Tag Archives: Homeschool Science Curriculum

April 10, 2014 · 11:21 am

Supercharged Science . . . A T.O.S. Review

My children and I were fortunate enough to review the e-Science Premium Membership from Supercharged Science last year, so we were surprised and happy to be given this review again this year! 🙂

Last year, I was so excited about this that I printed out the shopping list for the unit we wanted to work in, without paying attention to the teacher, Aurora Lipper (more about her later), so I would up purchasing supplies for EVERY SINGLE experiment, LOL!

Then, we went through a period of time with varied health problems and surgeries, and after the review period we never finished the unit. 😦 When the boys found out we were doing it again, they BEGGED to do more of the experiments making crystals, and since we basically still had everything (although I did have to buy some sugar and some alum), that was what we did.

I’d like to tell you a little bit about Aurora Lipper, and Supercharged Science, though, before getting into what we did this time around. She attended Cal Poly State University in San Luis Obispo, California, earning a Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering (with a minor in Mathematics and senior project in Rocket Science) in June 1996. Aurora also, while still in CA, continued her studies in a Master’s program with Edward Air Force Base, later becoming a student pilot, followed by receiving her private pilot license. Aurora Lipper, who is the online teacher at Supercharged Science, is a real rocket scientist, who has a gift for bringing her lessons to a level where even younger kids can understand them, along with no-nothing mom’s in the science department, like me. My kids are special needs kids, with various developmental disabilities, and they are very enthusiastic about this program.

As I told you above, at the request of my four boys, we chose to work more in the “Matter” unit, because they wanted to do more crystals. First, though, we re-watched the video on Unit 3: Matter (Getting Started)
. Then, it was onward and upward!

We did NOT actually begin with crystals, however. We started with an experiment called “The Breaking Point”, in which we learned about tension, compression and elasticity, using a pencil. We learned that wood (such as in a pencil) is very elastic and can bend. We also learned that eventually, there is a “breaking point”, and the pencil will snap. While we looked at the differences in the breaks in the pencil, Aurora explained about tension and compression.

Watching Aurora’s video . . .
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Here, we have the boys taking turns bending the pencil . . .
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And now, “The Batman”, finally breaking it in half!
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They really enjoyed this one. Being boys, they like it when they get to break stuff! 🙂

So, now we were onto the one experiment that all four boys have been DYING to do, Rock Candy crystals. We made a supersaturated solid solution, just like we did when making laundry soap crystals in our previous review, except THIS one was made of water and sugar.

First, we watched Aurora teach us on the video . . .
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And then, we began making our solution.
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Here is “Mr. Loquacious” taking a turn at stirring . . .
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Next up, “The Puzzler” . . .
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Then “The Artist” took a spin . . .
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Followed by “The Batman”.
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After what was a LOT longer time than we expected from what was on the video, we FINALLY got the sugar dissolved! We then divided it into separate glasses, and added food coloring to each one.
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We seeded our skewers with sugar, and then put them into the glasses just the way we had been shown on the video . . .
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And left them to do their work. Sadly, we must have done SOMETHING wrong, because they’ve been sitting a while and there are no crystals yet forming on the skewers. We will try again, though! 🙂

We WERE successful with another crystal experiment, this one involving cleaned out egg-shell halves, water, alum and food coloring.

Here are all of the supplies we used for egg-shell crystals . . .
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Here, the water and alum is being mixed to make another supersaturated solution.
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We set the egg shells, filled with the solution on a plate with an upside down bowl in the center, so they would stay put.
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We then left them to do their work, with me pretty much constantly telling my boys they didn’t need to check them every five minutes! 🙂

Happily, we were successful this time, YAY!
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Aurora said in her video that we can keep making the supersaturated solution with the alum and water, and adding it to the same egg shells, which will eventually give us a simulated geode. My kids are wanting to do this, so we’ll see if there is a bulk food place here where I can buy a larger supply of alum without spending a fortune at the grocery store on it.

We received the K-12 plan for this review, however, you can either subscribe to that at a cost of $57.00 per month, or the K-8 level plan for $37.00 per month.

Do I believe it’s worth the cost? Yes, I do, especially as we would very likely stick with the K-8 plan. Do I feel it is truly affordable? Well, it really is not affordable for us, and I think many homeschoolers would feel the same, sadly. Most homeschoolers live on one income, and have to pinch the pennies very hard. As I said in my previous review, I’d love to see a substantial discount for paying a whole year at once, whenever the family can afford to sign up and do that (like at tax refund time, lol!), or even partial scholarships. Other than that, I can see nothing but positives regarding the e-Science Program from Supercharged Science. We LOVE it!

To follow Supercharged Science on social media, please check out the following:

https://www.facebook.com/superchargedsci
http://www.twitter.com/aurora_lipper
https://www.youtube.com/user/auroram42

https://plus.google.com/u/0/112193545312804826871/posts
http://www.superchargedscience.com/blog/

Other crew members also reviewed the e-Science Premium Membership from Supercharged Science. Please click the graphic below to discover their views!
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February 27, 2014 · 11:00 am

Science4Us.com . . . a T.O.S. Review

Many of you are aware that our boys really, really enjoy things that are, in their words, “science-y”. You may NOT be aware though, that I am NOT a “science-y” type person, so this topic has always been sort of a “learn it as it comes up” kind of thing. Well, being given the chance to review an online science curriculum called Science4Us.com Online Subscription turned out to be something of a God-send!

Science4Us.com offers a FULL online science curriculum for your K-2 students. However, don’t let that grade range limit you at all. It can also be used as review for older students. MY kids are having a great time with it!

Here is a video of “Mr. Loquacious”, talking just a little bit about the program . . .

As you can see, he tends to lose his “Mr. Loquacious” title when being put on a video, LOL!

I feel that this curriculum is very good for either the homeschool parent who wants to set up lessons for their children (or is required to do so by their state), or for the homeschool parent like me, who is more of a “fly by the seat of your pants” type. I do not use a lesson planner, I have never lived in a state which required me to keep records of any kind, which is the way I, personally, feel homeschooling ought to be. We do a lot of “interest led” homeschooling, and believe me, the Science4Us.com Online Subscription works BEAUTIFULLY for our homeschooling method!

Lest you think it won’t be for you though, because you prefer (or are required) to keep records, have lesson plans, etc, this curriculum works for you, too! The Science4Us.com Online Subscription gives you, the parent and/or teacher, well done lesson plans, already prepared for you! The program is set up to allow you to check on your child’s progress, and see what and how they are doing. You have the capability to set specific assignments for your children, and can even set it up with start dates and end dates, or just set the assignment up to end when they have completed it.

MY kids like that when they log in, everything they have already completed now has a gold star on it, and they know to go to the next thing. They also enjoy the animated lessons, the games, and surprisingly, they like taking the “evaluates”, or quizzes at the end of each topic they do. 🙂

The Science4Us.com Online Subscription is EXTREMELY easy to navigate! Even my boys, once I showed them how to log on with their individual memberships, were able to move around with great ease, needing only to ask for help the very first time they were on. That says a lot to a homeschool mom like me who has special needs kids, and almost always has to tweak whatever we are using to work with my children. 🙂

Here is an example of what your child will see after he or she logs in . . .

At that point, they may either choose one of the books at the top right, which my kids did to begin, and then thereafter, they chose from the “recent activity” box, going to the next circle without a star.

Here is “The Puzzler”, who, by the way, asks multiple times a day if he can “do the science thing” . . .
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And here is a shot of “Mr. Loquacious, also working on his own . . .
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Your subscription will include a good overview of the following main topics: Science Inquiry, Earth/Space Science, Life Science, and Physical Science, as well as numerous subtopics. I do feel it’s important for me to mention that the Earth History topic does come from an evolutionary viewpoint, and because of that, it was the one limit I put on my kids. We did not use that portion of the curriculum. I allowed them each to choose their main overview topic, and required that they stick with that one until finishing the unit, but other than that, they were free to work on their own, at their own pace.

If it is important to you to use a “standards based” curriculum, Science4Us.com Online Subscription states that it falls within that. This is not something that matters to me, but I know that some of my readers do feel it is important.

I feel that the price for what you will be receiving is excellent! There are Over 350 Online Lessons, Hands-On Activities and Worksheets, it is web-based, and there will be availability to use it on the iPad in 2014. For those to whom it matters, this curriculum does correlate to state and national standards. In addition to science, Science4Us.com Online Subscription also helps build math and language skills. Here is a picture I took while “Mr. Puzzler” was working on something that added in language arts . . .
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Finally, if you need or want it, there is automated Reporting for Homeschool Portfolios.

All of this comes to you for the very reasonable price of $7.95 per month, per child.

So far, we are really enjoying our time with the Science4Us.com Online Subscription, and I feel confident in recommending it to you!

To find Science4Us.com on various social media, check out the following:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Science4UsSays
Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/science4us/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Science4Us
G+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/112259351657747584252/

To find out what my crewmates thought of the Science4Us.com Online Subscription, please click the graphic below!
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November 6, 2013 · 11:01 am

Exploring Creation With Chemistry and Physics . . . A T.O.S. Review

If you are looking for a hands on, Charlotte Mason Style Homeschool Science Curriculum with a definite Christian world view, you will certainly find it in Exploring Creation With Chemistry And Physics, written by Jeanie Fulbright and published by Apologia. This curriculum is written for children anywhere from kindergarten through grade six, and is perfect, in my opinion, for working together as a group, even in a multi-age group.

As reviewers, we were allowed to select any two of the notebooking journals which go along with the text book. Because I had hopes that at least one of my kids (“The Artist”) would be able to use the Regular Notebooking Journal, I asked for it . . .

Along with a copy of the Junior Notebooking Journal.

Because of a mistake in shipping, I actually received two of the Junior Notebooking Journals. Apologia was kind enough to replace the missing journals for those of us who received the wrong ones, and ESPECIALLY kind enough to allow us to keep the wrong ones! In the meanwhile, I was able to acquire two more Junior Notebooking Journals from other reviewers. 🙂 As it happened, this turned out to be a real blessing, because although “The Artist” probably CAN handle the regular Notebooking Journal, he definitely preferred the Jr. one.

The Notebooking Journals are very similar, but the Junior Notebooking Journal actually has a lot more in it for someone who likes art, and the Regular Notebooking Journal has significantly more writing to do, something “The Artist” gets balky about if he has to do it with handwriting as opposed to using the computer.

One of the best things about the Apologia is that when we use it as a read-aloud (and we do!), the text is very easy to understand, and there are plenty of good quality color pictures to go along with the text.

Spread throughout each chapter (Lesson) are boxes with the heading “Try This!”. It may be a small experiment, a game, or something else, but it always goes right along with what is being taught in that section. Some of the “Try This!” sections we have done are:

The 20 Questions Game, which teaches the skill of being able to describe the properties of matter.

Figuring out the volume of a small rock using the method discovered by Archimedes . . .

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during which we discovered that this small rock from our yard came in at about 50 cubic centimeters.

We began learning about density using two eggs, two glasses of warm water, and one half cup of salt . . .

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We learned more about mass, volume and density by seeing whether different objects would sink or float in a bowl of water . . .

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And we also did one other “Try This” to learn about buoyancy. The idea was to build a foil boat, put it into our “ocean” of warm salt water . . .
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then begin adding pennies (pirate treasure) to see how many it took to make the boat sink . . .
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In case you were wondering, it took 56 pennies!

In the main text-book “Exploring Creation With Chemistry and Physics“, there are 14 lessons. The breakdown of the lesson plans are in the Notebooking Journal and the Junior Notebooking Journal, with the suggested pace of two days per week, doing one lesson per week. As usual, we are slowing this down quite a bit, in order that all of my children can really get as much as possible out of this curriculum. I think that’s one of the best things about homeschooling, the fact that we can go at our own pace, tweaking here and there as needed to accommodate the various special needs my kids have.

There are also a multitude of lapbook style things in both of the Notebooking Journals for the student to cut out, fill in, and then glue to the appropriate page of their notebook. We are just getting ready to begin one of them, in fact!

There are vocabulary activities, such as crossword puzzles, word find puzzles, match-up sheets, vocabulary puzzle pieces, etc, and, should you need them, the answers are all in the back of the Notebooking Journal!

Here are just a couple of pictures from our Notebooking Journals:

From the Junior Notebooking Journal, you can see that my kids are not carbon copies of one another when it comes to coloring!
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Here is the one picture I managed to get of “The Artist” beginning a crossword puzzle in the regular Notebooking Journal, before going back to the Junior Notebooking Journal, which he very much prefers! 🙂
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Apologia is a good fit for my family, and we will continue to use it, but with one small adjustment in addition to slowing the pace down quite a bit. The only other change I will make is that when they have a copywork page with a Bible verse, I will be having them use our King James Bible, rather than the version used in the curriculum. As my regular readers are aware, that is my one pet peeve with Christian homeschool curriculum, it is mostly written using other versions these days. I would love it if this were offered with the option of being published using the King James Version for those of us who will use no other version of the Bible. In the meantime, I guess I will just continue to adjust for that by typing the verses out from the King James Bible and then adhering them to the Notebooking Journal over the other version.

The Textbook “Exploring Creation With Chemistry and Physics” by Jeanie Fulbright can be found here at the cost of $39.00.

The “Chemistry and Physics Notebooking Journal for Exploring Creation With Chemistry and Physics” can be found here for $24.00.

The “Junior Chemistry and Physics Notebooking Journal for Exploring Creation With Chemistry and Physics” is available here for $24.00.

My children and I are very much enjoying this Homeschool Science Curriculum, and I hope you will, too!

To find out what other Schoolhouse Review Crew members thought of “Exploring Creation With Chemistry and Physics“, please click on the graphic below!
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Filed under Apologia, Christian faith, education, family, home education, homeschool products, Homeschool Science Curriculum, homeschooling, Kids, Lapbooking, Schoolhouse Review Crew Post, special needs education, TOS Post, TOS Review

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