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Science for non-mathy high schooler
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My daughter is a couple of years away from high school level courses, but in planning ahead and looking at possibilities, what would you say are the best choices for a non-math, concrete learner? Abstract ideas are difficult for her, math is a struggle. I’m guessing we might skip chemistry, and definitely physics. I’m looking at doing biology, human atanomy and astronomy. I like the John Hudson Tiner books, but how do we get a credit out of those? I’m not interested in Apologia for her. She needs more hands-on, but can definitely write papers. Light on formulas and calculations would be best. Maybe also Beautiful Feet’s history of science course, if I can give her a credit for that.
What are your thoughts on these: JH Tiner books, Friendly Chemistry, the 101 series, and Queen Homeschool science for high school.
I want her to learn what she needs to know, and to be challenged, but I also know what her struggles are and we have spent many years in tears with the wrong books. So I want to choose carefully so that she can be successful, but progress at a strong pace as well.I’m not sure if this is what you are looking for but I have found for real learning living books work best for us for high school science. Here’s a list we used for biology: https://lettersfromnebby.wordpress.com/2015/04/11/living-books-for-high-school-biology/
i have tried different things but my ideal so far would be to read living books, watch some videos and do Landry 2 day lab intensives to make a whole HS science credit with labs. I like Tiner’s books too. They are somewhat simple but I think simple they get a lot out of is better than harder but they retain little. I’ll be posting what we used for chemistry soon. Spoiler: I like the Joy of Chrmistry. It has easy to do at home labs though you need to collect all the materials.
Sounds a little like our situation here. My daughter will be in 7th this fall. She struggles with math and abstract as well. So, we definitely will stay away from science that involves numbers. I will probably use Queen’s for the most part. As far as a credit, here in PA we just need 120 daily logged entries or 2/3 of a textbook completed to get a credit. Depending on the type of diploma worked toward, there may or may not be certain courses that need to be completed. In our case, it will be a general diploma, which can be earned in a variety of ways. We can choose what science we want to cover.
My oldest daughter, now 28, earned a credit by being involved in a local envirothon competition, and reading and studying about the different topics covered in the competition; e.g. tree identification, aquatics, soil study, animals, etc. There was no text book for it. We just logged each day that she read, watched a video, attended group study, etc., until we had 120 logged entries. Our homeschool group won first place in Envirothon (against public and private schools) several years in a row.
So, find out what is required in your state or diploma program require (unless you are giving your own diploma), and go with what you would like to see your complete. Shouldn’t be too difficult.
Check out my friend Nicole’s blog at sabbathmoodhomeschool.com. She has lots of resources on there. In addition she has just released her first science guide! This one is for middle school biology. She plans to do elementary and high school guides as well. I wrote a post about the new guide here.
http://childrenslegacylibrary.blogspot.com/2016/03/new-living-science-curriculum.html
For my non-mathy dd, I am planning to use biology 101 dvd, and Science Roots in 7th grade to prepare her for Apologia biology in 8th grade. We are starting it early so we can take it slowly.
After that plans are physical science, and then Chemistry 101 dvd along with Guesthollow.com plans for kitchen chemistry. I looked at Friendly Chemistry but liked Guest Hollow’s plan better.
My older dd tried Queen’s chemistry and though she liked the story, she didn’t like doing research and said the experiments were too easy and she had seen them all before.
Also, we add ACE lab dvds to all courses because we have them. You could substitute You Tube videos.
Hth
I’ll second Guesthollow Chemistry. My daughter was dreading the subject with what we were using, but after switching to this its now one of her favorite subjects.
http://www.guesthollow.com/homeschool/curriculum.html#science
The books are really interesting, we love the experiments (density tower, making marshmallows), and we stream the videos during breakfast and all look forward to watching them, so the whole family’s learning.
They have biology and a few more sciences, but we haven’t used those so I can’t say anything about them. They do have a fun free geography that my younger kids are using that’s great.
We have the 101 Series for Biology, Chemistry and Physics. We have really enjoyed the Chemistry and the Physics ones, but I felt the Biology was not nearly full enough to for a full year. My 14 year old has done mostly Apologia Biology this year and she wanted to give Abeka’s Biology a try but I think she’s realizing that it’s a small book for a reason…cramming information into a few pages with nothing to help you relate to the information. Now that there are just a few months left of the year, I may give her the 101 Biology again and have her do that for the rest of the year.
I’ll be using Apologia a year behind with my non-mathy DD. I also plan on adding in the Physics 101 DVDs to make it a bit more concrete.
The 101 Series does come with lesson plans to make it credit worthy. These plans add in quite a bit of writing, so it may be a good fit for your DD. You can view the lesson plans on their website and watch a sample video.
This site also has some guides to go with the Tiner books, but I’m not sure how good they are: http://www.nlpg.com/browse/homeschool-curriculum/subject/science?m-layered=1
Thanks for all of these suggestions. I completely forgot about Landry Academy, and I am really liking the look of Guest Hollow. The 101 series is definitely on my list, and the book lists linked to in the above comments are a great help. This is a great help to me. We are part of a homeschool group where the majority of students are using Apologia, and it’s just not going to be a good fit for her. She might be able to get through the Biology, but definitely not the other books. And I have other plans for jr. high science- We are completing HOD’s Hearts for Him series, but it will only take us up to 9th grade, and I don’t like their science options for high school. I know it seems crazy to plan ahead like this, but my son is graduating this year and if I had it all to do over again, I would have planned his entire high school plan before he even hit 9th grade. Instead, we found ourselves planning only a term or a semester at a time, and many times I was just getting plans done a week ahead. So since I have learned this lesson the hard way, I’m planning ahead!
My daughter and I just started Signs and Seasons by Jay Ryan for part of her first highschool science. We are really enjoying it so far. Charlotte Mason had her students doing several different kinds of science each year instead of just studying one subject each year. I think we will do the same. We are alternating Signs and Seasons with Apologia’s Physical Science. I may cobble together my own biology course which would include the Biology 101 dvds and living books.
For Chemistry, I’m leaning towards Friendly Chemistry.
One thing to remember is that we don’t have to use a textbook as the author instructs us. We use Apologia sometimes but my daughter and I read the text together, do the On Your Own exercises orally together and I have her complete the study guide on her own. We read a short section each day-only to the first On Your Own exercise we come across. We don’t do the tests since they simply repeat the information from the study guide. I am not a fan of testing. I don’t believe cramming for a few days and testing on a subject helps a student really learn the information. I feel good in that I am exposing my daughter to the material and she is learning a lot without having to memorize lots of definitions only to promptly forget them after passing the test or finishing the course. I also have my daughter narrate after each reading and her retention has been very good-much better than mine was in highschool, even when I memorized all the definitions and aced the test. 🙂 In fact, I hardly remember anything from my science studies. My daughter, at age 14, is already miles ahead of me in her knowledge of various fields of science. She is constantly sharing things with her daddy that she is learning in her studies.
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