Our first year with Dr. Jay Wile’s science series proved amazing, even for my daughter who struggles a bit with making connections.
Since my daughter was in the 7th grade this year, we began her studies with Dr. Wile with his General Science text.
Wow!
Practical for the homechooler, this course clearly teaches science in addition to apologetics!
Initially rewriting our classical history curriculum this year to include Young Earth theory, I was delighted that Wile’s approach to General Science completed undergirded, reinforced, and massively strengthened my lessons!
As a result, my daughter learned to clearly articulate:
- the difference between Old Earth versus Young Earth theories
- why there are fallacies to Old Earth theory
- why Young Earth theories best support Scripture
FAVORITE ASPECTS OF THIS CURRICULUM
After two years of studying with Dr. Wylie’s books, we’ve seen lots of consistencies that are helpful.
His books read like a conversation, as if he’s talking to students instead of at them.
His experiments are approachable, with guidance and expectations explained, while using common household items.
As a result we can actually be successful with most of them.
Multimedia discs are available for purchase, which allows dd to watch cool movies and graphics that pertain to her studies.
That’s more than I got in public school, even in honors classes!
MP3 audio files are available, that she makes great use of since she has vision issues.
At the end of each chapter is a study guide which helps her determine which parts she needs to further study for the test.
Practically for the test, Dr. Wile explained the value of memorizing the vocabulary, to communicate and understand scientific concepts.
DIALETICALLY MAKING CONNECTIONS WITH IEW
After completing the experiments, my daughter wrote a KWO (key word outline – a valuable technique she learned from Institute in Excellence in Writing) in preparation to write a lab report.
The write up of the lab report helped her think through the connections of the whys and hows of the experiment, a dialectic aspect of classical education, which helped cement information for the chapter test.
EPILOGUE 2024
Although the old curriculum we used is no longer in print as Dr. Wylie wrote it, he now has a new science series through Berean Builders that my daughter hopes to use with her daughter when they start to homeschool.
