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Any opinions on Science Fusion?


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I'm using it this year with my first grader. I like it, BUT it's too expensive for what it is. It is basically a big, full color worktext with several online videos & games for each unit. He liked the online stuff - ONCE. For $150 I was really hoping for stuff that we could use more than once, but he watched each video & played each game ONCE and never wanted to do any of them again. Almost all the online stuff is geared towards classroom tracking & not very useful in a homeschool. I'll probably just do living books for science next year.

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How many videos and games are there? Is there one for each topic?

 

It's not really like that. Each unit in the book has 2 to 5 multimedia presentations in it on topics in that unit. Each presentation is like one of those online books (like on Reader Rabbit or Jumpstart) where the audio is reading the words, the words are at the bottom of the page, and in the middle of each page is a picture, video, or interactive game. Like one 'page' might explain characteristics of animals with a visual illustrating birds, mammals, reptiles, and fish, and the next page might be a game with a bunch of animal cards that you have to drag and drop into the correct pages of a scrapbook. Some of these are better than others - some are little virtual labs that have some good info in them; others were just 'jigsaw puzzle of a bird' kind of thing. Hope that explains it better. They used to have an online sample of one of the fourth grade ones, but the link no longer works :(

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The grade 5 sample looks wonderful! I called yesterday but the customer service folks are clueless on this product. No recession at HM obviously.:tongue_smilie: For $150 a pop they should have more info for savvy homeschool parents who have money to spend.

 

ETA: Here's an animation sample. My dds would enjoy this. :)

Edited by Beth in SW WA
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I've been looking for science for my youngest for next year that has a strong online/computer component, because of how much she's like Exploration Education this year.

 

However, EE also has many offline, hands-on elements. I think I'd really miss that with Science Fusion - it looks to be 100% online? No physical materials at all? The closest thing I've found to what I'm looking for is K12's middle school science, which is mostly online, but also has a hands-on, offline lab every week or so. I think there's also a book to record things in, similar to EE (maybe someone who's actually used K12 can tell me if I'm right on that one).

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I was interested in this, too, so I signed up for an evaluator account. I wasn't overly impressed with what I saw. It seemed rather simplistic, to me.

 

I guess we're sticking with RS4K for next year. I don't really want to; I'd like something that lasts longer than the RS4K texts. But the kids love it, and, most importantly, it gets done.

 

Tara

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