Homeschool Freebies

Serendip , an information exchange dedicated to providing support and exploration in science, education and social organization, has provided excellent resources for teaching biology.  Although they have many other educational resources, the Hands-on Teaching Activities for Biology are excellent and engaging.

The “hands-on, minds-on” approach of the activities provided caters to the philosophy that students will learn and retain more if both their hands and minds are actively engaged in the learning process.  The biology activities and lessons were written by a retired professor at the University of Pennsylvania in cooperation with a grad student at the same school.  Creationists take note:  These are secular lessons and activities so if you stumble across something you don’t like, don’t flay me.  You were warned.

Most of the activities and experiments listed can be performed with few supplies, but any supplies needed also reference places to obtain them.

All of the teaching guides for the are made available in PDF format and are available for download/printing.

Topics and activities are listed in a sequence that would be suggested for building a solid foundation in biology.  You do not need to follow the sequence; it is simply recommended as an effective building block sequence.

A few of the covered topics include:

• Is Yeast Alive?
• Cellular respiration in Yeast
• Genetics
• Mitosis, Meiosis, and Fertilization
• DNA
• From Gene to Protein-Transcription and Translation
• Evolution by Natural Selection
• Antibiotic Resistance

Head on over and take a look .  Comments are welcome on their site, and they use feedback from teachers and those who use the lessons to improve and update the activities periodically.