Using Evan Moor Daily Science as a spine

[fairy4tmama]

Is any one else using, or considering using this as a spine for science? After the recent thread regarding Evan Moor Daily Science I ordered the grade 4 version for my oldest as science was just not happening in spite of my attempt to implement previous curriculums I liked. While I am not in love with EMDS it feels doable and as the saying goes "the curriculum that gets done is better then the best curriculum that doesn't".

 

We started this week and I am happy with how easy it is to use and I can see that this is something that WILL get done. I like the Big Ideas, however, it is a bit simplistic and I worry about retention down the road as it feels a bit rote. That being said I am thinking about ways to extend and deepen this resource while being able to just use it as is when things are extra busy ( I am expecting a baby this spring). So far we are not writing on the pages but rather using it as a journaling tool per Hunters suggestion. Ds is making his own diagrams and using true statements as copy work. I wanted to add a nature video about beaver this week, but DS felt "why beavers build dams" was kind of a lame topic and did not seem interested at all. I am going to sit down this week end and pul books from our science shelf that will correlate and make a list of topics to be on the look out for.

 

What are some ways you are using this resource as a spine (or resources like this)? I would love to hear about your ideas even if they are similar to may own as we all put our own spin on things.

[Hunter]

Magic School Bus, Bill Nye, Eyewitness and PBS DVDs make wonderful supplements. Bill Nye often demonstrates an experiment; sometimes they are easy to do. The library always has books on the topics. It's easy once a week to grab a pile of resources.

 

As for Beavers, they are sometimes featured in fiction, as their type of home is an interesting place for a child to hide. Maybe you could use a beaver lodge as a creative writing prompt. You could supplement with man made dams. Instead of focusing on WHY beavers and men make dams, you could focus on the RESULTS of dams. Salmon cannot swim up dammed rivers. Entire villages have been destroyed from the flooding, after they are built. On the other hand they control seasonal flooding. Las vegas and Los Angeles wouldn't be the cities they are without dams. Egypt became more prosperous. Dams produce a lot of electricity. A lot of men died building the Aswan and Hoover Dams.

 

Beavers and dams are one of my favorite topics to teach. I don't know what children's stories I read about them, but I know I read several, as a child.

[fourisenough]

Per my signature, I had plans to use Nancy Larson science this year with my newly 8 year old daughter (note to self: update sig). I just couldn't pull the trigger on that purchase! Instead, we've been using EMDS, faithfully. In fact, since September we've completed over half the book. My daughter has a good science foundation after having attended a once per week class at a natural history museum ages 3-7 and a Montessori preschool/K that has a strong science component. Additionally, we did a pretty thorough year of life science (a la WTM) last year for first/second grade. The topics in EMDS are rarely her first introduction to a concept, but I try to have her use the book as written and then add in non-fiction books or videos from our collection or the library that relate to the topic. It probably isn't the MOST robust science education she could get, but it works for a busy family. It always gets done and it usually leads to discussion and application.

 

Oh, one other thing that happened organically (I didn't plan it, she just started doing it...). My daughter has used the science vocabulary words introduced in EMDS as her two 'bonus' words each week in her spelling lesson (EM Building Spelling Skills). I've thought of having her write every science vocabulary word (introduced in the sidebar of some lesson pages) out on a flash card and adding them to her memory work. That hasn't happened yet, but may be the next 'tweak'. She seems to really like this series (we're also using the Daily Geography book), so I think she'd be open to working with/playing with it more.

[Halcyon]

vWe just started using EMDS and for now at least, it is our spine. We add in lots of other stuff: Young Scientist Kits, Brain Pop, lots of living books, Creek Edge Task Cards, notebooking, lapbooks. But my younger really likes workbooks, especially those that present interesting information, like "Do dolphins sleep?"

[fairy4tmama]

This is great, I love all the ideas you all have thrown out there. I like the idea of using vocab for memory work as one of my big concerns is how do I keep ds from closing the book and dumping the information.

 

Halcyon, I would love to hear more about how you are incorporating Edge Creek Press Task Cards. We have the earth science cards and I like them but they just didn't jive for us on their own but I would love to still use them.

 

Hunter, Thanks for chiming in I was hoping you would, it was your description of using them that encouraged me to give this a try.

[Satori]

We're using EMDS now as our daily science spine, after a year of doing almost no science.

 

We'll add in videos from BrainPop and Discovery Streaming and various books. We've also been using Singapore My Pals Are Here science a few times a week - the text, Homework, and HOTS. But I'm so grateful for EMDS, as my daughter also loves working independently in workbooks, and it gets done every weekday.

