Naomi was doing Apologia Botany for elementary students (Exploring Creation with Botany by Jeannie Fulbright) and said it was too young for her. My mentor in Michigan concurred. So I had her finish reading it, rapidly, and now she has started Exploring Creation with General Science.
I haven't read all that far in the book, but so far I like it. The beginning discusses the history of science. So far, the 3 experiments have been simple and mostly fun, though Naomi was irritated with the second one becuase she had no doubt about the outcome; that one involved putting food coloring in 2 jars, one with hot water and one with cold. Of course the food coloring spread more rapidly in the hot water jar.
Experiment #1
I liked this one. Naomi put water, corn syrup, and oil in a jar. They separated into 3 very distinct layers with the syrup on the bottom, the water next, and the oil on top. Then she dropped a grape, a rock, an ice cube, and a cork into the jar. The rock sank to the bottom, the grape sank until it was on top of the syrup, the ice cube sank until it was floating on top of the water layer, and the cork floated on the oil. I've done density experiments before, but this one was more thorough than most.
Oh, I loved this one! We put vinegar in the jar. We put baking soda in the balloon. We put the balloon over the jar's opening. We jiggled the balloon until the baking soda fell into the vinegar. Yes, this is the same wonderful reaction that we've used to make little volcanos, but it was very fun seeing where the carbon dioxide ended up. It blew the balloon so full that both big girls were concerned it might pop.
So, so far so good on this book. I am looking forward to reading more of it (I hope slightly faster than Naomi) so we can discuss some of the scientific issues in detail. One area of discussion is Old Earth/New Earth. I'm leaning pretty heavily towards being an Old Earth creationist and Jay Wile is a New Earth creationist. Naomi is inclined towards New Earth creationism, but is still thinking it over. I anticipate some fun discussions. Science is fascinating and people of good intent and character sometimes interpret the data differently. One thing I am NOT is an evolutionist...I don't think the data supports macroevolution. So we can all agree on that!
1 comment:
I've wondered that with Hannah, this year and our Botany study, however since both girls were working together I can't change. I think Flying Creatures is going to prove challenging though as we've tried it before and went to Astronomy. I'm hoping to cycle through all the Exploring before moving on but we'll see as Hannah may need something extra later on. I'm glad I won the physics course and I have the Living Fossils (Vol. I) and Evolution (Vol.2) from New Leaf. We'll have our Botany done in March and then move on to Flying Creatures in June. I'm definitely a New Earth as the fossil record and dating does add up to old Earth - carbon dating depending on how long the matter has been around can be skewed resulting in results much older than it really is JMHO.
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