A Fun Way To Approach Homeschool Science {A Curriculum Review}

My 8-year-old and I had so much fun over the last few weeks working on some new homeschool science material. From WriteBonnieRose, we have been going through some of the packets in the Learning About Science Collection, Level 2 and he has been diving into things like the Solar System, the Water Cycle, and the Human Body. It’s been super fun, and even though our review period is over, I know we are going to keep working on the rest of the items in this collection.

Who Is Bonnie Rose?

Bonnie Rose, the creator behind WriteBonnieRose, is a woman who has found her passion in life by serving homeschoolers and creating practical resources to aid the ever-growing homeschool community. She learned quickly all about homeschooling when she first started writing for The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine in 2012. She states on her About Me page, “My heart’s desire is for every child to feel the love of God and know how special they are to Him. Writing for the homeschool market has blessed me with more ways to do that than I ever knew existed.”

The WriteBonnieRose website is filled with tons of subscriber-free and paid products that can help your student at any level of education. Whether you need a quick lapbook for a younger one, or something more in-depth for high school, you can find it on WriteBonnieRose.

Learning About Science

When my son and I sat down to select a collection to work with I wanted to go by what I thought would be grade-appropriate. He, however, wanted to know what topics were covered in the collection. We ultimately decided by his interest and chose level 2.

Learning About Science Collection, Level 2 is an 8-unit collection that covers life science, earth science, and physical science. This program is recommended for 1st through 3rd graders and is 163 pages total. For the purpose of keeping things organized, we printed one section at a time.

The first section we started working on was all about the Solar System. This is a topic my son is passionate about and eager to learn all he can. In fact, this single topic alone was how he chose Level 2.

We dove right into the material. This particular unit is just 26-pages and we read through most of it on the first day due to his sheer excitement. It starts out by talking about the solar system and galaxies. Next we read about the sun and how hot it is. This lead to a discussion about the weather that day. It was particularly hot and my son was wondering if that was hot it was on the sun. I informed him that it was quite a bit hotter on the sun and that the heat we were feeling had cooled down significantly along its 92,960,000-mile journey here. Unfortunately, his 8-year-old self just can quite fathom 93 million miles, so he just had to take my word on it.

After we discussed the son we moved right into planets. The material is presented in a fantastic way and actually lead to more than a few side conversations. As a boy obsessed with space, he was throwing in other facts he already knew, asking questions about the material, and generally talking more then I was.

Oh, and loving it!

Following the planets, we covered the moon and several constellations. We’ve studied the moon in the past, but he always enjoys learning more.

The last things we did was a short review. For him, this was fun. A chance to show off what he knew and a great way for me to check for understanding and comprehension. He sailed right through it. In fact, my only concern was that this particular packet was not going to be challenging enough for him. And while a lot of the material he already knew, there was a lot of new items presented. Not only that, it’s presented in a very kid-friendly way. Even if you have never studied space with your child they should be able to easily work through this packet.

There’s A Whole Lot More Than Space Included

As much as we focused on the space portion of Learning About Science Collection, Level 2, there is a lot more material included.

• Understanding Food Chains takes a look at ecosystems, predators and prey, and the importance of the sun.
• Why Do Animals Hibernate? looks at animals that survive winter by sleeping it away.
• Plants: How They Grow and How They Help Us explores the plant world and life cycles of various trees and plants.
• A Closer Look at Body Systems walks your child through their body and major systems including circulatory, respiratory, and digestive.
• The Cycle of Water and Types of Clouds follows the water cycle teaching your students about evaporation, condensation, precipitation, and more.
• Forces and Simple Machines explores motion, distance, and speed along with push, pull, friction, and gravity and looks at how simple machines help us.
• Scientist and the Scientific Method explores the scientific method and many of the famous scientists that shaped our understanding of the world around us.

Up Next For Us

After we finished up The Solar System packet we started in on The Cycle of Water and Types of Clouds. This packet was just 17 pages, but really interesting. He enjoyed learning the water cycle – evaporation, condensation, precipitation – but he really loved cloud identification. Even with the strange names, Bonnie was quick to point out that these names serve a purpose and the name parts help to identify the cloud. This tip was really helpful for my son.

Now that we have finished up the water cycle, we are moving onto the Body Systems packet. Our goal is to work through the remaining lessons over the next couple of months. It will be a great way to ease back into school and so far, he has really enjoyed the material presented in Learning About Science Collection, Level 2 from WriteBonnieRose.