Natural Science combined with the science cycles?

[Trivium Academy]

Do you think it would be worthwhile to combine natural science with the WTM science cycles?

My thoughts on this aren't complete yet so please bear with me. I like the Ambleside schedule for science but I also like the WTM science cycles. Do you think combining them would be worthwhile?

FIRST GRADE
Ambleside Year 1-
James Herriot's Treasury for Children by James Herriot
The Burgess Bird Book for Children by Thornton Burgess

and study a bird's anatomy, weather, flight, life cycle, etc. which would cover physics, anatomy, earth science and animal study. How to apply chemsitry?

SECOND GRADE
Ambleside Year 2-
The Burgess Animal Book for Children by Thornton Burgess See Kelly Kenar's taxonomy key to research more about the animals in the book
Pagoo by Holling C. Holling

Habitats, animal life, earth science, physics?

THIRD GRADE
Ambleside Year 3
Science Lab in a Supermarket by Robert Friedhoffer
The Story of Inventions by Michael J. McHugh and Frank P. Bachman

I don't know if I would use Science Lab in a Supermarket but I do know I want to use The Story of Inventions, which would fit perfectly with 1750-now history studies but maybe focus on scientist biographies with experiments.

FOURTH GRADE
Microscope approach?

I don't know my thoughts aren't very complete on this but I think I want to combine natural science and the individual disciplines.

Any thoughts? I've been debating whether to post this or not since I haven't fully developed my thoughts on it.

[Pata]

Sounds interesting, life is the best classroom! I just had an idea about chemistry for the first year. You could study the chemistry of an egg. For example, solid(hardboiled egg) vs. liquid(raw egg) and how this affects movement(spinning, dropping, floating and so on). You could also dissolve the calcium in the egg with vinegar. This is a good chance to bring in the periodic table, show where calcium is, talk about vinegar being an acid(study acids and bases), talk about precision in weight and measurements as the size of the egg will change and you could measure the changes after 3 days. Just some thoughts. Let me know if you have any questions. I love science and it's nice to see others place importance on it and approach it from all different ways!

[Rhondabee]

Not really about blending life science, but about blending the process you described in your other post with a structured study...(and it may be you are applying this concept already; if so, then just disregard :o)

What I would suggest is that it is not so much "life science" that you all enjoyed the other day, but the process you used to study it. The subject was life science, but the process was exposing your children to something concrete, and then letting them decide where they wanted to go from there (*if* they wanted to go from there).

This message is sort of lost within TWTM Book, but is much more apparent in some of the articles on the website and in the SWB's CD's and tapes - that history and science (and art and music) *should* be delight-centered. You use the spine to expose dc to an idea, and then you ask, "Would you like to know more?" or, probably better the way you phrased it, "What else would you like to know?" And then go look for the answers - or, go on to the next idea and see if *that's* the thing that lights their fire.

That process can be applied to *any* content-subject and certainly any science discipline. I'm not trying to negate the study of life science - I certainly did much the same thing when we studied life science. But, I think that process of discovery ("the joy of learning" for oneself) is what really excited you guys, and I would encourage you to try to apply that more broadly - rather than limiting that process to just one subject.

Hoping you understand I'm not trying to criticize,
Rhonda

[8FillTheHeart]

Hi Jessica,

I wouldn't even go as far as to plan all of that. I apply the term "nature study" much more loosely than some that replied on the other thread. For us, it is all that is observable. We simply follow where interests lead. Magnetism, bees, electricity, pond life, birds, levers/pulleys.....whatever. You absolutely do NOT have to worry about gaps. There is no reason to plan so far ahead. Your dd may find that she has an extreme interest in something......let her indulge. My 12 yos was fascinated with bees about 4 yrs ago and read every book we could lay our hands on about bees. We spend lots of time simply reading about the observable and then "looking" for it. We spend lots of time observing something and than reading more about it. Either way....it doesn't matter. It is fun, interesting, and they are learning tons.

[ELaurie]

Hi Jessica,

I've given a bit of thought to your earlier post about nature studies, in the context of my own desire to continue with the four year cycle for science studies outlined in WTM .

Like you, I see advantages to both; I also realize I will need to pick and choose to avoid overwhelming myself and my dc.

