Occasionally I’ll post a report on some resource that isn’t listed in TWTM. I’m continually on the lookout for good educational materials, and we only update TWTM every five years or so…which makes this blog a useful place to highlight new discoveries.
This fall’s big success story for me is K12’s high school science. Science, as most home school parents will immediately tell you, is a tough subject to do at home. The humanities lend themselves to solo work; not so with science. Those of us who are literature and history types struggle to find good options, but high school science can be a challenge even for the scientifically minded, simply because excellent resources are tough to locate.
My oldest son (now eighteen) did correspondence courses from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Independent Study High School. This was adequate but uninteresting. He’s a literature type like me, so I wasn’t overly concerned. But Son #2 (just turned sixteen) has an engineering mindset, and Son #3 (just turned thirteen…yep, that’s right, three teenage boys now!) is absolutely going to be a scientist, so I’ve been much more active in searching for options.
I enrolled DS16 for the K12 Chemistry and it’s been an excellent choice for him. The lessons are taught online–which means that he logs on, daily, and reads through the text posted online. He takes notes on this text, which often contains multimedia demonstrations, pronunciation guides, animated illustrations, etc. K12 sent him a huge box of lab supplies, so when it comes time for an experiment, he follows the online directions and then logs his results on charts that K12 provides for him. Every three or four days, there’s some sort of progress check–a quiz, a test, or participation in an online threaded discussion.
In order to provide fellow students for these online discussions, K12 gives each course a starting and ending date. DS16 has two other students enrolled on the same schedule, so the three of them participate together in the discussions. He also has an actual teacher who answers questions by email, takes part in and directs the discussions, grades the quizzes and tests and provides feedback, and occasionally calls on the phone to check up. DS16 responds well to structure, so the relatively rigid requirements for logging on daily and doing a prescribed amount of work is fitting his style.
It took us a little while to figure the whole process out (K12’s enrollment directions are NOT as intuitive as they could be), but I have to say that this is the first time I’ve felt that we weren’t floundering when it came to a high school lab science; in fact, I’m investigating starting DS13 on one of the middle-school courses.
There are, of course, pros and cons.
The pros include: structure; individualized attention; complete course materials provided; expert assistance both with grading and teaching.
There are two major cons. First, lack of flexibility: if you’re going on vacation for a week in the middle of the course, you’re out of luck. The kid is going to have to log on and do his work anyway. We do school Tuesday through Saturday, which has worked out OK because DS16 logs on Saturday morning and does the following Monday’s work, but it would be tough to shift the course schedule more than one day in either direction.
Second, the course is expensive. High school chemistry cost me $700. Hard to imagine doing more than one course per semester, and if I start adding kids it’s REALLY going to rack up the cost. Yes, it is absolutely cheaper than private school, but the cost makes me wonder whether this is something I can recommend in the next edition of TWTM, since we do take cost into account when recommending materials.
Any thoughts from other parents, particularly those of you who are science-oriented, would be most welcome.
{ 20 comments… read them below or add one }
I am always surprised not to find mention of the Lawrence Hall of Science GEMS units in your resources for elementary and middle school students. My husband is a research marine chemist (ocean acidification issues) and professor; I am a humanities ex-lecturer turned homeschooler. I was the one who did science with our daughter.
These units are hands-on, investigative and exploratory projects which gradually include more writing and math (my daughter also kept a lab notebook). They require ENORMOUS amounts of material-scrounging, which is their biggest drawback; but that said, once you have done the legwork the units practically run themselves and they are plenty engaging. During a year I taught homeschool earth science to a group of six kids we did Plate Tectonics, Rivers, Convection, Ocean Currents, and Stories in Stone. I can’t recommend them highly enough. The kids ran the classes themselves. They would come in, see the materials, and go to it: they assembled equipment, thought up ideas and tests, bubbled over with questions, tried all kinds of alternatives, and finally got around to the actual structured investigations. I have never seen a bunch of kids that excited — in my mind, worth every minute I spent finding tubing, cardboard, infrared bulbs, etc.
I have done over half of everything GEMS has got with my daughter. Last summer we did a unit on electromagnetic waves for middle schoolers. This year she is in her first year ever of private school (8th grade) and is outstripping everyone in her physics class. I’m sure this is partly genetic — her father’s side of the family are all scientists — but certainly the lack of paper-based and quiz-based training has not impeded her whatsoever.
