With all the great science materials that are now available to today’s homeschoolers, why was I so impressed by Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding that I spent an entire month compiling the review you are reading now, just trying to do this new book justice?

Why do we even need another approach to science?

“The best of both worlds” sums up nicely my opinion of the new science lesson plans put out by Dr. Bernard Nebel. (Though I apologize in advance to those of you who will now have the Hannah Montana theme song stuck in their heads for the next hour.)

Let me explain what I mean by “both worlds”:

Like many homeschoolers these days, I am often drawn to use “living books” in our studies, instead of the generally lackluster textbooks that are available in the science curriculum marketplace. I was homeschooled with traditional science textbooks as a child, and I have to admit: they didn’t do much for me. I’m not sure I ever related much of what I dutifully read in those books to the real world.

In my experience, textbooks, while technically thorough, often have a disturbing tendency to result in very little learning, retention, or (perhaps most regrettably!) enthusiasm for the subject.

Now that I homeschool my own children, I tend to gravitate towards living books for our scientific pursuits. (Charlotte Mason defined living books as quality works written by a single author who is passionate about his or her subject.) There are many interesting children’s books that speak to various aspects of science, so finding such resources has not been a problem. In fact, there are a number of curricula for homeschoolers that are primarily based around the living book concept. (Sonlight, Noeo, Living Learning Books, among others)

But, but, but, I still felt that there was something missing from that approach. You see, each of these living books on weather or constellations or animals or habitats was a valuable and worthwhile resource, but they were like numerous individual pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that never quite seemed to fit together in a logical and coherent way. To mangle another metaphor, I felt that we were seeing lots and lots of trees, but missing the big picture of how they all fit together into a real forest.

So what was I to do?

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I wanted to take the opportunity here to link to one of my favorite free online resources: The Canon 3D PaperCraft website, and explain a little bit about how this site works.

The PaperCraft site has dozens of full color printable models that you can print, cut out, and assemble. They run the gamut from simple to unbelievably complex. Some of them are truly masterpieces - perfect for those of you who are really up for a new challenge. Many of the projects are well suited to complement homeschooling lessons, whether you are studying Ancient Egypt or the solar system. [Read more]

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Gametap is a swell resource for homeschoolers: if your children love computers, they will really love this! (And I’m not even an affiliate or getting paid to write this or anything. Just a happy customer working on our second year of enjoying Gametap in our family!)

What is Gametap?

Gametap allows you to have computer games . . . on tap! It’s a subscription service - Once you subscribe, you have unlimited access to over 1000 computer games. There are offerings in almost every category imaginable, including arcade, action, adventure, and more. For the nostalgic, they include ports of old Atari and Commodore games, as well as many PC classics. (I personally love that they have all the old Sierra games, like King’s Quest and Space Quest!)

Perhaps most relevant for homeschoolers, though, they include a “family” category with games and educational software for children. (Though I have to think that I learned a ton about problem solving, typing, patience, and drawing maps just from playing those Sierra games as a child!)

If you use a lot of parent intensive homeschool materials, like I do, you will appreciate having something that the kids can enjoy on their own. I don’t know about you, but by the time we finish all our reading aloud, our hands-on math explorations, our fun but messy art and history projects, and our nature explorations, I’m usually ready for a little “independent” time, lol. This is a great way to get that, but more importantly, most of the Gametap family content is highly educational, too.

Gametap has tons of appeal for unschoolers, as well as more structured homeschoolers. My children have had a ball using Gametap games to teach themselves how to count out change and tell time. There are also plenty of games that help introduce and reinforce math, reading, science, history, art, and other concepts in fun and motivating ways.

How does Gametap work?

Once you download the Gametap application, you can log onto Gametap, browse or search through all their selections, and choose a game that you want to play. Games you select are automatically downloaded onto your computer - Time involved can vary from a few seconds to an hour or more, depending on the game and your internet connection. (Dial-up isn’t supported, unfortunately, but I can certainly understand why!) Most of our games have averaged around 20 minutes or so to download.

