TrilliumSimile Posted January 22, 2018 Share Posted January 22, 2018 Right now my 2nd grader and I are using the trial membership lessons. My child really likes it, and I'm considering subscribing. I have a couple of questions for anyone who uses it: *How are you planning this out? Do you just open up a lesson and see if you need supplies for the activity, then start teaching? I find the design of the website a little difficult to navigate. Ideally, I want to be able to see what a lesson is about, and what the activity is meant to teach and what I need for it without having to watch the whole thing beforehand. Also, am I missing a way to skip past the video to see the screen that shows up at the end, with the optional activities? Do you maybe see a different layout once you subscribe? I am easily confused. :huh: *Particularly a question for people who've looked at/used both Mystery Science and Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding, how do you feel the two compare? I admire the philosophy and sequence of BFSU, but I think I need some handholding to get started. *From the planning guide, it looks like you're meant to do a mystery a week. Is that how you're planning it? Do you use the optional extras to expand on the lesson to spread it over multiple days? Are you doing more than one mystery a week? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shawthorne44 Posted January 22, 2018 Share Posted January 22, 2018 I did a co-op class on it. You could forward the video to the end to see it. I think there was also a link with just that. If you can gather some other friends to do the Pollination one, I'd recommend it. The activity was each kid made a paper flower with a circle of tape on the inside, sticky side out. Then each kid put one of two different spices with very different colors. Then they made 'bees' out of pipecleaners, and the bees were on a pipe cleaner stick. Then the kids ran around and stuck their bees in every flower and wiggled it around saying, "Bzzzzzz". This is incredibly adorable. Then when everyone did that, they looked at their flower to see if theirs was pollinated. Of the 10, one wasn't. I thought it was funny that the kid with an unpollinated flower calmly picked up the other spice, and 'polllinated' their flower. I also recommend the one on tree propagation. The 'Zone of Darkness' said in a spooky voice was great. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
silver Posted January 22, 2018 Share Posted January 22, 2018 I have three kids in the age range for Mystery Science. They all participate, even if they aren't the targeted age. The youngest doesn't grasp as much in the mysteries meant for older kids, and the older isn't challenged by the mysteries meant for younger kids, but it's better than nothing. I went through the mysteries at the beginning of the year and choose which ones I wanted to use (going by the theme, such as "Invisible Forces"). I made sure to pick mysteries in all the age ranges, so that each of my kids would have some mysteries aimed at their level. We tend to do the introductory video Monday, the activity Tuesday, and then spread the extras out over the rest of the days. When you click on one of the themes, several mysteries are listed. I go through them in order (1-2 mysteries a week). If you click on the mystery title (ex: "How could you win a tug-of-war against a bunch of adults?" under "Invisible Forces"), a list of the time requirements is shown. These are actually links. So if you click on "Extras" at this point, it will take you to the slides at the end that provide extra reading, videos, etc. Most of the activities have been really good at using stuff I have around the house. I think the only one we had to postpone was one on how the eye works, because we needed to have a small magnifying lens. Because of this, I don't even bother looking ahead to the materials needed. I just print off the paper the day we do the activity and go ahead. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shawthorne44 Posted January 23, 2018 Share Posted January 23, 2018 .... *From the planning guide, it looks like you're meant to do a mystery a week. Is that how you're planning it? Do you use the optional extras to expand on the lesson to spread it over multiple days? Are you doing more than one mystery a week? It hadn't been a problem to finish a mystery in a hour long co-op class. In fact, I usually checked out some library books on the subject as fillers. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TrilliumSimile Posted January 23, 2018 Author Share Posted January 23, 2018 Thanks, folks! This is great information. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vintage81 Posted January 23, 2018 Share Posted January 23, 2018 We do one mystery per week. Most of the time we're able to complete the mystery in one day, sometimes two. We don't usually do the extras, but you can definitely use them to stretch out the lesson. I've also been kind of lazy about pre-planning, but if you're good about it, you can get library books and other materials ahead of time to stretch out the mystery to a full week. We've been using Evan Moor Daily Science Books and I've noticed that many of the topics in the workbooks match up to the ones in Mystery Science, so you could even look into using those to go along with the mysteries. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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