I don't know about anyone else, but I had a devil of a time finding a good Biology text to use. Every time I thought I found something, it ended up being a 'short attention-span theatre' book (where all around the necessary information on Biology, you're inundated with pictures and puzzles and blurbs and colors - until your brain can't focus on what's important) or it was filled with environmentalist tracts on global warming and the evils of mankind.
You wouldn't think it would be that hard.
Anyway, with the dearth of good texts out there, and me on a shoe-string budget, I decided to utilize the free information available on the net. For one thing, it's easier to skip over the splotches of enviro propanganda when you're on a website, and for another it's free. (I'm big on free.) What I ended up with was mix-and-match coursework, but as long as the student is getting the necessary information without getting their brains scrambled in the process, it works.
To that end, these are some of the links we used (and will continue to use until they're no longer useful):
An On-Line Biology Book - this was our main resource for 9th grade biology
The National Biological Information Infrastructure - has some enviromentally stuff, but it's easily ignored
Biology 4 Kids
The USDA Plants Database
KidInfo - The Human Body
Exploratorium - All branches of science.
Nature's Best: The Human Body
And for a little higher education (that your kids may or may not be ready for - depending on their skill level):
Marietta University: Invertebrate Zoology
The Franklin Institute: Living Things
(Unfortunately, I lost a lot of my biology links when my computer crashed in 2006, and we were past those enough that I never went looking for them again. When in doubt, use Google to find the particular topic you're interested in, and find something that works for you and your children.)
In addition to information on the web, we also have a few books to back things up. Now most of the books we have are old college Biology texts. I recognize some of them are way over my daughter's head, but she reads them anyway, and I explain in layman's terms what she can't figure out on her own. We also use non-textbooks on certain subjects - like Anatomy - to give her a better idea of how things are put together.
One last thing. If you can afford it, I would highly recommend buying a microscope for home use. We got ours from Home Science Tools and it was less than $200. Not a cheap investment, but well worth the price. Plus that company also has kits for growing plants, hatching critters, dissecting things. You can set up your own Biology lab without breaking the bank. (We set up a Chemistry Lab last year.)
If you have any Biology resources you'd like to share, please leave them in the comments. (And as always, I reserve the right to post them or not.)
Thursday, August 28, 2008
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2 comments:
Some of those links look really good. Thanks!
So far for biology and just about every other branch, we've used a combination of reference and resource books, such as the Usborne Illustrated Encyclopedia - The Natural World, and websites.
For Biology, some of the sites we've used for elementary grade biology are:
Tree of Life Web Project: http://www.tolweb.org/tree/
KidsHealth - How the Body Works:
http://kidshealth.org/kid/htbw/htbw_main_page.html
BBC - Science and Human Nature - Human Body & Mind: http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/body/index_interactivebody.shtml
Florida Nature: http://www.floridanature.org/
BugGuide.Net: http://bugguide.net/node/view/1
Children's Museum - Bones Exhibit
http://www.childrensmuseum.org/special_exhibits/bones/kids_mazeGame.htm
GetBodySmart.com: http://www.getbodysmart.com/
The Yuckiest Site on the Internet:
http://yucky.discovery.com/flash/index.html
Oh, and for higher level stuff for Biology as well as many other subjects, MIT offers a great deal of material through it's MIT Open Courseware project.
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm
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