Once the game has been downloaded, however, it is stored on your hard drive, so you don’t have to re-download it in the future. Next time you want to play, just log on to Gametap and launch the program. Gametap lets you bookmark your favorites, which allows even pretty young children to easily locate and use their games. Mine could use Gametap independently (for the most part) when they were 6 years old.

One key aspect of Gametap is that every family member gets their own ID. 7 free sub-accounts are included with every subscription, and this allows you to set up appropriate parental controls for each user. That way, young children won’t see games that are too mature for them. You can also select whether your children are allowed to chat with other gamers, etc. (Mine aren’t - but then, they are only 7!)

There are two different versions of Gametap. The first is free, and allows you to play about 70 games. This is a good way to see how Gametap works. I’m a big fan of try before you buy, myself! The free games rotate every week or two, and they don’t typically select too many children’s games (they are primarily trying to attract teens and adults, I think) which means that if you do like it, you’ll probably want to upgrade to the paid subscription.

The full version of Gametap is only $59.95 a year right now, which is a great deal, in my opinion. Just one Wii or Playstation game would cost that much! You can also subscribe for $9.99 a month, if you don’t want to do a whole year right now. Gametap advertises that you can easily cancel online anytime, but we haven’t had to do that yet (obviously!)

What kinds of games do they have?

Most of Gametap’s selections are games that are a few years (or in the case of their retro games, a few decades!) old. Over the past year, though, they have been adding more and more current games as well, and they’ve been developing some games that are only available on Gametap. They recently added Sid Meyer’s Civilization IV, for example, which is a fantastic game for kids from late elementary level on up to adult! All the Sam & Max adventure games are released first on Gametap, and Gametap hosts Uru Live, the online multiplayer version of the Myst games.

In the “Family” category, they have dozens of selections including:

• Jumpstart titles (preschool on up, plus History, Science, and more)
• Reader Rabbit products
• Lego Creator games
• Freddy Fish adventuress
• Scooby Doo mysteries
• Cluefinders products
• and really many many more. You can see the whole list of Gametap products at Gametap’s website.

Some of the selections my children have most enjoyed:

• They love the Jumpstart 1st and 2nd Grade products, plus the History title.
• They also enjoy all the Lego games.
• They love Freddy Fish.
• One of my girls taught herself to play chess with the tutorial in the Lego Chess game. Now she loves playing chess on Gametap and in real life!

We bought Gametap for the kids, but one side effect has been that my husband loves to go on Gametap to play some of his childhood favorites. He also loves to play Civilization while the girls watch and offer their advice. They’ve learned so much about knowledge and invention, just from watching him play! I’ve enjoyed getting to play some new and old adventure games, too, so our whole family loves Gametap.

My husband thinks some of my reviews sound too much like infomercials! I’m sure he’ll think that about this one too, but my feeling is that I would prefer to review and recommend the products and services that we have found to be the most helpful to our family. It’s fun to review resources you love, and spread the word to other people who might like them, too!

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MS Nucleus is developing a complete free science curriculum, and so far all the levels K-6th grade are completed. When you visit their website, click on “Free Access”, and you’ll be able to download all the lesson plans, activities, and worksheets for any level directly to your computer. You can then print out any or all of this information.

MS Nucleus has designed each year of work to cover topics in units of varying lengths: Applied Science, Universe Cycle, Plate Tectonics, Rock Cycle, Water Cycle, and Life Cycle. (Chemistry and physics topics are addressed throughout the curriculum, as appropriate for the context of each unit.) Every unit is sequenced to build on the ones that came before, which is why Life Cycle comes last each year. The underlying idea is that you can’t really understand how life is sustained if you don’t already have some background in understanding the water cycle and the earth sciences, and you understand the earth science topics better with some grounding in understanding the universe cycle, and so on. The applied science topics are designed to demonstrate ways in which science is useful in everyday life.

Overall, the curriculum does seem to be well organized to lead to an understanding of how the various branches of science are interrelated and why they are important. As a big fan of Nebel’s Elementary Education, (a topic for another article, in its own right) I’ve come to really appreciate how meaningful it is to present science in such a way that students can make crucial connections and understand how everything fits together, rather than just teaching random disjointed topics hear and there.

