Science Goals

I use Elemental Science (ES) as our main science spine. The curriculum is written by another homeschool mom who has a background in biochemistry. She has built the curriculum according to the subjects and grade levels suggested in The Well-Trained Mind (WTM) (my absolute favorite homeschooling reference, by the way). It runs on a four-year cycle: biology, Earth science/ Astronomy, chemistry, physics. These subjects are repeated for a total of three cycles (grades 1-4, 5-8, and 9-12), each time going more in-depth.

You’ll notice that our science goals are short. Science has always been my favorite subject, and I’ve instilled that love of science in my kids. So, we have covered science topics pretty thoroughly through the years (sometimes doing three different science programs a a time: Elemental science, small-group science, and large-group science). So, I focus my goals each year on the area of science that correlates with Elemental Science and WTM. The Investigation and Experimentation portion of the CA standards gets covered through our ES and small-group science. Other than that, I just include whatever CA standards I’m not confident we’ve already hit in the other science areas.

So, for Ryan’s second grade goals, we focus on Earth science and astronomy: