Science is a subject that is VERY important in our family. My husband wants the kids to start to cover all sorts of concepts, but I’m obviously limited on time. Thankfully, we were asked to review an online homeschool science program from Science Shepherd. We have been using Introductory Science, Workbook Level B.
Online Homeschool Science
Introductory Science is an online homeschool science program for students around ages 6-11. This is the perfect age for our household, because we have 6, 9, and 11 year old students! My kids all watched the videos together and all seemed to pick up a lot of the information. I believe that is because each lesson is quick and to the point.
The program is meant to be used 5 days a week for 35 weeks. Since the lessons were so short, my kids were eager to “watch ahead” and I was totally okay with that! The set comes with 12 months of online access to daily videos (all very short and just a few minutes long), a spiral-bound softcover workbook, and an answer key to the workbook. I loved that we had access to all of the videos right away, which made it easy for my son to watch them at his own pace.
After they watched the videos, I chose for my son to be the one to complete the workbook activities. I will probably be purchasing an additional workbook for my other students now that we know we like the program so much! My 6 and 11 year olds are a little jealous that their brother gets to work on the little puzzles about the lessons and they don’t.
We have the Level B workbook, which is intended for the students on the older end of the age range to work. It contains the same questions as the Level A workbook, but with some more advanced extras like crossword puzzles. (If I buy a workbook for my 6 year old, I will get Level A for him.)
The worksheets are clearly labeled for which lesson, week, and day it goes with. The worksheet for the video never took my son longer than a few minutes to complete.
Overall, if he had completed the program “as written”, an average day’s lesson, from start to finish, would only take about 5-10 minutes. Since he was working ahead, I would say he spent about 15 minutes a day on the program.
When I asked my son what he thought about Science Shepherd, he said he liked it, and here is why:
- It is easy to use.
- The program is quick to work through and doesn’t take very long to complete.
- The videos are clear, and the concepts are easy to understand through watching them.
- Some of the videos are entertaining. 🙂
- My kids are learning new things.
- The workbook includes fun activities like word searches and puzzles.
- The workbook has a lot of questions, but it is broken into just a few questions each day.
- Between the video and the worksheet, it has a very manageable workload per lesson.
- It is Biblically-based, and talks about God as the creator of all things for the first 2 weeks of lessons.
I’ve tried other “religious” curriculum for science before, and I’ve been unimpressed how some of them seem to just answer all of the hard questions for elementary students with, “because God….” I want my kids to get the meat and potatoes of hardcore science, and this program does go through those nuts and bolts! I mean, didn’t God create science? Aren’t his awesome works the whole reason people get so fascinated and want to experiment and learn more?
Speaking of that, my kids also liked that there were experiments in the program. We were not able to complete many of them together, but the videos showed the whole process, including having real kids constructing and performing the experiments.
I was happy to see the supply list for experiments. We’ve had programs before that said the materials needed were easy to find around the house, only to see that they were not actually that common. With this program, the items really are easy to find, and probably laying around already in the home. Finally! Experiments we can actually throw together on the fly without having to chase down things at a hardware store or by mail order!
If more science classes were offered in this format, I would snatch them up in a heartbeat. I wish all of our subjects were this easy to implement into our schedule and complete by my elementary students!
Other members of the Review Crew reviewed this and two other science programs from Science Shepherd. Click the banner below to go check them out.