Real Science Odyssey multiple texts at once

[Josh Blade]

We just finished up with BFSU. We all really liked it, but we're definitely not at the point where we could go to BFSU 2 and we don't want to just run through BFSU again. I was looking at Real Science Odyssey, but thinking maybe we would pick up both the Life/Biology as well as the weather/astronomy books and kind of go back and forth between them rather than spending a whole year on one and then a whole year on the other. Has anyone else done something similar? I was thinking this would be a lot more similar to the approach that BFSU takes with integrating all topics of science rather than just focusing on one at a time. 

[KathyBC]

We sort of did this, while covering our province's science topics which were on a trimester system. I picked what we wanted to do for Life/Biology and worked through that, then followed with what worked from the weather/astronomy book, before going on to other resources in the final trimester to cover physical science topics. We liked it.

[ChocolateCake]

Yes, each book has sections so you can just pick which sections to cover during the school year. We did Life/Earth one year and Astronomy/Chemistry the next.

[ExcitedMama]

We are doing RSO Life and SIB. The first half or so of RSO has gone really quickly. We've done it sporadically the last two months. It would have gone even faster but we've been at a standstill because I refuse to go outside and dig for worms and find snails so I'm waiting for DH to do that. I think it would be easy for you to accelerate.

[bwdiaz]

I don't know if Courtney Ostaff is still here on the WTM forums but she used to be and I remember about a year or so ago she posted a loose correlation between RSO units and BFSU threads. I still have it, I saved it for my own use, but I don't want to repost it without her permission/attribution/knowledge etc because it was a fair amount of work on her part. If someone knows her user name and can tag her maybe she can weigh in. With this correlation you can do the RSO units in roughly the same order you did BFSU and if the kids momentarily draw a blank on a concept you can know where to look it up in the BFSU K-2 book. I think she meant the two programs to be used together but I can't imagine she'd have a problem with you using it this way. I'm going to check the BFSU FB group and see if she's in there but someone more search savvy than I may be able to find the post quicker than I can locate the author.

[Josh Blade]

I don't know if Courtney Ostaff is still here on the WTM forums but she used to be and I remember about a year or so ago she posted a loose correlation between RSO units and BFSU threads. I still have it, I saved it for my own use, but I don't want to repost it without her permission/attribution/knowledge etc because it was a fair amount of work on her part. If someone knows her user name and can tag her maybe she can weigh in. With this correlation you can do the RSO units in roughly the same order you did BFSU and if the kids momentarily draw a blank on a concept you can know where to look it up in the BFSU K-2 book. I think she meant the two programs to be used together but I can't imagine she'd have a problem with you using it this way. I'm going to check the BFSU FB group and see if she's in there but someone more search savvy than I may be able to find the post quicker than I can locate the author.

 This is exactly the idea I had. If you were able to find / provide the lessons with permission from the original creator that'd be great. If not, I can probably cobble something similar together following the BFSU lesson order we went with. Thanks for the advice. 

[desertflower]

Josh - just out of curiosity, what do you like about BFSU?  I like the idea of it because it was the first science curriculum I tried to do, but it's hard for me to implement. 

 

 

ETA: I guess I'm trying to decide whether it's worth the effort.  I like mystery science and dabble in RSO already. 

[Josh Blade]

Josh - just out of curiosity, what do you like about BFSU?  I like the idea of it because it was the first science curriculum I tried to do, but it's hard for me to implement. 

 

 

ETA: I guess I'm trying to decide whether it's worth the effort.  I like mystery science and dabble in RSO already. 

 

I see a lot of people saying it's hard to implement, but for us, my wife or I would open up to the section we were going to teach for the week and spend 5 minutes reading through the goals and discussion suggestions and then we would just talk about it with our daughter. Most demonstrations I felt like were super easy to get going on the fly (even easier than Mystery Science which my daughter also loves). The most involved demonstration we had was the bean plants which were in our last few weeks of the book and even that was just sticking some lima beans in a bag with a paper towel and checking on them every day / transplanting them to soil once they had roots. 

