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50 of 50 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best elementary science curriculum I have found, February 5, 2008
This review is from: Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding: A Science Curriculum for K-2 (Paperback)
Building Foundations for Scientific Understanding is a newly released collection of 41 thorough, brilliantly organized, and fascinating lesson plans, covering scientific ideas appropriate for grades K-2. It is suitable for classrooms, learning co-ops, homeschooling, and more. I am using it as a tool in homeschooling my 7 year old twin daughters.
I think this book is best described to homeschoolers as a living book about how to teach science. Dr. Nebel (who has a long career in teaching college level environmental science) is clearly passionate about his subject - science is his life's work. It seems that the goal of this curriculum is not just to have the child read a book and pass a test, but to encourage people to become scientists - thinkers who actually use scientific knowledge in their own lives.
Dr. Nebel's approach is systematic, yet flexible.
He compares science to math - Just as you would generally introduce addition before calculus, BFSU introduces foundational ideas first. This allows the child (and the parent, at least in my case!) to develop a good appreciation for and understanding of the terminology involved, as well as encouraging them to relate to how the concept fits into the real world.
At the same time, there is flexibility built in to the lesson plans.
The 41 lessons are divided into 4 different threads:
* The Nature of Matter
* Life Science
* Physical Science
* Earth and Space Science.
Each thread is carefully developed in a logical manner, with every lesson building on the foundation laid by the ones that came before. Unlike many homeschool science curricula, however, with BFSU you do not concentrate on a single thread at a time, but rather you can interweave the threads as appropriate.
This way of organizing gives you flexibility within a framework. At any given time you can select a thread to work on based on student interests, weather or seasonal conditions, etc. At the same time, however, lesson notes alert you if there are any topics from other threads that should be completed before attempting the new lesson. This ensures that you have maximum flexibility to select your lessons, while also ensuring that you and your children will have the necessary background experience to fully understand and relate to each new lesson.
The book begins with two introductory chapters that explore in depth the educational approach that BFSU uses.
* Chapter 1: Teaching According to How Children Learn
* Chapter 2: Guiding Students to Think
These chapters highlight the deficiencies of the "teach, test, forget" approach. They also explore the limitations of the purely "hands on" approach that provides many activities to perform, yet does not adequately convey how or why the concepts actually work. Instead, BFSU argues that it is better for long term understanding and retention if we provide context for what is being learned, if we build on what was learned previously, if we encourage reflection on what we do or do not know, (encouraging asking questions to fill in the gaps), and if we connect the learning to real life.
These chapters also explore how to find joy in learning, and how to encourage self-motivated learning, as well as how to use guided questioning and discussion as tools to assist children in constructing a firm understanding of the concepts introduced.
After that, the 41 lessons are presented. Each lesson has details about:
* exactly what concepts the lesson addresses
* how much time the activities and discussions will likely entail
* if there is any required background from other threads
* materials needed
* "teachable moments"- suggestions for introducing the lesson in a natural way that sparks the child's interest
* methods and procedures for conducting the lesson
* questions/discussion/activities for reviewing, reinforcing, expanding, and assessing the learning
* notes to parents on integrating each lesson's concepts into everyday life.
* connections to other topics and notes on how the concepts can be used in higher levels
* lists of children's books on the topic of the lesson (usually non-fiction selections available from your library)
My children and I have thoroughly enjoyed the lessons we have undertaken thus far, and are looking forward to the lessons to come!
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21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Nebel does not underestimate children, March 30, 2010
This review is from: Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding: A Science Curriculum for K-2 (Paperback)
I purchased BFSU a couple of months ago with the intention of using it in the fall. After seeing the book, though, I ditched the $100 1st-grade science that I thought I loved, because BFSU was so much better. Dr. Nebel knows science and knows children, and that is a rare combination. And for a quarter of the price, I received three times the volume of lesson plans.
What is BFSU?
BFSU is neither a traditional nor a classical science curriculum. Rather, it is an entirely new approach to teaching science. There are two main ideas that drive this curriculum: (1) People learn more when it is relevant to their own lives, and (2) People retain more of what they learn if they are making mental connections. BFSU attempts to create and take advantage of "teaching moments," that is, those times when children are seeking to learn, asking questions and wanting to know. Although it is not marketed as using the Socratic method, I find the Socratic method used heavily to create these "teaching moments."
BFSU covers the following general areas of science, called "threads": Nature of Matter, Life Science, Physical Science, and Earth and Space Science. There is not a specific schedule or order in which you have to teach the lessons. The lessons, however, are intended to be taught approximately in a spiral such that you are teaching one or two lessons from one thread and then moving on to the next. Each lesson plan tells you what lessons from all threads that are considered prerequisite. The earlier lessons are designed for the younger K level students, and the later lessons for the older students. In this way, the child learns to integrate the different areas of science. (For example, before teaching the distinction between plants and animals from the Life Science thread, the child should first have covered concepts of energy and making things go from the Physical Science thread, since how we get our energy is an important distinction between plants and animals.) As you spiral through the different threads, you continue to revisit what you have previously covered but just go into it in greater depth each time.