I should say upfront that I haven't read CMs original work in it's entirety as of yet, so I offer my thoughts in a very tentative way.

One of the things I appreciate most about a CM approach is the underlying attitude; an emphasis on cultivating a child's sense of wonder and discovery, while helping him fine tune his powers of observation, and understand relationships while he is learning.

It seems to me that emphasizing these kinds of things is very compatible with the approach outlined in WTM.

I am considering using Real Science 4 Kids as a "spine" to study chemistry with my dc next year. The Pre Level 1 book contains only 10 lessons, offering ample time for nature studies, and reading "living books" along the way.

It seems to me that if my dc run off to discover leaves turning red in the fall or icicles meting n the spring, we can easily talk about these kinds of things in the context of our chemistry studies. If they discover rocks, we can talk about their chemical structure, and why they are hard or softer than other materials; if they see a rotting tree stump, we can talk about the process of decay, etc.

I'm wondering if it is as much a matter of emphasis and underlying attitudes as it is the content and related activities. My hope is to proceed with the kind of exploration I mentioned above in a somewhat more "organic" way than outlined in WTM, keeping a nature journal or making notes of observations and writing narrations when it makes sense to do so, without feeling bound by the structure for keeping a science notebook outlined in WTM

A work in process here too : )

[hsm]

I find that I do not teach "nature study" at least generally. WE walk at study and see what is before us...But, I think planning an natural history education is important--at least to our family--and this is why (and different things work for differnet families). Our Science study is built on nature study, not the other way around. My goal is for my chidren is see that Heaven and Nature declare the glory of God. And to know what is their direct world around them.

I want our outdoor times to be free and spontaneous, for the most part. we do have the focused session sometimes--look for this thing in particular, observe this tree, find this, etc. Really stretch their observational skills/sketching etc.

But to hear others' excitment about their experience in the form of a living book is inspiring. it gives the children ideads about what to look for--now you can teach this directly, but we've enjoyed this apporach alot.
for example; we have read all or are reading all the Burgess books animal, plant, seashore, bird slowly over a year. They've made their own field guide based on the despriptions in the book and looking at our field guides at home. They'v studied, contemplated, and internalized-- all in fun. Then, when we go outside, they know what things are already. It's worked well for us. I really enjoy designing my own nature curriculm, and thought I'd never use a premade text, but once after a baby was born, I used an Apologia elem book (mixed with my own stuff) --just to simplify. I really don't like "chummy" writing, but the children responded well, it gave them pegs to look for specific things during outdoor time. I really don't want to enter into the young earth conversation--because I have nothing wise to say on the matter---other than those parts can be dealt with easily if that's an issue. The simple activites/free notebook pages were a blessing for that season of my life.

But to respond to your specifics:

The Science in the supermarket and other books are hard to come by, at times, And you can easily substitute with whatever experiment books you have on hand. We love Burgess, Pagoo and his other books (those have alot of detail--can be used with older children as well), Herriot, those are great! lot of the older years of AO science narratives are fun and online, VanCleve and Backyard Scientist are also fun--some better than others. I really like Vancleves's Microscope book--it is more microbiology than chemistry. Some of the suggestions for nature reading at Tanglewood we've used and really enjoyed. Voskamps ist geography book is fun. I think biology and geography/earth science are more important than chemisry, physics, etc in the k-6 years. Although we do chemistry and phsyics experiments for fun, because they are...but we generally do it in the context of how it illustrates a life/eath science principle--unless wer're just playing:) You have handbook of nature study? just pre-reading the intro and questions can give you a great focus if you really want a "sturctured nature study"

sorry for rambling

[Trivium Academy]

Today a copy of Real Learning by Elizabeth Foss arrived (thank you Kindred friend!) and I turned right to the science section b/c that is on my heart right now as I navigate through all the good stuff we "could" do.

She wrote about the thought that I've read from Charlotte Mason which put this bee in my bonnet..

"Books dealing with science...should be of literary character, and we should probably be more scientific as a people if we scrapped all the text books which swell publishers' lists and nearly all the chalk expended so freely on our chalkboards." (Philosophy of Education, 218)

When I read this the thought occurred to me that, "Yes! I want to read Burgess' Bird book as the basis of bird study and other literary gems that modern curriculums forget to utilize. I want to read Herriot's books and biographies about naturalists that contain much more than the nuts and bolts of science but as a way to reach my children."

