Physics 1 (Grades 1-3)

This science is amazing! We kids absolutely love it! And it is so easy to teach.

This curriculum was everything I needed it to be. Hands on, versatile, multiple students at once, all inclusive, and easily modified for my needs. We don’t use the lab book for each student. They have their own science journals they keep record of things in. We use the lab book and teachers manual mainly for group answering and as an experiment guide.

My kids are loving the books & experiments. As the teacher, I wish that my handbook and the experiment guide were one and the same. But otherwise liking it

Very well laid out with lessons that spark interest.

This is our third NOEO science program. We actually have science as part of our curriculum but my kids enjoy the activities and experiments so much we supplement with this. Great customer service as well. We were right in the middile of an experiment and the cars sent didn't work. I was going to start the hunt online to replace them but thought I'd see if NOEO would help me out. Not only did they help get us working pieces but we got them in just 2 days! That was great because we didn't have to have a gap in the lesson.

We are enjoying the experiments and the books - however, the pace of the books (often 1-3 pages at a time) was painfully slow. We have ended up reading the books in full a few times, instead of only reading a couple of pages at once.

I’m thrilled to hear my kids throwing around terms like “inertia” in proper context - that has proven to me this was the right curriculum for us!

We are enjoying science! Started with Biology and working our way through Chemistry and Physics next.

This curriculum provides a thoughtful design and structure that any home educator can modify to suit his/her needs. My daughters love the books that come with the curriculum; they certainly pique their interest and help to get them curious. What I find cumbersome are the 3 "manuals" --- Instructor's Guide, Experiment Guide, and Lab. There has to be a way to combine the Instructor's Guide and the Experiment Guide into one. Much of the content is repetitive (ex - answers to questions from the Lab Manual in both), and I think both are unnecessary. Additionally, the Lab Manual is ONLY in a Question & Answer format. NOEO (and I) could have saved money with a simple list of questions in the Instructor's Guide instead of an entire Lab Manual dedicated to this, and I could have orally asked my children the questions. My hope was that this manual would have been more creatively designed with suggestions to draw what my girls had seen, document data in a chart (such as for the experiments dealing with force) or some other interactive "extension" activities. As it is, I strongly recommend that they redesign the Lab Manual to BE MORE than what it is. Overall, you could do much worse than this curriculum, and the overall layout is helpful to structuring the year. However, there is room to improve.

As a homeschooling Mother with little to no interaction with physics prior to this time, I am stunned at how simple the lessons and experiments are. My Son loves the Max Axiom comic books and likes to use funny voices while reading them. He enjoys the living books.. all of them. The first experiment we did was super simple and fun to do as well; I did not expect this. I have dreaded opening the box since it arrived because I was just subconsciously scared of the complexities I was expecting to encounter.
To my surprise, they are quite simple and I like them.

To hear my 5-year old Son talking so confidently about force, gravity, pulleys, wheels and levers, and so on, gives me such a great feeling of joy and pride.

I am consequently teaching myself about the basics here, “accidentally” learning about Force and motion, and the many other interesting things to come. We have just began this curriculum and I am still awaiting my Biology and Chemistry but I am glad we get to focus on one subject for a year so that is not much of a challenge.

Sometimes I ask myself “am I really the one teaching Physics?” My husband and I make jokes about it… almost unbelievable.

I cannot imagine the amount of work that has gone into putting this amazing resource together and I want to thank the team for all their hard work. May God bless you all. We are all the way here in Africa but we have been really blessed to come upon your simply amazing resource. Thank you again.

This curriculum is great! I love that both my 1st and 3rd graders can do it together with me, and that everything we need is ready to go! The readings are short and engaging, and the experiments easy to put together and fun for the kids. They really help explain and explore the topics. The lessons are short enough that we fit most of each week into one "science day" weekly activity rather than spreading out a little each day, as that works best with our schedule.

The whole curriculum is wonderful and beautifully done. As soon as I opened it I knew I wanted to continue purchasing it thru the years BUT the teachers manual was not done well. It’s not in a proper order and have a few mistakes. This have slowed down our “grab and go” homeschool routine significantly and it’s frustrating to use. Due to this. I won’t purchase it anymore. Sad, because everything else was 100% amazing.

I can’t believe how much my second grader is learning. Didn’t think it was possible to learn physics so early! My four year old begs me to let him join all the experiments because they are so fun!

