TRADITIONAL TEXTBOOK APPROACH – WHAT WE DON’T DO
In order to understand our approach, we’ll start on common ground: traditional textbook or teaching approaches.
Traditional education teaches science like a long, straight highway where each chapter is a separate exit. You visit one exit, learn about it, and then drive on, never looking back. That’s the common textbook method – neat, orderly, but a bit disconnected from the real world. In fact, biology often gets separated from chemistry, which gets separated from physics–when all three need to be distinct but also intertwine. What happens if you want to become a meteorologist or storm chaser, for example? You need to know how to combine all sciences because of the overlapping concepts. Unfortunately, if you went the traditional school route, there wouldn’t often be a textbook that did it in the right way.
In a textbook, you’d read about biology in a set order: cells, then energy, then plants, then animals, and so on. It’s like eating a meal course by course. But life isn’t a neatly arranged dinner party.
WHAT DO COLLEGES WANT? WHAT WILL PREPARE YOUR CHILD FOR LIFE?
Respected colleges or career fields require MUCH more than your child being able to memorize things. They look for and demand comprehension, application, cross-curricular understanding, and more. This is not something textbooks do well. They touch on biochemistry, and the like, but it is lacking in true comprehension and application.
CAMPFIRE’S WAY
Campfire’s method is intentionally designed to be like the former paragraph. At Campfire, we take the approach that will ensure your child the most success in life—whatever his or her goals. Our science lessons are tiered, from elementary to university-aspiring high school.
At Campfire, we take the approach that will ensure your child the most success in life–whatever his or her goals.
In Campfire, science is more like an interconnected city. Each street (unit) leads to fascinating neighborhoods (topics). While you’re exploring one area, you’re constantly reminded of others, and even visiting them again on your way across town. It is a living, breathing city of knowledge, not a one-way street.
Just like you wouldn’t stop reading a textbook at the 4th chapter and call your biology credit complete, don’t just complete a Campfire unit and call your biology credit complete. You have to complete multiple chapters in a textbook, and you have to complete multiple units in our unit study approach. Go in any order you would like, because we have you covered!!!
Now, you might be wondering: Don’t some things need to be learned in order? I mean, sure, plant biology and zoology can go in different orders even in biology textbooks, but you can’t learn about something like cell division or molecular directionality without first learning about cells, right?
Answer: Absolutely!
So how does that work? Do you have to do the units in a certain order? NOPE!
Here’s how it works. We start every unit from the basics, building up step by step. If your child already knows the basics, great – that’s a helpful review to ensure they don’t forget it (what is called a “spiral” approach). If they don’t already know the basics, they’re learning the foundation they need. Each lesson is a building block, and by the end of the unit, your child has a complete understanding of that topic (what is called mastery). It’s like constructing a building from the ground up – every brick matters. Just as in real construction, you keep going back to the same bricks over and over again—sometimes to set them, sometimes to wash them, sometimes to paint them, etc. Each time you are returning to the bricks, but each time you are learning or doing something different. We never just lay a brick and leave it there. We do a combined spiral and mastery approach.
When we focus on one piece, we’re also connecting it to the surrounding pieces. So, when we dive deep into “Zoology” in one unit, we’re not just learning about animals. We’re connecting it to cell biology, classification, biodiversity, ethology, taxonomy, ecology, and more.
Likewise, our “Independence Day” isn’t just about history; it’s a journey through biochemistry, using Benjamin Franklin’s discoveries as a starting point. Again, we start at the foundation your student needs, and we build. “Valentine’s Day” takes you through the world of molecules and polymers. “Island Life” isn’t just a tropical escape; it’s a deep dive into plant biology and cell structure. Each unit is complete in itself, but also part of a larger, ever-growing tapestry of knowledge, constantly weaving together. It allows all students the “Aha!” moments, where they can actually apply what they are learning, which is exactly the kind of comprehension that colleges or careers need.
There is cross-curricular and interdisciplinary learning, which is high on respected college’s checklists.
ENTRANCE EXAMS
We don’t believe in learning something only to forget it after a test. For example, how many of you even remember what something like molecular directionality is? No one? Well, your child will. And he or she will be able to explain it on the SATs or ACTs or in an interview when utilizing Campfire’s method.
Our approach constantly circles back, reinforcing and connecting concepts–without getting old (because it is always introduced in a new light, with a different angle, just like those bricks we talked about). This way, your child doesn’t just memorize facts; they understand and retain them.
It’s not about memorizing chapters and moving on; it’s about building a lifelong understanding and love for learning.
Welcome to Campfire!
*Note: We are a new company, having only been publishing our curriculum for three years (and initially, we did not include separate Core Connections Companions as in our more recent units). Since we are covering ALL school subjects and high school is a 4-year-long stretch, we obviously have not had enough time quite yet to cover every single topic within biology or chemistry, and this would be true until we were publishing for more years Each new unit that comes out will include more and more.