Combining several STEM disciplines, physical science can be a fascinating subject for kids to study, but it isn’t always the easiest.
But with its approachable and visual digital lessons, plethora of hands-on activities and fun projects, interesting and comprehensive workbook/logbook exercises and plenty of opportunity for review, Exploration Education can be an excellent option for those looking for a program that can get students engaged with, and even passionate about, physical science.
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What is Exploration Education
Founded by former teacher and homeschooling dad John Grunder in 2002, Exploration Education is an digital physical science program for students in elementary through high school.
A project-based curriculum, Exploration Education teaches standards-aligned science through a combination of digitally accessible lessons, videos, workbook exercises and science journal write ups, quizzes and, of course, hands-on projects and science experiments.
The program is available as a browser-based online program or as an offline, CD-based curriculum.
What Ages or Grades is Exploration Education Intended For?
Exploration Education’s physical science courses are broadly aimed at students from kindergarten through 10th grade, covering everything from the principles behind simple machines to energy, sound, thermodynamics, circuits and more.
To do so, the company offers three different programs:
- Elementary Physical Science, intended for students in K-3
- Standard Physical Science, intended for students in grades 4-6
- Advanced Physical Science, intended for students in grades 7-10
Parents should note that Advanced Physical Science also includes content from Standard Physical Science, so it can naturally be used by students in 4-6 as well, which is good news for those teaching siblings of different ages.
With that said, Exploration Education is a homeschool science program and can be used by students outside these age ranges, such as by precocious particularly since the program often makes use of narration or text-to-speech technology and uses a lot of video and illustration at all levels.
One thing parents of precocious science learners should be aware of, however, is that there is something of a skills jump between Elementary and the Standard/Advanced programs, as the latter includes the use of a logbook and the exercises therein tend to involve more student writing, which can be an issue if a student’s language arts and writing skills aren’t up to par.
Unfortunately for parents interested in switching into Exploration Education’s physical science curricula from another program, there is no science placement test with this program.
Parents will instead have to go through the topics for each course and make a decision based on their student’s existing knowledge and readiness, something that can perhaps be a little tougher for those new to homeschooling.
What’s Included In A Course
As a full, hands-on science curriculum, each course in Exploration Education does have a few items that parents will have to buy, such as a teacher’s manual, digital student text, workbooks/logbooks and project/activity materials.
Because it is an online course, the student texts are digital, which means that parents have a little less to keep track of and organize.
That said, Exploration Education Physical Science is not a totally digital course and, like other blended programs such as Elevate Science, students do make use of some paper-based materials that will need to be physically stored.
Teacher’s Guide
As might be expected of a homeschool curriculum, Exploration Education comes with a black and white, softcover Teacher’s Guide.
Unlike other homeschool science curricula, however, because a good deal of the work and teaching in this program is done digitally with the Interactive Student Text, the Exploration Education Teacher’s Guide tends to be a bit more more administration-focused than teaching-focused, and so there isn’t quite as much in the way of detailed lesson plans and scripting as there might be in a more traditional paper-based, teacher-led program.
Instead, the Guides contain things like answer keys for the in-lesson reviews, tests and quizzes, materials lists for the different lesson activities, grading rubrics and so on.
Overall, the Teacher’s Guide is pretty intuitive, easy to use and is well laid out, and the book generally makes overseeing student learning pretty easy even if a parent’s own knowledge of physical science is a little rusty.
Interactive Student Text
Accessible from an internet browser or CD, the Interactive Student Text includes illustrated and animated science lessons that provide most of the program’s direct student instruction.
Written in plain and straightforward English, and with plenty of visuals to go along with the written instruction, the texts provide a pretty clear, highly visual and understandable introduction to a wide variety of topics and concepts in physical science.
At the Elementary level, these lessons are narrated by the course founder, which is helpful for students still learning to read, while at the upper level they include text-to-speech functions, which we feel adds a bit of welcome accessibility for students with reading difficulties.