 

I felt like BFSU was very conversational. Most of our lessons were discussion explaining whatever phenomena we were talking about for the week scaffolded with easy to perform demonstrations. I liked that it went over a ton of topics instead of spending a whole year on biology or earth science etc. We did 1 lesson per week across 2-4 days. We usually would do 1 part (the lessons are typically 3 or 4 parts) per day unless we felt the part was really short or ended up talking about a subsequent part in explaining the idea. The conversational nature made it easy for us to review in an unforced kind of way all of the topics in just our every day life as we can bring up a topic and talk about it's implementation when doing just about anything: cooking, sitting outside looking at the moon, watching or feeling the wind blow, rolling a ball, playing with balloons, listening to music, playing with dirt and rocks outside, watching the rain, and so much more.

 

We did all of BFSU in about a year with how I described above spending maybe 15-20 minutes per day 3 days a week on average (with the additional non school time review whenever we see a good opportunity to talk about and reinforce and idea). I just went and checked and we started at the beginning of August last year, so we did 40 lessons in about 50 weeks (meaning we took 10 weeks off or extended the lesson a bit like for the bean plants). For us it was easy to integrate into our life and the prep was minimal. I feel like BFSU gave our daughter a very broad scientific foundation to understand a huge range of topics while also being easy for us to implement. In another 2-3 years when our son is old enough, we'll probably go through the whole thing again with both of them.

 

ETA: I was just reading through another thread about people having a hard time implementing BFSU. A common complaint seemed to be that the parents weren't very science minded and thus it wasn't as hand holdy as they needed it to be. I felt like it provided plenty of discussion ideas, but I am very science minded and my wife is a teacher (high school English) so maybe in that respect it was a little easier for us to 'wing' the lessons as we both have our own foundations to draw upon and my wife has the knowledge and experience with teaching strategies.

Edited August 4, 2017 by Josh Blade

[desertflower]

Thanks Josh!

[bwdiaz]

Josh, I saw your request above to get permission but I so far haven't reached Courtney. I did message her on FB messenger because she is in the BFSU FB group but no answer so far. She's usually pretty active so maybe she's on vacation?

 

I see a lot of people saying it's hard to implement, but for us, my wife or I would open up to the section we were going to teach for the week and spend 5 minutes reading through the goals and discussion suggestions and then we would just talk about it with our daughter. Most demonstrations I felt like were super easy to get going on the fly (even easier than Mystery Science ...

 

...

 

ETA: I was just reading through another thread about people having a hard time implementing BFSU. A common complaint seemed to be that the parents weren't very science minded and thus it wasn't as hand holdy as they needed it to be. I felt like it provided plenty of discussion ideas, but I am very science minded and my wife is a teacher (high school English) so maybe in that respect it was a little easier for us to 'wing' the lessons as we both have our own foundations to draw upon and my wife has the knowledge and experience with teaching strategies.

I just wanted to speak about the preparation issue. I see this complaint a lot as well. I have two daughters, ages 6 and 8. I split book 1 in half and did it for older daughter's first and second grade science. Younger daughter will do same. Older daughter is moving on to book 2 this year for third grade.

 

My experience with it is very like that of the OP. Once I understood the method and what the goals were for the program I relaxed a lot. As I look back on my planner I'd say we averaged a full lesson about every two weeks over first and second grade. I'd read a lesson, review and lessons that were prereq's so I could remind her of things if she didn't bring it up, and just talk about the ideas in a laid back way. I scheduled 15 minutes a week for this, and I'd say then I'd informally point things out all week two or three times (whenever it came up naturally). Most lessons, we often followed up with a library book or looking at things in our Usborne science encyclopedia or with a video on YouTube, whenever she wanted it and I often planned a demo AFTER we'd had an initial topic discussion, and maybe not for days after if I had to look for something - and it was fine, no stress and no problem. I really liked the interdisciplinary nature of it and my daughter made great connections between lessons she'd had months apart.

 

I do not think I'm science minded. I'd call myself an interested layperson who reads a lot of popular science. I also do not have a teaching background. I'm an average mom (in this area) and I do not 100% understand the complaints that BFSU is difficult to prepare. I get that people have different needs, challenges, and expectations about curricula. That said, I personally feel that people way overthink BFSU. I feel people think they need to compile supply lists, get books ahead of time, and be super on top of things. It's my opinion this science really isn't meant to be done like that (though it's ok if it is) and that people try to force more structure on it. People didn't teach science in a structured way in the past, they did it gently, with nature studies, observation, reading, and most importantly time - and I feel like that's what BFSU gives kids.