Our AO6 Science books

So we’ve been talking about science the Charlotte Mason way, and about how I’ve been trying to do it this year.  This is supposed to be the post where I explain how we’ve gone about that. Yeah.  You'll notice it's been a while coming, and that's because I have really struggled with getting it onto the page.  I know what we've done and why we've done it and how it's been received, but boy it's hard to put it into writing!

After spending another three hours grappling with the post today, in addition to many hours during the past two weeks,  I've come to the conclusion that I'm trying to include much too much in one post.  As a consequence, I'm just going to list here the books we've used and press publish. We'll see where we go from there.

First, here is the official AO list for this year 6:

• Albert Einstein and the Theory of Relativity by Robert Cwiklik - Physics
• Secrets of the Universe: Discovering the Universal Laws of Science by Paul Fleisher - Physics
• Archimedes and the Door of Science by Jeanne Bendick - Science History / Physics
• The Sea Around Us by Rachel Carson - Oceanography
• Galileo and the Magic Numbers by Sidney Rosen - Physics
• School of the Woods by William J. Long - Natural history
• It Couldn't Just Happen by Lawrence Richards - Young Earth Creationism Apologetics
• A Little Brother to the Bear by William J. Long - Natural history (Free read)

We moved the two William Long Books to free reads, where we may or may not get to them, and replaced them with these three books:

• Australian Backyard Naturalist by Peter Macinnis
• Australian Backyard Explorer by Peter Macinnis
• Australian Backyard Astronomy by Dr Ragbir Bhathal and Jenny Bhathal

It Couldn’t Just Happen by Lawrence O. Richards is an excellent kids' apologetics book looking at the earth’s beginning from a young earth creation perspective.  We really liked this book, but we read it back in AO4 before the science schedule was changed, so we replaced it this year with Who Made the Moon? A Father Explores How Science and Faith Agree by Sigmund Brouwer, which approaches the earth's origins from a Christian old earth creation perspective.  It has been a difficult book to read, since it challenges many of our beliefs, but if we totally ignore all scientific advances or treat them as non-Christian and false,  then we are no better than the Church in Galileo's day, are we?  We risk making Christians appear foolish.  Know what you believe.

Physics is well covered in this year, so we added in a wonderful book on the history of chemistry called The Mystery of the Periodic Table by Benjamin D. Wiker. It looks at the chemistry that lead to the modern periodic table of the elements, and it is outstanding in the way it presents the big picture of science.  Wiker covers a remarkable amount of stuff – from the alchemists and the first known elements through to phlogiston and the discovery of oxygen,  and on to the structure of the atom.  This book along with the Einstein bio gives us the knowledge to read the Brouwer book.

Finally, in third term we'll be reading a biography of AO favourite, Jean-Henri Fabre entitled The Insect Man by Eleanor Doorly.

That means our final Peaceful Day AO6 Science List  looks like this:

• Albert Einstein and the Theory of Relativity by Robert Cwiklik - Physics
• Secrets of the Universe: Discovering the Universal Laws of Science by Paul Fleisher - Physics
• Archimedes and the Door of Science by Jeanne Bendick - Science History / Physics
• The Sea Around Us by Rachel Carson - Oceanography
• Galileo and the Magic Numbers by Sidney Rosen - Physics 
• School of the Woods by William J. Long - Natural history (Free Read)
• A Little Brother to the Bear by William J. Long - Natural history (Free read)
• Australian Backyard Naturalist by Peter Macinnis - Australian natural history
• Australian Backyard Explorer by Peter Macinnis - Australian physical geography
• Australian Backyard Astronomy by Dr Ragbir Bhathal and Jenny Bhathal - Australian astronomy 
•  Who Made the Moon? A Father Explores How Science and Faith Agree by Sigmund Brouwer - Old Earth Creationism apologetics (Free read)
• The Mystery of the Periodic Table by Benjamin D. Wiker - Chemistry (Free read)
• The Insect Man by Eleanor Doorly - Natural history

We've done lots of other things for science too, this year - experiments using a great Lego education kit, replicating the experiments in the Fleisher book, watching videos to compliment our oceanography study.  All these need their own posts.  I also plan to review these books and explain more why we chose to use them.

At least now I have been able to tell you what we've read, and we can talk more about Living Science next time. Is there anything, in particular, that you'd like me to elucidate?

You can't believe how happy I am to get to the end of this post!!