Singapore- Reflections on math and science

We enjoyed Singapore math up through level 4a, at which point my own math idiocy began to frustrate my confused son. At that point I hired out the math explanations to the good people at Teaching Textbooks.

I feel like I need to point out here that my early math instruction didn't sink in at all. In 7th grade I fell off the math bandwagon and eventually landed in the less advanced math prep classes in my high school. My mind could not grasp percents and algebra confounded me. Geometry puzzled, me but trig kicked my ass. William and Mary took me in spite of my low math SATs. I dont think I ever exceeded 600 on the math portion. Funny enough, when I returned to college at age 28 I took college algebra and flew through it with 100%. I also aced finite math and calculus. This didnt help me to explain factoring to the kid last year.

Anyway, having ditched Singapore math for the bigger kiddo I felt I must make it up to the company somehow and decided to look at their science materials.

You may have noted that the husband is a scientist. He is a molecular biologist who is doing toxicology studies for a major agro chem business. He is no longer in the lab, for which I'm grateful. The stench of cell culture is behind us.

So my kids have a good working knowledge of science stuff just by virtue of eating dinner with the man who never was shy about discussing a day's work, even if it was about dissecting mammary tumours or rat brains. One of the issues I have with science study is that we go through the materials more often than not and say, "well yeah, we knew that."

Singapore science is no different actually. We know a lot of what science 5 will teach us. But I'm hungering for the simplicity of the approach. Read the well done little text. Do a little easy work book page. TAKE A TEST! What? yeah, I said take a test.

Anyway, science instruction in Singapore starts at 3rd grade, so level 3 isnt for us, despite having a 3rd grader. Its very basic. We could have covered it in preschool or kindergarten. Level 5 is as good a place for us to start as any, with explanations of plant and animal reproduction (seems timely) complete with drawings of anatomy.

The series is comprised of a text, a workbook, an activity book and a test book at each level. I ordered one of each. Each paperback book is about $7 from Rainbow Resource. After each portion of text for which there is an activity you are cued to go to the activity book. I didn't notice such cues for the workbook, which surprised me. The activities look simple enough for home. They are more "on paper" in some cases than I would have liked.

In addition to Singapore science we also purchased some kits made by the Young Scientist Club. They have a website where you can subscribe to receive a kit a month, but it was cheaper and easier to order their kits (packaged in sets of three) from Rainbow Resource.

Given that I love Sonlight and their approach to almost everything, it is a little surprising that we chose a different way to tackle science. After all, aren't living books the best? Yes. Undoubtedly. But even better than books are hands on activities. And while some people enjoy TOPS, which is included in SL science, I do not. Its designed for a classroom. The directions were too confusing for the science impaired. I had to wash out milk cartons. There was dirt involved. And the possibility of stinky milk residue.

So this year we'll dissect an owl pellet on the kitchen table and grow bacteria and fungi in the dining room. Somehow this is less gross to me than the possibility of stinky milk residue.