Plaid Dad: Science Question For You

[Canada_Mom]

Your blog says that you are currently using Harcourt Science. Can you please tell me a bit about this program?

I wanted to use it for gr. 1 w/dd6 this year but I couldn't find any information on the web so I chose NOEO instead. I came across Harcourt on Angelicum Academy's website. I like most of what they recommend so I figured that their science recommendation would be decent. That's all I know about Harcourt. I would like to try something else for next year and am interested in learning more.

Would you mind giving me your review of it, please? Would you recommend it? Something else? I can't decide what to use for science next year!

Thanks.

[Plaid Dad]

I should preface this all by saying that, if I had my druthers, I wouldn't be doing a formal science curriculum with my dd at all, just informal nature study. But she's 6, and science-crazed. I can see middle school age kids doing something more formal. That said, here's my take on the book.

I'm using the grade 4 book with my dd. We're signed up with Kolbe this year and it's what they recommended for her. We "just read" the textbook - the workbook was too, well, workbooky.

Pros: The explanations are clear and accurate. They use real scientific vocabulary. The photos and illustrations are colorful and relevant to the text, not just eye candy. It's a secular text (a pro for me when it comes to science, YMMV). The summary and test prep questions run the gamut from "the answer is on line three of page 27" to "hmmm...how would you figure that out given the information you already have?" The experiments are to the point and not terribly difficult if you have the necessary materials on hand.

Cons: It's all about state standards, baby. :rolleyes: (In fact, I nearly gave up on the book earlier this year because it's such a public school textbook. I even bought Singapore Science 3, but it was really too babyish for my dd. I've come back around to Harcourt.) Some of the experiments require materials that aren't in most homes. (Although you could easily skip those - Kolbe doesn't assign them in its course plans.)

So as far as formal elementary school science goes, I think it's a solid book, and my dd loves it. She just wishes her papa weren't such a stick-in-the-mud about messy experiments. ;)