science Archives - Classical Education Books

The Story of Science Review

Admin — Thu, 05 Aug 2021 04:58:41 +0000

Homeschool Science:

The Story of Science: Aristotle Leads the Way

Aristotle Leads the Way was the main science text I found to pair with Beautiful Feet Books Ancient History (Intermediate) curriculum for my past year of homeschooling. My kids were in grades 6 and 8 this past year, and we often do Socials and Science together for ease. Aristotle Leads the Way was a perfect fit for middle school. I wanted an open-and-go resource that we would be able to keep up with our interwoven subjects. I was so pleased with this choice! It created a rich and fertile ground for seeping ourselves into history I’d forgotten from my youth but was eager to press into.*

Teach Science through History

Finding Aristotle Leads the Way was like finding a needle in a haystack. I was able to marry two sciences that my children enjoy learning about–Physics and Astronomy–with the historical era of Ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome. If your child has never been introduced to either of these subjects, it doesn’t matter. This is an excellent place to start because Hakim gives us the chronological order of the ideas and observations that birthed these two subjects. If your students have had experience they’ll find new information and rediscover the why and how behind these disciplines from great thinkers of ancient times.

As far as textbooks go, this is a smaller one, but at just under 300 pages, it’s flush with ancient maps, geographical photographs to provide context, works of art throughout antiquity, diagrams of inventions, and little excerpts that give the student practice with the concepts, whether that’s prime numbers or how Hero calculated the area of a triangle. Don’t know who Hero was? You’ll want to look him up; he was one of my students’ favorite thinkers and tinkerers from this text. If Hero’s ideas would have caught on quicker we’d likely be in flying cars by now! He invented hydraulics and a steam-powered device while living in Alexandria. The steam-engine powered train was up and running only 18 centuries later. Hero was a tad ahead of his time.

I learned a lot this past year alongside my kids, and Hakim was a fantastic tour guide. She has a witty sense of humor, and the book is written to be read as a story. She spins the known world and highlights the masters of antiquity in philosophy, astronomy, physics, engineering, and mathematics, and how all of these disciplines were entwined together in the beginnings of scientific thought, experimentation, and record.

We had such a good experience with Aristotle Leads the Way that we’ll be finishing the series over the next two years, adding Newton at the Center and Einstein Adds a Dimension, to our curriculum choices for science. I don’t recall ever hearing a peer saying to another, “Wow, that was really good!” about a textbook but that happened in my classroom!

*So many puns, so little time.

My name is Sarah Mast and I homeschool my two kids in Ft. Langley, BC. One of my favorite aspects of homeschooling is the community gained, and I volunteer with a local support group to help foster that and connect others. My family loves the outdoors and traveling, and our weekends include skiing, swimming, hiking, or biking depending on the season. I found Classical Education Books at a conference and noticed their well-curated selection of children’s books. I kept tabs on their collection of the classics and hard-to-find books and reached out. Now I get to help customers hone their collections, and work on the ever-growing inventory here at CEB!

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Curriculum Spotlight – Science Through History

Admin — Thu, 08 Jul 2021 14:55:03 +0000

How do we know how things work? What are atoms and molecules? How do human organs function? Why are there sparkling lights in the sky?

These are questions that humans have been asking from the beginning of time, and we wanted answers. This science program tells us about those men and women who asked the questions and then proceeded to find answers to them. With a solidly Biblical beginning in, Science in the Beginning, we move on to Science in the Ancient World. The stories of Archimedes, Galen, and Hippocrates describe some of their first questions and how they were answered. Archimedes is the first person who recorded his observations of mathematics in space as well as things like water displacement, engineering in movement, and calculating volume. Galen observed the human body and how each part connected with the others. Hippocrates decided that fluids in the body influenced the emotions that we experience.

You may wonder, how is this relevant to our world today? What is scientific about these things? Science is something that is not settled, it’s actually constantly being discovered, tested, and changed. So how can we tell our children about this world of discovery? By reading the stories of the men and women who observed and wrote about their findings, we can show how our knowledge of the world in its minutest and grandest forms was discovered, but not always with a definite conclusion.

Aristotle, one of the greatest scientists and philosophers in history, believed that the Earth was the center of the universe. While we can learn so much from his work, we now know that he was wrong on this very important subject.

How can this program help our students to study and learn about science? As an elementary program, this is the story of how people came to believe what they did. Young children love to hear stories, and imagine them, and play them out. Rather than giving children dry facts of anatomy, astronomy, chemistry, and the other sciences, this program tells them the story of the discovery.

However, it’s not just a story. Each lesson also has an experiment. Again, as a course for elementary students, it’s a beautiful introduction to start the first books of the series with younger ages. The experiments are very basic and engaging, and even mind-blowing to 6- and 7-year-olds.

