One bite at a time.
I am of course, referring to Physical Science and my 14 year old son. We've decided to change companies for high school science, until then, we still have to finish the Apologia Physical Science course that he's officially half way through (Yay!) This has almost killed his interest in science. Sorry to burst any bubbles out there.
At the beginning of this year, we set up a notebook according to a notebook that another blogger had. It has dividers labeled "Vocabulary", "On Your Own", "Experiments", "Study Guide" and "Tests." Let's just say we had issues.Seeing that big notebook full of empty paper is overwhelming.
On a slight sidenote, I have been listening to Andrew Pudewa talk about teaching boys and teaching writing.
He is very helpful in understanding the male psyche. Boys are made different and you can't teach them like you'd teach girls, hence the "one bite at a time." (If you have boys, I highly recommend buying these downloads, it'll be the best $6 you'll spend.)
By Module 3, I was taking individual pages out, so that it wasn't so overwhelming. Thus, defeating the purpose of a notebook. When he started Module 4, I started stapling all the pages that he needed for that Module. I had to do it on a weekly basis and lost track after only two modules. N generally did not get the work done on his own. He'd read and do the questions, etc "in his head." Uh, OK. You can imagine how that has been going.
With the arrival of next year's curriculum, I have had to clear some space in the school room. This means going through curriculum, papers and notebooks and getting rid of things we are done with. Today, I put the rest of the Modules' paperwork into packets.
Each packet has a weekly schedule on top. The schedule instructs N to divide the reading into 6 days and WRITE down the number of pages he should read a day. We do school Monday through Thursday. So days are labeled, 1, 2, 3...8. Days 1 through 6 have listed under them, Reading, On Your Own, Technical Drawings and Experiments. Day 7 says, "Open Book Study Guide." Day 8 says, "Do the test." The packets are stapled together and in the notebook. He is supposed to take a packet out at the beginning of a module and put it in the book. Then, when he has completed the packet, hand it to me. I'll grade it and file it back in the notebook.
I got printable On Your Own pages, technical drawing pages and lab sheets from Donna Young's Apologia Physical Science page.
I'll let you know how it goes.
4 comments:
What microscope did you go with? Any thoughts on it so far? I am about to purchase one from Sonlight but am still unsure. I just want something for the kids to discover with. Thanks.
Hi Paige,
We bought the 100X Home Microscope from Home Science Tools. Not knowing anything really about them, and only having it one day, I like it a lot.
It's very nice. We can see very tiny things, haha!
That said, I did read several reviews all over and looked at other websites. And this is the one dh thought would work for us through three boys.
~C
When Plan A doesn't work, you try Plan B and hope it works better, right?! (And with some kids you get all the way to plan K... not that I have any of those at my house...) On the road to teaching them independence, you have to set them up to win. (Not that "failure" is necessarily a bad thing; that can be a good learning experience, too, but you know what I mean.) Switching gears to find what works sets a valuable example for a kid. Now N knows a little more about how he learns & what *doesn't* work for him, and he's (hopefully) learned that when something isn't working, you can always try going about it a little differently.
As for boys learning differently from girls, I'm sure there is truth to that, although I think personality probably makes more difference than gender. My two girls seem to learn fairly similarly (although it's a little hard to compare when they are 8 yrs apart), but my boys have learned somewhat differently from each other. And there are certain learning similarities that all 4 share, probably by virtue of being my kids!
My 13yo is working on mod 12 of General Science. And with us too Apologia is just NOT doin it. I have another plan for Biology but gotta figure something else out for Physical... I already have the Apologia Physical Science, worked well for my oldest. We are so not looking forward to it. I am on the search.
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