BFSU Preview...

Otherwise known as Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding. I got this from another homeschool mom and stayed up quite late reading through a lot of it. From what I have read, I can see that this is a good, thorough foundation for future science. I plan to start using it next week - I don't want to wait until next fall! While it is technically aimed at K-2nd, I can see that it is adaptable to 2nd and 4th (currently 1st and 3rd) without too much trouble.

The pros as I see them so far is that a lot of it is hands-on and great for kinesthetic learners, like my son. Not much, if any, writing really in there, which is both a big pro and a little con. I think I may have Elf make a few notes about various topics/projects... maybe. The activities all seem to call for general household items (yes, I almost always do have balloons in the house). The books recommended are almost all available at the local library, which saves me time and money, since I can put books on hold and pick them up once a week.

The book is divided into four threads - "A": Nature of Matter, "B": "Life Science", "C": Physical Science, and "D": Earth and Space Science. There is a recommended flow chart in the book, which allows you to move between threads. Each lesson states which lessons are "prerequisites", which is very helpful in planning ahead. There's also a yahoo support group, which I just joined yesterday and have already found to be a huge help! And, as a bonus, the files on the yahoo group contain a well-made schedule, saving me a LOT of work!

We're going to start with thread A next week. Day one is simply introducing the concepts of categories and organization. Nebel (the author) recommends sorting a variety of household objects into different categories. This will be an easy one for my kids, so we'll move on pretty quickly to lesson A-2, which is on states of matter. I plan to read What is the World Made Of? All About Solids, Liquids & Gases (part of one of my favorite science series for kids) to Fairy, and have Elf read What's the Matter in Mr. Whisker's Room? to himself. Looking ahead even farther, I can use a lot of the Let's Read and Find Out series with Fairy, and there are plenty of appropriate books for Elf on the same topics. Plus, our library has lots of Bill Nye, the Science Guy videos that will go along with this, and my kids love him!

I'm also looking forward to the release of the next two levels in this to-be-series. If this one goes as well as I think it will, I'll have science covered for the next several years! After that, I'm thinking maybe of going chronologically, using The Story of Science in conjunction with Milestones in Science.