I am part of the Homeschool Review Crew. All opinions are my own.
In elementary school, I loved science! It was always my favorite subject after reading. Science was simple back then and even though we read a lot out of our textbooks, I still loved learning all the concepts. Junior high science was pretty fun too and I even had a perfect 100% in earth science which was one of my favorite courses. So naturally I thought once I entered high school, I would really enjoy honors and AP science classes. And with my grades, I was able to get my papers signed to go into honors and AP classes. So 9th grade came and it was Honors Physics. I thought it would be just as easy as all the other science classes I had taken before, but this was purely book learning. No experiments at all and it wasn't soon after that I had a D average in the class. It was then I learned that I have to actually "see" something to understand it. So that's why I'm so excited that for 6th grade, Mary gets to check out Supercharged Science's e-Science Homeschool Science Curriculum.
Supercharged Science's e-Science Homeschool Science Curriculum is amazing because it spans for all grades, K-12. Before getting started, I would highly suggest checking out the Getting Started section so you can understand how to move through the program. It's set up to let you move through your own way and at your own pace so you can pick and choose what you would like to do.
There are two main ways to navigate through the program - by topic and grade level. I chose grade level personally since I want to make sure I teach Mary what she needs to know for 6th grade. But if you choose topic, it will list all the different topics like life science, earth science, etc.
So for 6th grade, the 3 main things they will be learning about are Earth Science, Energy, and Life Science. You can click on any of those to start. Since I'm a person who likes to do things in order, I started with the top one, Earth Science.
Now you're at the fun part! On the page you choose, you will get a giant list of videos. The videos are the lessons and include a visual experiment. On the lesson page, you will get a list of materials to buy for the experiment, a reading section to understand the lesson, the visual video experiment and lesson, a PDF of the student exercises, and detailed instructions on how to do the experiment yourself. I was SO impressed with how easy but effective the e-Science Homeschool Science Curriculum is! I love how the lesson isn't intimidating and you can visually watch a video on the experiment being done for you too. This really helps me as the teacher and Mary as the student because we are both visual learners. So watching the experiment helps me understand how to set it up much better than reading instructions.
Another great thing is that not all the experiments require a bunch of items to be purchased either. Some, like this great one that teaches about how shade trees keep things cool, only required a few items and we had all of them.
So for the shade experiment, we took two jars and filled them both with water. Then we placed one under a shady tree and the other in direct sun. After coming back to check on them a few hours later, the one under the shady tree was a lot cooler than the one in the sun.
The purpose in learning was that if something is in the shade, it will be cooler because whatever is giving that it shade will be taking the direct heat from the sun. So if you're under a tree, the tree will be taking the direct blow from the sun and you'll be cooler. And for that exact reason, we have our duck pen under two shade trees!
Overall I really loved Supercharged Science's e-Science Homeschool Science Curriculum and I plan to use this as our science curriculum for 6th grade! Mary loved the experiment and she was able to recite the concept to me much better than any lesson she purely learned from a book.
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