Supercharged Science eScience Online Learning Program {A Review}

"Can we do some experiments from that Aurora Lady. She's got those awesome ideas." ~Jo-Jo 

We've been using Supercharged Science ($57 a month for K-12 e-Science Premium Membership) for a year now. We initially reviewed it last year and have done lots of experiments. Here's some of what we've done with eScience over the passed year.

Unit 10: Electricity

Basic Circuits

Simple Switches

Conductivity Testers

Nerve Tester

Electrolytes

Silver Battery

Burglar Alarm

Robotic Cookie Snatcher

Race Car

Jigglebots

Unit Zero

Maxwell's First Equation

Maxwell's First Equation

Newton’s Third Law of Motion

Keeping a Science Journal

Unit 11: Magnetism 

Which way is North?

Magnetic Grape & Some of our own

Unit 3: Matter

Lava Lamp

Unit 13: Thermodynamics

Making Clouds

The Scientific Method

Underwater Presidents

Communication Block

A Weighty Problem

Science E-Camp

Fountain Bottle

And now we've just been given 6 more months of eScience to review. We're so excited! We are using Mathemagic, Unit 4: Energy 1, and Unit 2: Motion during the review period.

So What's in a Subscription
The Supercharged Science e-Science curriculum is a complete K-12 science curriculum (K-12th grade $57 monthly or K-8th is $37 monthly) that has over 1000 videos of experiments arranged by topics or grade levels. 

Included in each unit:

• lessons that can be self-guided
• video-based instruction 
• Step-by-step videos for each experiment, activity and project
• Comprehensive teacher/parent guides
• Textbook readings
• Exercises & Quizzes

Additional Materials Required

You'll need a device with internet to access the curriculum, a printer for any materials you want printed, and items for the experiments that you choose. Shopping lists are available by unit. 

Time Frame
You can invest as little or as much time as you'd like with this curriculum. We tend to spend 40-60 minutes at a time watching the videos, doing experiments, and working in our science notebooks. You, as the parent, can do as little or as much as you want. Science experiments are fun to me, so...I do them right along side my kids.

Getting Started
To begin, definitely start by watching the welcome video under the getting started tab. Then choose 1 of the units under the topics tab that initially open or go to the grade level tab and select from there. Every month new units open up.

A Typical Lesson at our House
We do our lessons one of two ways:

1) We watch the video. Do the experiment. Read more about how it works.

2) I ask the kids a question, give them the materials, and have them experiment. Then we'd watch the video (they can't get enough of watching Aurora), and read more about how it works.

We document in our scientific notebooks as we go along.

Then I'd ask...What do you want to try out? Letting them come up with their own experiments. Aurora usually asks some questions to prompt more ideas, too.

Our Review Period Experience
We started with the Mathemagic unit and watched the introduction video (Mathemagic: What is Math?). Aurora teaches a terrific game called "Bagels." Before doing anything else we started playing it! Beware you have to learn a secret code to play...bagels, pico, and ferbi.

We learned how to decode and write our own secret codes. We started with the split rail method and also learned others. 

We printed off the game board for playing Hex and played several games.

In Unit 4 Energy 1, we worked on The Seesaw Lesson. Aurora provides a formula; however, it was for advanced students. We instead worked on deciding how changing the distance of the fulcrum to the load and to the effort changes the amount of energy needed.

We watched the video on What’s a Joule? and discussed how to determine how much energy we could exert.

Then we tried our hand at the different pulley experiments.

In Unit 2 Motion, we watched the video to determine which is faster a chicken or a clam. Then we created our own ramp to test out different ideas.

Changes in a Year
Last year, I mentioned in my review that "I would love to see a question prompt for the beginning of every experiment and written procedures." And guess what? The experiments now have step-by-step directions, additional questions, and more on each experiment page! That makes me so happy.

Future
We're going to use the Mathemagic unit every week until we've tried them all. I'm even planning to add some of them to our summer bucket list. And we have more robotics experiments to try out and several other units to get into! 

Recommendation and Free Sample
Do we recommend Supercharged Science? Definitely. For everybody. At the very least, try out their free complete mini-program. It’s a small sample of science activities and projects taken from the e-Science program especially for our readers. OR try full access to e-Science for just $1. 

Wishing you homeschool blessings,


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