Tackling Science in Your Homeschool

Homeschool Review Crew

Anyone else loved science when you were in school but the thought of tackling science in your homeschool fills you with fear?  Just me?  Okay so it doesn’t fill me with fear but I really am not an experiment type of girl.  I prefer kitchen baking experiments to science ones.  Recently we’ve been checking out (reviewing) the Learning About Science Collection, Level 1 from WriteBonnieRose.  

About the Curriculum

This curriculum is geared for grades 1-3 and a downloadable file/e-book.  We received all the downloads for Level 1.  There are eight downloads total counting the discussion helps file.  In addition to Level 1, WriteBonnieRose also offers a Level 2 as well as a Level 3 available in both cursive and print.  Level 1 and 2 are just available in print.  These are NOT textbooks.  When you download these you find a fun filled workbook type activity to help your child learn as well as remember.  

The first download is 14 pages long.  This includes an answer key, title page, and a connect with the author page.  I was pleasantly surprised with the layout.  It’s small bits of reading with a picture that can be colored(my kids love to color) plus a word to trace.  Some activities then follow that review the reading.  There are several bits of reading thrown in.  

Depending on the age of your child they should be able to read MOST of this on their own with you helping them with big/new words.  I have a few struggling readers in my first through third grade level so I chose to just read the parts aloud while they followed along.  Of course I also have an advanced reader in this age group who had read it all and was busy coloring before I finished.  

Lessons Included

There are seven lessons or units or books within Level 1.  They include:

• Familiar Plants and How They Grow
• Fruits and Vegetables Around the World
• Animal Habitats of The World
• Our Senses and Systems and How They Work
• Learning About Life Cycles
• Earth:  Layers, Earthquakes, and Volcanoes
• Exploring States of Matter

The eighth information download is all about discussion questions and information.  There are several links within it to more information for digging deeper into each of the seven topics.  This is a Biblical based curriculum.  

How We Used It

This has been a fun curriculum to use over the summer.  The units are small and fun.  My kids have loved them and my bigger kids have even requested some of the coloring sheets.  Because I have been reading the information out loud they have also been able to absorb anything they might not of known as well as ask questions.  I love when my kids ask questions!  Especially when the older kids and younger kids are together.  Yes, they are on different levels but it also fosters good thinking skills and information processing.

Because this is downloadable I was able to save and then print off extra copies of pages that I needed.  The cover sheets are in full color but most of the actual workbook pages are black and white.  I had hoped to only print off certain pages at the end for activities but soon learned that I needed a whole packet for each of the kids working through them.  They of course wanted their own!  But also because there are tracing words to do and pictures to color while I read.  

I’m a Charlotte Mason type mom and believe any curriculum can be enriched with books. So of course I went to the library and made sure we had book baskets full of fun books that correlated with the study we were doing.  We worked through one study a week.  I probably could have slowed us down more by doing more books and more research on what we were using though.

Ages!  I used this with a five year old kindergarten student, an 8 year old and a 7 year old(supposed to both be first but one is struggling and one is advanced), and two boys who are third grade level, though again one struggles reading while one is advanced.  Oh and my toddler did some coloring too.  As I mentioned I did have my older children in the same room.  They were working on either math or reading at the time but they liked to pop in our discussions too. Tackling science in your homeschool does not have to be complicated, lesson learned.

The animal habitats is the longest study at 51 pages and we did split that into several weeks.  I’ll talk a bit below about the ones we used.  When tackling science in your homeschool these fall under life sciences.  No experiments needed!  Unless of course you want to plant some seeds and grow some things during the plants course.  Which of course we did!

Plants!

First we tackled Familiar Plants and How they Grow.  I chose this one for first because it’s first on the list and I normally follow with how a curriculum is written.  This one is super short.  We were done with it in one week, in fact it really only took us one day.  There are actually three short studies and if I had planned ahead we would have added a lot more to this one.

Basically we worked through the whole workbook on day one.  On day two we used the links provided in the discussion material download section.  Then on day three I pulled out all the books I could possibly find on plants and let the kids browse those.  Day four we went out to the garden(which is a normal activity) but I had the kids help me identify the different parts of the plants and asked them to think back on when the plants were popping up.  Day five we really didn’t do anything related until evening when I decided we’d pot some flower seeds.  Definitely should have done this on day one!

Life Cycles!

Week two brought us to learning about life cycles in our tackling science in your homeschool series.  I love the life cycles and couldn’t wait to see how this would go.  I’d thought ahead and stocked up on books that fit the theme already too.  So those were available throughout the week.  I didn’t think enough ahead or I would have gotten us some butterflies to watch emerge!

So for this one there are 27 pages.  This meant we worked through five pages on days one through four with lots of fun books to read.  On day five we did the two review pages.  Also on day five since that didn’t take long we watch the Magic Schoolbus video of when they go into an egg and watch a chick form.  Fun and neat!  Should mention my toddler is obsessed with this series so we watch a lot of their segments that go along with our school information.  

Day five also was the day we read through/watched all the links in the discussion material.  I feel I did much better at breaking this one up to take the whole week.  Definitely could have added more if we had more prep time.  Right now I think we may use these again next summer and add in all the fun things I thought of and wished we’d had time for!

Animal Habitats!

We are actually spending several weeks on this unit so we’re just not quite halfway done now.   This is the longest unit at 51 pages.  Animal habitats also falls in the life science category.  I never really knew tackling science in your homeschool could be this much fun but now my older kids want something like this for them too!

There are 78 animals and 18 different habitats to visit in this study.  I’ve collected ALL THE BOOKS for this unit.  Easily this unit could take a month if you use a lot of resources to learn more about each animal.  For the purposes of the review I chose to go through these units fairly quickly though.  Also my kids have access to the books baskets all day everyday including weekends so we’re still learning when we’re not “learning” too.  

I really like how this is set up in that you learn about a habitat and then you learn about some animals that live in that habitat.  The way I set this up is that we’re only doing one habitat per day.  Some habitats have more animals than others though.  The plan is to spend 18 days or about four weeks working through all this information.  We’re in week two.  But because I got pulled for jury duty it’s nice that we have a few extra days in week four to catch up.  (Secretly hoping I show up tomorrow morning and they send me home not needing me.  First time I’ve EVER gotten jury duty.)

So far we’ve worked through the African Savanna, the Arctic, the desert, Australian bush, Antarctica, Beach, and today we covered caves.  Really wishing it was during the school year and I’d take the kids to see a cave!  But well, it’s not, and the public school kids are not in school yet so we avoid most public places.  Wrangling ten kids while pregnant can be an interesting task some days.  

Learn More

Want to learn more about tackling science in your homeschool?  Or maybe learn about the other levels and what reviewers thought of them?  Make sure to check out the main blog post for WriteBonnieRose on the Homeschool Review Crew blog.  This is where all reviews are linked up!  You can also find Learning About Science and WriteBonnieRose on facebook, twitter, and pinterest. 

Definitely check out the special offer that is being offered as well!  Using REVIEWCREW50 you can get 50% off on the Learning About Science bundle which included levels 1, 2, and 3!!  The code is good through August 15th!  Join me in tackling science in your homeschool in a fun and exciting way.