Planning Curriculum - Science

For high school science, I am so happy that the textbook series we love offers many of their books read orally on MP3 CD's for an additional $15.00. An MP3 CD is different from the MP3 that you might normally think of. It's a disc, just like a CD, but it holds more and can be tracked more easily from chapter to chapter. Some CD players can play an MP3 CD (but not all can). When we were last in the market for a new one, an MP3 CD player was not all that expensive. However, you can also simply play an MP3 CD on your computer's CD Rom drive. The high school science series that works for us is a teachable, creationist set of textbooks written specifically for homeschool families by Dr. Jay Wile. I see that Dr. Wile has also written books for 7th and 8th grade now. You can learn more about all of these books at the Apologia Press website:
http://apologia.securesites.net/store/

The Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired offers a number of science resources at their website: http://www.tsbvi.edu/Education/index.htm#Subject

For elementary age students there are a number of textbooks on the homeschool market. But alternatively we might read good science books from the library (and have our child listen to tapes from the Library of Congress, National Library Service).

Nature walks and home science experiments are particularly good for capturing the interest of children, who usually learn better about the real world around them than just from reading a book. They can feel the textures of different leaves, feel the different textures under their feet, hear the sounds of nature.

Thanks to the TSBVI site, I discovered a website which gives a number of ideas for learning to appreciate science with other senses than visual. This includes a neat page where you can play the sound of different types of birds, each one identified and described. I highly recommend exploring this website: http://www.nhest.org/nonvis.html

You can download a free Teacher's Manual for Adapting Science Experiments for Blind and Visually Impaired Students, by going here: http://www.tsbvi.edu/Education/Manual2.doc