Science is a subject that I really don’t want to teach myself, so it was nice of Fascinating Education to give us access to their Fascinating Chemistry program for a year. It is an online science program designed for high school students, but can be used by middle school students as well.
There are 19 total lessons in the Fascinating Chemistry program. As you can see from the picture of the screen when logged in above, each lesson includes a button to go to the lesson itself, a script of the lesson, and to the test.
The LESSON button takes you to the lesson, which is comprised of several slides, divided into different subjects that are being discussed, much like a textbook would have the Chapter and different subheadings. You can click around in there to go where you’d like if you’re needing to brush up on something specific, or you can just watch and listen to them being presented sequentially.
If you log out and log back in day after day, it will ask you if you’d like to begin where you left off last time. You just need to remember which lesson you were on, as it does not track which lessons have been completed.
If you’d like to be able to do lessons on the go, you can click the SCRIPT button. It will take you to the information that was presented in the slides, as well as pictures that were shown on the slides. This would also be a great option for students who need to learn by reading it for themselves. You could even print it out and have them follow along as the LESSON slides are playing and are being spoken aloud.
When a student has completed the lesson, there is a test. These scores are not tracked within the system, so students or parents will need to print out the results if you need them for record keeping purposes. Each test also has question “helps” on them with quite a bit of information to help students to choose the correct answer.
These tests are in the same familiar format as the lessons, so it’s easy to navigate.
For tests, if you’d prefer to use printed out tests, you will be given access to printable PDF versions of every test, as well as an answer key which includes all of those Helps for each question.
Some Fascinating Chemistry lessons have labs. This is important for students who need a certain amount of hours for their state record keeping, but also so that they have a chance to really see the information in action!
Students will be prompted within their lesson if there is a corresponding lab that they should be completing.
There are a total of 12 labs, including things like learning about salt crystals, viscosity, atmospheric pressure, density, barometer, sugar in soft drinks, and more.
The labs use fairly common ingredients. When you click on ACCESS LAB, it takes you to a PDF to print out with safety information, the title, purpose, science behind the lab, materials list, and directions.
Final Thoughts on Fascinating Chemistry
My daughter is only 12, but she’s been showing interest in learning chemistry. She was excited to get started with this program. We actually have been using it as an introduction to the material. Since she has no real background with chemistry and this course is at a high school level, it was definitely difficult for her. A lot of it was over her head, but she was able to pull out some information from each of the lessons we completed. She specifically liked learning about the elements. She also liked learning about how geckos and spiders are able to walk upside down on a ceiling or up a wall.
HOWEVER, when her 10 year old brother is 12, I could definitely see using this program with him. He is more science-minded and can’t wait to learn how everything works. I love the ease of the labs. They are accessible to a non-sciencey mom like myself to help with!
The tests were difficult for my daughter, but I reviewed the tests and feel like they’re very reasonable for a high school student.
I liked that you could take this on the road or just completely offline and do everything using the PDFs. Using it as presented, the slideshow presentations with the audio were awesome for my daughter who prefers to be read TO for her lessons.
We will be checking Fascinating Education back out when my kids are just a tad older. The material was complex, but explained well. There were enough slides and subjects covered to break up the information in a way that allowed my daughter to pay attention. It was flexible and easy to decide how much I wanted her to listen to each day to complete about a lesson every week or week and a half. The lessons were only about 45 minutes long, not including labs.
The course could be used by multiple students at the same time while you have access. This is a great value for homeschool families on a budget. You can look at sample lessons on the website to see if it would be a good fit for your family.
If you’re looking for an option for your high school student or a middle school child that loves science, check them out! They offer this Chemistry course, and also offer Biology, Physics, Anatomy & Physiology, and Logic of Medicine. They are all mobile friendly and are very reasonably priced at $79 for a full year of access. They even offer combination packages at a reduced cost.
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