Noeo or Nancy Larson ?

[bnwhitaker]

Has anyone used both to compare?

 

Which one did you like better?

[Abeilles]

Will be following this thread as I am wondering the same thing.

[alisoncooks]

Try this:

 

http://forums.welltr...page__hl__+noeo

http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/282135-larson-vs-noeo-vs-elemental-sciences/page__hl__noeo

[bnwhitaker]

Thank you. I feel like I looked through things for hours before getting your attachment and both of those helped a lot!

[alisoncooks]

Thank you. I feel like I looked through things for hours before getting your attachment and both of those helped a lot!

 

You're welcome! Those threads helped me, also. I've been debating between NOEO, Sonlight and Nancy Larson for next year. I am pretty sure I've decided on NL (though I haven't been able to bring myself to hit purchase yet.... that's a big chunk of change! :D)

[bnwhitaker]

Those are my 3 also. Oh no a year and I thought a week was bad :) I hate not being able to decide.

I think Im leaning toward Noeo. Not 100% yet, NL I seem to keep hearing retention,

retention, retention which sounds good to me. But I have 3 boys who LOVE experiments and NL doesnt have much for that I've

heard. But Im sure the activites are fun too, just not the same. We have done SL, pre-K,K,A, B and we like the book part alot & experiments.

Which is why Im thinking noeo. Its so much like SL with a bit more organization. Just makes more sense to do topics that go with

Chem, Ph, Bio (at least with how my brain works). I was thiking I will still look at SL books and add any in that I felt we were gonna

miss out on. Also, since Noeo its focused on a certian focus I could always add things in if wanted. Where as SL that was possbile

too but only if you looked ahead and were a good planner :) I just cant get around how "good" I keep hearing NL works.

[NittanyJen]

NL made my son want to poke his eyes out with a fork, and me as well. The reading materials were well below his level, and he has language issues. *I* had trouble with the extensive scripting of the program and the fill-in-the-blanks worksheets that required no thought from him. Every word you need to speak is pre-written for you, and every word your child needs to respond with is also supplied. In level one (I think it was L1, i have been trying to blot ths experience from my memory) there are seriously cards to show them what a deer and a squirrel look like. They are labeled, just in case you aren't sure. Similarly, you receive photos of a baby, toddler, child, a teen, adult, and geriatric person, all labeled, in case you have also ever seen any of these in the wild.

 

It does come with cool toys, but all of them (tree cookie, butterfly house, ladybug house, X-ray set) with directions can be ordered much more cheaply from XUMP or HomeScienceTools.

 

We had a much better time and he learned far more from NOEO (chem; did not use bio).

[km123175]

Thanks for this discussion and the links to previous discussions. I'm in the middle of putting together our schoolwork for our soon to be pre-school, 1st, and 3rd grader's. Science is one area that I was still struggling to figure out what to do.

 

I wanted to do physics because I thought it would be an "easy fit" for all 3 kids - very hands on for the youngest to watch/explore. Listening and narration for the middle, and reading and writing for the oldest. Neo looks like it will fit our ticket. :)

 

Kimberly

[She Reads a Lot]

FWIW, I am in the same situation, and am using/used NOEO this year for 1st grade. (Chemistry). I think it's a great program, but I became sort of bored with chemistry for an entire year. There are only so many experiments a 6 year old can do to explore chemistry without danger--(Mommy, I want to see sodium react with water explosively!--um no, not until you are older). So I think that mixing up the year with something besides just chemistry would have been good for us. And reading about chemistry to a 6 year old on the days in which there were no experiments got a bit boring. Perhaps it would have been better i she was older. Again, good program, and perhaps if we had chosen biology or physics it would have been more interesting. I am looking at NL science for next year. I looked at SL last year but decided against it because from what I read the experiments didn't go along with the readings which I found strange.

 

I could have written this post myself! It is exactly how I have felt this year using Noeo Chemistry I with my ds (8). We used Sonlight Science B for second grade and loved the books, but I didn't keep up with the experiments. I thought it was too easy to ignore them since they didn't line up with what we were studying.

