When I first started home schooling, I knew that I did not want to use boring textbooks to teach science if there was another, better, way.  I felt like this mainly because when I was in school, I was bored to death in science class.  It seemed to me that there was always too much, or too little information presented in textbooks.  There was too much information about the topics in which I had no interest, and there was never enough information about the things that I found fascinating. As I pondered my options as a new home school mom, I decided that maybe there was another way to teach science.  It occurred to me that most of the science knowledge that I retained came not from textbooks, but from the interesting non-fiction books that I had checked out from the library just because I was interested in the subject. I also remembered how much I enjoyed science projects and experiments.

So I decided to just let my children learn basic scientific concepts from library books, hands-on projects, and activities.  This worked pretty good for a while, but eventually, I discovered that I really needed to come up with some kind of a plan for organizing these studies so we didn't end up learning the same things over and over again. That's when I sat down and came up with an outline that guides us through the major subject areas of scientific study once every three years.  It is loosely based on the first eleven chapters of the book of Genesis.  I decided to use Genesis 1-11 because I am convinced that an understanding of these eleven chapters is absolutely fundamental to an understanding of the world around us.  It is also essential in understanding God and our relationship to Him.

Just for clarity, this is a plan.  Sometimes even the best plans do not work out exactly as originally planned. Our family has been cycling though this plan now for six years, and I do not think that we have actually completed everything scheduled any of those six years.  But that is the nice thing about having a plan!  If I realize that we never quite covered, say, desert life, then I can look for a place to insert this topic somewhere else, or I can rest easy knowing that in three short years, it will come up again. 

I feel sure that using this plan of study as a family has made our study time more productive.  For example, our oldest son has studied plants twice previously.   So when the topic of plants was introduced for the first time to our youngest son, the oldest immediately jumped into the conversation, remembering aloud some of the fun things he had done during our last study cycle.  The excitement of the older brother instantly "hooked" the younger brother!  It was only a few minutes before both brothers were outside "experimenting" on a tree in the front yard.   (Poor tree!)

I could not possibly tell you how to adapt this three-year plan to your family and its learning style.  It is up to you whether you write lesson plans and design worksheets, or you just casually read aloud a few books on the suggested topics.  But since many friends have asked for an explanation of our plan, I have included it here.

Year One
Year Two
Year Three