Does anyone have experience with: Super Charged Science with Aurora Lipper?

[Guest Allin1]

Have any of you used Super Charged Science as a science curriculum for your family? I wonder if it can be used for different grades at the same time or would I have to divide each lesson according to each child's grade level . Was it too time consuming? What are the pros and cons?

[u2006kids]

following.....

[MerryAtHope]

My daughter won a subscription to the site one year, and she enjoyed it. I basically let her "unschool" science--she could watch the videos, read the text online, try the experiments--she just had to tell me what she needed ahead of time. I asked her to work for 30-45 minutes per day (she was in 7th grade that year) and to journal in her science notebook at least once a week. She also got an idea for her science fair project from the site that year. It was fun and she really enjoyed it for that year, but she felt she had looked at all the things that interested her most and wanted something more structured the next year. (Here's a review I did in Feb. of that year, when we were still considering it for the next year--didn't end up going that way).

 

If you are looking at the site subscription, I would do one of the monthly trials first and see if it will work for your family. I think she sometimes does free monthly trials. It's kinda confusing to find your way around at first--I was happy to turn it over to my dd and say "go for it." 

 

Anyway, I do think you could use it for different grades, and each would participate to their level of interest. 

[MargaretS]

I don't have actual experience with it directly yet, but I have been looking over the material for a few months trying to decide if it is a good fit. From what I've gathered, the material available on the site can be divided into either units (http://www.sciencelearningspace.com/study-units/) or grade level (http://www.sciencelearningspace.com/grade-levels/). If you choose the unit option (best in middle school), your student will progress through the 20 units at their own pace. I assuming all the units will take maybe 2-3 years....but I'm really not sure.  If you choose the grade level option, your student will go through a few topics (2-4) selected specifically for that grade. I am not sure if these topics would span 150-180 hours required by my state for one year of science, so if using the grade level approach, id imagine there would be a lot of extra reading and activities. I don't mind this though. I think adding in living books and nature exercises would work for us. 

 

The curriculum itself covers all the topics your students need to learn in science including Physics, Chemistry, Earth Science and Life Science. The structure of the material is laid out pretty well. Each broad topic is dividing into smaller topics. Each smaller topic has and intro video and text reading to explain the concept, then several different videos with hands-on experiments to test and learn the topics more thoroughly. After that there are usually some pdfs to print and record findings or to further cement the info.    

 

i.e. The first unit is called Mechanics. It's divided into three smaller topics: Force, Gravity and Friction. The second unit is called Motion and it's divided in velocity and acceleration, etc.

 

The Pros: (1) Covers all middle/elementary science topics, (2) has a lot of printables, (3) has video instruction we can watch together, (4) has many hands-on experiments.

 

The Cons: (1) The topics in the grade level option don't cover the required learning time. While the topics do cover everything you need to learn, in theory, you could do all the videos pretty fast. The parent will probably need to incorporate some extra material or ideas to make it last all year. If using the grade structure, i'd suggest organizing the each topic into 9-12 week unit studies or something similar.  

 

Overall, I think this is an awesome curriculum and I think I will def be using it. The hands-on nature of the lessons and the videos really sell me. 

 

I'm not an expert on the program though, so check out the link and watch some of the videos. You'll also be able to see the lesson structure on the site.

 

[u2006kids]

thx

[Julie of KY]

I've been using individual videos from her ultimate science collection. My kids have loved them - especially my hands on boy.

 

My daughter watches the videos and does some of the experiments. She absorbs all the knowledge. My son watches, rewatches builds, investigates. He's completely independent other than asking me for some materials. We have a wide selection of materials, so I don't have to buy much. She uses lots of routine household equipment as well as a variety of cheap hand-ons science equipment. It can add up if you are trying to do it all and don't own the equipment to start with.

 

 

[mamamoose]

Bumping this up, wondering if there are any more users on this board? I think it looks terrific but would love to hear from a few who have actually used it! Thanks so much!

[ExcitedMama]

Never used it, but I did sign up for her newsletter or whatever it's called. Have you done that? If you do that you will get emails with short videos or links to longer ones. I'm assuming the videos would be what's in the program so it may give you a better feel for it. Plus at the end she always offers a discount on one of the programs.