This past school year my son and other children in the first grade participated in a cooperative of parents and students to teach specific subjects.
After realizing how much fun my son had in Science programs, through our local Science Center Homeschooling Program, I decided to take action.
I spent several weeks dedicated to locating a science program that fit my needs of spending quality learning time together, and hands on exposure to enforce learning. I came across NOEO Science, which has several science titles: Biology, Chemistry and Physics, which is split up into different levels for different grade levels.
NOEO is a program designed by Dr. Randy Prichard. There is an excellent structure that is “a balance between the classical method and the Charlotte Mason approach.” The schedule/instruction manual is offered to parents and split up to complete in four day “work week” however they offer other schedules for parents that use only two or three days per week for science activities.
Each day you have assigned reading, which you end with journaling/note-booking to help the student keep track of their reading progress. Each week generally has an activity to perform, using the Young Scientist Kits, which work nicely with the reading selections for the yearly program. The goals for the lessons are very realistic and the reading is on level with the material taught for the range in the grade-level. At the beginning of the year, my son wasn’t reading all of the material on his own, but by the end of the year, he was, and loving it.
At the time, we were ready to start Biology 1. I corralled a few other parents to research the program as well and we decided to bring this to our homeschooling co-op. The kids had a blast. We completed all of our individual reading on our own at home, reviewed the material, completed the science kits, played games, and really reinforced the importance of science and biology to our children.
There were some weeks that there weren’t designed activities listed for the Chemistry I set. For these weeks, we picked out material from the books to work on, making up our own projects to complete in co-op. We worked on vocabulary cards, review, played games that also tied into the program, and let the kids share their experiences.
What was truly amazing was that all of the kids were just really excited to work on these projects together, to have this scheduled science time to learn. They not only engaged their brains in application, but they worked together as a group, and had fun doing it. They would bring in experiments from outside sources to try, to help reinforce the topic studied.
For instance, when learning about the human body and the amount of times the heart beat per minute, one of our older students, brought in a book that had an experiment for you to have a bowl of water and to try to count and see how many times you could “pump” your arm to simulate the pumping of your heart and see if it came close to the actual amount of times your heart pumped blood through your body per minute. The kids tried their hardest, several times, to reach that magic number, but they never did. It was great reinforcement to show how hard our heart is constantly working, and we discussed how to make sure we stay in charge of taking care of it.
NOEO made teaching science easy. I personally love having books to work with to teach students. I love the concept of using unit studies in the home, but I’m a very busy individual and haven’t been able to master a system to keep myself accountable, on task, and keep my children learning. I honestly got the feeling that NOEO really helped me to do this. The flexibility of the program is one of the things I really liked about it. Everything was laid out in an easy fashion, but the material taught from is books, not just one large textbook without a lot of pictures.
We look forward to working with Chemistry I, the next progression in the program.
Biology I included: Instructor Guide, Usborne Internet Linked Pocket Nature, Several One Small Square Books, Pasteur’s Fight Against Microbes, Usborne Science Activities, Usborne Internet Linked Encyclopedia of the Human Body, DK Eye Wonder Weather, The Boy Who Drew Birds, Audubon’s Birds of America Coloring Book, and 6 young experiment kits, which included multiple experiments in each.
NOEO has drastically changed my perspective of teaching science, as not being hard, or a chore, and it has provided excellent resources for me to be comfortable with.
In addition to responding to emails, Randy Prichard, who designed the program stays in contact with individuals if questions arise, and helps to moderate a message board on Yahoo for any individual that posts questions on the message board.
You get all of the support you need for teaching science with NOEO and it’s just a lot of fun. Check them out.
