Science is one of the subjects that we are doing a bit differently this year. When my oldest did her Science my son would always sit and listen and often even ended up doing worksheets alongside his sister. So he actually has already covered quite a bit of the Science that he would in theory need to do this year. But at the same time my son is someone who needs to be challenged so I am not just going to say Science is done lets leave it alone. Instead we are going to add in some extras and hopefully challenge him a bit more.

The idea of Science is 3 parts – firstly we will revise / go over a few sections that I think he needs to look at. For this we will use the Activate 2 range. Out of all the KS3 Science books this range is my favourite to use with my kids – it is easy to use – the explanations are concise and they have workbooks which link it to the student books. So my son tends to read the explanation page in the student book and then he will do the corresponding page in this workbook and he marks it himself (answers are at the back of the workbooks). This will be revision for him but I feel like there are a few sections we need to revise so we will do that.

Sticking with the idea of revising what he already did with his sister I want to also include some “more relaxed” methods. So we will be digging out our KS3 Biology Scramble game and playing that. Oaka Books have board games for Chemistry and Physics for KS3 but as this stage I just have the Biology one. We have used this game before and both my kids really enjoyed it (In fact I have to say we have used a LOT of the Oaka Board games and they have all been big hits with my kids and myself). But honestly if you are looking for a more relaxed way to revise some Science then you should really look at these games.

Then he will continue with the weekly home education Science lessons from Theatre of Science. He enjoys these lessons and I love the way Lara does them. She takes a topic and they work on it for 6 weeks so she goes into quite a bit of detail. During her lesson she explains the topic, often does some sort of activity with the kids and then she normally provides a worksheet with some questions which the kids work through and she then goes through the answers. It is roughly 45 minutes long and it is really well done. I really recommend this.

And then thirdly something a bit different. We are going to start working through the IGCSE subject Environmental Management. I am not sure if he will write the exam but the topics they cover under Environmental Management are topics that really interest him. So I thought why not, it will challenge him and he will find it interesting. I will still deciding which resources we will will use for this but I will share a post once I have them.

So our Year 8 Science will be a bit different this year, some revision of what he already covered due to the fact that he enjoyed working with his older sister, some fun lessons from Threatre of Science and some new challenging topics under Environmental Management.

If you want to see what resources we used with my daughter in her Year 8 this is that post – Year 8 Science.