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Exploring God's Creation in Nature and Science
4Real Forums : Exploring God's Creation in Nature and Science

Topic: Noeo Science users - how's it going?

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Katie
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Joined: March 11 2005
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Posted: Jan 06 2009 at 8:42am \| IP Logged

I've been using the Chemistry II with my 5th grader. He's the kind of kid who reads encyclopedias so I went for the more in-depth course hoping he would learn something new, and he definitely has. We're enjoying it, and I'm following on mostly as written, except we do it in bigger chunks once or twice a week.

I do find it a little frustrating when the whole week is just "Read page ** and write or sketch what you learned in your notebook". I find that annoying for some reason - I suppose I want a bit more guidance or direction so I can just pass that on to my student. I think for our new semester starting on Monday I'm going to make worksheets with questions and answers and places for sketches for each lesson I feel needs more meat.

The other thing I did was put together a test for ds, mainly because he'll probably be in school next year and I don't want him to forget about studying for tests and taking them. I think he realized he had learned a lot but also realized he needed to study a bit to retain all that.

It's annoying that the chem kit they sent is still in a box and we're half way through. I think ds will be happy when we break that open!

So how are you all gtting along with it? Pros? Cons? Successes? What are your notebooks like? Any great ideas we can borrow?

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Mother of 5 in South America. No 6 due in April.

Rachel May
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Joined: June 24 2005
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Posted: Jan 06 2009 at 10:03am \| IP Logged

Thomas and Anthony are doing Physics II in 4th grade.

I allowed them to be too independent at the beginning of the year, so their lab books are a wreck. Some of the concepts are challenging, so instead of having them read the pages and summarize, I am moving towards a read aloud format for all assignments. I'm using cues from our grammar curriculum (Intermediate Language Lessons) to know what is appropriate for their written work at this age. But in my opinion, the strength of this curriculum is that it is read, discuss, and summarize with lots of hand on opportunities.

Yesterday we read the 2 pages in the Science Encyclopedia and discussed the concepts. Then I modeled for them how to summarize what was written. Today, they will write their summary in their own, and I will check it.

We were saving up the experiments and doing them every 8 weeks, but I would like to start doing them every Friday. The lab papers don't really work well with the experiment book we've been using. We'll see how they work with the lab kits.

One thing I've surrendered to this year is the fact that no boxed curriculum is exactly how I want it to be. With Noeo and our Latin program there are little bumps that would have bothered me other years, but this year I started to really see that my expectations of finding something that would work exactly as written was unrealistic. I don't know if you feel that way too.

I'm looking forward to finishing this year's science more successfully than we started it, and I would like to do Biology next year.

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Rachel
Thomas and Anthony (10), Maria (8), Charles (6), Cecilia (5), James (3), and Joseph (1)

folklaur
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Joined: Feb 07 2005
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Posted: Jan 06 2009 at 12:15pm \| IP Logged

Okay. Here goes.

Pros - schedule, good books, the kids are learning a lot, and they LIKE it. They ask to do Science first every single day.

Cons - the schedule is less than expected as far as extra notes, etc. Lather-rinse-repeat. I guess I am spoiled with Sonlight IG's. I expect an IG to have something more to it.

But I still like having the framework and not having to write it myself. Been there, done that, have accepted I am not that good at it.

margot helene
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Joined: Feb 26 2006
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Posted: Jan 08 2009 at 5:47pm \| IP Logged

I have two groups going: one doing the Physics II and the other Physics I. The younger kids are doing great - loving it! The older kids were getting too bogged down with the read and summarize . . . all their experiments are still in the box, too! (I guess most of them come late in the program???) And so we took a detour to KNex physics kits, which I had done with my older kids in the past. They built the models and then tried them out. After the break we will go back to the NOEO schedule.
Margot

Rachel May
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Joined: June 24 2005
Location: Kansas
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Posted: Jan 09 2009 at 2:56pm \| IP Logged

The physics II box experiments start at week 16, I think. The boys enjoyed building things from Gadgets and Gizmos, but I didn't enjoy them much. We've enjoyed those from the box and those that we got out of the Archimedes book.

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Rachel
Thomas and Anthony (10), Maria (8), Charles (6), Cecilia (5), James (3), and Joseph (1)

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