Physics 1

As a former science educator of 10 years and now homeschool mom, I was excited about Noeo and it appeared to be one of the best on the market from my research. Upon using the curriculum, I am still impressed with it *in theory* , but many of the experiments do not “work”. Now, if this was marketed as an inquiry based (design your own) experiment or model, I wouldn’t have the same review. However, since this has “cookie cutter” experiments that spell the experiments out exactly and the parent and child are expecting them to work, I must leave a three star review. We do persist, tweak and make changes to the experiments (as any good scientist must do) ultimately are modified and work, but this is not how the curriculum is set up. Hopefully these issues are specific to the physics course.

I really enjoy the simplicity of the lesson plans as well as the approach to use a variety of texts. The pace is appropriate as well and seems reasonable for my 2nd grader. The labs are generally pretty easy to execute with given materials and things from home, so that’s nice. Although we often don’t answer the questions in the “Lab Manual”, but rather just verbally go over our findings.

This approach does lack a certain order and structure that you would get from a traditional text book approach. I would like to see more info given in the “Lab Manual” and “Instructors Guide” to outline and organize key concepts (e.g.; terms/definitions, laws listed, brief explanations). It sort of seems like the material has to be pieced together like a patchwork quilt and there’s nowhere really to organize it. I’m not sure how well this would work for someone without a science background because I’m regularly drawing on my own knowledge to help my kids (my older kids are doing the Physics II curriculum) categorize and organize the information being presented.

I have used this curriculum for two years now. We all LOVE the content! The reference books are engaging and informative. The experiments are varied and can be quite fun. My children enjoy learning by reading about a concept and then having a hands on practical application right after. I really like that in the new version, specific questions are asked about the reading material and the experiments. The Instructors Guide is laid out wonderfully and gives me all the tools I need for science. However, having a separate Lab Manual and Experiment Guide is a complete waste of paper. They should be combined into one book and efforts should be made to condense some of the pages. Sometimes the experiments are four steps deep (Instructor Guide shows me there's an experiment, we all go to the Experiment Guide, we are sent to a separate reference book, then we go to the Lab Manual to write up the experiment). This is just too much wasted time and paper. Other than this, we really do love this curriculum, my children are learning and retaining a whole lot about science.

Really disappointed that the books are so heavily relied on and they arent available at the library or my bookstore. There should be alternative way to access the main idea/info needed for each lesson like videos or science encyclopedias already laid out instead of me finding something each week

I’m grateful for the first time Noeo was ever recommended to me. It’s a game changer for homeschool science. I should be excited about the constant changes to the curriculum, but that usually means more money spent , and now it means what I originally purchased is now a bit outdated. Frustrating, but I make it work because I don’t have the money to update everything, so much of my older lesson plans don’t line up with the new content.

Great materials that make learning fun and when learning is fun it sticks in the student’s mind.

This science curriculum has been great. The lessons are easy to follow, no guess work on what to do each day. There have been some typos in the manuals, clearly as projects were updated the books weren't. The reading books have kept my son's attention and he's excited to read more. The experiments are very fitting to what we are learning though some of them don't work the best because the parts used aren't fitting (like lifesavers for wheels). Overall, I'm happy with this purchase and would make future science purchases from Noeo.

Love the content and the books. Wish the parent guide and the experiment guide were combined in one book! Was flipping back and forth a lot as my kids love science and we'd do a weeks worth of lessons on one day sometimes!

Easy to use, straightforward, love the easy experiments especially that most of the supplies come in the kit. This curriculum makes teaching science easy!

My kids love the books included with our box, and the experiments are easy and practical and do a good job of illustrating the principles discussed in the books. I love the fact that it's very "open and go" for me--no real advance prep. The fact that Noeo uses experiment kits from a third party (and that these kits are used out of order in Noeo from how they were intended to be used) is slightly confusing, but nothing we can't handle. I'm much, much happier with this than with our previous science curricula.

So, we have really loved using NOEO. BUT, we've gotten closer to the end of Physics 1 and it really starts to focus more on the inventors and not physics and then even venturing into earth science with the planet and constellation study... So I'm a little confused why the curriculum went that direction?

I really enjoy the length of the lessons and the Max Axiom books, but the Young Scientist Experiments have not worked consistently. We end up with a fair amount of wasted time trying to make them work. The kids are learning, and I appreciate that each week includes hands on components.

To be fair, we are only on Week 6, and have plenty more to go. It may get better as we continue along.

The kids are enjoying learning Physics in a hands on learning fashion.

Who knew teaching physics would be so much fun?!?! I would highly recommend!

We love this curriculum, but as a former science teacher, I have a suggestion. The instruction manual can be very confusing. I suggest making it clearer and adding the structures/reading for the experiments, to the manual as well.