A Week With Physics for the Grammar Stage: Wrap-Up

Now that I have shared with you all our routine for the week with Physics for the Grammar Stage, I thought I’d share with you some of my thoughts.

If you missed the first two posts in the series about how we use Physics for the Grammar Stage in our homeschool, here’s where you can read about Day 1 and Day 2.

A Week With Physics for the Grammar Stage: Wrap-up

My Thoughts

It’s kinda hard to review your own curriculum, as there’s no way that you can’t be biased about it :).

I will say a few words about Physics Experiments for Children, one of the spines as there has been some debate in the past about the explanations in this book not being scientifically sound. I do agree with this on some level, see this weekly report for one reason why.

I think that the explanations can be a bit over simplified, but when you take into account that this is the first introduction to these principles that your student will have and that they will have two more times in the cycle to study Physics, I think that the explanations are sufficient. The author does do a good job of making the principles of physics relevant to young students by sharing them in a language that they will understand.

The experiments in the book are easy to do and we haven’t had a dud yet. I’ve looked at every possible spine out there and I still feel that despite a few shortcomings, Physics Experiments for Children is one of the best physics experiment books out there for the grammar stage.

I will also say that Physics for the Grammar Stage itself recently underwent a major overhaul (updated version came out in June 2011), so if you haven’t looked at it in awhile you may want to take another look. I’m pleased with the changes, here’s a breakdown of the major ones:

I have cut the second weekly experiment in favor of having a day dedicated to the project. This means that the projects have taken a more prominent role, which is good because they have been princess’s favorite part.
Almost all of the pictures were redone by a professional artist and she did a great job!
I have added a 2-day schedule to give the teacher the option of doing science 2 days a week or 5 days a week. Both schedules contain the same material so your student will learn a lot about physics either way you choose.
I have also added unit overview sheets so that you can see what the unit covers at a glance, and simple memory work to use with your student.
The student workbook underwent several changes to make it more user-friendly for the student. The project pages were expanded and a separate vocabulary section was added. The pictures were rearranged to make them easier to find for the student.

It was a bit of work, but I feel the end result is a better product that will help you make the transition to our logic stage level programs much smoother. If you want to view a sample of the actual program, click here.