[sbgrace]

I was disappointed when I got mine. I have a workbook loving kid and I thought it would be great for a spine. I find the more limited topics (like dolphins sleeping and how does a movie projector work) difficult to easily supplement and not something I want to really work to retain anyway. I felt I'd have to do more work to get rentention for those topics than to just continue to use Core Knowledge or similar curriculum outlines. Some of the sections in the workbooks are more usable than others (fossils in 3rd grade is decent). I still don't think we'd have retention without a lot added though. Evan Moore has some science Take it to Your Seat Centers and similar books/downloads which I think are a lot more usable here. The topics are more standard science and so easy to incorporate Bill Nye, Magic School bus, etc. and they are presented in a much more memorable/less rote way compared to the workbooks. Maybe I'm just missing something about them! We haven't used it yet.

[fairy4tmama]

I find the more limited topics (like dolphins sleeping and how does a movie projector work) difficult to easily supplement and not something I want to really work to retain anyway. I felt I'd have to do more work to get rentention for those topics than to just continue to use Core Knowledge or similar curriculum outlines.

Agreed, I think the limited topics do make it difficult to supplement in and of themselves, yet the big ideas do seem worthy. This is the part where I am unsure of how to go about deepening our study of the big ideas. I don't want to bog down the daily piece too much as I think that this is a lot of what will work for us in the getting it done department, but I think the Big Ideas can be more meaty and worthy of retention. I wonder if there is an easy way to coordinate EMDS with core knowlege or BFSU...

 

But if I get too carried away with supplementing this I run the risk of religating this science curriculum to the same dust shelf as the others because I have made it into something that is too complicated.

[Hunter]

I only used grade 1. I sat and read the other grades at B&N but never used them. One of the things I noticed was that later grades did build on earlier grades and that is why I started with Grade 1. There would have been no problem completing the later grades without doing the earlier grades, but Grade 1 was so rich I didn't want to skip it.

 

And I just didn't take each weekly lesson too seriously. I always stayed focused on the Big Idea and used the weakly topics as EXAMPLES of the Big Ideas.

 

I'm using the ORIGINAL Core Knowledge series right now because I have it. It doesn't hit the bullseye for each topics as well as EMDS, but it makes up for it by being integrated with the other subject topics. So it comes out even which series I like best. I teach both series pretty much the same. If the library has nice things to supplement the topic and can be gathered in minutes, I use them. If there is nothing for a topic I move on. I just don't stress over content. I can't with all the skills that need to be covered. A spine is a tool and a map; it's not a law. Skills are hard for me not to get all OCD over, but I have an easier time with content.

 

Looking at the books at B&N, I don't think jumping into the upper grades without having done the lower ones, would have produced the same love. I don't see myself having a problem doing that. I just don't think I would have had the same love for the series. Often my love for a series is about it's entirety, or how it meshes with the other subjects. I'm a big picture teacher. If the wholeness is flawed, that's where I freak. For example, I use the ORIGINAL Core Knowledge instead of the revised edition. The structure of the original edition is more organized, even though the revised edition is spiffier and more current.

[sbgrace]

Ah. I totally missed that all those "minor" weekly topics correspond to a bigger concept. I just purchased the workbooks for each child and so didn't have the teacher information with the big ideas listed. I just viewed that on the Teacher File Box site and I see it's beyond what I was thinking. Huh.

 

So anyone who used these I'm curious. Did you feel you had retention just from the daily work and experiments as written? How often did you need to supplement something to add to retention for a week's topic?

[sbgrace]

Ok. I'm looking at the teacher books for the program on Evan Moore Filebox and wondering if maybe this would work here after all.

 

What I'm thinking is that I find a great resource or two (say a Bill Nye video) to go with the big idea and we might watch it even every week. I am nearly certain my kids would want to watch more than once and maybe the repitition along with further delving into the topic of the month through each week's daily work would actually be better for retention than the unit approaches I've been using. Hmmm.

[fairy4tmama]

What I'm thinking is that I find a great resource or two (say a Bill Nye video) to go with the big idea and we might watch it even every week. I am nearly certain my kids would want to watch more than once and maybe the repitition along with further delving into the topic of the month through each week's daily work would actually be better for retention than the unit approaches I've been using. Hmmm.

 

I like this idea a lot! I could see applying this same idea to a living book, science journals or encyclopedia research on the Big Idea...hmmm