At the upper level, each section in the lesson also includes periodic questions that students can answer in their browser and/or their student logbooks, which add an interactive element from which the text derives its name, and serves as a sort of continual built-in lesson review, which is always nice.
Unfortunately, unlike some other digital science programs out there, these questions are not tracked or recorded, so students won’t really be able to use the lessons totally online and will need to physically write things down.
The Student Interactive Text also includes fully-illustrated, step-by-step guides to the various experiments, demonstrations and projects that the program includes, usually using photos or videos to keep things clear and easily understandable and directing students to all the relevant work in their logbooks or workbooks.
This can all be very helpful for students and parents, as it dramatically reduces the likelihood of setting up an experiment improperly and/or getting lost along the way.
Overall, we feel that the Exploration Education Student Interactive text is well-organized and very capable of guiding students through learning to the hands-on phase of a lesson without any real issue or need for a lot of parental oversight.
As a result, while younger students may need help here and there, the text’s narration, carefully sequenced nature and easy to read, highly visual lessons mean that most students should be able to do a lot of the work on their own.
On the downside, of course, the Student Interactive Text isn’t very advanced looking or feature-filled compared to some other interactive digital learning options out there, such as Science Fusion for example.
It tends to look a little like an old school website in our opinion and so may not be the most thrilling for students to use, especially those raised on the latest and greatest media, games and learning software.
Student Workbooks and Logbooks
From time to time during Exploration Education, students will be directed to do work either in a workbook or in a science logbook.
Student Workbooks
The Exploration Education Workbook is used in the Elementary course and tends to include a page or so of various exercises for each lesson.
There are, in fact, two options for each lesson in the workbook, which we found to be kind of interesting.
Younger students can take advantage of more casual, less reading-oriented activities, such as coloring or connecting the dots.
Older and more capable students, meanwhile, can do “Further Study” activities that tend to involve more complex reviews and extensions of lesson learning.
These tend to require a little more reading and writing skill but are still not all that strenuous, as the level is aimed at K-2.
They tend to, for example, ask students to answer basic yes or no or very short answer questions based upon the experiments and activities undertaken during the lesson.
Although the two sets of exercises for each lesson are really designed to accommodate students of different ages, we feel they can also help tailor Exploration Education to student readiness and different homeschooling philosophies.
They provide parents with the option to ramp the formality and complexity of lesson exercises up or down as a parent may desire or as a student may require.
More precocious learners, for example, may be free to do both the activity and Further Study activities, while those who may be struggling may choose to do only the activities to keep things a bit simpler and more casual.
Finally, each workbook contains fun unit review activities, such as crosswords, which are used to help students practice their science vocabulary in a less intimidating way.
Logbooks
Students studying the Standard and Advanced Physical Science courses eschew the typical workbooks that are found in most science programs in favor of a science journaling approach, periodically recording their lesson responses, answering questions and recording data from experiments in a student logbook.
A softcover black and white book, each student logbook contains the review questions posed during lessons, which students can use in lieu of online responses, as well as room for data recording, student calculations, proposed theories and hypotheses of the various demonstrations and experiments they conduct during lessons.
These logbooks also contain a variety of short answer questions that students fill out, which often require students to think a little deeper about what they are encountering and extend their learning a little further.
Finally, at the back of each student logbook there is also a glossary of terms and terminology, which is used to help review vocabulary before tests, as well as various templates to help students properly set up their projects, which can be handy.
All in all, the logbooks are pretty thorough, filled with clear, detailed instruction and are structured in a way that makes learning and recording physical science pretty guided and intuitive for students.
Like the Interactive Texts, students should be able to properly record and organize their thoughts, observations and results simply by reading and answering specific sections of their logbook in sequence, which in turn makes it a lot easier for them to study on their own.
For example, at the Advanced level, these books contain full, guided write ups of experiments, including sections for titles, objectives, hypothesis, materials, results and conclusion.
