Which would you use with pencil phobic, short attention span 2nd and 3rd grade boys..

[5LittleMonkeys]

Real Science Odyssey Chemistry - OR - Mr. Q Chemistry?

 

Here are other factors:

• No more than 3 days a week. Preferably 1 day of reading and 1 extended day for experiments.
  
• No "notebooking" type activities. This needs to be science, not an exercise in writing.
  
• Experiments need to be able to be easily and quickly set up and be directly relative to what was just read.
  
• Experiments that produce a big "show" or "awesome" factor. These two boys are very quick to label something "lame" if it takes too long or doesn't produce the expected results. (yes, we are working on this attitude)
  
• Easily obtained material for experiments.
  
• Teacher text readable from an iPad or laptop.
  
• Option to EASILY print only worksheets that are needed.
  
• Needs to come with duct tape so I can keep these two very wiggly boys in one place.
  

So, which would you pick and why?

[happypamama]

I don't know anything about Real Science Odyssey, but I am planning to use Mr. Q with my 3rd grade boy and 6th grade girl next year, and it looks like it meets all of those criteria. (Except the duct tape -- ROTFL, I love it!) I also haven't tried the experiments, so I can't comment on the wow factor for sure, but since it's scheduled with one day of reading and two experiments per week, I'm thinking that there's a pretty high likelihood that a fair number of them will be pretty cool. I have it on my iPad, and it is super easy to read. There are about three worksheets per week, and they vary in difficulty -- there are crosswords, word searches, fill in the blanks, matching definitions to words, short answer. . . I'm thinking I'll just have my kids do one, maybe two, a week. I set it up so that each of them has a file on the iPad; they can do the work right on there (with a stylus and Notability -- this ups the fun factor for the pencil-allergic), and I'll just print a couple of samples as needed.

 

I printed the definitions and terms, cut them out, and glued them on index cards to make review cards, which I'm working on putting in chapter order. I'm thinking we'll read the section one day and do the worksheet(s) for it, then do the experiments in the next day or two. Hopefully, I can get the experiments mostly set up the night before and have them ready to go. Then we can use the cards to review and reinforce definitions in the following days/weeks, like at dinner.

[5LittleMonkeys]

happypamamma - excellent idea about the stylus and notability - these dc will love that!