teaching science without a textbook

[ccasanova]

I love the Lets Read and Find out Science series and the Magic School Bus series also for teaching science. For now, I have to follow the CA standards for teaching science because we are with a charter, but have the option of using whatever materials I like so I wanted to know if there are any other series out there that I don't know about yet that I could use for teaching different science concepts. I'd love to be able to keep teaching science in this manner and never have to use a textbook for more than a spine! Any videos, books or science experiments that aren't too time consuming is what I'm looking for.

[elizawill]

i also love the "let's read and find out about" science series - we have about 50 books and just love them! my library has a few too. we have recorded on our dvr all of the magic school bus episodes as well. in addition, our favorite series that i record are "planet earth" and we also love all of the gail gibbons books (which are similar to the read & find out series) www.gailgibbons.com

[elizawill]

oh, and the funbooks site has cool looking stuff too! i haven't bought from them for science yet - but it looks great. http://www.fun-books.com/

[elizawill]

i'm seriously not trying to hog this thread

i just thought of one more thing.

the guiness book of world records would be fabulous for learning science. i plan to get it for my children this year at christmas. it will start a lot of conversations and serve as a great launching point into many interesting things.

[ccasanova]

don't worry! post away mama! i want as many suggestions as possible! i wish i could have all those books! just don't have the $$$ to spend on all those i'm off to check out the gibbons books

[karemore]

Thank you!

We have two of the Let's Read and Find Out books from the library and I didn't realize they were a series.

I just ordered two more from the library!

[elizawill]

Originally Posted by ccasanova

don't worry! post away mama! i want as many suggestions as possible! i wish i could have all those books! just don't have the $$$ to spend on all those i'm off to check out the gibbons books

oh, we don't have the money either!! believe me ...or ask my wallet! lol.

i find them at thrift stores a lot, and i also bought about 30 books in bulk for dirt cheap from homeschoolclassifieds.com ...then i got several from paperbackswap.com


also, http://www.lookybook.com/ has a lot of gail gibbons and other science type books. the print is small on some of them ...but maybe you know how to magnify your screen or something? i wish i did. anyway - it will give you a good idea of her books! it's free to join there we also love tumble books http://www.library.santaclaraca.gov/ (click on tumble books to the left)

[Fairy4tmama]

we have a book out from the library thats called Hibernation by Anita Ganeri, and it part of a series called Natures Patterns. This is the first one we've read but I'll definatly be checking out the others as we move into other topics. The publisher is Heinemann Library.
HTH

[library lady]

If you have the standards and know which concepts to teach, then you can just go to the library and check out books on that topic. I find that it works well to get books that present the topic from a variety of perspectives rather than sticking with a single series. It also makes things a bit more interesting at times.

[nancy926]

I don't know anything about CA standards, but there's a new-ish series on public TV called Sid the Science Kid. Sid is in a lower grade, like 1st grade maybe? and they learn about the scientific method, graphs, recording observations, etc. It's pretty cool and Muppet-y.

[MSings]

Here are the CA standards by grade:

http://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/docum...ciencestnd.pdf

It seems to me that for the primary grades it would be easy to cover all the concepts (and more) with nonfiction books from the children's section of your library. Some of the concepts are also encountered just from play. For example for 2nd grade: "Students know objects fall to the ground unless something holds them up."

[Lillian J]

Originally Posted by ccasanova

Any videos, books or science experiments that aren't too time consuming is what I'm looking for.

You might also take a look through my page of annotated links to science websites:
Our world and beyond. It's absolutely amazing what you can find online for free - beautiful interactive sites, sites full of ideas for science experiments, information sites on all manner of nature studies, and more...

Whoops! I see that some of the links need updating - will get that done asap - these kinds of sites quite often change their addresses because of some sort of reorganization...

Lillian

[LilyGrace]

We use NOEO science which relies on regular books to make up the scope of study. There's a teacher's guide to organize it all but the books are things like a science encyclopedia, a lot of Usborne and DK type things, and it comes with experiments from the Young Scientist club.

I'm sure you could make your own scope using the same sort of things, but I'd recommend browsing what they have to offer.

[Mrs. Cheerful Face]

We're rather keen on Janice VanCleave's books. They are very user friendly and fun to boot! Science For Every Kid! Cool experiments as well.

[kittie313]

For nature sciences you could do this:

http://handbookofnaturestudy.blogspot.com/

Then I also use this site (and the sister sites that are linked at the bottom of this site's page) for science.

http://www.biology4kids.com

Also, if you *wanted* a science textbook you can view the full texts for the Real Science 4 Kids series at the publisher's web site, this includes the textbooks, teacher guides, and student lab books. But I know you said you didn't want a textbook for science, so I'd stick with the links I gave above probably (as well as the links others have suggested)

[AngelBee]

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