Sunday, January 25, 2009

Middleschool Science Options

Still wonder about doing a middleschool highschool overview science -- we've got a year and a half! I'd like to just do an overview to pull in some pieces that we might be missing -- but I'm not sure where it would fit in our day. Our focus right now seems to be technology, without much extra on any of the sciences or social sciences!

Here's a couple sources that came up recently:

Singapore Science -- Interactive Science for Inquiring Minds (Gr 7,8)
http://www.singaporemath.com/Secondary_Science_s/31.htm

And K12's Science program -- for middleschool, they have a regular and advanced version of Earth Science, Biology and Physics:
http://www.k12.com/curriculum_and_products/science_main/

Bj would really like some background on Microcontrollers and ways to put together basic robotics since FRC and FTC keep coming up. B's boys are working with the Thames & Kosmos kit for the Microcontroller which would be interesting to look at. Also there's some pretty "geeky" kits called "Nerd Kits" that look interesting:
http://www.nerdkits.com/kits/

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Linda,

I saw your post linking to our site (NerdKits) and just wanted to say that we're also interested in helping adapt our kits better toward a math/science/computer curriculum. We've had kids as young as 9 using our kits (with help from parents) but generally recommend 13+. In any case, if we can help coordinate toward developing something useful for homeschoolers or otherwise, let us know. Also check out some of our project videos -- some might be adapted toward "class projects".

Best wishes,
Humberto and Mike
www.NerdKits.com

Linda said...

Thanks for your reply.

I'm looking for something for my 12 yo son as far as a step into robotics/micro-controllers. He and his friends have been competing in a FIRST LEGO League team for several years so are familiar with programming robots but they are now interested in moving up to bigger, build-from-scratch robotics. For the spring/summer, I was hoping to get some sort of kit to cover some of the basics. I know very little about this topic (old, old programming classes in Fortran and Pascal) but am willing to learn along.

Is there any way to check out a couple pages of the instructions to see what level they're at? Or do you have a list of topics covered? Not sure really what I'm looking for -- I guess the framework/topics covered to know if we can learn it together or with me guiding the kids before they take over and race ahead.

Thanks.

bridget said...

We may need to invest in a nerd kit. I really like the feedback it gives. I'd like having 2 options here.

Thanks for bringing it to my attention. :)