Science Sunday - What is Life?

As part of deciding what to do for Kindergarten, we have been looking at several different science curricula. This week we are testing out R.E.A.L. Science Odyssey while we wait for Insights to arrive. I won't get into the details of one vs the other now. That is for a separate post. I just wanted to share our lab for this week.

With REAL Science the kids make a science notebook. The first page of each lesson is a summary sheet for their notebook and each lab has sheets for their notebook. I am hoping this will help motivate Froggy to want to do the labs.

Here is my take on the Lab in bullet points
+ - each lab starts with a question that is answered through the lab
+ student poses what they think will happen
- low on the wow factor
- lots of reading and writing very little doing. In the lab as designed, the student is not even supposed to have or touch anything during the whole process just think about and compare in their minds. Bleach

We revised the lab a bit by moving it outside where we could see and touch the items

Froggy did not want to read the page explaining the lab even outside with the things to touch. Now that may be because this was easy stuff but I am going to move the reading to a separate time from the lab for our second attempt.
We did complete the worksheet and talked about it and made corrections. I did all the writing but Froggy did all the answering.

I am very unimpressed with the whole program. We are going to give a few more tries to see if it improves but I am not putting odds on it.