After those first basic discoveries, we move on, with the ages, and engage with the renaissance world as they build on the ideas first discovered. Galen told us so much about the human body, but he was not correct in everything. Leonardo da Vinci begins to show us more and we experiment with more complex materials. Copernicus and Galileo challenged Aristotle’s ideas about the universe and bravely published their works, showing us that even the most intelligent Aristotle could be wrong on some things.

This is the story of science. It’s a method: purpose, hypothesis, materials, procedure, results, conclusion. In telling our children about the brave men and women who were able to publish their conclusions to a world that might not accept them, we are raising up a generation of young people who can lead us into the next generation of scientific discovery.

Stay tuned as we recommend more scientific texts for middle school and high school.

Quick facts:

This tells the story of science from the beginning of time including the people who presented their ideas.
This is not just a story. Experiments accompany every story as the students are compelled to prove the theory.
As an elementary program, it begins very basically and as they are more able to understand and build on discoveries, this program guides them.
These books do not have to be done in order. Each text stands alone in content.
Every lesson concludes with questions for the student. The questions are for three levels: youngest, older, oldest.
This is an excellent program for a one-room schoolhouse approach. You can teach many ages with one text.
The reading in each lesson is very manageable.
Printable Notebook Pages are included and can be accessed through links in the product descriptions on our website. See sample.

5 Volumes – 180 lessons in each volume

Science in the Beginning
Science in the Ancient World
Science in the Scientific Revolution
Science in the Age of Reason
Science in the Industrial Age

Or buy the entire set for an excellent price: Science Through History.

Optional but Recommended Helps and Hints Resource

Helps and Hints for Science in the Beginning
Helps and Hints for Science in the Ancient World
Helps and Hints for Science in the Scientific Revolution
Helps and Hints for Science in the Age of Reason
Helps and Hints for Science in the Industrial Age

*You can purchase the text and helps and hints as a set or separately.

by Hester VanBraeden

Hester is a second-generation home-educating parent who is keenly aware that her own education is not complete, and comfortable that it probably never will be. She has many years of experience with children, books, and curriculum. She loves to travel to worlds and times beyond the present with her children through many books. Hester and her husband have four children and live in the lower mainland of BC.

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Apologia Exploring Creation with Marine Biology

Admin — Thu, 08 Apr 2021 02:52:27 +0000

Apologia is a Christ-centered, award-winning homeschool curriculum. Their mission is to help homeschoolers learn, live, and defend their faith through their curriculum.

Overview

Exploring Creation with Marine Biology is a high school level, college-prep, lab science (Biology is a prerequisite) yet it is also captivating to teens that are not majoring in science. The course covers a complex topic using a conversational style that is engaging for students. Parents will appreciate that it can be completely student-led.

Apologia offers several ‘add-on’ components to the course, including a DVD, tests, and solutions, and a student notebook to complement the textbook. We used the text, test booklet, and the notebook, which we found indispensable. It offers a daily schedule which was easy to follow and includes a chart for grades. There are pages for notes, definitions, study guide questions, an experiment and lab report section, and space for the ‘On Your Own’ questions found throughout the text. The test manual includes solutions for the study guides, a test and solutions for each module, and quarterly tests.

The course contains 16 modules, intended to be completed in 34 weeks using the lesson plan schedule of 45 minutes per day, 5 days a week. One module with lab experiments and tests should be completed every 2 weeks.

*Our daughter found this pace quite relaxed and often would complete 2 lessons in 1 day. After completing the study guide for a module, she would start the next module, while studying for the test of the previous module. She completed the course in approximately 28 weeks.

The Pros and Cons

Pros included the easy-to-read delivery and the abundance of information on fascinating sea creatures. She also appreciated that while the focus of the course is on creationism, other viewpoints were presented as well for a balanced view of both sides. Cons were the large amount of time spent on microscopic creatures (not her personal favorite topic) and she found that often the study guide was not an accurate representation of the test questions.

Final Thoughts

While not considering herself a science kind of kid, our daughter really dove into this course (water, get it?…) We often heard her narrating fascinating tidbits at the dinner table, showing that she absorbed a lot of detailed information without the course being overly time-consuming. The ‘On Your Own’ questions were a great way to explore new knowledge on a deeper level, instead of just repeating learned facts and she liked that the author wrote for a high school audience in a way that was not overwhelming but was also not condescending.

After going through all of the elementary Apologia science courses as well as several high school courses, we are excited to continue exploring creation!

Other Apologia Titles for Highschool Science:

Exploring Creation with General Science

Exploring Creation with Biology

Exploring Creation with Physical Science

Exploring Creation with Chemistry

Exploring Creation with Physics

Exploring Creation with Advanced Biology

Exploring Creation with Advanced Physics

Julia lives in Langley, BC with her husband and four children. Their adventures include traveling as The Springmans, a family band. Yes, that means that Julia homeschools on the road! This last year has made them available online for everyone to enjoy. Visit their Facebook page for live concerts, and follow Ryan, Sarah and Jacob as they search for treasure in the wilds.

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