Singapore Science Jr./Highschool

[CAROLinON]

Should have posted this here I think, instead of the curriculum board.

I have been looking at Singapore Science for grades 7 and up. Has anyone here used any of them and what did you think? How do-able were they at home experiment wise? Thanks

[MaryM]

We have used the Level-O Biology and Chemistry and the texts are excellent. They build good thinking skills and application of the material in the text problems and exercises. We did not use these as the sole text however since we were looking at self-study for AP. FOr non-AP they are fine. The chemistry does offer more coverage on industrial topics than the standard US text but it is inteesting.

Now, unless you are lucky enough to have a lab set up in your home, the labs, at least a large portion of them are just not feasible. I tried. I invested beaucoup bucks in supplies but it just didn't work. It is very time consuming to just develop the list of supplies need! We sought virtual labs and scoured the internet for good wet labs and there are many available.

Hope that helps a tad.

Mary

[Myrtle]

Should have posted this here I think, instead of the curriculum board.

I have been looking at Singapore Science for grades 7 and up. Has anyone here used any of them and what did you think? How do-able were they at home experiment wise? Thanks

I'll be doing interactive Science (grade 7) this year coming up.

I've looked through all the experiments and I have in mind to order the
Chem C3000 chemistry kit (http://www.thamesandkosmos.com/products/chem/c30002.html) because it has many of the chemicals that the lab requires, bunsen burner, etc and if not the exact chemicals it has a lab on the same topic. The price is shockingly high on that site but I think I can find it for about $150 elsewhere. I already have a good microscope from a previous year that will get use again, I think the only thing I still need are vernier calipers.

The new Interactive Science series also has several labs that involve the use of software along with gadgets that hook up to the computer that I don't have access to so I guess we won't be doing those.

But the real draw back for me is that the answers to the workbook and lab are no longer in the back of the book! To compensate, I'm going to order direct from Singapore a review book called "Excel in Science for 7th grade" that will hopefully give us more practice opportunities.

I don't know how we are going to handle Chemistry or Physics labs later on, that may be something we have to postpone for community college.