Biology 1 (Grades 1-3)

I absolutely love this! I'm a total science geek. So, being able to start home schooling with this and the accompanied experiements is going to be a game changer!

Great and fast shipping! Love the product

The product has changed since I originally ordered it years ago. It no longer includes instruction pamphlets on the experiments. Without the pamphlets, the kits are useless as my old intructors manual does not have the instructions either. Im assuming the instructions are in the new manuals. Very dissapointing. A lot of money to spend on nothing.

Biology 1 (Grades 1-3)

I was thrilled to buy our first Noeo kit and dive in this year. I've discovered a couple things:

What I love: my 5 and 6 year olds love the read alouds and are engaged in the experiments. It really is not boring at all; yay!

What I don't love:

1) Juggling three workbooks. That is not, in my opinion, "open and go." Would love to see these consolidated!

2) Not all of the experiment items are included in the kits, and most of the "common household items" I actually don't have in my house, and needed to go out and purchase, which was just one more organizational obstacle for me. Again, not "open and go." We are currently stonewalled and can't complete an experiment because I don't have anything styrofoam on hand, and refuse to buy a whole package of styrofoam plates just for one experiment. Kinda annoying.

3) I wish there was a coloring page/activity page for each lesson for younger grades instead of note-taking. For now, I have them answer the questions orally because the lab journal has just too much writing required for kindergarten and first grade. I am also printing off various activity pages for each lesson wherever I can find them online, which my kids love but it is a lot of extra work for me.

4) What would really be the icing on the cake for me, would be an extended book list of titles I can check out from the library to really bulk up the read-aloud portion. We rely heavily on reading time with our younger kids and the included books are great, but I've had to do additional research to find enough on-topic reading. Overall, for my family, this is currently a 3 out of 5 stars because of the above issues, and I'm not sure if we will try again next year with another Noeo kit based on the amount of additional prep and supplementation I've had to do to make it work for us. Perhaps for older grades it would be more successful!

My daughter loves doing it. She is preschool age and I read everything to her. I almost had my second grader use this curriculum, but decided to push him to biology 2 with his older sister and I’m glad I did because this I would be much too easy (and boring) for him. I will say, so far we have only been talking about the weather and that is not biology, to me, it’s Earth science.

Biology 1 (Grades 1-3)

We purchased this grade 1-3 curriculum for my daughter in 2nd grade. I found the readers in particular to be geared toward a much younger learner than the average 2nd grade student. Content and experiments are very similar to the curriculum we used for kindergarten science called Discover & Do, so it was disappointing to see that we would be repeating a fair amount of things we’d already done two years ago. Experiment packets were stocked with rather cheap materials that didn’t always match the experiment presented. This left me scrambling for substitutions and improved materials on several occasions. One specific example is the Petri dish that came sealed already had something growing in it, so there was no way to complete the week 5 experiment. I reached out to the company twice for a replacement item but was given no response. The guides and lab manual are very flimsy materials and all but 2 readers are paperback, which is disappointing considering that we paid $267 for the entire kit. While I think the curriculum itself is ok, I think the course we purchased was completely overpriced compared to other resources available elsewhere. Sadly, it’s a lesson learned too late for us as we missed their deadline for return/refund, so be on top of checking out your full year of resources early on to be sure it’s a good fit.

Easy to do lessons

This is a fun science curriculum for first graders. It engages them and provides great experiments. Not all experiments are in the package, but those usually use household items already in possession. The books are engaging and easy to read and understand.