Our 9th Grade Homeschool Biology Plans | Curriculum & Resources We're Using for Biology this Year

[music] Hey everybody, welcome to the Wild Way. I'm Jessica. Today's video is going to be all about the resources that we have and are hopefully going to be using for biology and our homeschool this year. I have a lot of stuff because I like stuff and we are maximalists and I like having books and games and resources and all of these things on hand so that I can pull from them when it comes time for homeschooling. That doesn't mean that you need all of this. Obviously, you don't, but I like stuff. So, the two main things that we will be using for biology this year are watch and learn biology, which is a crash course companion guide. So, this basically is going to give Emily the ability to use the crash course biology playlist and she will read, watch the video, and then respond. This is going to be the like spine that I kind of base everything off of. So, this is like the syllabus that we will be following. And anytime a topic comes up when I can fit in a game or a book or a hands-on resource, I will basically be using this as the kind of like backbone. In addition to that, to make this a full credit and to make it biology with lab for her high school transcripts, we are pairing it with the complete introduction to biology um experiment kit, if you will, from home science tools. So this is the booklet that comes with it and then this is the box basically that you get. So everything that you need is in this box. So that is basically what I am pairing it with. So we will for the most part be using watch and learn biology as the like main component and then the introduction to biology from home science tools as the lab component. Now in addition to that I will also be strewing the discovery deck biology basics. So this will just have some questions like how do scientists investigate living things? How do plants make their own food? What do enzymes do? Why do different cells have different jobs? Not because I don't think that the videos that she'll be watching here are complete enough because I obviously do. I just like the idea of her watching other videos from different sources to get a different take on some of the same topics. Kind of like having different opinions when it comes to teachers. Um, okay. Let's talk about the books. For reference books, I only grabbed two. I seriously limited myself, you guys. So, I have the Smithsonian Super Simple Biology. I really like this one because it's split in a really like way that makes sense. like the different sections. So that's all about cells and there's a respiration enzymes, nervous system, and it has, you know, decent graphics and like little bite-size information. I felt like it would be a really great addition and a great way to look things up. And then because I am a visual learner and Emily gets some of that for me, I also grabbed the Baron's Visual Learning Biology, which is an illustrated guide for all ages. It says that it is a stepby-step visual guide to biology with clear illustrations. And I actually do feel like it is. Um, so like here we have classification. And let's see if I can find one. Um, trying to find a better Well, here's a pretty good one. Like the genetic inheritance. So, it's not just, you know, the information. Like, it has a pretty good Oh, here's a good one for the cells. Like, you get a really good illustrations. So, those were kind of the two reference books that I grabbed to use alongside biology in case we needed to reference anything. And then Emily loves graphic novels. Like, they're her favorite thing right now. So, I also picked up um I went through all of the science comics, which is a graphic novel that she really enjoys, and I grabbed everything that would work with biology. So, um I'm not going to assign these. Basically, these will just be her free reads throughout the year. Um I will kind of put like a post-it note on them of when if there's like a specific tiein, like when we do this lesson or wait until we do this lesson, I'll put like a little post-it note on it. Otherwise, she can just free these whenever. So I have plagues, the brain, the digestive system, trees, prehistoric mammals, dinosaurs, coral reefs, elephants, frogs, sharks, crows, bats. Polar bears, whales, birds of prey, cats, dogs, and deep sea creatures. Now, we already had a lot of the animal based ones. Um, so she may have read some of them, but the ones she hasn't read, she'll definitely be reading through. Um, and then let's talk about hands-on activities. So, this we already had, but I'm pulling it to make a note to use it. Um, is the cosmos genetics in DNA lab. It says it has 20 different experiments. So, that will be a good addition to the other experiments that we have. And then I did grab this 4D structure animal cell as a hands-on activity for her to do as well as the 4D structure plant cell. Then also just a few other things. I got 25 prepared biology slides. Um, and I'm going to make some sort of like um microscope like notebooking page, if you will, to go along with these. Um, and then two like kind of random things that I grabbed cuz I thought it would be fun. Um, I got a rapid test soil kit. So, I thought her and Kevin could test our soil just as a fun hands-on way to do something. And then I also got a complete water test kit. Um, this seems kind of weird, but when we travel like anywhere, we always collect water and we use the water from anywhere we travel um to do watercolors with. So like lakes, beaches, um, mountains, springs, basically almost everywhere we go, there's some sort of water. And so we're always collecting it so that we can watercol with it. And so I thought it would be kind of fun to do since we're collecting the water anyway to test it. And so basically it came with like this sheet where you would record well now I'm not going to be able to find it. Anyway, it came with this sheet where like you would record all of the different things for water like for example the EPA um primary standard um and secondary standards and all of that. And so I basically typed all that up and made multiple coffees um and put like dates and locations and she is just going to test the water like anywhere we go. So we recently went on a lake trip this summer and she did her first one and so she already tested it. Um and then I just kind of thought that was cool. So there's not a whole rhyme or reason to it and it's basically little strips kind of like you would use to test the pool. Um, and they test for 16 different parameters. So, just a fun additional thing to add in. And then for games, um, actually have quite a few because there was some really good ones. I was excited about that cuz I was worried we weren't going to find a ton of games for like biology or chemistry or some of the high school things. So, I was excited for what I found. The first one that I found is Who Knows Biology Better? This is kind of a trivia based game. Um, I don't know that we're going to necessarily play it exactly the way you're supposed to play it. We like to play trivia during dinner. And we pretty much play every trivia game the same way. Um, I read the questions or we take turns reading the questions and whoever answers gets to keep the card. And whoever has the most cards at the end of dinner is the winner that night. Like that's just kind of how we've always played. We use guest and 10. We use different trivia. We use um Professor Noggin. That's, like I said, it's just the way we've always played. So, these are just biology based trivia, and I thought they would make a great addition to our nighttime trivia that would happen to tie in to what we're already learning. The way you're supposed to play it is there's like basically all the questions are A or B, and everybody gets like an A or B card and you lay them down to see who knows it better. We probably won't do that when we play Professor Noggin. Um, we do roll the dice, but other than that, we don't do a whole lot of other things because we're eating dinner. So like us all having all these extra cards to move just makes it complicated. We're just using it like trivia more than likely. Okay. Then we also have anatomy flux organ attack. Peptide a protein building game. Viralence an infection card game. Sorry. an infectious card game. We have Biomas. We have nature which is adapting to the changing environment. Cytosis. This one is a cell biology game. Then we have cellulose which is a plant cell biology game. So similar we have genotype and this one is um a medilian genetics game. And then the last game that I have is planted which is a game of nature and nurture. So, that is pretty much all of the resources that I have on hand for biology for our upcoming homeschool year. But if you have an amazing book or game or hands-on resource that I missed, please let me know down in the comments.