And best of all, to my mind, is that I myself finally got the science background, albeit very basic, that I never had (never did an experiment until 7th grade and then had only two years of science). I have had so many “Aha!” moments to cherish, and I now am reading science non-fiction for the first time in my life with the greatest pleasure. My husband (the chemist) thinks this was one of the best decisions I made regarding curriculum, because there has been so much lab-based work and so much emphasis on thinking up questions and investigating them.
Do be warned, anyone who is interested, though, that you do have to spend a fair amount of time tracking down disparate junk. Perhaps this is why the units didn’t make it into TWTM???
Wow, that sounds great, except the cost. We are a very science oriented family and both my boys want to be scientists (one a biologist, the other a doctor). We are already finding it hard to do the in depth science at home that they really want. They are only 10 (twins), so time will tell if this continues to be an issue. If we used K12 that would make $1400 per class for me. YIKES! This makes me wonder if taking a class at a community college wouldn’t be cheaper. Thankfully, I have time to check this out. Are there any other ideas for high quality, inexpensive science programs out there?
You may want to look at enrolling through a different county? According to http://www.k12.com/curriculum_and_products/participating_schools_in_virginia/ Bedford County allows students to enroll from outside the county, but charges $700 for HS level courses. Halifax county only charges $500 though. Not much of a discount, but some…
I’d go ahead and mention it in the next edition – as long as there are other options, please do not keep silent about such a good resource for science just because you think many readers can not afford it. If they have a science-minded kid a reader of WTM may want to drop the money on K12 and skimp elsewhere.
Could you also contact K12 and note that you are concerned about recommending such an expensive program? If they knew they could get a recommendation from you, maybe they’d look into lowering their price (if they can). Getting more students into their program might help them lower the cost??? Just thinking as I type, now.
At least you have a some female company in your household. I don’t. My three teenage boys couldn’t understand why I wanted our new kitten to be a girl. I take great pleasure in the boy-ness of my household, but there have been an awful lot of times when I’ve covered my ears and announced that I didn’t want to know about that, or turned around and pretended I hadn’t seen something. And wished I could forget.
I’m not sure whether you should list K-12 as a resource. People are often silly about following others’ advice, and many homeschoolers don’t have much money. Maybe you could add a statement separate from your normal science recommendation warning parents that technically or scientifically oriented students will need better science options but that they tend to be expensive, and put the K-12 recommendation there? That might keep a few of the homeschoolers with more ordinary students from spending their entire homeschooling budget on K-12 for their oldest just because SWB recommends it. Maybe. If you had a separate section for tech/sci students, you could also point out how many hours a day most top math students are putting into math and how that is considerably more than the five hours a week many homeschoolers devote to it. If you haven’t already – I haven’t reread TWTM recently and I only have 1 and 2, not 3. You could also list resources for some other sci/tech options like robotics. Your local science museum or university could probably help you think of catagories. A list of catagories that their sci/tech students might like to investigate would be helpful for non-technical parents, even if you didn’t list resources for them all.
I just got done panicking over my 9th grade youngest’s high school plan over on the homeschooling board because I feel like I am doing a good job of teaching foreign language and great books to my future-engineering student (sort of teaching it suitably badly, if you see what I mean, by tailoring it to his interests and abilities) but not doing the superior job on the math and science that I ought. In our case, the answer is probably community college. My older one’s community college chemistry cost about what K-12 cost you plus a half-hour commute one way. K-12 may be inflexible, but it is at least more flexible than community college. On the other hand, my son’s chem transfered to his state college as a science elective. And then there is the whole problem of the opposing advantages of rigorous textbook science and do-it-yourself science. Remember that great thread on pool chemicals and napalm (sp?)? Part of my problem is that I keep waffling between these two. And I feel like I ought to be providing lots of good opportunities to build robots or whatever, but my son isn’t quite able to do that on his own and I can’t figure out how to find him some guidance on top of all the other things we are trying to do. And there is the problem of whether to focus on art/music/lit now because this is going to be his last chance to do those in school (although hopefully he’ll continue to learn on his own), or to focus on the technical half to make him more attractive to technical colleges …
GRIN Perhaps you could address all that in that separate section? It would be too late for me, but at least it would help others.
-Nan
For Elementary science, we use Mr. Q’s classical science curriculum. http://www.eequalsmcq.com/classicsciinfo.htm
He is a public school science teacher who does a lot for the homeschool community. He has written his curriculum, and book one, Classical Life Science is free. The other three cost $50, I believe (I’ve only bought the second since we are on our second year). His curriculum follows WTM: Life Science, Earth Science, Chemistry, Physics.
My kids LOVE his books; they are filled with good info and explanations, and lots of jokes and pictures. He also has activities and experiments for each chapter, and the materials are always easy to find.
