Curricula tables

[imperfectgenius]

Singapore Math also have good Science, Maths, English text and workbooks (along with other subjects) available. You can obtain most information here. Because we are in Australia, we had to order the books from another site. We used Halfmoon. We have only ordered the 'teacher's' text books in Science and the Maths text and workbooks so far.

This was written on the thread about online resources. I brought it over here for possible inclusion on the curricula tables because Singapore offers a wealth of secular science materials for K-10. I didn't notice Singapore was not listed until I was browsing that thread and come upon Mimi's post.

"Child's Play Science" is for Kindergarten

"Earlybird Start-up Science" is recommended for grades 1 & 2 (four thin books in total)

"MPH Science" is suggested for grades 3-6

"Interactive Science" is written for 7 & 8 grade

"Science Matters" is for 9 & 10 grade (this series is divided into typical high-school level sciences: biology, chemistry, and physics)

Formal study of science doesn't start until grade 3 in Singapore, so the items for K-2 are pretty basic "warm ups". Depending upon where they're at developmentally and interest-wise, some children may be able to start the MPH Science series much earlier than 3rd grade.

Each of the series for grades 3 and up offer several materials to choose from including textbooks, workbooks, teacher's guides, and practicals. There are suggestions on the Singapore site about which of these materials are useful for homeschooling and which ones are best left for classroom use (for example, sometimes the teacher's guides aren't necessary for home use).

Prices range from around $3 for an activity book in the elementary series "MPH Science" to $29 for a teacher's guide in the high-school level "Science Matters".

[Michael]

Thanks, I just added the various Singapore Math Science curricula and Apologia's Exploring Creation series.

[nicoled]

You might consider adding Miquon math curriculum to the curricula tables. It's completely secular and it's worked really well for both of my kids. You can find info about it here: http://www.keypress.com/x6252.xml

Nicole

[Michael]

Thanks Nicole, I added Miquon Math to the tables.

[Kim]

Hi,
Your curricula tables are great! I thought I might suggest a program.
One Year Adventure Novel by Daniel Schwabauer, an award winning novelist and playwright He has created a one year writing course for high school students. After completing the course, your child will have theirr very own adventure novel. This is a practical course on fiction writing. It covers all the basics and provides strong parameters and boundaries for novel writing. He offers a free demo disc which totally sold me and my son. We're not totally homeschoolers, yet, not totally unschoolers either and this program seems to excite my teenage son.
oneyearnovel.com

It is very pricey, but for those who can afford it or have many children to pass it down through the years - you can buy additonal workbooks - it is well worth it.

[Michael]

Hi,
Your curricula tables are great! I thought I might suggest a program.
One Year Adventure Novel by Daniel Schwabauer...

Thanks Kim, and welcome to the forums! I checked out the One Year Novel site to try to determine whether it is secular or not (or something in-between) so that I can add it to the tables. The homepage says that the curriculum benefits include a "Biblical worldview", though I can't tell to what extent that is the case. I would really appreciate your thoughts on that. In the sample pages, I saw words/themes like "revelation" and "sacrifice".

The blog section of the site has a review of Terry Pratchett's "Nation" (Terry Pratchett is a Humanist), which is revealing about the Mr. Schwabauer's worldview:

What bothers me about the theme of Nation is its humanistic hypocrisy. Faith is evidently the only thing that needs challenging. Science isn’t challenged at all, because science is Truth.

But is it? I don’t mean, is it in real life. We all know science isn’t Truth in real life.
[...]
Nation lacks ITW’s hostility, but its ending shows a faith-is-good-when-it-doesn’t-require-anything-of-us attitude common to western humanism.
[...]
But of course Pratchett doesn’t really mean this. He means that Science really is better than Faith… and everything really is meaningless.
[...]
I do not need to agree with an author’s worldview to enjoy his work...

I'm also curious about what Mr. Schwabauer means by "Truth". This page from his website http://www.danschwabauer.com/ discusses his goal for the One Year Adventure Novel curriculum:

My goal is to give young people the tools to create stories that will impact American culture by reuniting the dynamics of Story with Truth.

I took note of the descriptions of his own work from his books page:

For readers of the Old Testament, you will recognize many arch-type parallels with the David and Saul story.
[...]
...a fantastic young adult novel that in effect retells the legend of David and Goliath.
[...]
Troubled House is a timely reminder that intolerance is not exclusive to religion--and that naturalistic philosophy masquerading as science has become the new orthodoxy.
[...]
An adventure series based on the lives of real men and women who discovered God's incredible power in the blast-furnace of adversity.

Also, his recommended links seem geared to sites for Christian writers.

[KarenC]

I'm in the process of reviewing curricula for next year and I've found a couple that aren't mentioned yet:

Math Mammoth - Is a mastery program that has the advantage of coming all in one piece. There is no separate teaching guide. It appears to be entirely secular and I've been happy with it.

Writing With Ease - by Susan Wise Bauer. I was dubious about this because I read the beginning of "Story of the World" and noticed that she fudged the dates so as not to offend Young Earth Creationists. The teaching text for this writing program contains no religious content that I could find. I have not seen the workbooks.

Hope this helps,
Karen

[Michael]

Thanks very much Karen, I added those to the curricula tables. Story of the World? Well, everyone knows we just appeared out of thin air a few thousand years ago. Makes perfect sense.

[dbmamaz]

a few things I dont see in here:

The Story of Us by Joy Hakim (US history), The Story of Science by Joy Hakim (history of science), Time4Learning (on line all-in-one grade school curriculum), The Lab of Mr Q - ok, might not be secular, the life science unit is free and doesnt mention creation or evolution, so who knows. http://www.ellenjmchenry.com/id25.html . . which i was thinking was secular until i finally chased her down on another website: http://www.dominionsciencecenter.org/id15.html . Sigh.

http://www.kineticbooks.com/index.html which does look secular.

http://www.khanacademy.org/ . . . hmm, he has a video discussing intelligent design vs evolution. He says he's not getting in to the argument. Sounds like he is explaining that its understandable to think its too awesome to be accidental, but . . . so i THINK he's secular. He actually just argued that saying that god created the eye - which is actually flawed - is almost an insult to a god, and just because you think god is all powerful doesnt mean he creates each detail (i guess implying that god could have set the whole thing in motion, rather than creating every individual item).

btw, part of why i'm doing this is that i'm trying to find a way to respond to a recent article about home school sciences not including evolution. this website seems to be the best place to see clearly what is secular and what isnt, as far as curriclum, so i wanted to help keep it up to date!

cara
dbmamaz.wordpress.com

[Michael]

Thanks Cara, I added the Joy Hakim ones. Is the Ellen McHenry stuff that popular? I've avoided adding it up till now, assuming it's kind of obscure. I found that Dominion Science Centre link as well last time I looked into that one...