city we do is that we have a county system of many suburban branches…and they can get me stuff from public libraries and college libraries a few hundred miles away…..plus a couple of wonderful, privately-operated suburban libraries. These days, I’d probably be more likely to vote for a library tax levy than a public school district levy…..but I digress…..
November 5, 2011 at 4:22 am
Wings2fly
Participant
We started with Zoo 2 for Swimming creatures, because the kids had more interest in that. I printed the chart from the sample chapter of zoo 1 to briefly explain classifying. I think we spent only 1 or 2 day on that and we moved on. I don’t expect them to totally understand that, but to know in general how and why animals are classified (and that humans are NOT animals). We read some stories in picture books and short chapter books at bed time on the same topic. That helped peak their interest.
We also did lapbooks with the first five chapters and they would cut while I read and then they would orally narrate and then write down what was appropriate on the mini-book for the lapbook. If you don’t want to do the lapbook, you could do some sort of science journal. If you don’t want to spend the money on the corresonding lapbooks, you could go by topic for the free lapbooks at http://www.homeschoolshare.com. That is what we started with and when I realized that it worked for us, I ordered the corresponding lapbook on sale. Even coloring pages with corresponding animals have been useful while reading these books to them. We have had fun with the “try this” and experiments at the lesson end. But for now, we are taking a break from these books and just using picturebooks from the library of the kids’ interests. We’ll pick up zoo 2 again soon, to finish.