Home → Free Homeschooling Curriculum: Home School ScienceI'm going to share with you the best of our free homeschooling curriculum for home school science. Our free homeschool curriculum goes all the way from preschool on up through high school and has been tried and tested on William and Catherine. They both love science. Who could ask for more? Unfortunately, science can be one of those areas which really throw you when you come to think about homeschooling. Common homeschooling worries:
Panic not. We've all been there.
And there's something you need to know, a little secret which I'm happy to share. All those science curricula educationalists are so keen on churning out – full of long words and important-sounding principles which must be absorbed and tested – they all ignore the simplest and most important truth.
Everything else, all scientific knowledge, follows from that. And the plain fact is that the science curriculum on both sides of the Atlantic does its best to take away the launch pad. Before you look at the specific curriculum applicable to your State/country, just look at what you're being asked to cover in homeschool science with different eyes. Here in the UK, for example, between the ages of 5 and 7, our science curriculum says we're meant to be studying life processes.
Life processes? For a five year-old? Don't we mean watching a caterpillar turn into a butterfly?I think I can manage that. In school they may well decide to get the class some butterfly eggs and watch them hatch, but you can be absolutely sure it's going to be put in the context of teaching 'life processes.' Your child will have to answer questions on it, write about it, and, (at least in the UK), be tested to make sure they have 'understood' it. And the fun will fly out the window with the butterfly… So I'm going to share our best homeschool science activities which make up a free homeschooling curriculum. You'll find you'll naturally cover the school curriculum and, probably, get asked questions that go way beyond it! Free Homeschool Curriculum:Preschool – First Grade
Free homeschooling activities like growing sugar crystals to make science fun. Set up your own home school archeological dig and dig up a dinosaur!  Have fun making a homeschool model solar system. As I explain, this isn't just for space fanatics, it's for any child who likes getting their hands messy. Then we're going to look at: Free Homeschooling Curriculum Unit StudiesJoin us by doing home school in the rainforest! Our free homeschooling curriculum includes meeting the biggest spider in the world, turning a pineapple into a bromeliad and listening to the rainforest at night from the comfort of your own home.  Take your kids under the sea with our free homeschool unit studies! Paint a homeschool sea scene, try out water experiments, touch a sea urchin and watch Monterey Bay Aquarium's live kelp web cam. We'll do free homeschooling curriculum activities and show you: Show You Our Best Free Homeschooling Science ExperimentsStarting with: If you look here, you'll see more: FREE homeschool Kids Science Experiments.As you'll see in our free homeschooling curriculum for age 7-11, Catherine, William and I have covered most of the science curriculum without knowing it. Some of it we haven't touched. But where our interest have soared, so has our level of understanding. How many 10 year-olds would be able to tell you that sponges first appeared in the Cambrian period, coal deposits were laid down in the Carboniferous and Ginkgo leaves evolved in the Triassic? Yet it was all done by scrabbling round in the coal scuttle, visiting our local park and paying a visit to the bathroom! Free Homeschooling Curriculum:Second Grade – Fifth Grade (roughly age 7-11)This is where we start the biggest free homeschooling science curriculum on Earth:
Your free homeschooling science curriculum is about to come alive in the age of the dinosaurs. You'll make drawings, download maps and delve in the coal scuttle at home - all to uncover the Story of Life on Earth. You'll discover Life on Earth, uncover a freshly laid egg and keep a pet from the age of the dinosaurs.
We'll also: Including dissecting an Owl Pellet.
You'll have to come back and see how this list pans out as time goes on! Here's something I've discovered about teaching home school science: Catherine hates science workbooks and always has. Some of them suit William down to the ground.
The reason's simple. The science curriculum in the US and the UK is absolutely obsessed with facts. Learning them, repeating them, regurgitating them. That's ideal for William because he's always been fascinated by numbers. Here's a typical exchange in our homeschool at age five. Mum, reading from The Pocket Scientist: "It takes 248 years for Pluto to orbit the Sun." William: "No; 248 point 54 Earth years actually." Great. But what about the rest of us? It seems, if you look at the science curriculum right through to the end of High School, we don't stand a chance. We're all going to fail. Except a love of science, as we all know, is only partially about facts. If you want some ammunition, just see how leading scientists like Michio Kaku, the American theoretical physicist, condemn junior high school and high school for crushing science to death. Dr Anthony Seldon is an example of a leading educationalist heading up the criticism of the 21st century obsession with teaching facts, warning that: "Soulless, loveless, desiccated education damages children for a lifetime."When we come to design our free homeschooling curriculum to teach homeschool science, let's remember a John Holt classic: "Memory works best when unforced, …it is not a mule that can be made to walk by beating it.” (John Holt, How Children Learn.)Let's seize the opportunity that home school gives us. We do have to know what the science curriculum is, but we don't have to teach our home school science the same way. Restricting your home school science curriculum to specific grade-level books is one of the stifling factors in teaching home school science; so, for some children, is using homeschooling workbooks at all. What about Homeschooling High School level?We've certainly done more course books and workbooks at home with William now we've started homeschool high school. The difficulty is in finding lively and interesting ones.
And the key to devising a successful free homeschooling curriculum is definitely to follow the interest of your child.Take, for example, our homeschool Human Body project. I still remember wondering how to explain to the TV repair man the cause of William's giggles as the pencil we were using to draw round his body tickled his shoulders! Free Homeschooling Curriculum:High School (roughly age 12-16)
More to follow as William grows older! But, to prove to you that there are lots of wonderful free resources available for homeschooling science for older children, just have a look at the free science video library at the Khan Academy.
What you won't find in our free homeschooling curriculum is lots of 'teacher-speak.' Even free science lessons designed for home school can get stuck in the trap of giving you the aims and objectives of each Unit Study and provide you with worksheets so that you can present measurable 'results.' Would it be too rude to say that most worksheets are there so teachers can justify their jobs? However, if it suits your homeschool method best, you can easily add worksheets and whatever else you want to our free homeschooling curriculum ideas.Before you decide how precisely you want to follow the science curriculum laid out by your State/country in your homeschool, it might be worth bearing in mind, as John Holt says: "We may find, in fifty or a hundred years, that all of what we think of as our most up-to-date notions about schools, teaching and learning are either completely inadequate or outright mistaken." (John Holt, How Children Learn.)
If you have State curriculum requirements to cover in your home school, there are many ways to achieve that. But I'm sure you'll find the best way, (and the most fun for you), is to use homeschool to follow your child's interests. And there are the most fabulous scientific resources to help you homeschool – books, videos, kits to use at home, interactive games, even the Hubble telescope! We'll look at free homeschooling curriculum science resources and supplies too. John Holt speaks about a "spirit of joy, foolishness, exuberance," which should lie at the heart of everything, "including the game of trying to find out how the world works, which we call education." "I'm afraid this is not what most people understand by the word 'education,'" he goes on to say. "They understand it as being made to go to a place called school, and there being made to learn something they don't much want to learn, under the threat that bad things will be done to them if they don't. Needless to say, most people don't much like this game, and stop playing as soon as they can." (John Holt, How Children Learn) I hope that our homeschool science activities go some way towards helping you create your own free homeschooling curriculum full of that same exuberance and joy. Return from Free Homeschooling Curriculum to Homeschool-Activities.com Home Page New! CommentsI'd love some feedback! If you'd like to make a comment about my site, please write in the box below. |
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March 2012 ISSUE:
SCIENCE
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