You may have noticed, or maybe stopped noticing, the tabs at the top of the blog under the banner that have led to blank pages, or at least previously blank pages.  I have finally gotten around to actually creating those pages.

The structure of each is similar.  The top part of the page is topic-related picture and two links, the top icon is linked to my Diigo list of website for that subject and the bottom icon is linked to my LibraryThing book list for it. Below all that is the Our Favorites section with resources I have found especially helpful.

Hopefully those pages will help you find more homeschool science resources to enjoy with your family and co-op. Click on them and let me know what you think!

Blessings,

Updated Design and Tabs!

I have long been looking to collect my resources in one place.  I have Diigo links, an Amazon Store with my favorite books, and LibraryThing.  To top it off, I never could get the header to this blog to display the way I wanted.  I downloaded some code to make tabs but hadn't gotten around to hacking my template (nor would I soon.)

Today I discovered you could add tags with Blogger In Draft, as well as other nifty things, and...here is the new look.

I plan on using the tabs to link over to Diigo or LibraryThing rather than reconstructing everything anew here.  I hope to get to that sometime, or at least get something crude going until I can polish it off.  My hope is to have each page divided by level--maybe even subtopic.  We'll see how it ends up, but at least I have a start.

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!

Seeing my book reviews on LibraryThing

If you are browsing the catalogue, you may or may not see my reviews depending on the display style--and you certainly won't see them if you select my suggested view. Some of the reviews are just hyperlinks back to here; the problem is, links display but are not active when viewing the catalogue.

Here's what to do, even if you have no clue what I'm talking about: When at AtHomeScience at LibraryThing, click on the profile tab. The fourth item in my profile is "books reviewed." Click on that see all the reviews with their active hyperlinks.

Library Hints: making the most of tags

When you're at the LibraryThing web site, click on a tag to see all books with that tag. You can view all tags clicking on the "tags" tab at the top of the display.

About the Library

LibraryThing is a free site in which you can get and display book information. You can also add tags, comments, ratings, and reviews. Since At Home Science has books at its core, the information at LibraryThing is half of this project! To get to the At Home Science Library, click on the LibraryThing icon. If you click on a picture, and if the picture is supplied by Amazon, you will be brought to Amazon.com; if you click on the title/author, you will be brought to LibraryThing social data for that book (owners, reviews, tag cloud, and such.)

I use the tags for subject categorization. Here’s a list:

Activities (books with experiments or other activities)
Biology (processes, internal anatomy, classification, microscopic life)
Biomes (describes flora, fauna, and geologic features together)
Chemistry
Earth
Natural History
Nature (external, visual features and habits of plants and animals)
Physics
Space
Weather

Other tags describe the general reader level:

Preschool (up to first grade and is mostly picture books or short texts)
Beginner (present an introduction to a topic without going too in depth)
Intermediate (books contain more extensive and in-depth information)
Advanced (books are for high school level)

I don’t find ages or grades to be as useful as this system. You may have a 5th grader that has never covered a topic before and may do better starting out with a beginner book. You may have a 3rd grader that loves science and is quite ready for intermediate books and activities.

I also use other tags and comments and labels to describe the books, like:

Literature (a story with a narrative style)
Resource
Pictorial (photographs/illustrations are particularly good)
Series names

This is the labeling scheme as it currently stands. I will, of course, edit this document to reflect any changes that may occur. Feedback on this is greatly appreciated!