After quite a bit of research and thought (and Tony almost deciding to write his own science curriculum), we found a curriculum we thought would meet our needs: “Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding: A Science Curriculum for K-2″ by Bernard Nebel (BFSU). You can also read more about the book on Dr. Nebel’s website.
We really wanted to find a curriculum that didn’t just package a bunch of facts with fun little experiments that may or may not teach much of anything. Instead, we hope to guide our kids to discover “why we know what we know” when it comes to scientific principles.
Dr. Nebel’s curriculum is not set up in a traditional manner with daily or weekly lessons to be followed in a specific order each year. Instead, 4 strands of scientific learning (The Nature of Matter, Life Science, Physical Science, and Earth/Space Science) are to be pursued simultaneously with some degree of freedom as to the exact order of the lessons left up to the parent/teacher. There are seven to twelve lessons in each strand, and these “lessons” can easily be stretched into a week or two (or maybe even more) of learning as extra library books and experiments are added in. Since much scientific knowledge builds upon earlier foundations, there is a suggested order within each thread of which lessons should come before the others.
If it sounds confusing…it’s probably because it is a bit confusing, and very different than most curriculum products. A flow chart is provided of some suggested order to this buffet of learning and some research reveals that other users of the text have made up lists of the order in which they plan to pursue the lessons.
I plan to take one of the suggested orderings I found on the web, and modify it a bit to give us a road-map of where we plan to go…while being willing to change that up as seems appropriate of course!
If we want the book to last for a couple years (and not rush through the concepts presented), it seems like one lesson every two weeks is about the right pace. About once a month in between the lessons from BFSU, I hope to add in another piece of science learning: studying the history of science. If Tony were to write his own elementary science curriculum (and who knows, maybe he still will someday), learning about the history of science would be integrated into it. This is more than just learning a few facts about what scientists lived when and what they studied–it is learning about some of the foundational experiments in the history of science and what was learned through these experiments. It’s another aspect of “learning why we know what we know.” I’m not sure how much Madeline will retain or understand of this type of study at her current age, but we’ll give it a try. As a tool to facilitate this, I purchased Janis VanCleave’s “Scientists Through the Ages”:
If these lessons turn out to be worthwhile, they should last us for about two years at the rate of doing them once a month.
I’m planning on attempting to set aside one longer block of time for science each week (though some reading of supplementary materials like library books would probably still happen on other days). Our four-week cycle would look something like this:
Week 1: Lesson from BFSU
Week 2: Lesson from Scientists through the Ages (and continue to read supplementary books on Week 1 BFSU topic)
Week 3: Lesson from BFSU
Week 4: Another science or “health class” type of topic (I’m thinking things like nature study, studies of various animals and habitats, and maybe someday what ever one is supposed to teach elementary age kids for “health” — I haven’t quite figured that out yet!)…along, again, with supplementary reading on the previous week’s BFSU topic.
I wanted to start with our first BFSU topic this past week, and it didn’t quite happen. We’ll do it this coming week for sure!
Hopefully a date night!
