Elemental Science or R.E.A.L Science Odyssey

[raisingrey]

I was set on RSO, but discovered ES and it really looks great, so now I can't decide. Could anyone that has tried both share their thoughts of which one they liked better and why? It would be for my very soon to be 8 year old (9/3). We've been using BFSU and as much as I love it, I need something that is broken down into a schedule, with activities and a script.
Thank you. 

[Wheres Toto]

If it matters to you RSO is truly secular while ES is neutral and will leave out things that are considered controversial. 

[GoodnightMoogle]

To make your decision even harder, have you heard of SCI? Scientific connections through inquiry. They basically took BFSU and did all the planning for you 

[raisingrey]

3 hours ago, Wheres Toto said:

If it matters to you RSO is truly secular while ES is neutral and will leave out things that are considered controversial. 

Thank you. This I knew. I don't mind neutral. We have already covered age and orgins of Earth, and evolution (not in depth), so I don't mind adding this in. 

[raisingrey]

2 hours ago, GoodnightMoogle said:

To make your decision even harder, have you heard of SCI? Scientific connections through inquiry. They basically took BFSU and did all the planning for you 

I have and tried SCI 0 with BFSU, but didn't care for it. They also don't have 1 or 2 out and do not have a time frame for either. They won't give an actual realease date or even estimate. SC1 was supposed to be out this spring.

[Malam]

21 hours ago, raisingrey said:

have and tried SCI 0 with BFSU, but didn't care for it

What didn't you like about it? Have you tried early elementary science education? It's a book based on bfsu that's also more structured

[raisingrey]

1 hour ago, Malam said:

What didn't you like about it? Have you tried early elementary science education? It's a book based on bfsu that's also more structured

SCI just didn't flow right for me. I'd be willing to give it another try, but since there is no date in sight for when 1 and 2 will be out, I'm not going to wait and rather move on to another curriculum. I have EES and even did a co-op using EES and BFSU. It's not an open and go program and for science minded parents, this may not be an issue. I've accepted that I need a daily schedule with activities listed. I end up skipping science a lot because of the prep for BFSU and that doesn't benefit my daughter. I think it's a fantastic program, but I've tried it for 2 years to make it work for me and it's not a good fit for what I need to home educate. I still plan on looking through it for any thing I should add to discuss. 

[raisingrey]

I haven't received any feedback on ES, but I think I figured out what I'm going to do. I'm going to purchase the biology since it's slightly cheaper. Biology should be mostly review for my daughter. (We haven't been consistent with science since I've struggled prepping for the science we were using.) And I'm going to use RSO for Astronomy and Earth/Environment. 

Unless I hear any feedback that changes my mind. 😆

[Malam]

16 minutes ago, raisingrey said:

Biology should be mostly review for my daughter

That's good, hopefully you'll be able to compare it her past biology curriculum 

[Shoeless]

I'll be Negative Nancy and say that I didn't like ES or RSO or BFSU. Rather than stick with a formal curriculum, we ended up reading science books and watching a lot of Amoeba Sisters videos on topics that interested my son. 

It's been several years, and I no longer have the books to flip through. What I remember disliking about RSO Life was that it felt like there was a lot of busy-work. The labs we did were little craft projects or building models out of food that then got thrown away. Wasting food like that is a pet peeve of mine, even if it's just junky candy. I thought the book kind of talked down to the kids, too, but that may be an "us" issue. We went through several years of curriculum being not-quite-right because of the mismatch between his interests and reading level.

BFSU was just so much work. I was a new homeschooler and couldn't get my head the program and how to pace our day/week. If you have the time and confidence, it's great. I had neither! 

I don't remember exactly why I disliked ES other than we had an issue where kiddo had to write some word definitions in his book, but the definition had other words in it that they weren't scheduled to define until a week or two later. Something like that. There was something about it that felt disorganized to me.  

I think RSO has some pretty generous samples, so you can always give it a try for a few weeks to see if it will work out for you. 