 

Um, well, it turns out that I am just lame about doing experiments. It wasn't Sonlight's fault. Fast forward to this year. Some of the Noeo books are great ("How to Think Like a Scientist" and "A Drop of Water") but most of the ones about atoms and molecules are going right over my son's head. We have read about electrons and protons and neutrons ad nauseum but he still cannot tell me which part is which.

 

Now notebooking doesn't work for my writing-phobic son and I haven't done well with the experiments, in part b/c we are moving and things have been hectic, so maybe I am not doing the program justice, but I feel like he hasn't learned anything this year beyond a little bit about the water cycle--after a whole year of chemistry!

 

Maybe like the poster I quoted said chemistry is just tough to study when they are little. I'm not trying to bash Noeo. But it just hasn't been enough for us (we read a book that was scheduled for a week in two days when we first started) and the retention is not there.

 

The Sonlight worksheets/cutting out and gluing parts actually appear to have helped him retain what we read last year--a lot more than he's retaining from Noeo. This is a kid who despises worksheets, but since it was just a few questions each day and it was minimal writing, he actually did the student pages without complaint. So we are going back to Sonlight Science in the fall. I already picked up the Science D set used :hurray: !

 

Hope this helps!

Christina

[NittanyJen]

FWIW, I am in the same situation, and am using/used NOEO this year for 1st grade. (Chemistry). I think it's a great program, but I became sort of bored with chemistry for an entire year. There are only so many experiments a 6 year old can do to explore chemistry without danger--(Mommy, I want to see sodium react with water explosively!--um no, not until you are older). So I think that mixing up the year with something besides just chemistry would have been good for us. And reading about chemistry to a 6 year old on the days in which there were no experiments got a bit boring. Perhaps it would have been better i she was older. Again, good program, and perhaps if we had chosen biology or physics it would have been more interesting. I am looking at NL science for next year. I looked at SL last year but decided against it because from what I read the experiments didn't go along with the readings which I found strange.

 

 

 

Make sure you note in the NOEO directions in sections where it says to continue doing an experiment per day in "Fizz, Bubble, and Flash" and the other experiment books -- you can do daily experiments all year long in chem.

 

Some other favorite experiment kits in our house (very good if you want to switch up subject matter now and then without a whole new curriculum) are the Science Wiz kits-- for $20 you get several experiments and a book that explains them, and all of the doo-dads needed for them that might be annoying to find-- balloons, feathers, prisms, magnets, leads, waxed paper-- are included; you might have to supply water or a 9V battery on occasion. The color kit was awesome for little ones; chem and chem+ were great. We can't wait to try inventions and the other physics kits next year. The DNA kit worked well (70%ethanol required, I think) and was well planned.

 

 

[lexi]

I'm chiming in a little late......

I've never used NOEO but had looked at it several times. I was afraid I wouldn't get to all the experiments and I wasn't sure I wanted to study one topic per year.

I used NL 1 last year and it was a great fit at our house. At first I was worried it was too easy and that there weren't enough experiments-just more hands-on things. But my kids loved it, remembered everything, looked forward to science daily, and got a lot out of the hands on projects and demonstrations. I thought it was so easy to use (even if it was very scripted), required little planning or prep, and made sure that science actually got done in our house.

I have lots of littles and fun (messy) experiments require too much of me right now. I'm not able to gather all supplies, put everything together, and perform them. My kids lose interest in the experiments and many science concepts go right over their heads. I found the concepts in NL to be perfectly on their level and it was so so easy to add in a few Let's Read And Find Out About Science books or Usborne books on topics that my kids wanted to know more about. So, I never thought I'd love a fully scripted program with worksheets and hands-on demonstrations rather than experiments, but I really really do. I blogged about my thoughts while I was using the program and I've blogged about the 3 science programs I've tried and I also listed 10 reasons I like NL Science. Maybe those posts will help you decide which one will work for you :)