Our Plans for Science

My two oldest boys will be doing Apologia's Chemistry this year and my 13-year-old daughter will be doing Physical Science. Since both of the boys plan to go into science related fields, we place a lot of emphasis on this subject. I splurged a little and purchased each of them one of the slightly more expensive Avory binders with the clear cover that you can slide an insert into. Then I designed a cover page for them to decorate. Here is the binder belonging to my 15-year-old "mad chemist":

The boys will be using the notebooking and lab pages from Knowledge Box Central's Chemistry Lapbook Journal and their sister will be using pages I printed from the Apologia Yahoo Group files section. I really like the KBC lab forms, but the other pages have way too many lines for answering the questions and take a lot more paper than the free pages I found in the Yahoo Group files. The grading form you see in the picture below is one that I created. 

Knowledge Box Central Notebook Journal

On Your Own Questions for Physical Science

I believe hands-on experience is the best way to learn, so experimentation and observation have always been a big part of our science education. Several years ago, we even devoted an entire month to studying slime. We've been using Apologia textbooks for six years, and my children absolutely love them because of all the experiments that are included. I love how the elementary texts have notebooking worked right into them. However, I've decided to do something a little different with my younger group this year.

I had downloaded the free Elementary Life Science text some time ago from Scott McQuerry's website. I liked his fun approach and his emphasis on experiments, but we had already covered most of the Life Science material. However, when he introduced his Earth Science text, I figured it would be the perfect way to cover some topics that none of the Apologia elementary books address. I also had a copy of Ann Voskamp' A Child's Geography: Explore His Earth (which covers a lot of the same things) and being inclined to overkill, decided to add that in too. We will be notebooking through both of these texts and filing these pages in simple 3-prong folders.