More about what Foss wrote: pg. 94-95 of Real Learning

"I try to have a general plan for science study for the year. I look at each year in six-week increments, considering seven such blocks of time per year. During each six-week period, I try to focus on one particular aspect of science education. Typical "units" include botany, animal science, astronomy, chemistry, physics, geology, human anatomy and physiology, and marine biology. I rotate through the disciplines, adding others as the need arises. I force myself to be relaxed about this study—I don't want to kill science by being a slave to a schedule of readings. I gear the study to the time of year and we consider marine biology in the summer, and we might study botany both in the spring and the fall of the same year, since the plant world is very different in different seasons.

It is crucial that the reader understand the purpose behind the planned bookwork: I seek to provide a foundation upon which the child will build his understanding of the natural world. Nature study in the field is essential and integral to this method of teaching science. The child will learn much about the world in the context of excellent, living science books. Little of it will be "real" for him until he goes out and forms relationships in the world the good Lord created for him to enjoy. It is the processing time, in the field, interacting with science on a very personal level, that teaches the child the most. Galileo wrote, "You cannot teach anyone anything. You can only help them to discover it within themselves." To facilitate such self-education, a cycle of book study using living texts, fieldwork, and more book study (focused this time to bring the fieldwork into clearer view) is encouraged over and over again throughout childhood."

This is what I want to do and honestly, I'm very relieved to read someone's else thoughts that matches my own. I want to read "The Fairy-land of Science" by Arabella Buckley to my children and go forth to explore more within fieldwork with support from The Handbook of Nature Study and field guides (or whatever else we need). I want to read about John Muir and other naturalists, etc. etc.

I don't want science to become stifling, I believe history and science should be the ice cream of studies. I'm looking for a more natural way of learning and teaching for my children and putting the curriculums away unless they fit our desires to learn in the way we wish to learn.

I'm grateful for everyone's replies, esp. Paige's- I didn't think about EGGS for chemistry! Lol. And yes, it is about the approach but it's also about what is fed and how. We can read "The Story Book of Science" by Jean Henri Fabre and follow Uncle Paul's "true" stories that he tells the children in the book and not only teach science but live it as well in our imaginations, our lives and hearts.

[hsm]

that is one of my favorites...
you'll like these ideas
http://gypsycaravan.typepad.com/a_gypsy_caravan/botany/index.html
at least I think so.

[8FillTheHeart]

Hi Jessica,

If you like Elizabeth's approach, I highly recommend you check out MacBeth Derham's website. Way back when...when my oldest was in like 3rd grade, a new CM loop started. Elizabeth, MacBeth, and a few others really took the ball and started all kinds of neat stuff. Anyway, MacBeth was the "nature guru" and has tons of info. http://charlottemason.tripod.com/index.html

[hsm]

http://ponderedinmyheart.typepad.com/pondered_in_my_heart/2008/02/what-kind-of-ho.html

[Sunkirst]

More thoughts for you on egg chemistry/science (We did a unit last year to coincide with Easter).

We read Reschenka's Egg and then attempted dyeing eggs with and without vinegar (we had already made a rubber egg). This was a good way to reinforce what we had already studied.

My 10 yos found 3 different types of eggs (white commercial, brown commercial and local organic brown), and made rubber eggs out of all three. He had hypothesised that the LOB eggshell would take the longest to dissolve (it did, and he gave his results to our farmer friend, who displayed them at his market stand last summer).

We whipped eggwhites and made merinque (This is protein denaturing, caused by unravelling the protein "balls" into long strands.) We also made vanilla custard, which is a demonstration of egg protein coagulation caused by heat. My son thought it was "cool" that heat could change a liquid to a solid in this case). See "Science Experiments you Can Eat" by Vicki Cobb.

We also took two eggshells cracked cleanly in half, and then rested our dry-erase board on the four half shells (shells at the corners). We then weighed books and started stacking the books on the board. It took over ten lbs. of books before the shells started to crack. My son probably took about 25 pictures of this :D. This was from a book by Rebecca Rupp (Everything you ever wanted to know about birds??).

