My kids are enjoying courses from NatureGlo’s eScience. We were recently given a subscription to review their MathArt Online 4-Class Bundle courses, and we tried out some of their other products too.

NatureGlo’s eScience offers several online live classes and pre-recorded classes that you can do at your own pace. If you purchase the live class format, you also get access to the pre-recorded course for one year. The whole family can use the pre-recorded classes for one price. Most classes are taught for kids ages 10 and older and some classes are geared for specific ages such as highschool age.

The classes are taught by Gloria Brooks, the founder of Nature Glo and NatureGlo’s eScience. Gloria has extensive knowledge, and she is the creator of several curriculum products. She teaches from a “Neutral Worldview” meaning she doesn’t focus on “Creationism” or “Evolution” in explaining the universe. She has been teaching and working in education with all grades in the public, private, and homeschool education settings since 1997 and has been offering online courses since 2011.

Some of the online courses NatureGlo’s eScience has to offer include:

Marine Biology,
Herpatology,
Botany,
Rocks and Minerals,
MathArt.

You can subscribe to courses in several different ways. Some of the options available include:

5 – 6 week Class Bundles
4 – 6 week Class Bundles
3 -1-3 week 12 Class Bundle
Single classes too.

Be sure to check out the Course Catalog for a list with descriptions of all her classes.

Math Art Online 4-Class Bundle

The MathArt Online 4-Class Bundle is made up of 4 courses that last 6 weeks each.

Math Connections With The Real World
MathArt Patterns In Nature
MathArt in Ancient Cultures
MathArt in the Arts & Sciences

MathArt: Math Connections With The Real World:

For the purpose of this review, we will focus on one of the classes in the MathArt 4-Class Bundle called MathArt: Math Connections With The Real World.

Math Connections With The Real World

There are 6 Lessons in this course that are meant to be completed about 1 lesson per week. However you can go as fast or as slow as your student needs to go. This course is designed for students age 12 and older.

Each lesson in this course contains videos, power points, study guides, downloads, suggested activities, suggested research projects to further the learning, theme connections with various subjects (Math, Art, Geography, Archaeology, Music, History, etc) and quizzes.

Lesson 1: Introduction & History of the Golden Ratio and the Fibonacci Numbers

Main Lesson Downloads & Lesson Videos with NatureGlo
Lesson Activity – Math is Fun: The Golden Ratio
Quizlet – Introduction to the Golden Ratio & the Fibonacci Numbers

Lesson #2 – The Golden Number & Fibonacci in Art, Architecture & Nature

Main Lesson Downloads & Videos with NatureGlo
Activity – Math is Fun: Nature, The Golden Ratio,and Fibonacci too!
Project: Golden Ratio Do It Yourself
Going Beyond – Web Resources, Projects & Activities & Videos
Quizlet

Lesson #3 – The Fibonacci Numbers in Nature

Main Lesson Downloads & Videos with NatureGlo
Fibonacci Cookies Activity
Video (6:24) – The Magic of Fibonacci
Going Beyond – Web Resources, Projects, Activities & Videos
Quizlet

Lesson #4 – The History & the Golden Ratio of the Great Pyramid

Pre-lesson Activity – The Great Pyramid of Egypt
Main Lesson Downloads & Videos with NatureGlo
History Connection – TEDed Video (4:27) – History vs. Cleopatra
Exploration – Discover & Explore and Ancient Egyptian Tomb (Interactive)
Literature Connection – The Prince and the Sphinx
Art Connection – Video (8:00) – Egyptian Art History
Music Connection – Video (3:21) – Tomb Raiders
Going Beyond – Web resources, Videos & Projects
Quizlet

Lesson #5 – Phi & Quasicrystals

Pre-lesson Activity – Explaining What Quasicrystals Are
Main Lesson Downloads & Videos with NatureGlo – Phi & Quasicrystals
Video (10:18) – Professor Dan Schectman, Discoverer of Quasicrystals
Art Connection – Creating Middle Eastern Quasicrystal Designs
Literature Connection – Forty Fortunes
Quasicrystals Quizlet

Lesson #6 – The Mathematics of Music

Pre-lesson Activity – Musical Instruments (& their Relationship with Mathematics)
Main Lesson Dowloads & Videos with NatureGlo
Video – Fibonacci Melody (8:34)
Going Beyond – Web Resources, Projects & Videos
Quizlet – The Mathematics of Music

Student Certificate of Completion

When your students complete the course, you can print out a nice certificate of completion to keep in their portfolio.

Check out this Video from Lesson 1 in MathArt: Math Connections With The Real World.

Check out this Video about “Why” Gloria created the MathArt courses.

