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This year I haven’t seemed to blog as much about our science or even history for that matter and how time does fly! We have been plugging along with CKS Chemistry. I also decided to add in Exploring The World of Chemistry by John Hudson Tiner with our Chemistry study.
Exploring The World of Chemistry adds a lot more of the scientists, discoveries and stories to what CKS is explaining. It’s perhaps a little over the head of my 3rd grader but it adds more especially for my 8th grader. He decided to do Ancient Metals for his Science Fair project this year (though he may not admit it) because of this book.
On the metals for instance it tells you about how Egyptians made Iron and how an Antarctic exploration was doomed because of what they didn’t know about metals. I won’t tell you what happened you’ll just have to check it out. If you really must know look up Robert F. Scott, British Explorer 1912, I at least have to make you look for it!
Getting back to CKS Chemistry, we’re almost done with unit three so we’ll finish four and five next year. We didn’t start Chemistry until December because we took some time in the fall to study birds. This last week they went on a house hunt filling in charts with products that contain various kinds of acids and bases. The pictures are from a couple weeks ago with the bubbling “chemical” reaction experiment 
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Though they have enjoyed Chemistry and I feel it’s giving them a good grasp of the basics and working with the periodic table it hasn’t been their favorite CKS of the series. I would also say that it’s a little more difficult then the Biology and Earth and Space we’ve done in previous years. I would definitely save it for last (so your kids are older!)
Next year I had planned on moving on to Physics but after looking at it we’ve decided not to, at least for now. Several of the chapters are really repeats of things we’ve already done in Chemistry or Earth and Space volumes. It might be beneficial to do in a year or two but not next year.
Instead we’ve decided on a whole new route for science next year but I’ll leave that for another blog…. | 
