BFSU + Real Science Odyssey?

[SJ.]

I am curious if anyone here pairs BFSU and RSO...?

 

I plan to use BFSU as a framework and to ensure we hit the important points but pairing our lessons with RSO. Since BFSU is so planning intensive I feel like RSO will help us to stay on track especially during times when I do not have time to request library books, have materials, and pre-read the BFSU lesson. Thoughts?

[CrunchyGirl]

I'm thinking about it. I have both and have even laid them out/lined them up. I'm torn. I've gotten to the point where I feel like I am increasingly clear on what I want to accomplish with science with my kids and have been really inspired by llewma's posts. I'm not sure that doing RSO will really help. But then again, I'm with you. I'm worried about how hard BFSU will be to implement and keep thinking RSO's laid out lessons will help.

[Ecclecticmum]

I actually found BFSU quite simple after reading through it. I read through NEE (Nebel's Elementary Education) first, and found I pretty much agreed with him, and was already doing most of the things he mentioned, so maybe thats why. I already do our "extra" science pretty much the same, so I'm guessing thats why it wasn't a stretch for me. I also tend to "fly" better by the seat of my pants, than by planning.

 

I am planning to start using it next year (we already have KONOS plus Science Lit) for extra. I don't agree 100% with the way the child is supposed to respond to the situation, as its seperating them from their one-ness too early (but thats coming from my waldorf views) and making them step back from themselves to view the situation. So I am going to skew it a little to go more along the lines of Project Based Learning + Discussions (which is what we do here) so it "sounds" similar to what BFSU does, but isn't exactly the same. Meaning they will discover the "concept" and work through how to demonstrate it themselves .i.e. make their own experiment (from beginning to finish, me facilitating but not "teaching") to mimic or show their unerstanding of the concept.

 

Hopefully I'm making enough sense, my mind is only running on half-charge, lol.

 

I really think (of course depending upon your background with science, and how things "get done" in your house) that BFSU can be as complicated or as simple as you make it. I could open up that book tommorrow, read/scan over the first "lesson", put the book away, and just discuss it for a few minutes whilst getting items out of cupboard in the kitchen, then after my explanation, plopping the "ingrediants" down in front of the children and either showing an experiment the book & then letting them play with the experiment & concept whilst I do housework, or just letting them figure out by trial and error from the ingrediants. Even simpler is just to discuss the concept, and be done. Making it complicated is making flow charts, lesson plans for the whole year, pulling extras from the web, pinning different experiments for each thread and concept, grabbing 5 library books & 2 videos on each subject, and spending a week to a month on one concept because you have packed so much in.

 

As for using BFSU as a base....it really wouldn't work. I have seen people again and again think they can use BFSU as their framwork, then grab another program (ES, RSO, RS4K, Apologia, whatever) and start ripping apart the "supplement" and trying to match it up with BFSU's concepts. I would suggest either using RSO as your base, and using BFSU as a teaching guide to giv e *YOU* a bit more background on the specific RSO concept, or just having the programs completely seperate and not trying to incorporate them. Also doing two different science programs (esp with one being BFSU (of course depending upon how you use BFSU)) is going to be a lot of hard work. Most people doing similar things either burn out before they start, drop one program, or start out all bushy-tailed, photographing their pretty experiments, adding online lesson plans and goodies, and showing the world how wonderful they are going with juggling all of these fabulous things, only to disappear from the internet a while because they hit major burnout, and quietly come back without said science programs, leaving their plans and links mostly unfinished. Its a planning and burnout rut you can easily get stuck in. (Its very easy to get stuck in a *fab*-u-lous planning loop, making all these exciting things, then you are nearly sick of the program by the time you start, and trying to get all those things done, just leads you to either collapsing or getting frustrated/angry during schooltime, making school not a pleasant place to be.)

 

What about...do you school year round? Perhaps doing something like RSO during "schooltime" and then during summer or extended breaks, meandering around with BFSU, this gives you more time to slowly discover and have fun with a concept from BFSU. Just a thought.

 

:grouphug: Sometimes there are just too many good programs out there, making it impossible to choose just one. :svengo:

[momma2three]

I bought both, and can't really figure out how to integrate them. But I like both, so I'm torn. I'm thinking of doing them as two separate strands, and not trying to integrate them. Like, if I do science 3 days a week (which seems about right), spending 2 days doing RSO, and 1 doing BFSU, and just sort of treating them like two separate subjects. Which they kind of are: one is integrated science, the other is a very specific Life Science course.

[Wheres Toto]

I agree with Electicmum - it really can't be done. At least not without so much work that the idea becomes ridiculous. I tried. Repeatedly. I have all three Level 1 RSO books and the first BFSU book. They are just too different in their approach, in what is included. Right now, we just use RSO with a ton of supplements, and we don't finish a book and move onto the next. We're kind of doing it as an interest-led unit studies approach, at least for now.

 

I kind of like the idea of doing RSO as our main program and BFSU as a supplement, not matched up but as a completely different approach. I may have to pull it out and think about that some more.