Planning: I thought I was going to be going through the Sonlight catalog last night, but it was the RealScience-4-Kids curriculum that arrived from Access Research Network, not the catalog. It is great! We ordered the first of a six part series.

Access Research Network has programs for teaching science at two levels. The first level is for second through fifth graders and covers one subject per year (although you can go faster if you like). The subjects covered are Chemistry, Biology, and Physics. The second level is for sixth through ninth graders and covers the exact same materials in more depth. We got the first level Chemistry program for both Kelly and Christian. We will probably try to go through both Chemistry and Biology next year.

The thing that is really great about the program is that real science terminology is used in a very interesting way and they do real science experiments (not demonstrations). The kids write down the hypothesis, set up the experiment, record data, interpret the data, and then write up their conclusions. It looks just great! We are planning to do the one half hour reading/discussion assignments on Tuesdays and then the one hour experiments that deal with the material from the previous reading on Thursdays.

When the kids looked at the program, they wanted to start doing it immediately. I might weaken and start before the end of the summer, but right now I think that is something I do not want to do. It will help a lot to have them be very excited about getting into their studies in the fall with this material on the shelf where they have to just look longingly and not touch until our official start date.

Last night I mowed the lawn. There is a ton of stuff we have to do on the lawn including doing some rasied beds for Lorena and the kids before Memorial Day weekend so we can get a garden planted. I think that would probably be a better summer project than doing science experiments indoors. We can take pictures of the construction of the beds, the preparation of the garden, progress of the plants, and the harvest here. I am going to do some additional digging in the yard both to get some exercise and to reduce the amount of grass that I have to mow. I will get the kids to help Lorena and I move the barkdust and to do some weeding, too.

Progress: We worked on Christian’s MathIt last night. He was pretty hungry and tired when we were trying to do it, so we didn’t do as well as previously. I think we need to keep going on it for a couple more weeks so he has it very solidly before we go on. I think my goal will be to get him into the multiplication tables and flash cards by the time he is out of government school this year at the end of May.

Lorena told me a catalog had arrived while I was on my recent trip to South Carolina. I assumed wrongly it was the catalog from Sonlight. It was the science curriculum from Access Research Network called RealScience-4-Kids and it looks GREAT!