Because the courses are organized in units, however, you can certainly just pick and choose the topics that you want to cover, to fit with other science related activities and interests that you may have. You download the lesson plans and worksheets for each unit individually, so you can easily download and print only the units in which you have the most interest.

Activities are a central component of the program, which is great for elementary science, but it does mean that you will need to gather some materials. The website does sell kits of supplies for each unit, and they are relatively reasonably priced. At this point, however, I plan to use materials that I have locally, and adapt the lessons if I can’t locate something. For instance, one of the lessons has you using hand lenses to observe the characteristics of various specific sea shells. You could easily use the magnifying lenses you have on hand, and then collect items to observe on a nature walk. Especially if you use this program as a supplement to other resources, it won’t matter much if you can’t do each and every lesson exactly as specified.

See also my review of Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding, an outstanding k-2 science curriculum at an amazing price.

Also here’s my review of another recently released free science curriculum, Classic Science.

There are such wonderful, affordable materials available for science these days!

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An increasingly popular resource among homeschoolers is the Discovery Education streaming online subscription, formerly known as united streaming. This educational platform is used in homes and schools around the country to help children learn more through their streaming video selections.

They provide literally thousands of videos that you may view right on your internet-connected computer. Quite a few of their programs include additional lesson plans, worksheets, etc, that can be downloaded and printed out to go along with the videos.

A sampling of the programs we’ve found helpful over the past year:

• Elementary Spanish - (designed for schools who do not have Spanish speaking language teachers, by the University of Northern Arizona) A complete video course with lesson plans for 50 episodes per grade level, covering all grade levels from 1-8! Each level has a downloadable instructor’s guide, complete with vocabulary lists, activities, bulletin board pin-ups, and worksheets, and the program is designed to be led by teachers who do not know Spanish.
• Number Crew - This series is from BBC, for ages 5-7, and has about 60 ten minute videos, where puppets on a cruise ship discover and explain a whole range of math concepts through story and song. This could be a fun way to complement any math program, and we even found that many of the episodes cover concepts in ways that complement the special strategies suggested by RightStart Math. (See also the Number Crew website, http://www.channel4learning.net/sites/numbercrew/ where the sequence of episodes and what each one covers is explained.) DS has most, but not all, of these episodes available.
• Magic School Bus - Over 50 episodes of The Magic School Bus can be streamed on demand. My kids love them, and they’ve learned tons of science just from the few books we’ve had and a couple of videos that we found at the library. They are really excited to be able to view any of them that they want.

Those are just a few of the selections I’ve found for younger kids, and they have even more for older children. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of biographies, history, science, math, and other programing. This would be really useful for unit studies, or to supplement living books.

One year of access to Discovery Education streaming retails for $265. The Homeschool Buyers Co-op has offered frequent group buys at a discounted rate, however. As of May 2008, the discounted price was $139, including the $10 processing fee charged by the co-op. This price is slated to increase at an unspecified date in the future.

It is free to join the co-op - just go to www.homeschoolbuyersco-op.org and set up an account. Then you can take advantage of any of their group buys that you want. They frequently host special prices on homeschool related curricula and other products such as Dave Ramsey books and seminars, Lego sets, foreign language software, and more.

If you think you might be interested in DS, go ahead and visit the sight to sign up for the 30 day free trial, so you can look around a bit and get a better idea of whether it is something that would be useful for your family. If you like it, I’d go ahead and order soon, in case the rates go up.

Before you order, though, check the co-op faq page to see answers to many of your questions, especially about what is included in the homeschool subscription. The free trial for the Plus subsription provides access all their programming packages that they sell to various school systems. The homeschool subscription includes just the basic package, so if you find something during the trial that you particularly want, view the list of titles here to be sure it will be included in your purchase. Everything listed as K12 is included in the homeschool subscription. The other packages listed are currently only available to school systems who pay extra, although the co-op says that they would like to negotiate a way for homeschoolers to access them as well, for an additional charge.

