Do you struggle to teach your kids science? Looking for a great science system for early elementary kids? So was I, so when the opportunity for a Science4Us.com Online Subscription was offered to me in exchange for an honest review, I happily accepted.
What is Science4Us.com? I’m glad you asked. It’s a great program for early elementary kids, from Kindergarten through 2nd grade. It doesn’t cover experiments, but it gives kids a great foundation in a variety of subjects. Kids learn about the basics of science (starting with the tools that scientists use), and then move on to more “fun” stuff like animals and space. Each topic runs for 8 lessons, and each lesson takes roughly half an hour to teach. There are also fun activities that children can do on their own on the website. One of the cool things about Science4Us.com is that while it’s teaching science, it’s also reinforcing things kids this age learn in other subjects. One of Munchkin’s favorite activities was the “Silly Bulls” lesson, which is where key words from the teaching part of the lesson are broken into syllables, mixed up, and the child puts them back in the right order (get it? Syllables … Silly Bulls … ).
Science4Us.com has a login page for each student as well as one for the parent/teacher. You can sit right next to your kids while they do the activities, or you can set them free on the site to work through the modules and check their progress, including information/activities from their digital science notebook, in your teacher dashboard. The website allows you to assign modules to your students, and also for your students to select what they want to learn about each day, so there’s a bit of freedom in how you work the program.
While the website is geared primarily toward younger kids (Kindergarten through 2nd grade, like I mentioned above), it’s also a great place for upper elementary kids to get a refresher course in what they learned when they were younger. Even though Seahawk is in 4th grade, he’s been using Science4Us.com and loving it. Because it’s geared to the younger children, though, I’ve been focusing on having Munchkin use it and letting Seahawk on there when time permits.
Once they finished the science tools module, it was interesting to see what each kid chose to study. Munchkin was all over Life Science, which covers Living vs. Nonliving, Plants, and Animals. Seahawk wanted to study Space, which covers Exploring the Universe and Earth in Space. The Exploring the Universe module was really cool. My favorite part, and I think Seahawk’s too, was the exploration of our galaxy. It opened up a map of sorts of the Milky Way, and you could click on the different planets and it would zoom in and give you all sorts of facts about each one. You could also rotate and spin around the solar system. They provided a “ring” showing each planet’s course around the sun, which I think was helpful in keeping them straight while you clicked through them, making sure you chose the one you wanted to explore further.
This is the “main” view of the solar system page – what you see when you first open it.
And these two show you how you could flip all around to get different views.
And here’s Venus’ page. There was one of these for each of the planets, the sun, and Earth’s moon.
For a basic science curriculum for young kids, I think Science4Us.com is a great choice. There are so many choices in study topics that there’s something for everyone. With the “assign” feature, you don’t even have to strictly monitor your kids if you don’t want to. The website is ad-free, so you don’t have to worry about that while your kids are learning. As a subscription-based service, there’s a ton of flexibility, too. You can keep it during the school year and let it go during the summer, or you can keep it year-round if that’s your thing. They also provide printable pages for the kids if you’re a “worksheet” kind of teacher. You still need to have the online time, since the information is taught using online videos and interactive activities, but the worksheets are great for reinforcing what your kids have learned during their online sessions. And at $7.95 a month, it’s a really affordable option if you don’t know what to do for your young learner’s science needs.
To close, I just want to show you guys how big an impact this program had on Munchkin. We have a notebook that he and I write in, letters back and forth, and in one of his recent letters, he included this picture:
Little things like that are what I’d call a glowing review!
Blessings,
Wendy
You can find Science4Us.com on Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, and Google +.
I really enjoyed reading your review. My 4th graders have actually really enjoyed the program and we plan to complete it. They actually remind me to include it in our afternoon studies, if I have forgotten. Love the little picture your child drew. I agree, Yippee! for Science4Us.com.
Thanks so much! We enjoy the program, too, and will likely keep up with it as well.
I love that he liked it so much he wrote it in your special notebook! My son really enjoyed doing this review too. He really liked the space section and has been talking about space and planets so much more lately just becasue of what he learned through the Science4us.com review. I enjoyed reading your review! Have a great day!