Review: Supercharged Science

4/8/2014

Videos, experiments, text, learning, questions, answers, Supercharged Science has all this and more. Come on in and see what my son and I thought of thishomeschool science curriculum.

Vendor: Supercharged Science
Product Name: e-Science Premium Membership
Received: a six month e-Science Premium Membership online subscription
For use: Free Copy of the Science Activity Video Series and Guidebook.
Age Range: This resource is intended for all grade levels (K-12).
Price: K-8 students, the membership is $37 per month, add highschool $57/month

Supercharged Science has tons of information on their site, all sorts of material to study, to experiment with and just learn from while having some fun experimenting.
Here are the units they have.

Mechanics
Motion
Matter
Energy 1 (Levers & Pulleys)
Energy 2 (Potential & Kinetic)
Sound
Astrophysics (Astronomy, Space)
Chemistry 1 (Molecules, Atoms & Chemical Kinetics)
Light
Electricity (circuits and robotics)
Magnetism
Alternative Energy (solar cells, wind power etc)
Thermodynamics (heat and temperature)
Electronics
Chemistry 2 (Reactions, Bonds, Acids & Bases)
Life Science 1 (Living Organisms, Cells, Genetics, Microscopes)
Life Science 2 (Prokaryotes, Plants, Protists & Fungi)
Biology 1 ( Invertebrates, Fishes, Amphibians, Reptiles, Birds & Mammals)
Biology 2 (Skin, Bones, Muscles, Cardiovascular)
Earth Science

You can also engage in science experiments, mathemagic, science e-camp and learn tips and strategies for doing science with your children.

Aurora Lipper is articulate and has a clear passion for helping children understand science and to ask questions about what they are learning.

The e-Science website is organized in a few different ways. You can search for materials by topic or by grade level. I simply went by grade level, and then explored the topic as much as my son was interested in it. It's nice to be able to go back and forth so easily. It shows Aurora's responsiveness to her customers.

How we used this program:
I'd go the page where we can pick a topic we want to study. I'd ask the lad what he was interested in of of 2-4 choices, he would tell me and then we would do the introductory material. We'd watch the videos, I'd ask him some questions in order to gauge where his interests would most lie and then we read the text.

SINCE the experiments have print outs I was able to print off the experiments for later use during the week. My lad does best if I let factual learning sit in his head for a bit before continuing with the learning so this approach worked well for him. We would do the experiments later in the week from the print outs I had done. This gave me the chance to pull together the items we would need and for me to occasionally ask him questions such as... Do you remember what electrons do? What happens to the density of an object if you crush it? What is an atom again? I loved the fact that I could print off all the experiments at once, made it so easy. AND since each experiment comes with a video, if we ran into an issue later I could simply pull it up again so we could watch it actually being done.

Below are some of the experiments that we worked on. I have to admit, he really enjoyed doing the electricity experiments... and much of what he did with it wasn't part of the experiments that Ms. Lipper listed....he wanted to do his own thing and then tell me what he figured out rather than do what he was supposed to be doing. I gotta give Aurora kudos for that....the fact that she gets a child interested and thinking about stuff is good in my book.

This is the litany I have grown used to with Supercharged Science.
Mom... do we HAVE to do Supercharged Science?
Oh... mom.. that's neat.
Why does it do that mom? LET ME DO IT MOM!

Mom.. Do We HAVE to do Supercharged Science?
Oh.. Can we learn about electricity today mom?

So I've have to admit I have mixed feelings about my review for this all grades level science program. I like that I can look at materials in random order, picking and choosing what we are interested in on any given day. I like that everything is laid out in a logical manner, that materials are, for the most part, easy to gather together. I like that I am able to easily answer my son's questions.

I don't like that he is NOT eager to do science using Supercharged Science. He always has this hesitation and dragging of feet when it comes to this program, unlike other science programs that we have used. I'm not sure what it is, since I can get easily get him curious about different things we can try, but he always has something he'd rather do.. like his own creations, or coming up with questions and ideas out of the science book we are going through or pretty much using any other science program. When I ask him why this is he can't come up with a definitive reason other than "I like the other stuff we do better mom".

I think that It is worth visiting the Supercharged Science website and signing up for the money-back guarantee 30 day trial—especially when it’s being offered for only one dollar! It's a dollar, so no risk to you. Check out if Supercharged Science will work for you and your children. Find out more at the TOS Special Offer. Once your registered, you’ll also receive emails from Ms. Lipper with invites to free online seminars and other bonus materials. You can find out more about it here.

Weigh and measure, test it out. See if it's a good fit. Perhaps you'll run hot with it and it will meld together quickly, Perhaps you'll run a bit colder with it and need to figure if the meld will work. Give it a shot.