Also, for residents of Georgia and Alabama, you lucky ducks already have access to DS! Your state PBS affiliates paid for statewide access to this resource, so contact your local PBS station to get more details on how to sign up for the free access.

Enjoy!

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A friend of mine, Karen, asked me recently about whether RightStart Math would be a good option for some fellow homeschoolers on one of her groups who were experiencing problems with “math discouragement”. I sent her a fairly detailed reply, and I thought I’d repost it here, for anyone else who is interested. I’ll be at the Love to Learn Conference in Hickory next Saturday, demonstrating RightStart Math, so this seemed like a timely topic to post!

Karen had asked me in particular about a rising 5th grader, so part of the answer is addressed to that question. Much of it though is applicable to children of all ages:

Hi Karen-
Yes, RightStart is often quite good for kids who have developed a dislike for math. Of course no program is good for everyone, but this one is very hands on and games oriented, and so often appeals to kids who have developed aversions to the purely worksheet or textbook approaches. It also appeals a lot to children who learn well from visualization and kinesthetic approaches to learning.

There are a couple of different ways to use RightStart, depending on whether you want to just supplement your existing program, or whether you want to use the RightStart complete math curriculum. The completed portion of the program goes from grades k-4. (Although the program does cover advanced concepts, and Cathy Duffy’s review states that she thinks children who finished the program during their 5th or maybe even 6th grade years would be on track with their peers. Her review of the RightStart program is at: http://www.cathyduffyreviews.com/math/right-start-math.htm )

There is a three part intermediate (middle school) program which is under construction, currently. The first module, Geometry, is almost ready, and it can be purchased in a relatively inexpensive preliminary format from the RightStart website now. (The remaining few lessons would then be downloaded as they are finished.) The last I heard, two other modules, Pre-Algebra, and Fractions/Ratios/Proportions, are planned. The intermediate books will function almost like unit studies, so the Geometry book approaches all sorts of middle school math topics from a geometric approach, for example. Since the other two modules aren’t ready yet, Dr. Cotter, who designed RightStart Math, recommends using RightStart Geometry with the Challange Math book (website is:

http://www.challengemath.com/challengemath.htm )

If I had a fifth grader who needed something different for math, I’d probably do one of two things. If the child was basically on grade level, and understood the concepts, but was bored or just didn’t like the approach, I’d probably think about using the RightStart Games Kit to supplement what I was doing. I’d also consider switching to RightStart Geometry and Challenge Math if I felt like a big change was needed. (Becky Rupp said in Home Education Magazine that “Challenge Math is a great resource for the worksheet-discouraged and the mathematically curious.”)

On the other hand, if the child has become so discouraged with math that he/she has fallen “behind” grade level, I might consider getting the RightStart Transitions book, and working through all the RightStart ways to do math, along with the games. The Transitions book starts at the beginning, and quickly progresses through many of the various “RightStart” tricks, games and manipulatives, and was designed for students who need to begin RS after the first grade level. The student works up to the level where you want to begin RS, before beginning the level. So, if the student is a bit “behind” going into 5th grade, it would be perfectly conceivable that they could work through the Transitions and then do the Level E (advanced 4th grade) before going on to middle school math.

There is a RightStart Math Yahoo group that is very active and good at answering questions, plus the RightStart customer service team is good at answering questions about how the program works, and how to work through things with your child. (The Yahoo groups is at

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/RightStart )

Feel free to forward any or all of this information along, and let me know if you have any other questions!

April

UPDATE:  Dr. Cotter, the author of the RightStart Curriculum, has updated her recommendations for following RightStart Level E.  RightStart now recommends beginning the RightStart middle school Geometry program, working partway through that, and then incorporating the first module of VideoText Algebra to cover pre-algebra topics.  After finishing both of those, they believe your student will be well prepared to continue with the VideoText course, which covers Algebra I and Algebra II.  You can always utilize Challenge Math exercises if it seems appropriate for your child.

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