For science, Ace and I are doing the Noeo Science Physics I curriculum. This curriculum was written specifically for homeschoolers, grades one through three. So far, we are enjoying it. It pulls together several different books both on science and biographies on scientists. This curriculum includes Young Scientist Club Kits for experiments. I really like the experiments, and making notebook pages to go along with some of them is great practice too. We did not do a notebook page for every experiment, because being that Ace is nine years old, he still considers writing and bookwork to be boring, but he loves doing the experiments. (At my age, I actually still agree with him, but if nobody recorded their findings, we wouldn’t have science.)
This science curriculum claims to be a Charlotte Mason style curriculum with all “living” books. I will agree that some of the books qualify as “living” books, but some are a bit dry, with mostly little text boxes around pictures. That works, but I was hoping for something more fun to read. I am thinking about trying to figure out what sections of The New Way Things Work book correspond with the different units in the Noeo Physics. That is a really great book, and I already own it. We read it some last year, and loved it. I was really hoping for an open and go science curriculum that was really interesting and fun to read, and while this one is really good, I think it still has room for improvement.
Okay that is my review after doing one unit, now on to a few pictures from our first unit. The first unit was “Force and Motion.” There were lots of fun experiments about friction, gravity, Newton’s third law of motion and more. We enjoyed things from racing cars on sand paper to slamming coins into a line of other coins to see what happened.
Here is the lapbook that we made to go with this.
We laminated the cover image and then glued it on the left side of the lapbook with glue dots and attached it to right side of the lapbook with a velcro dot.
Excuse that I misspelled “Centrifugal”–bad teacher moment.
The list of sources for the lapbook: (no affiliate links)
Newton’s Laws of Motion from Jimmie Langley (Scroll down to find Newton’s Laws of Motion Book)
Cover for Gravity Mini Book from Crayola
Both Friction Mini Books from Tools & Technology Book by Dinah Zike
“Force x Distance = Work” Mini Book also from the Tools & Technology Book by Dinah Zike
Balanced & Unbalanced Flap Book by Haley Grant (Scroll down quite a ways to find link.)
Cover art by Phillip Martin
I have to admit that we looked at the lapbook that was done by Jimmie’s daughter from Jimmies Collage quite a bit since hers was also based on the Noeo Physics 1 forces and motion unit. If you’d like to take a peak at hers, here is the link.
Overall, he seemed to enjoy this unit a lot. He especially enjoyed the experiments. Next is Sound and Light.