Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Finding Living Science Books

O.K. I admit that finding true living science books is a bit of a challenge. Unlike math and history, both of which have more living books than a child could possibly read, science is heavily dominated by experiment and fact books. Most of the really good living science books relate to nature studies, a subject that lends itself well to the style. Even the biographies are more life facts than science facts. Still, gems can be found among the rubble.

Here are a few things to help you in your search:
  • I tag books "Living Science" and "Science Spines" on LibraryThing and I add informative notes whenever possible.
  • I will be blogging more about Living Science Authors and Living Science Series here.
  • You can see my book reviews pop-up when your mouse moves over a book on the Shelfari book shelf on the left; you can scroll through the books with a button at the bottom of the shelf. These are also tagged "Living Science" and "Science Spines"

These tags and reviews reflect our family's experience; you may have a completely different take on a book. Still, I hope you can at least get an idea of a book's general nature so you can decide if it is worth your time checking out. (I do have an Amazon Associate number that will help support this work should you buy a book through the link in the pop-up. I thank you if you should choose to do so.)

A great reference source for living books in all subjects is For the Love of Literature by Maureen Wittmann. Simply Charlotte Mason has a book finder that hopefully will have more user reviews as time goes on. There's always Amazon's comment section for each book, too, that can be a source of good information once you know a title you're interested in.

Hopefully this will help you find living books to more easily study science without a curriculum. Please comment on any other sources you use to find living science books!

9 comments:

Sherry said...

Thanks, Kris. This is helpful! We are gathering our books for next year and there are so many that its hard to know which ones are good!

Sherry

Kris said...

Enjoy--I pray your homeschooling is blessed by these books!

Prince Andrew and the Queen Mum said...

Thanks...I am starting my own librarything because I really liked your idea. I am starting w/ the science books I have. I did put a link on my blog to it. (the growing fruit blog.. http://www.growing-fruit.blogspot.com/ )

I think i only have about 30 books in there right now...probably not all living. I realized after reading your blog and looking at your libarything that we really DO do science! I just need to focus it a bit more. THANKS!

Prince Andrew and the Queen Mum said...

I could not find the living science or spine tags on the librarything. i did find them on the shelfari. am i missing something?

you are really filling a niche here.

Kris said...

I already have your blog's RSS in my favorites--I'll be adding it on to my personal blog, too.

What is your LibraryThing name? Send me an invite to be listed as a friend.

I just put in the few books that I can say with certainty are spines, mostly high school. I have several more middle school titles to add. Living Science is there, though. Click on the Tags tab and you'll see them in alphabetical order. HTH!

Prince Andrew and the Queen Mum said...

Hi Kris
My librarything name is growingfruit. again I just started it. adding some of the science books we have in the house at the moment.

if you add my blog- make sure it is the NEW one that I put above comment. I just 'revamped' and I have my old one still (www.rdisuperparents.blogspot) which may look like it is the main one because it has 300+ posts but I'm going to the new one now. I split my blog topics up and the growingfruit.blogspot.com is the primary learning one;)

Ms Eva said...

What a great resource! Thank you so much! I look forward to exploring LibraryThing more fully. : )

Jamie {See Jamie blog} said...

I've just recently learned of library thing, and look forward to exploring it! Thanks!

Barb said...

I love using Librarything.com to categorize my books. Many times I even forget that I have a resource until I pull up the particular tag.

This is a great resource. Thanks for sharing it on the carnival.

Barb-Harmony Art Mom