Excited about Science

I just received an order from Rainbow Resource yesterday that contained a few books and items I've picked for our science studies this year and I'm like a little kid excited to explore and learn!

I was a bit scared to break away from anyone's idea of what to study for science and when (mainly The Well-Trained Mind) and now I'm just so grateful that we did. We're currently studying invertebrates with the lessons I created and having such a good time, even without the experiments I had wanted to do. The Children of Summer by Margaret Anderson was such a great read for us, we were entranced by discoveries and lessons learned by the children and their Pére.

I have been too busy, stressed and what not to focus on our invertebrate study the way I had originally intended but I have a renewed focus and we will finish it by our 3rd grade/PreK start date of Sept. 15th. Yesterday we read, Sponges Are Skeletons by Esbensen (Let's Read and Find Out about Science, Level 2) and Secrets of the Animal World: Sponges, Filters of the Sea and really enjoyed ourselves. Today we'll do the worksheets I have for sponges and start reading about Cnidarians.

For 3rd grade, I decided a year devoted to Human Body, Cells and Plants would be a great idea and seeing the books come in, it feels like a cohesive plan! I was a little worried at first whether it would be as cohesive as I imagined but I'm bubbling over with excitement that it actually is!

We'll start the year with Head to Toe Science by Jim Wiese (not Weiss, the storyteller) and have 10 weeks of learning about the Human Body and then I have to figure out the next step with wonderful resources I've found for learning about parasites, germs, cells, DNA and of course, John Tiner's The History of Medicine! By Spring, we'll transition into Botany and truly be able to connect the differences and similarities between plants and animals.

The year's flow will go like this:

Human Body general studies for 10 weeks
-using Head to Toe Science, Christian Liberty Nature Reader 5, My Body (by TCR) and other various subject specific books

Cells, Parasites, Germs and Viruses
-Using Cells and Processes, What are Germs?, What's Eating You? A book about parasites, Magic School Bus Kit on Germs, Microscope slides on Animal and Plant cells to use with Pocket Microscope (100x) power and other various subject specific books.

The History of Medicine with corresponding experiments that I need to still find. Spotlight on Science's Famous Experiments has a few (Sir Alexander Fleming, Edward Jenner, Gregor Mendel, Anton Van Leeuwenhoek, Robert Hooke, and Joseph Priestly)

Botany
I have many resources that I need to coordinate yet but most will be living books like Seed-Babies by Margaret Morley.

The kids are excited, even Danny who grabbed our Magic School Bus kit on Germs yesterday and excited said, "My school bus! My game!" They both wanted me to take our new stethoscope out of it's plastic wrapping so they could play with it. I told them not yet, we're still learning about invertebrates. I know Danny is going to be happy making his own body this year as Camille and I revisit Human Body studies.

I know I sound like a science geek and I don't care. We're having fun and reading wonderful books!