Our Experience with BookShark Science

My boys are currently homeschooled. We try to evaluate what is best each year. My boys are homeschooled because it meets their individual needs best so I can be a little picky when it comes to curriculum. We do not homeschool for religious reasons and as a scientist I’m always looking for secular homeschool curriculum. This is how we first learned about BookShark Science. I was provided this product for free and compensated for my time. This is an honest review and I was not required to post a positive review.

BookShark Science has always interested me, but I wasn’t sure about their literature-based approach to science and how that would fit in with my kids’ learning preferences. I’m going be honest and say I was kinda surprised at how impressed I was. We got our hands on the level E program: Electricity, Magnetism and Astronomy. I chose that because I thought my boys would love to play with electricity and we haven’t done a lot with astronomy (here and there scattered approach). We dove right in exploring our box of goodies when they arrived.

Multiple Kids (one program). This is where BookShark Science really shines.

I had my boys use this curriculum and my little one came in and out as she pleased. Each level has a suggested age range, but you know your kids (and what you guys have covered already). My kids loved getting more exposure to the physics and astronomy topics.

It has been a great mix of challenging and not challenging that has kept them engaged and learning without being frustrated (more on that below). There is a schedule included with their curriculum. You can check out a description for each level, sample (including scope and sequence), and list of what’s included at their website, BookShark.com

They have everything laid out in an easy to understand 4 day schedule. It is a grid so you know which resources from that box full of goodies that you are using each day. It requires basically no prep from the teacher (as long as your kids can be a little patient).

Hands-On Approach: Using experiments to help kids love science.

My boys love experiments. They always have and imagine they always will. I was impressed with they way the experiments were laid out as soon as we started. There was a focus on exploration instead of demonstration which really gets kids engaged and thinking.

The schedule includes the list of supplies needed for your experiments and while some programs require odd things to be added to the kit, I was shocked and pleased to see that really only basic household and school supplies needed to be added. Everything else is there for you. For example, the aluminium foil and tape you use to make “wires” is already in the kit. The level we got was really an all in one approach to science.

Pictured below are some of the experiments from the electricity unit.

Literature Based Program – An uncommon approach to homeschool science.

This is a literature based program. BookShark Science loosely follows a living books philosophy, but don’t let that intimidate you the way I did. The books were approachable and I loved having the kids go through the books and look up answers.

If you already use lots of books and resources, it will be a seamless transition. For those of you that typically use a single resource approach, your kids may need guidance as you begin but the books are such high quality that you might even find them looking at them when you aren’t officially doing science.

This is a box of goodies so think about storage and usage so that you aren’t constantly loosing the kids attention. I suggest something portable if you have a specific place that you like to do experiments that is separate from where you do most of your school work.

Secular or Faith Neutral Homeschool Science Curriculum

We used a program that wouldn’t normally include evolution so I felt our level was solidly secular. However, BookShark describes their programs as faith neutral (if you aren’t familiar with faith neutral, please click on the term to find out more).