With everything going on the last couple of weeks I haven't been keeping up with what we're doing for school curriculum.

For those of you just joining our little adventure, we use primarily a Classical approach by loosely following the suggestions in "The Well Trained Mind." I am also really liking the Ambleside Online free curriculum and in the fall will make a more concerted effort to use it as a foundation for the school year.

So with that said, here's what we do for science.

Starting with the oldest, Kimberly, we started by going to the library and hitting the books on energy. We would pick it apart, write out definitions, do some experiments, report on the findings, and write narrations on the reading. It was going pretty good, until I started to get a little worried that we weren't moving fast enough. I also had a bad feeling we were missing "stuff" that she needed to learn.

So, we went to our awesome used book store and looked for a physical science text. Now, we do the same thing but we have a guideline to follow in the textbook. I know now that my worries were just a slight attack of the enemy getting me to second guess what we were doing and will not be falling into that trap again.

Matthew is strictly classical. We started the year by picking a new animal each week and finding books on that animal. He would read it, do a narration, and do some coloring. We the subscribed to zoobooks and he now sits and reads them as soon as they come in.

Now we are in the human body. Again, we go to the library and pick out human anatomy books. He will sit and read them, look at the pictures and can pick out all the major organs and bones. During the summer we will be strictly nature study.

Kaitlynn, while she's just four right now, started with a basic study of animals. She would just following along with the readings with Matthew. She sits and looks at the zoobooks herself and will pick out picture books on animals.

Right now we are also learning about the human body with her, but we are using the A Beka K-5 science book with her.

This summer all the kids will be starting a nature study notebook and will basically follow the Charlotte Mason method. We will be taking walks and they will be spending time drawing and illustrating what they saw. I'm excited about this summer and can't wait to get started.

There it is. Our science class. It's not earth shattering, but it works. I'm comfortable with it now and as we start doing a lot more Ambleside Online stuff our science will be a lot more involved.