What should I do for science for 8th grade

[hpymomof3]

I'm trying to plan curriculum for next year. My dd will be in 8th grade and it will be her last year home before she goes to a private high school. Right now she is planning to pursue a career in meteorology or she wants to work with animals in some capacity. (She's not sure if she wants to be a vet). She knows that either way she will need a lot of science.

During high school she will have biology freshman year, physical science sophomore year, chemistry junior year and then either physics or anatomy and physiology her senior year. So far we have done science in a somewhat haphazard fashion. She has done a lot of reading from different science topics but not a lot of experiments. This year we have been using Prentice Hall science explorer with mixed reviews. I'm trying to figure out what path to follow to best prepare her for high school.

She I continue on using some of the science explorer books? Should I have her do Apologia general science, which wasn't a huge hit when we tried it last year but would cover a lot of topics? Should I perhaps have her do Apologia biology to prepare her for biology next year or would it be senseless to just have her repeat it? By the way, she will be taking algebra 1 next year so I have to keep that in mind.

[gardenschooler]

Have you looked at BJU Space & Earth? She might like this if she's into astronomy. It's very thorough. Plus, since studying astronomy/geology isn't always covered in the usual high school courses, it's nice to get a good detailed course in on it during middle school, if they're interested.

My oldest used this and did well. It is a lot of work, though!

[CynthiaOK]

I love 8th grade! I have found it to be the last year to "do what I want" before beginning the standard high school science sequence. With my oldest 2 (and next year with the next 2) we used Runkles World Physical Geography. It gives a great physical science (esp. for someone interested in meterology) background as well as the bonus feature of geography. I've always found it difficult to fit geography in - we were never successful doing it with our history. I found that integrating it with history was disjointed and prefer a systematic program. Although we still do geography with our history, it isn't our primary geography.

I did substitute the Runkles map program with Our World by LearnSmart Pub. and we used a lot of games as well. Another favorite resource was the Standard Deviants Geography dvd.

I think 8th grade science should be fun!

Best Wishes,
Cynthia

[5wolfcubs]

Not a science program, but the first thing I thought of was Science Roots (http://www.redshift.com/~bonajo/latinlifesci.htm). I haven't used it, but it seems like it would give your dd an edge in high school science. Of course, if you've been studying Latin all along, this might be a totally unnecessary program.