Journey Homeschool Academy (A REVIEW)

Disclaimer: I received a FREE copy of this product through the HOMESCHOOL REVIEW CREW in exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review nor was I compensated in any other way. 

 

We had a fun time learning all about biology at the elementary level with this review. We received access to the Experience Biology: Elementary course from Journey Homeschool Academy. Not only were there great videos packed with new information, but there were also fun activities, good book recommendations, and more. Read on to see what we did!

What is Elementary Biology? It's an online video course with many supplemental offline activities to choose from. It is set up to study about one lesson per week, with watching the video first and then completing as many or as few of the activities as you'd like. We like all the "hands-on" stuff so we tried to do as much of the printables and activities as we could each week.

Our course page where we access all the lesson content including videos, printables, and resources.

To begin a lesson we'd first start by watching a video. The videos are about 15 minutes long, and they are really fun to watch. They have beautiful, colorful footage as well as a lot of interesting facts and information. They all begin with the same upbeat music at the beginning to introduce the course, and then instruction/talking from the teachers while showing illustrations or footage of what they are talking about. They are packed with REAL biology vocabulary and concepts. I was impressed with how equally challenging and simple the content is. The instructors are clear and easy to understand too.

Our setup usually included us at the table watching the video on the laptop. Sitting around the table was the comfiest for ease of working on the worksheets and activities.

Completing lesson 2, watching the video first!

After the video, either on the same day or another day, we'd start working on the worksheets and activities to go along with the lesson. All of the extra material for each lesson will contain a list of books to read, a hands-on activity, Memory work, Copywork, and a quiz.

Here are some examples of the worksheets (from various lessons):

Recommended reading list

An activity for lesson 2

The copywork by Alex 4th grade, lesson 1

The Memory cards from lesson 1

The quiz, lesson 1

Lesson 1:


So how did the first lesson go? It went awesome! Before we started I rounded up the recommended books from the recommended reading list (Pictured below). I was able to access books either through my library or purchase them cheaply from various websites. Again, you don't have to acquire the books, but these books are a great supplement.

We watched the video and Alex got a little creative "taking notes" on a poster as we were watching. This wasn't part of any of the lesson, just something he did on his own.

His completed poster! (This was not an assignment from the course, just something my son created. I love when curriculum inspires the student to go above and beyond.)

We decided to fill in some of the worksheets during the video too! He needed to copy the words to get the spelling correct for the activity later. That's all we did the first day, watching the video.

Filling in the worksheet during the video. I paused so they could copy the words correctly.

A few days later we did the activity. Determining what's alive.

Activity/experiment for lesson 1, determining what's alive.

Throughout the week we read the books.

What's smaller than a pygmy shrew is an awesome book that really solidifies the video lesson.

Then, finally, we worked on the copywork, memory cards, and the quiz. I won't picture them again because they are in the worksheet examples I already shared above. And that's about how a lesson goes!

How did the rest of the lessons go??

The lessons continued to be fun, challenging, and interesting. In lesson 3 we built a candy DNA...

The activity actually calls for colored marshmallows, but I couldn't find them at any of our stores. So, we opted for gummy bears. It made it a little more difficult and heavy, but it worked!

Overall we really enjoyed this curriculum. It's engaging and fun. The videos are enjoyable to watch, and capture the attention of the children. It was even challenging enough for my middle schooler who worked on it with us, so even though it says "elementary" I do believe middle schoolers could learn a lot too if you want them to join in with their younger siblings for lessons. We have many more lessons to watch as the course is meant to last a whole school year. They are still adding videos/lessons as they create them, but as of writing this review they have 19 weeks worth of lessons. They also offer other courses at Journey Homeschool Academy including astronomy, and the high school level courses of both biology and astronomy. Some of the other crew members tried these other ones. If you want to see what others had to say about this and the other courses, click on the banner below.