Review: CrossWired Science

I don't know about you, but science is always a "problem" in our homeschooling curriculum. We just can't ever really find something that works for us that the kids like that stands the test of time. Well, that is, we couldn't find anything. But now we have! Until Enter: Sound, and Fluid Dynamics from CrossWired Science to save our science and homeschooling day!

All righty, so I've already told you this program is GREAT. Now let's break down why it is great!

Price

I'm gonna start with the question everyone always has. I get it. We are homeschooling families. By nature of the decision to homeschool, we are usually one-income families. So the bottom line is: this program IS affordable. In fact it is very affordable. For $27.95 you can give one child access to TWO incredible science programs for an entire year: (1) Fluid Dynamics (2) Sound. If you want to add a child, it is just $10 to do so. This is a digital subscription. There are currently two projects available, however, they have plans to add more over time. 

Every kid can use this!

I used this program with NINE different children ages 4-13. But in truth anyone from 4-adult could use it. This program has SO much in it. In our case, our little 4-6 year olds just watched the videos. My first-grader, Abigail, watched the videos and was able to answer the questions with my help. 

However, if I had only a young child, I probably wouldn't use this program. If they are a younger sibling, it's great because then you can homeschool everyone together. I really think this program starts off working for kids in about third grade. 

For the sake of the fact that I don't want to spend all day telling you about the program, I am going to take one of my students and break down what they did step-by-step.

A sample of a first-timer

Let's start with my ten-year-old Elijah who goes by the nickname "Sidge". He is in fourth grade. I assigned him the Fluid Dynamics portion of the program. Because Sidge is a little younger, he chose the "First Timer" section of the program. (Older children can be a "Second Timer" and get harder questions following their video. Stay tuned and I'll let Ana show you that in a few moments.)

When Sidge clicks on Fluid Dynamics he comes to a screen that looks like this:

He clicked on the turtle in the top left corner and was presented with a 3:32 second video on Fluid Dynamics & Bernouli.(Bernouli was a scientist who came up with the law that said: "If you increase the speed you will decrease the pressure.")

Here is Sidge watching his video:

After Sidge finished his video, he took a quiz. This quiz is stored in his completed assignments so that I can check in and see how he did. Here is Sidge working on his quiz:

Now this is only the beginning. After Sidge works through the first four units, watching a video and answering questions, he comes to some sections that allow him to work with his parent in deciding what he would like to do next. Sidge chose to click on the Experiments button and then chose the one that is highlighted in white below:

This presented him with a Fact Sheet: Creature Homes. He loved this. He got to learn all about termites! See those yellow boxes on the bottom? Those were links where he could go and read more about termites!

Here is a photo which shows Sidge reading about termites and taking notes on what he was learning while he was reading:

A sample of a second-timer

Now my niece Ana who is in 6th grade decided to do the "Second Timer" portion of the program. This is very similar to the "First Timer" in that you watch the same video. However, the quiz that follows is more difficult. I had Ana do the Sound portion of the program. Here is what her main screen looks like: 

Here is a screen-shot of Ana beginning the second video in her series: 

And here is Ana working through one of the videos:

A family affair

Each of the two global topics that CrossWired Science currently offers contain eight core videos. Most of these contain a worksheet that you can print off for your child to complete, and they all have an online quiz that they can take following completion of watching the video. At this time students can only take a quiz one time (I'd love to see this change in the future.) There are also opportunities for you to allow your child to complete an experiment, complete research on a topic covered in the videos, explore some web links, and browse through a U-Choose option where they can choose how they want to reinforce their knowledge. 

This means that if you are homeschooling nine children like I am, I can use the SAME program for ALL nine children. This would look something like this:

All nine children in our home can watch the video together. Then from there we would do the following:

• Genevieve (5): Just watch the videos
• Hannah (5): Just watch the videos
• Eoin (6): Just watch the videos
• Abigail (7): Watch the videos & then do the quiz with parent-help and some follow-up activities with parent-help
• Kari (10): Watch the videos & do the quiz with no parental help. Do follow-up activities with no parental help. 
• Isaac (10): Watch the videos & do the quiz with no parental help. Do follow-up activities with no parental help. 
• Sidge (10): Watch the videos & do the quiz with no parental help. Do follow-up activities with no parental help. 
• Ana (12): Watch the videos & do the quiz with no parental help. Do follow-up activities with no parental help. Brach out into more difficult activities and research. 
• Gabr (13): Watch the videos & do the quiz with no parental help. Do follow-up activities with no parental help. Brach out into more difficult activities and research. 

Discount Coupon!
I have a great offer for you. If you click on THIS LINK you will receive $5 off your purchase. This makes it just $22.50! In addition, I will receive a $5 bonus as well. Once in, use the coupon code: wk25. 

Summary
I encourage you to take the time to visit the link below to read reviews from my fellow teammates on this product. This program is still a work in progress and there are some kinks that have to be worked out. But it still has SOOOOO much already there that is truly wonderful to use. 

One of the challenges is that as of right now, each child must log-in separately, and then I, as the teacher, have to log-in separately as well in order to access the teacher section. I am hoping that this can be simplified in the future as that is a lot of log-ins to remember. However, you can set your browser to remember the different log-ins to make it easier. 

As always, I invite you to contact me personally at: flakymn@hotmail.com if you'd like to ask me any direct questions about the product. You can then get a lot more information and hear from a lot of other people before making the decision whether this is the product for you by visiting review from my fellow crew members below: