The thread title also asks about Science, but the content of the OP's and subsequent ones are just math.
State standards for science contain little content before middle school. I consider "science" to be more than a listing of facts or a loose application of doing a demonstration in class and making qualitative observations. (Hopefully I'm not maligning any teachers with this statement. What my kids do in school seem very aligned to the state standards. The problem is the standards, not the teachers.)
I think that a lot of kids are ready for significantly more a lot earlier. I'm working with my own kids to work on thinking about problems, making predictions, testing predictions, and evaluating the result to figure out why something happened.
I have found so few resources out there that actually address science through the scientific method before high school (if even then) that I'm actually contemplating writing a book in my non-existent free time. My book would be heavy on the physics and chemistry, leaving making endless posters of the flower or frog life cycle to do in every single year of elementary school (see above comment on state standards. Snore.).
I have recently bumped into a pair of books by Bernard Nebel ("Building foundations of scientific understanding...") They seem to fit that bill, but I haven't gotten my hand on a copy yet. I'd love to hear if anyone has seen these books, I'd love to hear comments on it from the perspective of teaching through the scientific method.
Last edited by geofizz; 01/30/12 10:29 AM.
