Review: Supercharged Science, eScience

Do you feel that science is hard to teach or it's hard to make fun and exciting? Are you looking for ways to help your student with their science? Look no more!!!  Supercharged Science will do all that for you.  With their eScience online curriculum you can cover over 1,000 science activites, experiments and projects for all ages K-12.  Some of the units included are The Scienctific Method, Mechanics, Matter, Motion, Chemistry and many more. 

 Membership benefits: (from their website)   

• Videos of teaching real science to your kids, just like I do in an actual classroom
• Text-book type reading to support the material in the videos
• Hands-on activities and experiments, with videos that guide your kids through them. These activities and experiments are what really ignite a passion for science in most kids.
• Homework exercises/quizzes so you can see what your kids are really learning, and tips for how to keep track of your progress in a real a science journal
• A live science class in difference science areas every few weeks where you can connect with me personally
• Parent resources for helping you give your kids the best science education they can get
• A place to ask me questions (lots of them!)
• Recordings of everything so your kids can do the program on whatever schedule AND at whatever pace suits them.

Once you sign up you get access to the first 7 units plus additional sections like "The Scientific Method."  Then each month you will get access to the next 2 units in order.  If you need access to a unit before that time you can just email them and they will give you the unit.  There are a total of 19 units.   Supercharge science can be used with K-12.  This material can be used by all your children however you choose to use it.  You can watch the videos and work the experiments without reading a thing.  For the older students there is tons of  information with an addition of a textbook for more in depth reading.  When you signup for the 9-12 grades you will get the K-8 content free.  You can enroll in the full online e-Science program for $37 a month for the K-8 level or $57 per month for the advanced grade 5-8 and High School level. 

How we used it:
When we got started I was a bit overwhelmed with the website and all the material available to us, but thanks to Aurora Lipper who teaches the material and watching her getting started video we were ready to get started. I was mainly using Supercharge Science with my high school freshman.  We started on Unit 1 since that was what she had just started in her science curriculum.  It was easy to see where to begin using the Conversion chart which covers other curricula with suggestions of where to start. Once she started there was so much information for her to look through and watch.  The information available to her helped her understand the many concepts that she was learning. The experiments that she worked on were fun as well as beneficial   They do have Shopping Lists available which made it easy to make sure we had everything she needed. Each of the units has a separate high school textbook that added a lot of depth to the units.  We jumped around to some of the other units to see what everything looked like.  We decided that this is a great supplemental program to the science we are already using for my high schooler.  We did some of the Getting Started Activities with my younger children.

What I thought:

Supercharge Science is a wonderful resource for us and we have really enjoyed using it.  We aren't science people so we really need this detailed and well organized site to lead us through the science material.  It was a bit overwhelming for my daughter and she had trouble reading the textbook on the computer and following some of the directions.  She did enjoy working on the experiments as did my younger children as they watched her.  I can't say enough about Aurora and the videos that go along with each unit they were greatly appreciated and helpful to me as a teacher.  I think this is a great supplemental resource for my high school student, but think I could definitely use it as our primary science for my elementary and middle school aged children.