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The Stories of Science by Joy Hakim – any reviews
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We have not used them but I did borrow the first one from the library. I was really prepared to love the book, but it just wasn’t engaging. Granted, I am not a science lover so that could be the reason. See if your library has them and perhaps you can make your own judgment. I was looking to use them as a replacement for Beautiful Feet’s history of science course, but I think the books BF uses are much more engaging. Just my 2 cents.
As I am thinking about Hakim’s books, I think that what makes her history books enjoyable is not the writing, but the inclusion of the great pictures of art, maps, and source documents. If those weren’t in the history books, I would never use them just based on the writing. I buy them because we like to see pictures of the people, places, and things that we are studying. Obviously you don’t have many pictures to include with a history of science, especially the beginning of that history. Maybe that’s why they didn’t appeal to me.
We also have the last one – Einstein Ads a New Dimension – and fully expected to love it after checking out the middle one at the library a couple of years ago…and Barb’s (Harmony Art Mom) glowing recommendation for high school chemistry. But, it’s not the hit was hoping for. The verdict it still out. I haven’t scrapped it yet, but I’m seriously thinking about it. We’ve done the first 5 chapters now…might give it one more…it might be how I’m using it…need to think on it some more. I’m using it as an add-on for HS chemistry along with Chemistry 101 and The Cartoon Guide for Chemistry and the elements videos from Nottingham and an elements book. So, what we need is a good living book to go along with those. IIt may work better if it were the spine and other things were drawn in specifically to go along with it…and maybe for middle school?? I’m just not sure yet. I was hoping it would be the living book that would light the fire…and it’s not so much in that way.
I love Joy Hakim’s books and I think that they are an incredibly rich, if somewhat demanding, CM choice. I’ll explain what I mean.
Her style reminds me more of college than k-12, I guess. Your material is there in front of you. How you learn it, approach it, dig deeper in to it, relate it to other things … well, that’s all on you. No spoon feeding. Her writing is sort of conversational and she’s not writing a story in the same way we are used to reading living books in CM. Yet she is writing the story. How much you extract in what she writes is the challenge. You could go hog wild on things brought up in a chapter in either series or you could simply read the chapter. I think you miss a great deal if you don’t spring board off the points brought up in each chapter and discuss or delve deeper.
I pre-read every chapter before I read them out loud. (My children still do both Science and History together with me although their assignments vary.) I plan what ways I want to elaborate what comes up in the chapter – video, model building, experiment, writing assignment, discussion questions, living books, web sites with more information to explore, etc. You could do this week by week or term by term.
There are teacher and student books to go along with them, but I found them distracting and never bought them again after the first time.
These books (both Science and History series) are packed with information. Loaded. Over loaded. You could easily cover these books one time on a middle elementary level and then again for high school getting more and different things out of them each time.
They are our spine for American History and Science. We’ve used them our whole homeschooling. I love them! Can’t say it enough.
I have the books. So far I have just used them to read selections on certain topics we were covering. The writing is fine but I don’t like that there are lots of side boxes telling you about different things. IMO that it a sign of a non-living book. It is the format of a more textbook-y or reference book. I find it veyr hard to just read through books that are set up like that.
Nebby
Wow! And that is exactly what I love about her books … the side information. Anything extra I might like to bring to the table is right there for me to expand upon.
Story of the World, our World History spine, lacks the “extras” and I miss them dearly. In there, if I want to understand the culture of the people during 1920’s Japan I’ve got to go and search it out with little to go on. That kind of research is tidious compared with what I explained earlier.
I enjoy giving my kiddos as much of “picture” of the period in History as I can. Just knowning what happens isn’t enough. Knowing how it affected the people, the land, the culture, the art … etc. that it happened to opens History up and breathes life in to it. The problem I see with History (and maybe why kids do not tend to love it) is that it is so tightly focused. If you’re only reading 6 biographies when there are easily 600 worthy to study in a time period, then how limited is that focus? IMO, that is what schools do to History.
I should add that I have a real thing out for all the old tried and true, but tired biographies. I feel like my children could pick up the basics on those Historical figures just by being alive – they tend to be so prolific. What about everyone else? There were so many people as important that are far more interesting to learn about because the path to them is not worn clean, but kind of messy instead and fun to traverse!!
We don’t have the history. My only experience is with the science. I guess I just prefer a straight narrative and when there are lots of side bars I feel like I don’t know where to fit them in.
Nebby
I’ve only flipped through a couple of the History of US books, and it seemed like there was a lot of evolutionary/old earth stuff in there, while we are more on the side of young earth/creationism. Would that make these books a bad choice for our family?
The evolution chapters are all in the first part of the first book.
I have the history and science books. I haven’t read the science ones and I’m only into the second history book. The writing doesn’t grip me like I was hoping it would, but I appreciate that she tries to present historical figures as multifaceted people instead of “the good guy” and “the bad guy”. There’s a section at the back of each book where she lists other books and quite a few of them are ones recommended by SCM, so that’s a plus! I’m pretty sure my oldest will like these books so I’m considering using them in a few years, in addition to the SCM guides.
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