About our Building Blocks Program
Cover fundamental aspects of five science subjects over the course of a year.
The Building Blocks Series is based on an upward-spiral teaching method where the 5 core disciplines (chemistry, biology, physics, geology, and astronomy) are repeatedly visited and built upon over months and each year.
Spiral learning is proven to lead to better long-term mastery of facts and concepts and is effective for all learners, including struggling learners, and is the first research-based recommendation in a practice guide from the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Educational Sciences (Pashler et al., 2007).
Give it a try
Want to give our product a test run? Download our sample sets any Book Level to try the full program. Included in the sample sets are 3 chapters each of the student text, teacher’s manual and laboratory workbook, plus the corresponding chapters for the lesson plan, study notebook, quiz questions and graphics package.
Book Level Sample Sets:
Book 1, Book 2, Book 3, Book 4, Book 5, Book 6, Book 7, (Book 8 coming soon).
Need help choosing a level? See our assessment chart.
Subjects:
Multi-subject
Covers all 5 subjects: astronomy, biology, chemistry, geology, physics
Features
What does Building Blocks offer?
- Upward-spiral teaching method.
- Yearly progressive increase in complexity.
- 5 integrated core disciplines.
- One-year of study with 22 chapters.
- 44 hands-on experiments each year.
Benefits
What will my child get from doing Building Blocks?
- Better long-term mastery of facts and concepts.
- Increased depth and comprehension.
- High school, college, and career readiness.
- Laboratory skills doing “hands-on” experiments.
- Experience collecting data, drawing and evaluating conclusions.
- Deeper understanding by exploring connections between science and history, philosophy, technology, and critical thinking.
How to Use
When your books arrive:
- Use the Lesson Plan to map out your week.
- On day 1 read the Student Text with your child or have them read alone.
- On day 2 review the laboratory experiment with your child and collect materials.
- On day 3 have your child perform the laboratory experiment and record data in the Laboratory Notebook.
- On day 4 review any connections to other disciplines your child is interested in.
- On day 5 have your child take the self-test or quiz.
Choose your bundle
Book Bundle
- Student Textbook
- Laboratory Notebook
- Teacher’s Manual
- Downloads:
- Lesson Plan
Study Bundle
- Student Textbook
- Laboratory Notebook
- Teacher’s Manual
- Downloads:
- Lesson Plan
- Midterm and Final Quiz Set
- Study Notebook
Research Bundle
- Student Textbook
- Laboratory Notebook
- Teacher’s Manual
- Downloads:
- Lesson Plan
- Midterm and Final Quiz Set
- Study Notebook
- Graphics Package
- Online Edition*
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*Student text is online, Laboratory Notebooks and Teacher’s Manual pages are downloadable.
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Organize your materials
Watch Dr. Keller show you a simple way to organize all the materials you will need for the hands-on experiments.