If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. NewtonThis seems to be the year for throwing out the textbooks. Nowhere is this more apparent than with science. Honestly, who writes this stuff? It is so incredibly dull. It burns my brain. And it is sad because science is not dull. Well, not science according to Ganeida.
Having plodded through our Apologia General Science ~ which is very good if you are scientifically inclined, which we are not, ~ & having sampled all 4 main branches of the sciences Ditz declared unequivocally she was interested in none of them. This is not surprising as hormones mean she is interested in very little just now except sleep & the occasional foray into music. Practically her math means she isn't capable of the physics & a lot of the chemistry ~ & given her views on math this is not something to mourn. However science is still a subject we are meant to be doing. What to do? What to do?
Botany is considered so *soft* it is only available for younger learners but botany was something Ditz was sort of interested in. Possibly because she sensed she would not be called upon to make that interest good! Still, this is the child who researched soil needs & growing conditions for carnivorous plants before creating her own terrarium & growing her own carnivorous plants. OK, I helped, but only because I knew she could get sundews for free in the marshy bits of the paddock. And there's the rub. Anything in the *Natural Sciences* will rivet my entire household. We are glued to the t.v if Cousteau is sinking into the murky depths, or Vesuvius is exploding all over our screen. We become slightly unhinged over Big Cats & we will listen with absorbed fascination to the peculiarities of the Rafaelia. I suspect is is partly because we live so close to nature. Faced with an experiment we quail at the knees because they never, ever work the way they are meant to, the way we know they should, the way the text books assure us they do. According to Ditz & I every experiment disproves completely what it is meant to prove. Useless.
I toyed, briefly, with making the child read Hawking's A Brief History of Time...but given I'm not sure I understood it that didn't seem terribly wise. Besides I was enchanted when I thought he was suggesting the Universe was alive & breathing, in out, in out ~ but I believe I have misunderstood & quite frankly I like my theory better with no evidence at all to support it. Did I mention we weren't scientists. Besides I have to come up with some paperwork for our umbrella.
This would not be the first time educating Ditz has forced me to think outside the box. I have thought long & hard. I have surfed the net & been considerably distracted & sidetracked by all sorts of odd things. Strictly speaking what I have decided on isn't science. Not applied science. Not theoretical science. It is however general knowledge about science that most people don't know. Do you know what Dr Carl Djerassi is known for? [the contraceptive pill] Probably not, yet his discovery single~handedly changed the face of Western society. Jonas Salk? [polio vaccine] Edwin Hubble? Yes the man the telescope is named for. [observational evidence for an expanding universe.] So I have given her a list of 10 scientists who have influenced the 2oth century & she needs to find out who they are & how they influenced their fields. Einstein & Hawking are on it but so are people like Oppenheimer & Robert Goddard. Nope, I hadn't heard of most of them before I started looking. Have I mentioned we're not scientists? The net is a wonderful thing. Thank you Tim Burners~Lee.
12 comments:
I'm so with you, don't get me started on abeka urgh! We are switching to apologia next term see how that goes :)
Mrs Bean: This gets harder as they get older. More *normal* educational materials are required & nothing about Ditz is remotely normal so it's a total uphill battle. I do know it would be so much worse if she were in school. I'd constantly have teacher's nagging me but while you can drag a child to school you cannot force them to learn. Us, Ditz learns by default, as so many student do. At least this way I know some of the holes are being plugged via t.v ~ of all things. She will watch what she won't read or do. Counting down. lol
So we're total science boffins here. Medical science - even better. I do hope that I can find a science curriculum that is not twaddle. I will be incredibly discerning...
Isn't there a pure biology curriculum for Ditz then?
Jeanne: Apologia do a senior biology course ~ including dissections ~ & I think of the Christian curriculum Apologia is the best available. Sorry, but no~one here is going there & Ditz refused point blank to even consider biology. I did either general science or Natural science for senior; I don't cut things up either. Eeew! As of next year all the sciences go! Yay!!!! We are definitely arts/fine arts oriented & the older Ditz gets the wider the divide becomes. Now all the science people will want to jump all over me but while science is about the natural world music & poetry speak to the soul & that is at least as important. People seem to fall one way or the other & Ditz & I, well we didn't fall on the science side of the divide.
I can't do the math either, but physics interests me anyway. I think while you are attempting to educate Ditz you are finding yourself educated along the way!
Science was NEVER my strong point lol.
When I homeschooled my daughter (she was 14 and we sadly only got to do it for a year), we used the ACE Science curriculum. I found it excellent actually, and I learned heaps too. I think that was the only subject we used ACE for, but it was very comprehensive without bogging us down.
Why not do the 'natural science' stuff that you all love ~ you don't need a specific "official" textbook, do you? Choose the topics - actually, let Ditz choose! - and use library books, videos, etc.
http://canadianhomeeducation.com/itemdesc.asp?ic=9781932012583&eq=&Tp=
Marine biology? - it lists as a grade twelve course, but perhaps it could work for a bit younger?
Your comment about Ditz, maths and physics/chemistry intrigued me. A friend of mine's daughter was apparently told, when she was doing the rounds of prospective high schools, that she didn't stand much of a chance of high school if she didn't even know her times table. (She didn't go to that high school.) She still doesn't kno her times table, and her mother has given up on maths tutors as they don't seem to make any difference to the maths - but her physics teacher cnsiders her the best student in her class. I suspect there is more to the hard sciences than a predilection for maths: lateral thinking for one. Ditz excels at music and art. My friend's daughter excels at anything involving creative thought. I will probably go to my grave maintaining that 'soft' skills play an enormous part in all the hard sciences, business, commerce, etc.
That previous comment that was removed was my other account for my church--sorry!
Here is where our daughters differ: My daughter LOVES, LOVES, LOVE science. I know they differ in years, but the best source of science for us are letting her choose one book on science on any subject she wants and watching Discovery Channel shows. I have decided not to use a "curriculum" for the sciences so far (other than the one I keep playing with based on Creation that I am writing, sort of) and it has worked well for us and we do related experiments. That said, I like your assignment very much and will be keeping it in mind.
Try James Gleick's Chaos Theory - parts of it are quite digestible. Think she'll also like the fractals.
Tears of the Cheetah (sorry, I forget the author's name) is a very readable book that deals with molecular genetics, talking about such things as cheetah and lion populations and how a cat solved a murder. If I ever get up there I can bring it with me.
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