Science Crisis!!

I'm in the middle of a crisis over 8th grade science. I was getting Ga'hoole Girl's science assignments for the week ready and realized that Modules 5-8 are about geology, archaeology, and paleontology. While Dr. Wile does a pretty good job of presenting Old Earth and Young Earth perspectives side by side, I'm not real happy with the prominence of the YEC point of view. Then, she is supposed to do life science, but she has done a good bit of life science in the last few years and will be doing biology and marine biology in the next couple of years. In addition, I'm getting more and more disatisfied with the whole read the textbook and answer questions. That really doesn't do much to promote understanding, to my mind. EEK!

I checked out Reasons to Believe, but they don't have anything very useful. Amazon has lots of textbooks, but I've heard so much awful stuff about textbooks produced for the public schools, that I don't want to go that route (and I don't have the background to know if the book is any good). I did find a few interesting looking trade books at Amazon, and Usborne has a book that might work.

I've decided for now that we're going to do Module 4 - on simple machines. Then, I've ordered some books on Earth Science and geology from the library. Then, I'll decide about just using the library (and museums and internet) or purchasing books or curricula. If nothing else, maybe I'll just have her read interesting science books and write about what she's learning.