Notes from a Learning Life: Earth Science (Grammar 2)

Rumors of my venerable computer's demise have been exaggerated. Apparently it still lives, and thanks to the help of a computer savvy friend, we may actually soon have it up and running again, with documents intact and increased memory. Among other things, that means I haven't lost all my school-year notes -- the "things we learned" types of documents from second grade (which I'm still working on turning into a portfolio) and my tentative book lists and plans for third grade. Hallelujah!

I've been planning to write some school notes for awhile. I thought I'd start today with science, and share a few ideas (and resources) regarding what worked for us during the grammar 2 year.

Grammar 2 Science: Exploring the Earth!

Although I loosely follow the Well-Trained Mind recommendations for science, I was glad I decided to branch out a bit this year. Most of the earth science recommendations had to do with reading books and having the child narrate back to you, and while we did a good bit of that (across the curriculum) we did a few other things too.

Here are some of the resources I found most helpful:

A Child's Geography: Explore His Earth by Ann Voskamp (Knowledge Quest/Bramley Books)

~Don't let the title fool you; although this is a geography book (and the place where we picked up most of our geography studies this year) it also works well as an elementary earth science text. I thought the text might be a bit over the sweet girl's head, and parts of it were, but she "got" a lot more of it than I expected. And she loved it. A week didn't go by without us using this book, and we actually finished it near the beginning of second semester, which surprised me.

The main topics covered: atmosphere (upper and lower); continents; oceans; seasons, climate and weather; the structure of the earth and plate tectonics; earthquakes and volcanoes; latitude and longitude. Besides the very engaging text by Ann Voskamp, which does a wonderful job of painting pictures in young minds, and providing examples they can grasp, we also utilized the book lists provided in each chapter.

We didn't get to into some of the notebooking ideas (the little "postcards" for sharing facts seemed small, and didn't capture S's imagination very well) and we didn't do a lot of the supplemental activities provided in each chapter, some of which I plan to go back to in the next few years. But we read the main text cover to cover and did some of the experiments and main activities, and it turned out to be an excellent spine book for earth science and geography.

Scholastic's True Book series on the planets

~Here's something fun! The link above is to my review of one the books in this series, the one on Mercury. And I just found it "accidentally" on Google when I went look for a page link to provide an example. I thought the title was catchy -- forgot it was mine!

At any rate, we loved these Scholastic books on the planets in our Solar System. Not only are they very up to date and colorful, they're highly readable (and can be read in one sitting). S. liked the "true/false" statements at the beginning, which helped her stay attentive to figure out which statement was which. We read every single one (including the one on Pluto, the "new" dwarf planet) as well as the books in the same series on the Sun and the Moon. We did narrations from these, and at the end of our planet studies, the sweet girl created a planet poster.

Astronomy Picture of the Day

~There are a lot of excellent space websites out there, some of which we found exploring the notes on current space missions in the back of the True Books. This website, however, simply provides a beautiful, often stunning picture of something in the heavens each day. The explanations for some of the photos were sometimes above the sweet girl's head (mine too, for that matter) but they always inspired awe. "When I consider the heavens, the work of thy hands..."

Find the Constellations by H.A. Rey

~Yes, *that* H.A. Rey, the author/illustrator of Curious George. This book has been updated from his original (to include current information) so make sure you find the 2008 edition (there are still lots of older used copies available from online vendors). We were blessed to have the full use of a library copy for several weeks. It includes terrific introductory descriptions and drawings of constellations, along with star charts for different times of the year, and intermittent "quizzes" where a kid can test her knowledge. It turned out to be our "go-to" spine book for astronomy, although I'd already purchased the Usborne Guide to the Night Sky which I'm glad we own, but we didn't use much this year.

The sweet girl does like Usborne Books, and we ended up using The Usborne First Encyclopedia of Space to supplement some of our studies. It's got bright pictures and incredibly simple text, and is really more of a jumping off place to find topics you want to explore. I decided to use it to encourage independent reading in science, which seemed to work.

We also really liked Glow-in-the-Dark Constellations by C.E. Thompson, a book we pored over on many a cloudy morning while snuggled under the dining room table (one of the darkest spots in the house) a flashlight in hand.

Things To Ponder

Here are a few lessons I learned while teaching earth science to an inquisitive second grader.

~Do try to give your child some field trip time. We didn't do a very good job of that this year, though we made it to the National Air and Space museum for a brief visit the day after Christmas. It was overwhelmingly crowded, with what seemed like the whole world on vacation in D.C., and we forgot to take snacks (shudder) and couldn't afford to buy any. Still, I'm glad we went.

We really wanted to visit a planetarium this spring, our main time to study astronomy, but we couldn't afford ticket prices for the local one. A family membership to the Carnegie Museums downtown costs $130 per year, an utter bargain given regular ticket prices. I've been salivating over that membership page all year. While I'm grateful that we can sometimes tag along with friends, and that there's about a week of various free days to local museums and cultural events around here each fall, if I could tack one thing onto our almost non-existent homeschooling budget, some memberships would be it, especially this one. It would be wonderful to be able to schedule trips that work with our family's schedule and coordinate with things we're learning. (Suggestion: if you know a struggling or even not-so struggling homeschooling family you'd like to bless, ask them if they might not enjoy museum memberships or magazine subscriptions. I'll bet they'll say yes!)

~Don't buy "toy" equipment. We purchased a nice looking beginner's telescope at a toy store as a Christmas present, and it's hardly been used. We knew it probably wouldn't be very good, given its price, but the packaging fooled us into thinking it would work a lot better than it did. Save your pennies for the real stuff or go without.

~ I also learned that it's good to try to cut across the curriculum wherever possible, blending disciplines. So we did reading practice in the Usborne book, narration work with the picture books and True Books, art time with the planet poster, etc. I had good intentions about bringing more copy work into science, but it fell by the wayside partway through the year, mostly because I was trying not to push it...S. already seemed to be doing a lot of writing, and was balking at doing more (though in retrospect I think I could have pushed her on it a little bit more).

~ Go hands-on as much as possible. With earth science, that was a bit trickier, though we managed some good projects. I'm looking forward to doing more hands-on experiments in grammar 3 science, where we'll be focusing on introductory chemistry (and I think also doing a few units in biology/life sciences again). But that's a post for a different day!