Afraid of High School Science?

For years, one of the biggest concerns about homeschooling high school I’ve heard is, “But how will you teach science without a lab?” The assumption seems to be that a homeschool just cannot compete with a traditional school in this area and that homeschool students will miss out. Honestly, that has NEVER concerned me. Sure, it would cost hundreds of dollars to replicate a high school lab. However, the homeschooler can create a great lab experience with household items and a few purchased specialty items.

Last year, when Emily studied biology,  I taught a lab group once a week using Apologia Exploring Creation with Biology. We did dissection, hands-on activities to learn about cells, extracted DNA from peas, and much more. We also added a 2 month long fruit fly genetics project, which allowed the students to cross different types of fruit flies, make predictions about the offspring, and compare the results to their predictions. The yearly cost was $40 per student for supplies.

This year, we’ll be tackling chemistry. I’m choosing to use The Spectrum Chemistry from Beginnings Publishing, specifically because of their intensive lab content. It will be more expensive, about $80 a student (sharing the cost between 2-3 students), because I’m purchasing the ready to use lab kit that includes absolutely everything we need. It contains 5 times as many labs as most high school chemistry courses!  I’m looking forward to a really fun and easy-to-plan chemistry course!

Are you a mom who doesn’t want the trouble or mess of a lab in your own home? You still have options. You might be able to find another mom who’s willing to teach a lab group or maybe you belong to a homeschool co-op that has science courses. Landry Academy offers 2-day lab intensives in cities all over the US for physical science, biology, and chemistry. These look like a great experience and I plan to have Emily take a biology lab and a chemistry lab next spring even though we do so much hands-on science already. Many online schools (including Landry) offer science courses that include both virtual labs and labs you will do under online guidance in your home.

There are plenty of science courses designed for homeschoolers that don’t require the parent to teach the course. Apologia texts are written to the student and are easy to use. Fascinating Education science courses offer an online, graphic-heavy format. Supercharged Science is very hands-on and fun. Those are just some of the courses we’ve used; there are many more. Science is not something a homeschool parent should worry about teaching!

Read more about teaching science, math, and history on these blogs:

Home School High School Hosts Share this Month:

• Chareen from Every Bed of Roses - Math, Science, Biology and History in the High School Years
• Lisa from Golden Grasses - Math, Science, History- Homeschooling High School 
• Kym from Homeschool Coffee Break - Homeschooling High School - Math, Science, and History Round-Up
• Michele from Family, Faith and Fridays - Numbers and Atoms  
• Wendy from Life at Rossmont - Homeschooling High School: Maths, Sciences, and History
• Debbie from Debbie's Homeschool Corner - Afraid of High School Science?
• Carol from Home Sweet Life - Math and Science in High School ~ What's a Mom To Do?  
• Tess from Circling Through This Life - Teaching High School Math and Science: Resources
• Meg from Adventures with Jude - High School Math and Science
• Gena from I Choose Joy! - Why We Changed Our History Curriculum for Homeschool High School
• Cristi from Through the Calm and Through the Storm - Two Plus Two Equals Calculus
• Laura from Day by Day in Our World - History and Science for High School | Stress Free Teaching

 

Science and Social Studies Fair

Our home school cover school just had our annual science and social studies fair. The afternoon began with a very interesting presentation by therapy dog handlers. The kids learned about how therapy dogs work in schools, hospitals, and senior centers and were able to see and interact with several dogs, practicing the correct way to meet and greet a strange dog.

After the presentation, the students that had brought projects each had a few minutes to tell about their displays. My biology lab group presented a project about their fruit fly experiments and explained their food web posters. Emily did a history project on Adolf Hitler.

Fish and Frog Dissection (Apologia Biology)

We finished up our dissections for Module 13 last week. We missed a day due to snow and ice, so we squeezed 2 dissections into one busy afternoon.

First the students did a perch. Then, they did frogs. The text gave detailed instructions for the fish, but not for the frog, so I had them watch a virtual dissection video online. We found that very helpful, and by the time they got started, they were confident in where and how to cut and had an easier time identifying the various body parts. If I were to do this again, I’d look for virtual dissections for everything before we tackled the preserved specimen.

One of our frogs was packed full of eggs! Very interesting.

Emily anticipating spattering guts!

Dissection Adventure #2

This week, we dissected a crayfish. Luckily, we had two specimens because, while one group did a beautiful job and were able to locate and identify most of the internal parts, the second group rather mangled their specimen. Fortunately, they were able to look at the neater dissection to identify parts and do their drawings. They are getting a little less squeamish about the process.

Biology: Earthworm Dissection

After months of studying cells and microscopic creatures, we’re finally getting to the study of animals in our biology class. And animal study means….dissection!

Last week, we embarked on our first dissection project, the earthworm. Most students were squeamish, but we fortunately had a few who were willing to jump in. (Note to self: buy gloves before the next project.)

The students all had a turn helping to cut the earthworm and identify its internal parts. Then they made detailed drawings in their lab notebooks.

We had sea stars in our collection of specimens so, although we didn’t have time to do a full dissection, we did have a few minutes to examine the sea star externally and do a very abbreviated dissection. The students found that a sea star is very very hard to cut! I know they enjoyed identifying the external parts with a magnifying glass, though.

Spudoodles!

To continue our genetics study this week, the students made “spudoodles,” potato people that demonstrated the principles of inheritance.

 

Each student started with two envelopes, each containing scraps of colored paper representing the genes of one parent for various traits. They copied down the genetic information for each parent onto their worksheets. Then they filled out Punnett squares for each trait to figure out the possible genetic makeup of the offspring.

 

Next, they picked one gene for each trait from each parent to determine the baby spudoodle’s genotype and phenotype and figured out the percentage chance of that particular genetic make-up.

Then came the fun part—building the spudoodles. Each potato baby had different traits—ears or no ears; hair or no hair; small, medium, or large mouth, and so on.  You can find the complete instructions and worksheets for the Spudoodle project here.

Biology Class—Fungi Part 1

The experiments we did last week in biology class involved observing Basidiomycota (mushrooms, puffballs, and shelf fungi) and Zygomycota (bread and fruit mold). The students were instructed to bring in fungi and molds for us to look at with magnifying glasses and the microscope. Unfortunately, the weather has been very dry here lately, so the students had a hard time finding the fungi. All we had were a couple examples of shelf fungi and a portabella mushroom from the grocery store to examine. They did bring some “lovely” and aromatic samples of mold, though—growing on bread, cantaloupe, apple, and grapefruit.

I noticed that all the kids are getting better at writing up lab reports, making slides, and using the microscope.