We also really enjoyed Owls in the Family by Farley Mowat (when my son was 7).

Hope you can use some of this, it was all great fun for my kids.

[mcconnellboys]

I don't think anyone else has mentioned this yet.... Have you seen Dr. Nebel's new book on science that incorporates living books? Here's a link to a good, thorough review of it:

http://lunablog.net/2008/02/04/the-best-of-both-worlds-a-review-of-the-new-living-science-curriculum-building-foundations-of-scientific-understanding/

Regena

[Trivium Academy]

Thank you Regena, I'm looking into it. He wrote another book called Nebel's Elementary Education for K-5 and I just signed up for his yahoo group to investigate more. :)

[Audrey]

It is definitely do-able. I notice with your schedule in your OP you were relating the bird study to all four science avenues (life, earth, physics, chem), but in WTM the science cycle doesn't work like that at all. WTM has you focusing on ONE of those for a whole year.

IMO, that's the weakest point in WTM science. Kids like to mix it up (and so do adults!), and science isn't always so strictly limited -- as you pointed out, just birds covers a lot of ground (or sky?).

Anyway, my fave book is Buckley's Fairyland of Science. You'll love it with your little kids.

To your original question, were it me, I would try to balance out the WTM science cycle with Nature Studies (or Natural Science, whatever you want to call it). The year 1 life science lends itself to this best, of course, but once you get to year 2 (earth sciences) you can easily incorporate land formations, geology, astronomy observations, etc. Year 3 (chemistry) gets a little trickier. What we've done is take our observations a little step further, to look at how reactions occur in nature. This means we can look at food chains, take a look back at basic digestive processes with a more chemistry minded slant than before, look at how elements react to form our world (some of these processes are observable), and generally try to "find the chemistry" in nature. For year 4 (physics), I have sketched out a plan that has us looking at forces in nature along with Real Science for Kids. It just expands our observations that other step further.

Well, that got a little long winded, but I hope it gives you some ideas.

[Trivium Academy]

She said to do WTM science for a part of the year and then focus on whatever else we want for the rest instead of trying to make 36-40 weeks of science lessons from a short curriculum. We're going to be using Living Learning Chemistry next year (on our shelf) and I have living books that I've added to it (LL Chemistry does not use books outside of the plans other than encyclopedias). We'll be able to cover it in 14-20 weeks, which I have time to really look at it by Sept. and figure it out. Then for the rest of our time, we can focus on other things including reading aloud titles we want to.

I'd love to talk one on one with someone who has used the older books with their children. It's a good compromise for now and gives me time to think more about this and how to approach it. But ultimately I want a literary science book as a spine, nature studies that correlate with the spine but also child-directed with further investigations with experiments, field trips, interviews, etc. whatever else. I'd be thrilled if I had to make room in our home for "specimens".

I don't want to waste time/effort with crossword puzzles, word finds and insignificant activities in science (or history).

Thank you!

[Audrey]

We're going to be using Living Learning Chemistry next year (on our shelf) and I have living books that I've added to it (LL Chemistry does not use books outside of the plans other than encyclopedias).
Thank you!

We used LL Chem this year, too. I was hoping it would last through the long cold part of winter, but it went faster than I'd anticipated. It is a good program, but I found I was digging around for more for my ds to read on his own, and more hands-on activities, too. YMMV, of course, but my ds needs (and really enjoys) that tactile reinforcement.

[Trivium Academy]

If after LLB we want to continue with chemistry we have Janice VanCleave's Chemistry for Every Kid which focuses on kitchen chemistry. I've really appreciated your posts Audrey, thank you.

[Audrey]

If after LLB we want to continue with chemistry we have Janice VanCleave's Chemistry for Every Kid which focuses on kitchen chemistry. I've really appreciated your posts Audrey, thank you.

No problem. That's what we're all here for, eh? :D I'd be interested to see what you come up with, planning-wise.

[mcconnellboys]

Yes, that book is very good, also. He provides excellent support of it and so I suppose he will of the new book, as well. Both are written for the teacher, not for the pupil. The new book is K-2, but he's working on a 3-5 follow-up (but says to start with the first book first).....

Regena

[Trivium Academy]

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