Supercharged Science recommends teaching from "the inside-out." Basically, they encourage the science experiments to get the kids interested. When the kids ask "how did that happen?" then you have a great opportunity to teach them science! My daughter watched many of the experiments just to see what would happen. Then she would read the lessons.
I will admit, at first site this website can be overwhelming, so I highly recommend you click "Getting Started" first. It shows an overview video that will help guide you as you get started. There is also a helpful user guide. There is so much great stuff on, so take some time to look around.
You will need a computer, high speed internet, and preferably a printer. You will also need materials to do the science experiments, most are household items. We had to purchase a few odds and ends, but nothing expensive. If an item is hard to find, they share an online resource.
There are 20 different units of e-science. Everything from mechanics, to matter, to energy, to light, and so much more. I can't imagine you would not be able to find the topic you are studying.
Autumn is currently learning about rocks, minerals, fossils, etc., in her ACE science. I wanted to incorporate the Supercharged Science with our regular curriculum, so we started with Unit 20 - Earth Science. (The lessons are divided up by topic or grade, whichever you prefer.)
The unit begins with an introductory video, to the right of the lesson there are a list of extras, such as the written lesson for unit 20 (which is 34 pages, with exercises), the shopping list for the experiments, links for the two lessons in the unit, and links to the science experiment videos.
Here are a few of the printables we used.
One of the experiments we did was make a fossil. The instructions were super easy and the kids had a blast getting dirt and mixing it with water, flour, salt, and water.
Blogger is giving me a difficult time posting some photos. I'll try again tomorrow, but one is a cute photo of the kids and their dinosaur fossil!
Pros:
- Many, many great videos, I think I read somewhere that there was over 1000 videos.
- Easy to follow lessons.
- Shopping lists for the experiments
- It can be used for students in grade K-12, I enjoyed watching the videos, too.
- The conversion chart that lines up various homeschool curriculums with the Supercharged Science units.
- It is a complete science curriculum.
- I don't have to teach science, Aurora does all that for me.
Cons:
- The price, we would struggle to pay that much each month. So, I'd definitely plan it out when we could make the best use of it. Although the membership is expensive, I do think it is well worth it, there is just so much there to explore.
- We had a few issues with the videos. For some reason I could not get it to play on my laptop. I am still trying to work that out, but they played fine on my husband's mac. Occasionally they would be a bit blurry as well. This could be our internet connection though. No one else seemed to have these issues, so I think it's me or my laptop.
- There's a lot of prep work that needs to be done before you get started. That being said, most science curriculum have that as well.
Supercharged Science Media Links:
http://www.twitter.com/aurora_lipper
https://www.youtube.com/user/auroram42
http://pinterest.com/superchargedsci/
https://plus.google.com/u/0/112193545312804826871/posts
http://www.superchargedscience.com/blog/
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