Our Experience:

We received a subscription to NatureGlo’s eScience MathArt 4-Class Bundle. We chose to focus on MathArt: Math Connections With The Real World for the purpose of this review. My 17 year old son and 14 year old son were the primary participants in this course, though all of my kids participated in some of the other courses.

After enrolling in the courses at NatureGlo’s eScience, students can access their dashboard. The dashboard has tabs for each of their enrolled courses, achievements, notifications from the teacher, etc.

Here is an example of the “My Courses” tab with an overview of everything on our personal dashboard. My kids have enrolled in both the MathArt courses, and also several of the free courses offered including course samples in Marine Biology, Herptology, etc. My kids can easily click on the course they want to work on and then click on the specific lesson.

We have access to each course pictured in the “My Courses” tab for 1 year from the time we enrolled in them. For a quick overview of progress, you can see how far along the student is by observing a small pink bar under each of the courses in the picture above. Then once you click on the specific course, another pink bar appears above the list of lessons on the right side of the dashboard.

This pink bar indicates the level of completion of the courses we are working on. At the time I took this photo, you can see at a glance on the dashboard that we were over half way through with the Math Connections With The Real World course. We had also completely finished with The Introduction to Sea Turtles of the World course.

Under the “My Acheivements” tab on the dashboard, all of achievements are listed for all of the classes your students are working on. This is a nice way to see them at a glance.

Here is an example of the “Notifications” tab:

Screenshot examples of my sons doing lessons on the computer:

Here is a screen shot of the downloadable study guide. Each lesson in the course has additional study guide pages and worksheets you can save to your computer and print when needed.

Here are a few more examples of lessons in this course.

Pictures of some of the hands on projects:

Introduction to the Sea Turtles of the World

In addition to the MathArt courses, we also signed up for several of the free course offers and free downloadable unit studies. So far we have completed Introduction to the Sea Turtles of the World course.

Introduction to the Sea Turtles of the World

The 7 Sea Turtle Species Poster & How to ID
Learn to ID or Identify the 7 Sea Turtles
Literature Connection – Video (8:06) – Believe in Yourself, Story of a Sea Turtle
Art Connections: Various Sea Turtle Art Projects
Historical/Literary Connection: Traditional Japanese Folk Story: Urashima Taro
Geography Connection: The World’s 12 Healthiest Sea Turtle Populations
Creative Writing – Writing Prompts about Sea Turtles

This course was suitable for all ages of my kids from the youngest to the oldest so we hooked our computer up to the TV in the living room so that all of the children could take the class at the same time. This class covered the biology of sea turtles, geography, fiction story about a young turtle, as well as how different cultures view turtles such as the Japanese view, and also focused on different art projects relating to sea turtles.

The kids studied 7 different kinds of sea turtles and learned how to identify the different body and head types of each kind.

They also learned about life cycles of turtles from laying eggs on the shore to the eggs hatching and the baby turtles emerging from the nest to make it back to the water.

The course has several lessons and suggested videos. There is an audio video animated story about the eggs hatching and the new life of the baby turtle. After watching the suggested video, the kids dug deeper by researching their own videos of sea turtles hatching.

One of the videos they found was taken at Oak Island, NC where we have visited a couple of times and my kids have swam on that same beach that the turtles hatched from. The kids were very excited to make this connection.

One of the lessons in the course is learning to identify and draw a sea turtle.

Another art lesson in this course involves creating a unique 3D painting of a turtle and fish in the ocean.

Once you have completed this course, the student is sent an achievement award.

Here is a short video on the Introduction to Sea Turtles of the World course.

Final Thoughts about courses from NatureGlo’s eScience:

17 year old son’s opinion of the MathArt: Math Connections In The Real World:

“It has been fun to take this course. It has been amazing to see the Golden Ratio and Fibonacci numbers in everything in every day life from pine cones, to flowers, to architecture, and music. It is almost hard to grasp how much this in everyday life. It is amazing to see Father God’s hands in everything. I have learned a lot and I have been inspired to do a lot more research.”

My kids are enjoying all of these courses from NatureGlo’s eScience and having Gloria as the teacher. The younger kids are getting ready to start the Introduction To Whales & Dolphins. The older kids are about finished with the Math Connections In The Real World and will soon be starting the MathArt In Ancient Cultures. They are looking forward doing all of the classes in the MathArt Online 4-Class Bundle.

These classes are informative and there is a variety of things to do from reading, watching videos, videos of recorded classes, completing worksheets in the study guides, and additional suggested videos to expand the learning as well as a lot of suggested hands on learning activities, including fun art projects too. She covers such a wide variety of subjects from Science, Math, Art, History, Archaeology, Cultural History, etc and there is something that interests each of my kids even thought they are all different.

We really like the pre-recorded classes, because you feel as if you are in class with Gloria and the other kids, but you have the benefit of going at your own pace, and you can rewind and hear it again if you need too. With either option, pre-recorded classes or live classes, Gloria has made herself accessible if you have questions. She also asks if kids do the suggested projects, to send in pictures or links that she can share with others.

