A recent post on one of the Waldorf homeschooling email groups I subscribe to reminded me of this wonderful book on teaching chemistry using a Waldorf approach.
Waldorf teachers use a phenomenological approach in teaching the sciences. So rather than reading about a particular concept and then conducting an experiment to prove it true, Waldorf students conduct the demonstrations first, observe them and then see if a conclusion arises.
This approach makes the teaching of chemistry a much simpler task than it seems. We don’t need to abstractly learn concepts and the physical processes behind them. We just need to do things and observe. It’s really lots of fun.
This book by David Mitchell goes through the demonstrations you’ll conduct throughout 7th and 8th grades, along with the conclusions you and your students may come to. His instructions are just clear enough without feeling pedantically step-by-step. I particularly appreciated his instructions for building a lime kiln. Just mentioning it brings back such wonderful memories.
Have fun with chemistry in the upper grades!
Oh, I just realized that my Amazon link sells this book for over $100. Find it here at the Rudolf Steiner Bookstore for $26.95. While I was there checking it our I also found that they sell Mikko Bojarsky’s science handbooks! Mikko’s work is positively golden! The best Waldorf science guides on the planet!
AWSNA sells it for $24 and RSC bookstore for $27.
Hi Meredith – more amazing resources! So excited to get to the later grades to use all these awesome books!!!
I also wanted to let you know that I left you a “Beautiful Blogger Award” at my site
You so deserve it!!!! Thank you for all you do!
Hugs,
Jen