Honing Your Scientific Skills, A Review

In our home, we have been fans of products from In the Hands of a Child for a long time.  I can attest that the lapbooking and notebooking products they sell are of the highest quality and the most reasonable prices.  Owners Kimm Bellotto and Niki McNeil began In the Hands of a Child in 2002 by trying to answer the question "What exactly is a lapbook?."  11 years later, what began with one lapbook has become a huge line of lapbook and notebook products for kids of all ages.  We received the Project Pack entitled "Honing Your Scientific Skills" for purposes of review. Honing Your Scientific Skills (6th-10th) retails for $12, but is currently on special for $5.
           My 13 year old is not a huge fan of science if it involves a lot of reading.  She is much more the hands on type child. I had been struggling with how to teach her one of the most essential skills in science - how to use the scientific method.  We worked on it last year with the co-op class she attended, but she really didn't grasp it.  When we  began using our project pack, I think she was a little skeptical, simply because the word 'science' was involved.   Once we really got into the project, she was hooked. This particular product is designed for kids in grades 6-10.  If you follow the suggested schedule for reading and working on parts of the project, it takes about 6 days to complete.  Since it is still summertime, and our schooling has been much more relaxed, we stretched it out and completed the project over 2 weeks, doing a little bit each day.
     Since my daughter is 13, she didn't want to assemble the project as a  traditional lapbook.  She has done many of those in the past, complete with the pasted together file folders, and wanted to do a more 'grown-up' project this time.  So, she completed each of the parts to the project and glued them onto cardstock, hole-punched the pages, and bound them in a folder. Each day, we read from the provided study guide pages together and discussed what we had read.  I love the way that the project pack is designed. All of the information we needed was at our fingertips.  The suggested schedule shows the parent which vocabulary words to look at each day, what topics to read about, which new activities to complete, and which activities to continue from a previous day.  It is so user friendly!  After the introductory material, we covered each step in the scientific method one-by-one.  Activities included many different types of foldables and even an experiment about plants to help students test their newfound knowledge of the scientific method.  Including the experiment, there were 20 activities to complete.  As a teacher, I think using the foldables for small chunks of information is a great way for students to focus their attention and process what they are learning.

     Caitlyn worked very independently on her project.  She will be using it quite a bit this year as a reference during her science class. I highly recommend this project pack for any homeschooling family with kids in the appropriate age range.  The only outside supplies you need are scissors, glue, cardstock or file folders, crayons / colored pencils (we like color), pen or pencil, and a few supplies from around the house for the experiment.  We received the pack as the downloadable version (lapbook e-book), but it is available in 5 different formats ranging from totally downloadable, to a cd format, to a combination print / cd format, all the way up to a totally printed format.  Prices vary slightly based on the format you select.  I love the download format because I can print what I need, and reprint if need be.  This time, we only printed the foldables / mini books.  Caitlyn and I did all of the reading from the provided study guide on the computer.  This saved paper and ink. Be sure to check out the In the Hands of a Child website thoroughly because they have specials offered regularly and have membership options available. 
     Our wonderful crew members have been using many of the lapbooks and Note Packs from In the Hands of a Child.   To read their reviews, click on the banner below.