Anyway, here’s one homeschool mom (and two elementary students) who highly recommend Mr. Q’s science!
I’m also trying to figure out what to do with a science oriented younger son. K-12 may just fit the bill for chemistry as the community college option for high schoolers here in California is getting harder to access due to budget cuts across all of higher education in the state.
I think what is hard for homeschooling science isn’t just the lab equipment or the shaky knowledge base some of us bring to the table. There are many options for academic science that will hold our hands and lead our kids through the material. But science is more than just the facts and the history of discovery. Most labs are not true experiments but are simply demonstrations of a principle or recreations of famous experiments. The outcomes are always predictable. My physics professor father used to rail against the science labs I had in school, saying that the conclusions to many of these great experiments we were doing in lab were discovered by a spark of genius in a scientist who had fretted over the experiment for years. My dad thought it was silly that high school students should recreate those experiments and be expected to be struck with the same “eureka” moment.
And yet, in order for a scientist to do research, he or she has to be fully grounded in the basics of the discipline, so of course our kids need the cold, hard text book facts and to see basic scientific principles in action. But they also need inspiration, the opportunities to see how science is applied, to have their curiosities stoked. Can the instructor from an on-line class do that? Can a mom with a text book do that?
I keep trying to find volunteer opportunities for my science-loving teen so he can find that perfect science mentor to inspire him. The zoo turned him down for their teen program because, and I’m not making this up, he is “too into science. We are looking for kids who are passionate about conservation.” The Natural History museum won’t use teens except as camp counselors. Wildlife shelters and animal shelters won’t use anyone under the age of 18. It is really frustrating! So we plug along, and I ask every scientist and engineer I meet if my son can at least tour their work place.
Now that I’ve shared my thoughts high school science in general, was your question more specific about whether to recommend K-12?! I’m glad you did — I wouldn’t have looked into it or considered it otherwise. And I’m glad to have the caveat about its cost, too.
Jenn, your post is really helpful to me. You have just given me a little bit more understanding about some things for me to think about, with regards to high school science. I’ve got a science/math oriented boy. Thank you.
This is a timely post for me. My son loves science, and as an English major I just can’t do it justice for him. We have been using Noeo this year, which is enough structure and cost-effective ($150 includes books and kits with hard-to-find materials). It’s better, but he’s in sixth grade next year. Time to step it up a bit. I have been looking at a local private school that offers a la carte classes. They charge $800 per class. I had thought that that was too much, but reading this makes me think that’s just what it costs to do it well. I would include it in the revision. Informed shoppers make better decisions.
My ds, 9, is very math & science oriented. This year we settled upon Sonlight 4: Electricity, Magnetism, and Astronomy and are having the best year ever (for him) in science. He’s being challenged, has plenty of experiments, loves his readings, and the schedule is wonderfully laid out for me – a non-science oriented mom.
I’m really nervous about a couple of years from now, however. This is the child that, if he stays on the same trajectory, will be doing Algebra I in 6th grade. His dream is a highly competitive engineering school. How on earth do I prepare him for that?
I’m glad for this post. I had never thought of K12 as a science possibility, so I’m glad to have an option to explore. Please include any and all options like this in future TWTM editions!
Jenn brings up a really excellent point: the divide between exploratory/investigative science and the way most science curricula and textbooks present material as simply factual without any discussion of how it came to be accepted as such or even originally became an object of scientific inquiry and experimentation. There’s not a lot to counteract that barring biographies of individual scientists or programs, which your (Jenn’s) teenage son could begin to read now, and to discuss the difference between how science is portrayed in these books versus in textbooks or canned demonstrations. The problem has general effects in how ALL subjects are presented in mainstream education, with specific ramifications for how scientific investigation is taught to kids as a rigid process of (canned) question, hypothesis, experimentation, and results, when only about half of all scientific work actually proceeds along these lines. There’s a whole lot of simple messing around and grasping at straws in real science, plus a long line of “mistakes that worked” (title of a kids’ book on accidental discoveries).
That’s why I like the GEMS series so much. Despite the work involved in collecting materials, this is science out of the box, encouraging — even requiring — kids to come up with their own questions and ideas to try out. One unit, on Oobleck, has kids debating properties of slime as one way of modeling how scientists come up with a body of agreed-upon knowledge. You can do this with just a handful of kids, or even with just you and one child if your child is particularly opinionated and you play devil’s advocate. There is also often an introductory session of free exploratory play with the materials for the unit even with older kids. This may seem like a waste of time, but GEMS is concerned with deep conceptual understanding, which takes time and exploration.
