Planning Biology Course

I have been busy trying to figure out how to adapt a public school high school biology curriculum to our homeschool. Why am I doing this?

Last year, I invested over $150 on this as part of buying required curriculum for my son's class through a homeschool co-op. I don't want to start anew by buying some other company's curriculum.

After being frustrated by the student materials I owned I decided to fork over more money to buy teacher's manuals. The teacher materials for school curriculum are so expensive. Yet, once the used books purchased at a discount were in my hands I realized that to try to not use them was foolish. Much of the planning and all the answer keys are all prepared for me now and a lot of the burden of designing a course has been lifted from my shoulders.

I want a course that is in line with the SAT II biology test. A popular Christian homeschool biology curriculum's contents are not in line with the content in the test so I ruled using that company's product out. Chilefly, the regular biology high school course lacks human body content and evolution is missing from the scope and sequence.

As is the case with all public school curriculum to adapt it for home use takes hours and hours of work on behalf of the homeschool parent-teacher. When I do this to myself I kick myself and swear I will never use public school curriculum again. Really, the homeschool curriculum designers have done a lot of work for us and lay it out in an easy to follow manner. The cost of the homeschool curriculum is always far less than the cost of materials created for the school market.

There is not a homeschool curriculum for high school biology which matches the college board's SAT subject test contents. (I wish there was one.) Why no one has created this yet is beyond my understanding. I have heard that Dr. Keller (a Christian) of Real Science for Kids was going to create one (which was going to be secular as are her other products) but it if that is true, it is not yet on the market.

At a friend's suggestion I purchased a SAT II Biology test prep book. I plan to check with that to make sure that the content being taught in the biology text is in line with the test's contents. I will have my son take the Biology SAT II in June 2012. That deadline will also force us to keep on track and not slack off with his home studies.

A majority of my time is being spent figuring out which labs to do and getting the necessary lab supplies in place. A homeschool mom acquaintence asked me how planning was going and when I told her I was struggling with biology labs she lent me her Apologia lab kit and Apoligia dissection kit and gave me a bunch of dead critters soaked in formaldehyde to use. I am grateful for her generosity, as that will save us some money. It is also proof of why talking to people and why giving an honest answer to questions is a good thing to do. If I had just said "it is going fine" then I'd not have gone home with a giant bag of lab equipment in hand.

With me as the teacher of this course I am sure I will be learning more biology now than I ever did in public high school!