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The time fast appraoches for us to submit our homeschool curriculum to the State (in this case VA). Does anyone have any recommendations of what they did for first grade. It's now a rqeuirement to list our curriculum - in so much as books we are liekly to use. I'm not sure science is actually tesed for 1st grade yet.

We are mostly using Susan Wise Bauer's materials - and she doesn't focus in on science a great deal.

Looking forward to feedback - and to hear if anyone else is starting in their first year.

Do you want just science curriculum or curriculum for other subjects as well?

DS6 was "1st grader" last year and we used CyberEd Earth & Space Science (middle school material). We will use CyberEd Life Science together with Singapore Science (My Pals Are Here).

I don't know VA requirements but I would think you could list any science oriented book - animal encyclopedia, weather encyclopedia, etc. What is your child interested in? Animals? Universe? Chemistry? I would follow his interests and create a science curriculum based on it.

Do they require that you use what you list, or is it just a sample curriculum? Does anyone check?

If not, and if you don't feel like getting all your ducks in a row now for whatever reason, you could just pull the curriculum standards list off the

http://www.worldbook.com/wb/Students?curriculum

site (or something similar), then hit your library website and pull some sample books that would work with these here for your list. Done!

I plan DS8's work for a couple of months in advance, tops, since things change so fast. So for me, trying to plan April in August is a fruitless waste of time. My "fake list" passes muster, takes very little time or effort, and frees me up to be more loosey-goosey with it, which I like.

Plenty of people use the required curriculum submission as a way to plan their year and be organized and are very happy about it. That's great for them, and more power to them. But if you don't want to be that locked-in on things and no one checks, then you might be able to fake it.

It's all about what you prefer.

WEll I'm starting my first year w/ a 1st grader but this will be my second year with my 4th grader. My 1st grader went to public school K last year.

For science a good source is Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding. Dr. Nebel has a sort of living science approach. It's K-2, guides you in tying all the sciences together and weaving it into your life. It's easy to write up for the state and you can list some of the recommended books Dr. Nebel gives. Plus, it's easy to go as deep as you want in a topic using Nebel's book as a spine. It's $20 so not a huge investment. He also runs a yahoogroup where he will answer any question. He's coming out w/ 3-5 book soon. I think the K-2 book is easy to go in depth w/ advanced kids by choosing supplementary books from the library.

Any other topics you're interested in? I use several of SWB"s recommendations: writing with Ease, SOTW

Another idea if you're going in the classical direction, maybe, is the Science of the Past series (pub. by Franklin Watts; there's Science of Ancient Greece, of Ancient Rome, Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, Ancient China, in Early Islamic Cultures, etc.)--an interesting history of science, aimed at about grades 4-6, I think.

peace
minnie

Yes we enjoy that series Minnie!

Minnie, I'm requesting that from my library. It sounds like a REALLY good way to interest my DS8 in history more than he has been lately. Thanks!

Thanks, Minnie! Sounds like a good series of books.

Ironmom, I am not required to send anything into state. However, I bought Plato Science (middle school level) with Homeschool Buyers Co-op for a great price. I also bought a set of Real Science 4 Kids books. MSNucleus http://www.msnucleus.org/curriculum/curriculum.html also has free curriculum online you might want to check it out. We are just starting to homeschool in the fall, so we have not tried anything yet, but those are some recommendations I got from different homeschool forums.

I had another idea about science that might appeal, IronMom--Sara Stein's "The Science Book" (from the '70s, out of print, but lots of copies floating around) is something Groucho (also 6) and I are going to have a go at this year. It's arranged in three parts: Outsides (pests, pets, people), Insides (protistas, plants, animals), and Invisibles (touches, noises, sights, tastes & smells, charges, thoughts). I like the tone: she's curious, intelligent, and witty, and assumes her reader is as well. There are lots of black and white photos, and lots of experiments ("lung machines, bottle flutes, quiz boxes, pig grunters, light switches, balloon rockets, tooth casts, skeletons, draft detectors, optical illusions, dancing mothballs, leaf starch, electric wands, and candy sparks," says the back cover). There's likely more there than we'll want/be able to do in a year, but that's OK, too, I think--it's much more of a ramble through things that look interesting on any given day, than it is a sequential curriculum where each step builds on the previous one.

You could investigate the TOPS science modules, too ( www.topscience.org ). They are basically books of experiments; there's some explanation of things, but not in any amount of detail (well, at least in the ones that we have, I should say). I can't remember what science the WTM says for grade one--is it biology? So you might like the radishes one, or corn & beans, or the animal camouflage one.

Hope that helps!

peace
minnie

Kriston and Cindi, I'm glad those look good to you! I think they're really nice books. (My boys are mad about history, so I use it as a "gateway" to other--slightly less popular!--subjects quite often.) Along those same lines, we have also liked the Jeanne Bendick history of science books about Archimedes and Galen--there's also one about Galileo that I haven't been able to turn up yet. Another one we like a lot is Julia Diggins's "String, Straight-Edge, & Shadow," a nice history of geometry.

peace
minnie