On Science.

I hate science.
I don't understand it.

I attended 14 schools in 12 years in three different education jurisdictions: Ontario, Alberta and the NWT. It left huge gaps in my education and one of the biggest casualties was science. I know next to nothing about Earth Science (in fact until a few weeks ago, I didn't even know what the term meant) nor Astronomy. Don't ask me anything about Physics. And what I do know about plants, animals and the body is shaky.

I mean, I do find certain things fascinating, like tugor preassure and heliocentrism. I think it's cool that trees and plants photosynthesize during the day and then reverse the process at night. (They do, don't they? I can't quite remember.) The fact that all bugs have six legs and three body bits--and yet are so incredibly different from each other is amazing. (Those facts could be wrong, though. Don't quote me.) I think the human body is a miracle.

But, that's no excuse for not doing science with the kids. Part of why we don't do science--though I have three full curriculae on my shelves--is that I don't know what we need to learn. As far as I can figure out, there are at least four different approaches you could take:

• A. Nature Study
  Go for walks with a sketchbook. Learn to draw. Label the drawings when you get home from good reference books. Observe things happening in the world. Find out why it works that way (eg, cranes at a construction site. Condensation on windows, etc.)

• B. Forgo textbooks and formal learning and just get a bunch of books on how to do experiments and muck about.

• C. Read our way through science.
  Use a spine for topics in a particular area of study and pick topics to be studied. Read about the topic, make a narration page, read picture books, biographies, and I don't know what else. Maybe do an activity or experiment or two and write it up, somehow.

• D. Buy a text book, do what it says. But here too, one must make further choices:

• a) Cover one subject in depth for a whole year--like the Apologia texts do, or,


• b) Cover a few (or more) topics lightly, knowing you will return to study it in more depth later. Pick a few topics (related to your history cycle) each year and pick and choose from what's out there what to do.

Now, factor in that I have two children nearly three years apart in age and that I want to do the same thing with both of them together. I need a curriculum which will demand more from the elder without boring or overtaxing the younger.

YIKES!!

For the Grammar stage, the WTM recommends something very like approach C. (In fact, I looked it up!) Topics are correlated to the history cycle, though they say this isn't strictly necessary.

But for what it's worth:
Ancients: Animals, Plants and the Human Body.
Middle Ages: Earth Sciece and Astronomy
Renaissance and Reformation: Chemistry
Modern Era: Physics.

makes a lot of sense, right?

For the Logic/Dialectic stage the same topics are re-visited, (Grades 5-8) and then again at the High School or Rhetoric level.

But here's what they say about science in the Fifth grade:
You have the same topics you studied in Grade One (Ancients), Animals, Plants and the Human Body but you'll "study basic cell structures, learn about the environments they share and then branch out into the study of classification." In other words, you start to make connections as you delve more deeply into the subject(s).

In its procedure, it comes fairly close to what I understand about Nature Study, only we could call it artificial nature study, since one sets up an experiment first.

1. Set up an experiment, do an "experiment" report.
2. Do a sketch of the specific topic being studied.
3. Write a report on the area under investigation.
4. memory work: identify and define the scientific terms one ought to know.

Egads. It is thorough. It is sound. And it's a lot of work for Mom to pull it together--especially when you consider I'm doing this with a third grader tagging along who will have her own stuff to do. We have most of this school year yet to complete (Middle Ages: earth Science and astronomy. [shudder] and next year to plan and prepare for. It'll be chemistry, which is good. I did well in Chemistry and liked it until I flailed about in the unit on Organic Chem. and barely passed it. Then, I just wasn't interested anymore.

I really have to pull together something NOW! I have a little unit on the human body which is a quick and easy introduction to all the neat, cool systems in the human body. We're just not getting to it.

I hate science.
I really don't understand it.