BFSU is written for the classroom, but it is very easily adaptable to the home school setting (and even acknowledges this in the Introduction). It is not just "for" K-2 students, but there are easily enough lessons for three years of material, unless you have a child that is extraordinarily driven in the science category. To quote another forum post, "This is not a cutesy Kindergarten science program." BFSU tackles some very advanced concepts while managing to keep the activities and material on a young child's mental level. (For example, DH is a high school physics teacher, and he has remarked that most of his new students have never even heard of the difference between mass and weight, a concept that is dealt with in the Physical Science thread.)
Is it secular or religious?
BFSU is a secular text. But as a Christian, I have not found anything controversial. It does not address topics like the creation of the world or evolution.
What kind of preparation does BFSU take?
Each lesson is very thorough and lengthy, most covering 6-8 pages, single-spaced, with no pictures or diagrams. It is absolutely necessary to read the whole lesson carefully. Dr. Nebel is meticulous about giving you everything you might want to know, including what misconceptions children commonly have, and what answers you might expect to get out of them.
A materials list is given for each lesson. Almost every material needed is something that you would likely have in your home, but occasionally you might find something that you need to pick up. As I browse through the lessons, I see that I will have to be prepared to acquire balloons for one lesson and an empty glass jar for another. My recommendation is to go through the materials lists for all of the lessons and make a shopping list of things you don't normally have and then store those things in an easily accessible location.
Each lesson also comes with a list of reading books that you can use with the lesson. So if you are using these book lists to supplement your lessons, you will need to check those out from the library prior to the lesson, as well.
The most difficult part of preparing for a lesson is that most of us will need to change how we teach and think about science. You have to figure out how you are going to make the lesson relevant to your own child. There are many ideas and lots of guidance, but BFSU recognizes that different children will be reached in different ways. It might be as simple as planning to talk about solids, liquids and gases in the bathroom as your child brushes his teeth or takes a bath. Or you might be inspired to elaborate on a given activity or go on a field trip. I do not personally like a scripted program, yet I lack the creativity to come up with my own activities and discussions. BFSU gives me just enough script with a whole lot of ways to tailor it to my own child, family and circumstances.
But just let me warn that BFSU does take some preparation. I am spending at least 30-60 minutes reading the lesson and setting up the activities, with most of that time spent just wrapping my brain around the lesson plan. If I did not have a science background, I would want to write down the questions I was supposed to ask and the answers I wanted to elicit from the child.
What about students older than K?
Dr. Nebel has been saying on his Yahoo group that books for grades 3-5 and for 6-8 are due out by this summer. In my opinion, you could easily use this book for grade 3 unless you have a particularly savvy student. Even with an older student that is really into science, I think much could still be gleaned from these lessons. I would just go through it faster. If I had a third grader, I would get the K-2 book and start working on it now so that I would not have to worry about when the 3-5 book came out.
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25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Nebel Doesn't Underestimate Children, April 30, 2008
This review is from: Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding: A Science Curriculum for K-2 (Paperback)
Learning science in kindergarten is a privilege that most public school students do not enjoy. Teachers have enough to do teaching them to read and do math and stand in line and answer to bells and wait their turn to speak and print their names properly and wait for paste and line up their crayons in a row. Ironically, the kids probably get more science education in preschool when they do themed unit weeks like weather week or ocean week than they do in the early elementary grades.
That's the kind of science little kids get, when they do get it: topical stuff. Let's learn about fish. Let's learn about plants. We'll learn about fish this week and plants next week, but we're not going to learn about what connects fish to plants or how the sun is connected to both fish and plants, because little kids don't typically get trusted with that kind of information. They aren't asked to see the big picture, draw lines between their thematic units, understand science as a whole, as a system of interconnected disciplines. A privileged first-grader who's getting a bigger-than-average helping of science is going to know the names of the planets and how bees make honey and that their eyes allow them to see, but that's where it stops. I can't honestly say that I've ever seen a whole-world approach to teaching science to young children until I saw Dr. Nebel's books.
His first book was a how-to manual addressing all aspects of elementary education, not just science. As an elementary level homeschool curriculum, it doesn't provide a box of workbooks, but teaches a philosophy of teaching and learning. It's called " Nebel's Elementary Education: Creating a Tapestry of Learning." Here's a summary, from the web site:
***This single book (8 1/2 x 11, 450 pages) contains approaches and actual subject matter for delivering the entirety of a superior K-5 education. It describes not only WHAT to teach, but also HOW to teach it using hundreds of hands-on activities, and much more.
Most distinctive is the organization. Typical elementary curricula consist of an array of stand-alone units, which kids readily forget, confuse, and from which they never gain a full picture. In sharp contrast, Nebel lays out each subject (K-5) as a seamless continuum of lessons integrating different subjects along the way. Simultaneously, Nebel shows you how to guide your children along this pathway in a way that builds logically and systematically toward a broad, comprehensive, holistic understanding. The result is achievement of knowledge, skills, understanding, and problem-solving ability that will provide a solid foundation for all further learning.
The book is in total harmony with modern research concerning the most effective and efficient teaching techniques that bring children to become joyful, self-motivated learners. In short, this book may be considered a breakthrough in translating theory-what leads to the most effective and efficient learning-into a practical curriculum addressing all subjects.***
His new book focuses just on science, and is called Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding: A Science Curriculum for K-2. I can't think of a reason why five-year-olds cannot begin to learn and understand science in context, just like they can start learning history at this age, not that they get that in public school either. Homeschoolers have a special opportunity to start their children on the right path in science education, and Dr. Nebel can help.
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