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List of living science books
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I had book marked to my home screen for the old curriculum guide for science, geography and history and although I’ve done as you suggested Doug, and gone to the grade 1-12 overview, clicked on any and every possible link but they are just not there anymore. I especially liked those and I’m also wondering if they are permanently removed or if they’ll come back up?
@Bek, Were those the pages that said “You are viewing an older version of the SCM Curriculum Guide. A newer version is available” at the top of each one?
Yes Doug, those were the ones…I’m not very tech savvy so thought maybe it was me…but maybe not? I’d sure love to be able to see those again.😀
More changes??? More changes??!!! I just got done hyperventilating over the new look on the Organizer! And I’m running out of paper bags to breathe into…..and I’m a little leery about trying plastic bags, ya know?
C’mon, guys! What’s a change-resistant mom to do?
HOMESCHOOL LIVES MATTER!!!
**Disclaimer: This post is intended for entirely humorous purposes. It is not intended to start a social movement….
Several years ago we replaced our free curriculum guide recommendations with what is on the site now. Quite a few of the books had gone out of print (just try to find an affordable Oxford First Ancient History!) and we found better choices for many others.
We kept the old guides around for a while for those who were in progress with them but planned to eventually remove them. We haven’t updated them at all and our website stats show only a tiny percentage of our visitors ever go to those pages. So when we started rearranging recently we figured we would clean them out since they were so outdated and unused at this point.
Our apologies to those we didn’t realize who were still relying on the old pages!
I have restored the pages for now. We will be adding a statement to the top of each one making it clearer that they are outdated and that we have scheduled them to be removed on October 1, 2017. That should give everyone a chance to capture what they need but still let us eventually clean up the site.
That notice has been added to the old pages. And, yes, I made it so that part doesn’t print and push all the good stuff down or waste ink.
Oh thank you, thank you, thank you. I’d better get busy then and print off what I need. I really appreciate that you obviously listen to your readers….Yay for you, that’s so thoughtful.
Now about that living science book list. Yes, we removed it and here’s why.
It is really important to us that we have pre-read and can stand behind all of the books we recommend. You all trust our selections too much to do otherwise.
That was an older list that contained a variety of books that we had originally heard about as being good but we had not necessarily read all of them. We too have learned and grown over the years and that impacts how we approach things. So as we looked through the list last week we realized that many of the books did not meet our standards of what we would now recommend.
There has also been some confusion with how those books related to high school. Others have been trying to do a complete CM high school science curriculum with only living books. We do not agree with that approach but our list and that fact that others were doing so was leading some to think that’s what we were recommending too.
So most of the list went away. We did take a few of the books we liked and have included them in our individual grade suggestions. There are additional recommendations in our living science guides as well, which you can see by downloading the free samples.
Thank you so much for the clarification Doug, and for your honesty about the book list no longer meeting your high standards. May I ask why SCM does not agree with a living book approach to science in high school? Not trying to be argumentative, I value your opinion. I have an 8th grader this year and I am still undecided as to how I will approach high school science.
Thanks for all you do,
Crystal
The main reasons for not using a living books approach to high school science are in our answer to our approach to science found in our SCM Curriculum FAQ.
The high school years are a time of more in-depth study into several of the main branches of science: biology, chemistry, and physics. Because new information in the different sciences is being discovered every year, conversational-style textbooks are used to ensure that your child is getting the most accurate and up-to-date information. While living books might be more interesting, at this level of study it is difficult to find books that teach the science and not just about the science. Optional living science books may be read alongside the textbook, but care should be taken to choose books that do not have out-dated information. Continuing weekly nature study allows your child to add to his own discoveries.
Also, from what we can determine from Charlotte Mason’s writings, she taught botany, geology, astronomy, and some biology and physiology to her high school students—much different than the sciences for high school that are taught today!
Science has changed a lot in the 100 or so years since Charlotte’s time and has become much more prominent in our society, life, and careers. The tools we have available for scientific discovery (i.e., electron microscopes and satellites) have expanded our body of knowledge exponentially. So it benefits our children greatly to gain a solid science education to contribute to their future success.
FYI, I just posted a long explanation of why we changed our pages over in another forum discussion.
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