What My Child is Reading - March 6, 2010

We read a number of science related books this week - our bookshelf has never looked so intelligent.

We started out with three more Simon Basher books written by Dan Green:

I'm absolutely thrilled with this series. It really has the kids excited about science. The older children, ages 9-12, read these books on their own, without any prompting, which was great to see. The younger children enjoyed listening to the stories, and I think my seven year old, and maybe even my five year old, picked up an interest in science, even if they didn't get all the details.

A couple of small warnings:

These books are not written from a Christian perspective, so there is some mention of big bangs, and natural selection. Basher and Green are gentle with it though, it's not offensively in your face, but it's there. We generally don't run from secular science, the children are aware that Christian, and non-Christian world views are different, but I don't like books that are aggressively preachy with evolution.

And, the biology book covers both the sperm, and the egg. The approach is innocent, and straightforward, but it could lead to some awkward questions, if you're not prepared.

Moving on, we enjoyed Robert E. Wells' What's Smaller Than a Pygmy Shrew - which I reviewed, here.

And, Mickey's Magnet by Franklyn M. Branley, and Eleanor K. Vaughan. It's as sweet, and informative as I remembered, and was a big hit with the younger kids. I can see quite a bit more magnetic exploration coming up.

Our only dud was G is for Galaxy by Janis Campbell and Cathy Collison, another in the alphabet series from Sleeping Bear Press. After the excitement of the Basher books, it was rather dull. And, unlike Basher's Astronomy, it is very aggressive in it's secular approach - with B for the big bang, and D for the dinosaurs destroyed by a comet. I think we'll stick with the geography books in the series from now on.

To find out what others were reading this week, check out the What My Child Is Reading link up, at Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns.

It's great to be a homeschooler.