How do you handle high school science labs?

[hmsch4me]

This is a real weak spot for me.

[periwinkle]

ordering the materials from Home Training Tools. This is not as hard as you might think. If you can follow a recipe, you can do Apologia's labs. However, other options would be:

1-do labs with a co-op or other group
2-take your lab sciences at community college or public high school (if that is an option)
3-use virtual labs or some combo of virtual/hands-on
4-hire a tutor

[Sharon in MD]

I agree, if you can follow a recipe, you can do apologia. The labs are easy to set up, at least they have been so far and we are half way through Physics. I especially like to do labs with at least one other kid. I think that having a small group together for labs, we meet every other week for about 2 hours, is great. That way they get to have a partner, goof off a bit, and it is so much more fun than just mom:o.

[FloridaLisa]

The best option for us has been to put together outside science classes. Either have the parents come together and agree to each take a lab or hire a tutor. Grad students or stay-at-home science-minded parents can make wonderful tutors.

Apologia labs are very manageable. Even the dissections.

This year, my ds is doing AP Bio on-line. They have provided all of the lab material, and he does them, but I think he misses the interaction available in a group lab situation. It's also nice to get feeback from a science grad on lab notebooks.

HTH,
Lisa, particularly posty today.

[Gwen in VA]

I am going to take a radical stand and say that labs are not the be-all-and-end-all of a high school science class!

I know of one student who is now a bio major at Swarthmore who did NO science labs (other than looking at on-line ones) in high school.

My dd did one year of labs in high school, and she is now a chem major! When we called around to the colleges she was interested in, they all (except the college I talk about below) were very laid back about labs and said that they bear in mind the difficulty of hs'ed doing "real" labs when they look at lab experience. Her lack of lab experience might have been why she didn't get into MIT ::confused: but otherwise was not an issue.

(My 2nd son wants to go into engineering and we are going to have him do some lab classes at a cc).

One college my dd was interested in said that it pretty much required that hs'ed students do a 'real" lab class at a local community college in order to be accepted. After much thought, my dd decided to take a chance and not to do the cc lab science, and she got in as an "honors" student (meaning at this particular college that she was in the top ~5% of accepted students).

Labs are certainly a good thing to do, but don't sweat too much over them!

[Kareni]

For Chemistry we used the MicroChem Kit at home. Currently, my teen is taking Geology (with lab) at the local community college.

Regards,
Kareni

[Jenny in Florida]

For biology, I put together my own labs using a combination of ideas from the textbook (Holt's Visualizing Life) and suggestions I culled online or from books of experiments. I'd just go through each chapter ahead of her, look at the lab suggested in the text, decide if it was do-able and then either gather the supplies for that one or look for another idea that went well with the topic of the chapter.

It took some work and creativity, but it turned out to be a really great year.

For chemistry, she took an online class that, in theory, included enough labs (online and some simple hands-on stuff) to "count." But I wasn't impressed and wanted her to have more meaningful experiences. So, we bought the Thames & Kosmos C3000 chemistry set and worked through that alongside the online course. The activities from the chemistry set were absolutely more intense and complex and interesting than the ones assigned for the course, so I was really glad we had done that.

--Jenny

[Laura K (NC)]

I just invested in the materials for the lab from Home Science Tools. We already had a microscope. A Beka has a really great biology text and lab book.

I invited 3 other kids to share the lab with us, and that helped keep me accountable and gave the kids a good idea on how accuracy is a variable that affects the experiment's outcome.

This year I hired out for chemistry... we're using a private school that offers classes to homeschoolers. Truthfully, it was cheaper and easier to do the lab ourselves than to drive out to school.

In my sons' junior and senior years he'll be taking science classes either at the community college or via AP classes.

[Michelle in MO]

or from Nature Plus (if I order directly from Apologia).

I prefer to do the labs on Saturday mornings; since starting Biology, Saturday science study or labs have become a necessity. Saturday mornings give us more time to get all the stuff out. We don't have a co-op to do the labs with, so we just do them here. Apologia makes them very do-able.

What Gwen is saying is probably very true. My oldest will hopefully take her science at the cc next year, so that should help with the lab situation. There probably are some colleges that don't care, and others that care very much about where labs are done. However, since my oldest will most likely not major in science, I don't think this will affect her too much.

The Apologia labs are well-written and easy to read. They do tell you after the lab what you should have observed and learned from the labs; some don't like this approach, wanting the kids to learn and observe on their own. It helps us to tie it all together, though.

HTH! :)

[nestof3]

Foe Apologia Biology, we followed the labs from the text.

For Apolgia Chemistry, we are going to do the labs this month. My son already finihed the text, but did so while working full time, so this winter is the time we will catch up on those labs.

I invested a bit of money last year buying a triple beam balance, equipment and chemicals to do several labs I found from a high school teacher's website. I really wanted some fun and "wowing" labs. This isn't necessary, but what I chose.

The two resources I will use are:

24 Lessons that Rocked the World by Ian Guch

and

17 Effective Activities for New Chemistry Teachers

For some reason, I am not able to link the web pages right now.