On a personal note, I wish these courses were taught from a Christian worldview. I intentionally seek out educational programs with this worldview. Thankfully my kids are strong in their faith, and they are able to add what Gloria is teaching them in NatureGlo’s eScience courses into what they already know to be true about the “Creator of the creation”, the one who created everything we are studying around us.

FREE OFFERS

You can “try before you buy” by checking out the free courses and unit studies offered through NatureGlo’s eScience.

Fibranoci Unit Study (MathArt Course)
Introduction to Sea Turtles of the World (Marine Biology Course)
Transparent Living Jewels: The Glass Frogs (Herpatology Course)
Introduction to Whales & Dolphins Unit Study (Marine Biology Course)

Social Media

Be sure to check out NatureGlo’s eScience on their social media links for all the latest news and product updates.

Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
Google+
YouTube

Homeschool Review Crew

Be sure to check out what other families on the Homeschool Review Crew had to say about using courses from NatureGlo’s eScience in their homes.

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Would you like your kids to love chemistry? Then this curriculum is for you. We were offered the opportunity to review Fascinating Chemistry by Fascinating Education this fall. This class has helped my son to have a great start to the new school year.

Facinating Science Courses

Fascinating Education currently offers science courses in Biology, Chemistry, and Physics created by Dr. Sheldon Margulies. Read on down to the bottom to learn more about Dr. Margulies.

With Fascinating Education, your kids will get up to date technology interwoven into great science courses for high school. You can see the coarse outlines and free sample lessons for each course on their web site.

Fascinating Chemistry

The Fascinating Chemistry course is geared for the highschool student. It is a year’s worth of chemistry learning through an online course and includes 18 lessons covering about various subjects.

The course retails for $79.00 a year.

Every lesson has various subject within the lesson, and each subject covered has its own learning video, glossary, and a written script of the video lesson and an online quiz.
The quizzes and answer keys are available in PDF versions.

Each lesson is laid out in an easy to use display, with buttons below each picture for access to the lessons, text scripts, and tests which correlate with each lesson making it very easy for students to navigate the course.

You can access the course outline and see how each subject fists into each lesson.

This is page one of the course outline, access the link above to see the additional pages.

How We Used Facinating Education Chemistry In Our Home

We received a one year subscription to Fascinating Chemistry for the purpose of writing this review. We love learning science at our house and my oldest son is especially interested in learning the “WHY” of behind every thing.

He has been asking for a Chemistry course and this opportunity to review this class was a great opportunity for him. Each day he logs in and watches the lesson videos, learns terminology, and completes assigned tasks without being prompted by me.

He is learning so much. I am very impressed how easily he is learning the information. I feel he is getting a good handle on being familiar with the terminology. He takes his time and often repeats the videos to be sure he has learned all of the information. I think learning the terminology is the key to grasping an understanding of the videos.

I would definitely recommend this curriculum. It is wonderful to have courses on line because you can access them anytime day or night 24/7 to work on your assignments.

I love science as much as my kids. My favorite classes in school were science and music and I think I have passed this on to my kids. We want to know “HOW” things work and “WHY”. If you asked me about almost any subject today like cooking, bible, health, gardening, etc. I would tell you the science behind it. The kids are turning out like this too…cooking science, science of health, science of gardening, even science in the bible. We all love science. I have shared this with my friends before, but I will share it again, that our family’s favorite kind of TV shows are ones that show the science behind how things happen like “How It Works” “How Its Made”, “Good Eats”, “Myth Busters”, “Time Warp”, “The Science Of Stupid”, etc.

I am happy my son is enjoying this class and is learning about How and Why things around us work.

More About Fascinating Education

Dr. Margulies created Fascinating Education. He is an author, teacher, attorney, and a neurologist and knows the brain and how it functions best when learning information and performing tasks.

Dr. Margulies

Dr. Margulies has taught neurology to thousands of medical students in his 35 year teaching career and trained doctors to work in neurology. He focuses on interactive right brain methods of learning primordially audio visual methods with questions and answer. He supplements the audio-visual methods with written text. Dr. Margulies is especially skilled to teach science. He has an extensive background and understanding of the brain. He wants to use his knowledge to create programs that inspire the younger generation to pursue science related careers and study of science.

Please check out his ABOUT DR. SHELDON MARGULIES web page to learn more about his qualifications, degrees, experience, books he has authored, and his passions. He is a fascinating person with an incredible amount of experience and insight in many areas. It is so fitting that he would inspire others to learn about science with the creation of Fascinating Education courses.

Be sure to check out what other homeschool families on the Schoolhouse Review Crew had to say about Fascinating Education.

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