Science Shepherd Review

We've been reviewing the Introductory Science program from Science Shepherd. Science Shepherd offers three different options for online homeschool science programs: Introductory Science (elementary) , Science Shepherd Life Science (middle school) and Science Shepherd Biology (high school.) The elementar program, Introductory Science, is designed for kids ranging from ages 6-11, this bibically-based science program combines earth science, life science, ecology and natural resources, and physical science into lessons that have both a workbook component and an online video component.

The online videos include explanations, Bible passages, experiments, graphics, slides, animations, and offer activities to do offline with the kids. Registering for the program grants you a year of access to the online videos.

Each lesson is heavily based in scripture and is designed to be easy to use with quick lessons done independently by the student each day.  The lessons are divided into 35 weeks with short lessons to be done each day.  The videos take about 5 minutes to watch and the workbook portion is one page, which is short and sweet. My kids were ale to finish science in less than 15 minutes a day.

There are two levels to the workbooks. Level A is for 6-8 year olds while level B is for 9-11 year olds. We used level B since my son is a science whiz.

Things you should know about this curriculum:

• Heavily based on scripture
• Young earth based
• Overview of science, not super in-depth
• Video based information
• Light workbook work
• Easy to use and implement
• Little to no planning for the teacher (unless you want to do the activities)

Our thoughts:

My son is a heavy science kid. He reads non-fiction science text books for fun. Although he is only eight-years-old, he has an extremely knowledgeable base of science information in his brain. Saying that, he and I felt this curricula wasn't enough for him, even though we were using level B for the older elementary student. He just wants more from science and is probably at a middle-school level for science. On the other hand, my five-year-old daughter was enjoying doing this science with her brother. I haven't done much science with her so this was a nice overview of science concepts for her as a young child. Although she couldn't use the workbook, we went over it orally with her and she was understanding the concepts.
Since we are not a young-earth believing family I had to make some changes to the program and chose to not do the weeks that focused on young-earth theories. Most of the book focusing on this theory so it wouldn't be a good fit for us for an entire year, but I know MANY families that are young-earth and this would be a perfect fit for them.
Overall, we felt that this would be a good year-long science program to overview multiple science disciplines for those that believe young-earth science. I feel it would be great for younger kids or kids that might not be otherwise interested in science. It could also be used to "fill in the gaps" of things you may have missed while teaching science.