Even “demonstration science,” as I call it, has an important role, though. At dinner parties over the years the scientists from my husband’s lab have reminisced extensively about how they got interested in the field, and nearly all the men spoke fondly of bang-crash-and-explode demonstrations their middle school teachers had done (note: these are mostly chemists; some biologists and physicists and technicians). They went on to have fairly conventional high school experiences, but most had far more lab time than any kid gets these days, even in a good science school. So some kind of lab class or apprenticeship is still really valuable for scientifically-oriented kids.
I share Jenn’s frustration (being also from southern California and knowing the programs of which she speaks) in how thoroughly kids seem to be barred from precisely these areas they most need. Once they turn fifteen, however, they can usually enroll in community college classes (with labs); and they can, if you find a willing mentor, work in university labs. I’ve been very frustrated that my daughter can’t work in her father’s lab until then even doing the simplest of jobs — all he works with is ocean water, but she can’t even go in there and file until she’s fifteen. However, universities also offer summertime programs in science people might want to look into, and there’s always a chance you can stumble onto someone willing to give a teenager a work/study type of experience. My husband has had several older high school students work in his lab over the years.
P.S. I notice most poster are talking about boys — anyone have scientifically-minded girls? Same or different difficulties finding material?
I think that “demonstration science”, as you so aptly called it, works because it makes students curious, and curiosity is necessary to being a scientist. Once, during the grammar stage, I complained to a chemist on TWTM boards that chemistry was boring . She said I was doing it all wrong – I was making my children do the experiments themselves when I should be making the experiments into magic tricks for them. Doing the demonstrations for them seems counterintuitive, but it worked beautifully. It created a desire to learn the principle behind the demonstration. Saying “Wow! How did you do that!” is much better than just following directions.
-Nan in Mass
Please do list this as a resource. It is something I will probably try with my eighth grader next year. I usually set aside more money for the older kids and for science and math courses.
I also have three teenage boys. I think yours and mine are almost the same ages. We have used our local Christian school for science classes. They let the boys take just one or two classes and do sports there.
Another great option my youngest is using now is Veritas Press Scholars program. http://resources.veritaspress.com/Scholars_Online/Scholars_Online_Main.html
He is taking their Physical Science and is very good so far -a live class twice a week and homework the other days.
Thanks for all of these comments and the recommendation of a program. I have 2dd’s and my 2nd is definitely science oriented. She’s only in 2nd grade so I have a bit of time to figure things out. My other dd will do science but doesn’t think about it:) The struggle I have is how to talk about things that just aren’t in my make-up. I can have physics explained to me (as well as read about it) again and again but it just doesn’t stick. I’m sure my sweet girl will be running circles around me soon:) I can figure out the biology aspect but she is inclined to engineering and chemistry.
I don’t have much to add to the discussion as I haven’t had to think through many of these things yet. I might default to having her do a course from a good teacher, I even know one who teaches HS. My other option is to have her explore, have her father challenge her in discussions and to eventually take just the 30 level courses in school to get the course she needs for university.
Maybe by the time she’s in high school there will be some really quality online courses that don’t cost $$$$$.
If you come across good, rigorous foreign language correspondence/online classes, could you please share? I have used Keystone and University of Nebraska – Lincoln with my high schoolers, and they’re both *way* too easy.
What about Oklahoma State University? Or programs from countries where the language is spoken (ex. Goethe Institute for German).
Lukeion Project has Latin and Greek lukeion.org My nearly 15 yr old is taking Latin through them… the class moves at a fast pace, but he’s keeping up.
Another thought about why science is difficult-
You’ve probably already thought about this, but just in case…
I think science is a subject which doesn’t fit very well into the grammar/logic/rhetoric formula. In most subjects, it isn’t possible to memorize all the facts and skills in elementary school, learn all the reasons and connections in middle school, and then JUST use the facts and skills to do original work in high school, because one doesn’t do the grammar and logic stages as a grownup, fully able to understand the more complex facts and concepts. In high school, one has to continue to learn the complex facts at the same time as one does original work. Could it be that the problem with science is that there is a larger body of complex facts and concepts that needs to be learned and this is more separate from the applying/original work of science than in other subjects? They are both so time consuming that they don’t both fit in a science period. Doing lab work (being a scientist) also has its body of fact/reason learning, like using the lab equipment, which is why even at the community college level, it is difficult to find the time to actually do some science. But maybe I’m way off in my reasoning?
-Nan
K-12 is 100% free where I live. Nevada, check your state. April