Apr
Review of Supercharged Science
I have been very surprised this school year to find that one of Hailey’s favorite subjects is science. When we started our school year we were only doing science a couple of times per week. The days we did not do science, Hailey was asking me when we could do science again. I found that I needed to plan extra science activities so that we had some science to do every day of the week. Science has never been my strong point, so I had to do a lot of work and research to find or create unit studies and experiments to use. My search for the right science curriculum has continued through the year, so when we were recently given the chance to review Supercharged Science I was really excited to check it out. We were able to use the e-Science Premium Membership so that we could find out what it is all about.
So, what did we think of Supercharged Science?
The first thing I did was check out what is available by grade level. There is a screen like the one above where everything is organized by grade.
If you prefer to look at things organized by topic, you can do that as well, and you will see a screen that looks like this one.
I looked at the grade level and picked 2nd grade. Then we could pick from Chemistry, Life Science or Earth Science as the topic to learn about. Hailey picked chemistry, which scared me a bit 😉 Here is a sample of some of the experiments we did:
We tried the Laundry Soap Crystals experiment. First we watched a video about it and then we did our own.
Here is our experiment all set and ready to grow some crystals.
We did grow some crystals…. but our pipe cleaner was too close to the bottom of the jar and became permanently stuck to it. There was no way we were going to get our crystal out! It was still fun to watch it grow though.
We also tried the microwaving soap experiment.
I found a bar of Ivory soap, that had been around for a few years and we microwaved it.
Our soap did not expand like the one in the video that Aurora showed. We have done this before and it has worked, so I left a comment on the experiment post and asked if it could be because we had used old soap. Less than 2 hours after I posted my question she answered and explained that it was probably because we used an old bar of soap which has less water vapor in the air pockets, which means it doesn’t expand in the microwave.
One of the other experiments we tried was the Rubber Eggs.
We put a hard boiled egg in vinegar and left it for a few days.
When we took it out of the vinegar- it bounced.
Hailey tried to cut through the egg, which felt very rubbery, and even though the shell was soft it was hard to cut through.
She finally got the shell off and it was soft and rubbery for a little while, but was it dried it got hard and cracked.
After the experiments there are also downloads available for worksheets. Hailey is not a big fan of worksheets, so we just had some discussion questions rather than filling out a paper. But, for those who like to have some written work- that is available as well.
There is so much you can do with the Supercharged Science curriculum! This post is just a small little snippet of what is available.
Here is what it boils down to for me:
Pros:
Hailey loved the experiments.
The experiment videos were short, they did not have long drawn out explanations, and they kept Hailey’s attention.
We had the materials to do most of the experiments that we wanted to try. (There are some where you will have to purchase items.)
Cons:
The website was a little confusing at first for me. It took me a while to figure out where everything is.
I received a lot of extra emails from the company (but you can easily opt out of those).
The program is a bit pricey.
Want to see more of Supercharged Science?
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