Edited August 24, 2022 by MissLemon

[Malam]

7 hours ago, MissLemon said:

I'll be Negative Nancy and say that I didn't like ES or RSO or BFSU. Rather than stick with a formal curriculum, we ended up reading science books and watching a lot of Amoeba Sisters videos on topics that interested my son. 

It's been several years, and I no longer have the books to flip through. What I remember disliking about RSO Life was that it felt like there was a lot of busy-work. The labs we did were little craft projects or building models out of food that then got thrown away. Wasting food like that is a pet peeve of mine, even if it's just junky candy. I thought the book kind of talked down to the kids, too, but that may be an "us" issue. We went through several years of curriculum being not-quite-right because of the mismatch between his interests and reading level.

BFSU was just so much work. I was a new homeschooler and couldn't get my head the program and how to pace our day/week. If you have the time and confidence, it's great. I had neither! 

I don't remember exactly why I disliked ES other than we had an issue where kiddo had to write some word definitions in his book, but the definition had other words in it that they weren't scheduled to define until a week or two later. Something like that. There was something about it that felt disorganized to me.  

I think RSO has some pretty generous samples, so you can always give it a try for a few weeks to see if it will work out for you. 

Which were more advanced, his interests or his reading level?

How old was he during this time period and what was his reading level at?

[raisingrey]

10 hours ago, MissLemon said:

I'll be Negative Nancy and say that I didn't like ES or RSO or BFSU. Rather than stick with a formal curriculum, we ended up reading science books and watching a lot of Amoeba Sisters videos on topics that interested my son. 

It's been several years, and I no longer have the books to flip through. What I remember disliking about RSO Life was that it felt like there was a lot of busy-work. The labs we did were little craft projects or building models out of food that then got thrown away. Wasting food like that is a pet peeve of mine, even if it's just junky candy. I thought the book kind of talked down to the kids, too, but that may be an "us" issue. We went through several years of curriculum being not-quite-right because of the mismatch between his interests and reading level.

BFSU was just so much work. I was a new homeschooler and couldn't get my head the program and how to pace our day/week. If you have the time and confidence, it's great. I had neither! 

I don't remember exactly why I disliked ES other than we had an issue where kiddo had to write some word definitions in his book, but the definition had other words in it that they weren't scheduled to define until a week or two later. Something like that. There was something about it that felt disorganized to me.  

I think RSO has some pretty generous samples, so you can always give it a try for a few weeks to see if it will work out for you. 

I can see how none of these curriculums would be a good fit. A formal curriculum works better for me. I need something structured with an outline of what to do each day/week. My daughter does great with hands on projects and with us reading. She spends her days creating and building random things or things inspired from what she's learned. So hands on projects work great for her. I did download the RSO samples and I don't love the pages they have for reading to the child, so I will likely  just pull pieces from it or just look in our science books for the info. 

[Shoeless]

3 hours ago, Malam said:

Which were more advanced, his interests or his reading level?

How old was he during this time period and what was his reading level at?

I pulled him out of school in kindergarten when he was tested to read at a 6th grade level. His ability was a little more advanced than his interests. He was still happy to read Puppy Place and silly books like that for fiction. Non fiction was tougher to get right because books that matched his interest level were often really dry or required math that he did not yet understand. 

He really liked the Amoeba Sisters videos at that age because they were a little silly but had a lot of content. He was still a little kid, but a little kid that wanted to hear about osmosis and concentration gradients, and that wasn't being presented in most elementary materials.

It was a lumpy couple of years!

[PIE!]

On 8/20/2022 at 12:17 AM, raisingrey said:

I was set on RSO, but discovered ES and it really looks great, so now I can't decide. Could anyone that has tried both share their thoughts of which one they liked better and why? It would be for my very soon to be 8 year old (9/3). We've been using BFSU and as much as I love it, I need something that is broken down into a schedule, with activities and a script.
Thank you. 

I had the same dilemma at one point. I decided to do both. It was fun. 🙂