NatureGlo's eScience Review

Disclaimer: I received a FREE copy of this product through the HOMESCHOOL REVIEW CREW in exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review nor was I compensated in any other way.

If it were up to my oldest child, school would consist of nothing but math, science, and technology. We have formal curricula for all these areas, but honestly?  He would very happily and successfully unschool these subjects if I let him! So when we were given access to NatureGlo's eScience MathArt & Science course bundle, I knew he would keep busy, for sure.

I let John Paul (11) have access to NatureGlo courses after he was done with his other school subjects for the day, 2-3 afternoons a week. He struggles with focusing on the task at hand when he does any activity involving a screen (he tends to want to click away and look at the source code for everything), so I often had to be right nearby riding herd to make sure he wasn't taking forever to complete one lesson. And some of the lessons were pretty lengthy! He chose to complete several short, 1-2 lesson mini-courses, rather than delve into any of the longer courses that are available. But there are several courses available that span over several weeks, so students who would like a little more depth can get that through the unit studies and longer mini-courses that are also available.

 

John Paul is a math fiend, so he decided to use the "RoadMap" feature offered on the website, which walks students through all 31 available courses in a specific order. So while it's possible to jump around from course to course, there's also a sequential way to access the courses. You can see above that the courses in the RoadMap area are divided by topic, so students can simply follow the sequence of courses and not have to decide for themselves which course or lesson they would like to complete.

Some of  the lessons took much more time than I found reasonable to spend on a screen in one day, so we often divided them over the course of two days. They're very video-heavy, so students who learn well from videos will enjoy these a lot! There are also activities that accompany some of them, such as the snowflake fractal activity that John Paul played around with for quite a while, entertaining his siblings with the new creations he came up with:

 

It's easy to keep track of lessons completed, since they're crossed off in the RoadMap section when they've been finished, and there are special achievement certificates students can earn for completing lessons, and those are stored in the "My Achievements" tab. Since this is a program that's meant to be completed independently, it's helpful from a parent's perspective to have a concrete indicator of achievements!

With courses ranging from math, geology, herpetology, marine biology, and more, you're sure to find something that will interest any learner! Often we found that the younger children were watching along with the lessons, and enjoying themselves quite a bit. This can be used with the whole family, or with individual learners, and it's easy to make it work either way.

I asked John Paul and he said he really enjoyed the Fibonacci Sequence and Golden Ratio lesson, since it had some interactive components that he had a lot of fun with. There was a link to a game involving the Fibonacci sequence that he really enjoyed, though I often found him playing it when he was supposed to be doing other schoolwork... But I suppose it was educational?

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