Disclosure: I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.
I love teaching. I love planning. I love sitting with my kids and discussing things and researching things and breaking out the fun projects – but high school science is not fun to me, and I don’t like to teach it. That’s why we were excited to try Greg Landry’s Homeschool Science Membership from Greg Landry’s Homeschool Science.
The Science Membership program is different from Greg Landry’s other courses because it’s actually a whole collection of courses and not just a single one. This includes four high school classes: biology, chemistry, physics, anatomy & physiology; six half-credit classes for Grades 7-12: exercise & sports physiology, marine science, biochemistry & microbiology, embryology & endocrinology, earth & space science, student success skills 101; and half-credit classes for Grades 4-7: anatomy & physiology, biology, chemistry, physics, earth & space science. It also comes with a virtual lab for Grades 7-12 and lab instructions for three high school science classes, as well as access to FaithLife TV, the Dwell Bible App, and RightNow Media.
That’s a lot, right? So this is a monthly subscription service, so you pay a monthly fee and have access to all of that. If you’re teaching multiple students taking science classes all at once, this could be ideal for you, especially if you’re like me and don’t want to have to do the teaching of science. The idea that everyone in my household could get everything they need all from the same place is a great one for me!
The payment system for this service is a little unusual. There’s not an annual option, which is often the most inexpensive, and the price is a bit higher than most monthly services – though it really does include an awful lot. What’s different, though, is that the longer you subscribe, the less you pay each month. The price drops by $10 about every six months that you subscribe, so over time the monthly rate could decrease significantly. If you know that you’re not going to be using it for a while, though – maybe you’re traveling or involved in a special program – you could cancel and then come back and not feel like you’re lost time the way that you might in a program with an annual subscription plan.
So how does it really work? The classes are all pre-recorded and are video-based. Canvas is used as the learning management system, so when you log into your Canvas account, you can access all of the material listed above. By navigating to the class you want to take, you then click on the lesson for which you’re ready and get started.
For each class the teacher-owner, Greg Landry, shares a suggested class schedule, but because it’s prerecorded, there’s a great deal of flexibility. My student chose a schedule – to do two lessons per week – and we discussed what was required to do that. After that, she got down to business, and my only job was to ask questions and grade tests and labs. Easy!
My student is working her way through the high school physics course. She started a different physics class a few months ago, and then life interfered, so we’re happy to try this one. It feels very doable, and the information taught seems comparable to what was in the other class.
The courses all seem to be set up the same way: there are video lessons, where Landry discusses the concepts, and an online textbook that he wrote. For the physics class, ‘textbook’ may be a bit of a misnomer, because so far it’s mostly a collection of the images he uses in the recordings, but the information is coming across. Also included are very simple true/false quizzes and answer keys.
My students are great about learning from books and videos, so after I give them their assignments, they handle the rest themselves. They fit the work into their day when it suits them best, and that works out well for all of us.
One thing to note is that the high school classes offered in this service are not intended to be intensive college-prep classes, so if your student plans to major in science in college, this may not be the best way to go; however, if you plan to go another route, this could work out really well. Again, for larger families or for students wanting to knock out multiple science classes at one time, it could be a reasonably priced option – and one that comes with many choices.
Don’t take my word for it, though – read more reviews from the Homeschool Review Crew here.
