Science seems to be a scary topic to homeschooling parents. Thinking about science in terms of a secular education rather than a biblical one may cause this. There are three main stages in the development of any subject, including science: 1- the grammar or knowledge of the basic facts, 2- the logic or understanding the relationship between these facts and 3- the rhetoric or wisdom in applying what is understood.

During the grammar school years, it is easy to study science. When your child is 3-10 years old they can identify God's Creation as they encounter it. Field guides of snakes and bugs are interesting for both the parent and child to peruse and take along on walks. Identifying clouds, weather patterns, butterflies, body parts, rock collections and more all constitute the beginning of studying science. As time permits, there are a lot of good kitchen science books in libraries and homeschooling catalogs that you can enjoy with your child. Just work on developing children's scientific vocabulary and reading abilities.

During the logic stage it becomes important to develop an understanding of science. "Why?" is a question frequently asked by little children and answered by their parent. Now the roles need to reverse. The parent needs to develop clear reasoning skills with their middle school children by helping them learn to think about what they are studying. Parents can ask questions like "Why are there hurricanes in the fall?" or "Why does ungodly behavior lead to disease?" They can also encourage scientific research skills by asking their child to prove that paper plates are cheaper to use than doing the dishes or to plot the size of a seed compared to its fruit, for example.

We spend two years putting together personal research skills by asking subjects both assigned and/or of interest to our children. By doing a topic a week or month you can set a reasonable deadline for a certain amount of research to be completed and still cover as much as a textbook.

The problem with textbooks in a classical education is that they continue to ask the child to read and regurgitate information. Instead, having them pose a question for themselves (a hypothesis) and then discover the answer through reasoning with the direction from a parent. A good source for a parent/teacher for the grammar and logic stage is The Nature Study Handbook by Anne Comstack ($24.99). The book provides pertinent details, illustrations and leading questions on just about every subject in nature for parent/teachers to use with their children.

After studying nature for a year, we move onto physical science -- magnetism, gravity, and electricity. The emphasis during the middle school years is research skills development and writing ability instead of length of work produced.

In the rhetorical stage (high school) most of us think of lab work and feel unqualified. As an aside, poll all the people you know with science related degrees and see how many of them work in a lab. Lab work is a very small, though important, part of science. Before lab work can begin research work must be done, papers written, budgets verified, and presentations given.

We do lab work in a classical homeschool but it is not the emphasis. We concentrate on understanding creation and God's plan for it. We observe how God uses man's interest in science to glorify Him through research and writing details, logically explaining hypotheses, procedures and results. Therefore, we spend a semester studying the History of Science while learning the parts of a research paper then a semester studying the creation/evolution issue while writing a long term paper before we move onto Biology, Chemistry, and Physics. In Biology, we concentrate on lab work and writing our own biology notebook.