Educating the Whole Child: Science
As in the other cultural studies, the study of scientific topics, such as botany, zoology, and physical sciences, is integrated, multi-sensory, and follows a path of, concrete and basic, to abstract and complex. Efforts are made at every level to achieve a strong balance between explorations of real materials and use of print sources, models, and charts to develop scientific understanding of the way the world works.
In botany, for example, primary children analyze a real plant into basic parts: corolla, calyx, stem, leaf, root. With pictures and models, each part is then broken into more parts: types of leaves, venation of leaves, margins of leaves. In the elementary class this knowledge of parts is used to understand functions of the various parts and systems of plant classification. Additionally, there has been a study of the needs of plants and the contribution of plants to life on earth, so that botany is integrated with geology, chemistry, nutrition, geography, and so on.
At the middle school level, students follow a two year course of study in the sciences. One year includes primarily earth and life sciences while the second year focus is on physical science and chemistry. Students learn in a variety of ways, including participating in lessons and labs, scrutinizing demonstrations, reading from texts or other sources, developing hypotheses, conducting experiments, responding to questions, solving problems, building models, analyzing data, listening to podcasts, researching people or events, discussing concepts and ideas, listening, thinking, and writing.
