Fascinating Education - Fascinating Biology - Review

For review purposes my daughter received a year access to the Fascinating Biology course, along with a short course in Chemistry from the wonderful company, Fascinating Education.  

What is Fascinating Education?

Fascinating Education is a online science program offering courses in Biology, Physics and Chemistry. They use an audio-visual technique to teach science in a step-by-step manner. My daughter enjoyed it because she could actually see how science works in vivid color, rather than just reading about it.

How We Used the Fascinating Biology Course

Each course is broken down by topics. In the Biology course, there are 18 lessons and they cover the following topics:

• What is Life?
• Chemistry Review
• Cell Membrane
• Take in Nutrients
• Take in Energy
• Grow
• Reproduce
• Homeostasis
• Adapt
• Prokaryotes, Protists, Animals and Fungi
• Plants

Each topic includes a lesson, a script of the lesson, and a test. 

Lesson

The lessons are taught through video presentations. The videos have multiple slides and subtopics, which are found on the left hand side of the video in a menu bar. This allowed my daughter to stop the lessons at any time and come back where she left off and also allowed her to go back over information that she may have not completely understood. There is also a glossary available that defines some of the harder terms. This was also a nice addition to the already wonderful video lessons and also proved to be helpful to my daughter. 

Some of the lessons even allowed my daughter to get hands on. In lesson 2, Chemistry Review, my daughter learned about polar and non-polar molecules. There was a neat presentation that showed how oil and vinegar do not mix. My daughter of course wanted to try it as she was watching, so she did. She had seen the experiment before and had even done it in the past. This time however she understood even more about what was happening.  

Script

After viewing the video lessons my daughter would open up and print the script of the lessons. She kept all the scripts together in a folder for safe keeping. She loved that she could look back over the scripts whenever she needed a little extra help remembering some of the information. 

Test

The final part of each lesson is a test. The questions in the test portion are multiple choice questions and when my daughter would finish a question she would click a submit button to move on to the next question. My daughter showed some hesitation with the first few tests she took. At first she thought they would be too hard for her. We were both pleasantly surprised at how much information she was retaining from the lessons and she proved it with 100s on her tests. We were both so proud. 

Final Thought

We found Fascinating Education to be great for our science loving daughter. I do feel like it was a hit because she is a visual learner and the video lessons were right up her alley. However, I do wish there were more hands-on activities included in the lessons. We are going to continue using Fascinating Biology as a supplement and we look forward to seeing what else the course has in store. We recommend it for anyone wanting to learn more about chemistry, biology or physics.  

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Visual Learning Systems ~ Review

Friends, in our family, we love all things science. We love watching science videos, reading science books, doing science experiments and especially reviewing science products. We were recently blessed with the opportunity to review Digital Science Online: Elementary Edition (Grades K-5) and the Secondary Edition (Grades 6-12) from Visual Learning Systems. I reviewed this with my daughters who are 11, 10, and 8 and we absolutely loved this review. 

What is Visual Learning Systems?

Visual Learning Systems is a great company that offers a wonderful online science program called Digital Science Online. It is full of wonderful lessons, high-quality videos, animations, student worksheets and teaching guides. Teachers and students have 24/7 access to Visual Learning Systems’ vast online science media library. 

Digital Science Online: Elementary Edition is made up of topics for the K-5 levels. There are two groups: the primary level for K-2 and the elementary level for grades 2-5. You may pick and choose which subject and topics you would like to learn about in either of the levels. For this review we also had access to the Secondary Edition, which is for grades 6-12. We didn't get around to exploring this edition as much as I would have liked, but definitely plan to do so in the near future.

How We Used Visual Learning Systems?

We mostly used Digital Science Online: Elementary Edition  for grades 2-5. In this section there are three subjects to choose from. The subjects are Physical, Earth and Life. We loved the many different topics to choose from within each subject. 

Once we choose a topic to learn about, we were able to watch a high-quality video. The videos are broke down into chapters. I really loved this about the videos. It made watching them easier. If we needed to go back and review a portion, we didn't have to go through the whole video searching. At the end of each video there is a video assessment. This was wonderful. The assessments allowed my daughters and I to see how much we retained and learned during the course of the video.   

A favorite part for my daughters was also being able to see animations and images that are included in the videos. I have very visual children and these options truly helped my daughters learn more. My favorite part was of course the teacher guides. I loved that I had the choice to download and print out wonderful worksheets as they were needed and the option to download and print out the full guide. I always enjoyed printing out the a worksheet called video review. The video review worksheet allowed my daughters to answer questions as they watched the video. This was extremely helpful for remembering key points within the videos.

We found that Digital Science Online: Elementary Edition (Grades K-5) not only taught us visually but also allowed us to get very hands-on with each topic. For instance, when my daughters learned about landforms, I was able to download a worksheet that gave us very clear instructions on making salt dough landforms. This was so fun for my daughters. I loved that they seemed to be having so much fun learning. That's always what I aim for when teaching my daughters and Visual Learning Systems helped me achieve that. 

Through the course of the review my daughters learned about Earth's Nearest Neighbors, Earth's Rotation and Revolution, Landforms, and Minerals. We are looking forward to learning about so much more. Visual Learning Systems was a true blessing to our family. 

How much does it cost?

Visual Learning Systems offers subscription pricing for both public and homeschool families. 

If you are a public school, the pricing is 90 cents per student, with a $300 minimum order, per year. 

Homeschool pricing for the online program is $99/yr. for the elementary edition (K-5) and $99/yr for the secondary edition (6-12). This does not include any public performance rights. 

Want to connect with Visual Learning Systems?

Facebook - http://facebook.com/visuallearningsystems 

Twitter - https://twitter.com/visualearning

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