The nineteenth century was a fascinating time for scientific theory and new discoveries, from Russian, Dmitri Mendeleev’s Periodic Table, (which arranged all the known elements according to their atomic weight), to Louis Pasteur’s discovery that microscopic organisms caused disease, exciting progress was being made in all areas of science. Perhaps the most well known, not to mention most controversial theory, was that of Charles Darwin. Darwin wrote The Origin of Species in 1859. It was an immediate best seller which outlined his belief that all species of life have evolved over time from common ancestors. This is otherwise known as natural selection and forms the basis of our modern day Theory of Evolution.
Not being a Christian who avoids tricky subjects, I plunged right in to learning more about Charles Darwin. If we’d had more time I would have bought The Origin of Species for the older ones to read and discuss. We didn’t so we made do with a couple of films about his life and a Lent course based on one of the films.
Books About Charles Darwin:
Videos We Watched About Charles Darwin:
The Lent Study We (almost) Completed About Charles Darwin and his Theory of Natural Selection:
We did (most of) this course during our morning meeting time, leaving lots of time for discussion. Charlotte did not enjoy this at all. She is firm in her belief that the Word of God is just that and requires no explanation or embellishment. Nevertheless, I felt it was important to look at and discuss. Unfortunately, half way through the study the book mysteriously disappeared. Charlotte swears blind she didn’t take it and hide it……but I have my doubts. That daughter of mine will do anything to get out of doing any kind of science, however well disguised in literature it is 😉
Lastly we watched the following video for half an hour each day until we’d finished it (even Charlotte enjoyed this one):
Other Posts on Angelicscalliwags about Scientists of the Nineteenth Century
I had a bit more resistance to this week than I would have first thought. So much for parents of homeschooled children trying to protect their children from the theory of evolution. In our house it is more like the children wanting to protect their mother from the possible pitfalls of said theory!
Next week we are covering the very innocuous David Livingstone 🙂
I love Charlotte’s reaction. Here it’s something similar. We’re atheists, but I decided that we would be studying world religions this year. Want to guess who does not want to work on that part of their studies? Right, the boys. With disappearing books and all that too. It must be a common thing to hide stuff that they don’t like LOL
I imagine Wendy will be like that when we study Darwin in more depth.