Science Concerns

Science courses are a source of concern for the majority of home schooling parents because of the teaching of theory of evolution. If this a concern relax. The worktexts and workbook sets for K-5th grade do not discuss evolution. The 6th grade worktext includes one chapter that does, however it is contained in the one chapter and not integrated throughout the text. Notices are included in your teacher’s guide and schedules. You can either skip this chapter or compare the scientific ‘claims’ with a comprehensive creation publication. Your choice should depend on your experience and how you want to handle the matter. For life and earth sciences offered in 6th grade and above check indexes and make note.

General science covers life, earth and physical science concepts. From middle school and up single concept worktexts are offered. Described below are the three levels of difficulty:

1) the standard high school courses are the 300+ page worktexts with answer keys,
2) those with teacher’s editions
3) for lighter courses choose the texts with teacher’s manuals designed for middle school. Many high school students prefer this series especially for physical science. All include schedules.

Those wanting general science for 7th and 8th grades may select computer based courses. For an easy course covering the basics, choose the General Science worktext with teacher’s edition. Follow with the Life Science worktext the next year and continue the recommended sequence as directed below.

For standard high school text based biology choose the Life 300+ page worktext. Lab kits, which can be found at many hobby, toy, and department stores can offer a bulk of the materials needed to perform your experiments. Note: our high school course categories are: Math, Science, Social Studies,

English, and Life Goals, the most important category. Health, previously offered as a science is now a Life Goals course.

Experiments are included to lock in scientific principles taught and to help students better understand the world around us. Those lacking the resources to do both the book work and experiments are to complete the text, take the tests and hopefully do some experiments. Read those you cannot do and predict the outcome using what you have learned.

Curriculum Services provides multiple materials lists for nearly all our text based courses; one to be posted and others for shopping. Materials lists can also be found in the teacher’s manuals or editions. Adding separate lists resulted in a 70% increase in the performance of experiments making these text-supported activity based courses.

It is recommended that you set up a “Science Materials Box” to house non-perishable items and to start acquiring supplies early. Most supplies not on hand are inexpensive and can be easily found such as a pig’s foot which can be purchased while grocery shopping. The number of experiments you are able to accomplish basically depends on two factors: 1) the amount of time you have allotted and 2) the number of supplies you are able to acquire. Your success in putting these two together depend on one thing: your personal organizational skills, another skill you are teaching your youngster by example!

New! APMT ( Anatomy, Physiology and Medical Terminology) Plus Human Diseases Human Diseases is highly recommended for any good student who did well in a solid life science course in middle school. This beautiful and richly illustrated 400+ page worktext was written to not be out of reach of the lay person. It includes a test book, vocabulary notebook, teacher’s manual plus a  companion website! While not as in-depth as individual courses with those titles the following concepts are included: human biology, anatomy and physiology, health, organic chemistry, physiology, medical treatments and medical technology. Because this knowledge is far more applicable to life it is an ideal alternative to biology.

Also new, APMT thoroughly covers anatomy and physiology for the purpose of teaching medical terminology. Offered as a double credit course, APMT includes a beautiful full color 580 page worktext, teacher’s manual, CD-ROM, and notebook. Both new courses satisfy the life science requirement for L-CIPSSI. Check with your school’s administration for acceptance.

The content of A+ science courses matches that suggested by the National Science Education Standards (NSES), the Benchmarks for Science, and cover most nationally required objectives. While objectives vary slightly from state to state the content meets over 95% of those required. Students can move at their own pace through Study Guides, Practice & Mastery Tests, and Essays. Lab work can be done virtually on line, or traditionally. For high school science in this series we offer Earth and Space Science. Other courses can be ordered if preferred.

Those with students in 7th & 8th grades facing new end of the year test which now includes science may want to consider this series. While our students have always excelled with our worktext based single concept courses the publishers of A+ claim they were designed to correlate with these tests which cover life, earth and space, plus physical science concepts. For more information see www.amered.com, the American Education Corporation web site.

New! Biology, Chemistry and Physics— Described as textbooks on computer they contain the content you expect to find in tradition textbooks and have the same features as the very successful Classmate titles, described on page 17. These include multiple disks with video tutorials utilizing only the finest instructors, printable quizzes, notes, and real life applications. Because difficult concepts are made easy to understand these college level courses are truly suitable for high school. We call this “teachability”. Instructors communicate the fundamentals using engaging, interactive media that automatically reports students' progress. Rather than reading dense chunks of text students watch video lectures filled with illustrations, examples, and humor making learning easier than with traditional textbooks. Fully worked-out solutions and explanations for both right and wrong answers are provided for all problems. Students can work on exercises on-line, or print them to work on later.

The website provides exercises, quizzes, and hundreds of pages of printable review notes summarizing important points from the videos plus hosts an online testing system with automatic grading. For this series look for this symbol on the order forms: C.

At Curriculum Services we want assurance that your student has everything needs to learn. While there is little reason for concern at the elementary level some middle school courses can be challenging particularly in the areas of math and science. Of greater concern are the high school level courses because there may not be anyone available who is qualified to teach at this level. For this reason we will not offer text based courses for advanced high school courses unless they offer computer support. Examples include: APMT, computer concepts, psychology and upper level math courses. You can’t miss when you choose courses with these features!

• Life science courses include Life Science, Biology, and the two new courses, Human Diseases and APMT.
• Physical science courses include: physical science, physics, and chemistry.