This can really help students get comfortable with the proper formatting and structure of scientific lab reports in a more step-by-step and less stressful manner.
Experiments and Project Materials
Exploration Education’s physical science curriculum includes a wide variety of hands-on and interesting demonstrations, activities, experiments and projects that are used to capture student attention and guide learning.
Like other homeschool science programs we’ve looked at, generally speaking these hands-on activities rely on commonly found household items, such as string, magnets, glue, crayons and so on.
Unlike most other homeschool science programs, however, Exploration Education actually includes a good deal of project and experiment-specific materials in its kits, such as thumbtacks, LEDs, wheels and magnets, which can save considerable time and effort on the part of parents.
While we should note that the curricula packages don’t include ALL the material a year’s learning requires, parents will have to go out and do a little shopping for things like spoons, batteries, glue and so on, Exploration Education is a lot more all-inclusive than most hands-on science programs we’ve seen.
Exploration Education: Approach To Teaching Science
Project-based learning
Exploration Education takes a project-based approach to teaching physical science.
What that means is that, in addition to direct instruction, the program weaves in a variety of engaging experiments and projects that students can work on to help them acquire more knowledge and apply some of the concepts they’re learning to real life and immediately understandable scenarios.
In addition to the many demonstrations and hands-on science activities that fill the lessons, each section in Exploration Education is connected to a project.
These projects are usually quite a step up from the usual kitchen science found in many other programs, with students building rockets, banjos, mini houses, race cars and more.
Each project is relatively complex and connected to several essential concepts in physical science, such as electronics, magnetic fields, polarity, force, chemical reactions and so on.
As students work through the various chapters of that section, they connect to and directly apply the knowledge that they’ve picked up in their lessons.
In this way, and especially compared to most textbook or workbook-based curricula out there, students are engaged in active exploration of scientific concepts (hence the name of the program).
Throughout the program, students learn by doing, rather than passively receiving information, and generally hone their problem solving and critical thinking skills as they go along.
This project-based approach has several benefits.
First, it can be a more fun and engaging way of learning physical science and how its concepts can be applied, which in turn can lead to greater retention of information, not to mention increase a students appreciation and even love for science.
It also makes learning a far more multisensory experience, reinforcing textbook learning and facts with the use of other cognitive pathways (touch, sound, etc).
Specifically, it introduces more tactile learning, which can be very helpful for students who have a harder time learning only through reading and writing.
There are, of course, some things that parents have to consider when it comes to a project-based learning approach.
It can be, for example, more time consuming than a simple lecture approach, as parents and students have to spend time collecting materials, watching or reading project demonstrations in the Interactive Student Text, assembling or modifying the project in some way and then recording their results in their logbook.
Similarly, although projects are often dynamic and fun, some students may simply not be interested in this approach and may wish for more simple and straightforward science lectures or readings.
Interestingly, Exploration Education does address and, in our opinion, resolve a common issue with project-based learning.
In such programs, students can often get absorbed in building and experimenting and fail to learn the essential facts behind the project.
As projects in Exploration Education are more incremental (with a little bit done in each chapter of section) and because it weaves extensive logbook work into the program, which serves to reinforce and review the connection between scientific fact and the hands-on components, we feel it really can help drill in the essential science knowledge.
Digital lessons
In addition to being project-based, Exploration Education is also a largely digital science program, with students accessing the essential direct instruction on a computer or digital device.
This can offer homeschooling families a number of benefits.
Students can, for example, have anywhere, anytime access to their course material.
It also allows lessons to be far more dynamic than a traditional textbook, allowing lessons to include gifs, videos, text-to-speech technology and more.
This multimedia approach can not only help make learning more enjoyable for all involved, but can go a long way in helping students understand some of science’s more abstract concepts.
Finally, it is worth noting that Exploration Education is offered in a couple different formats.
It is offered as a browser-based program, where students log in through the company website, which makes the curriculum device agnostic.
That is to say, without any apps to download or software to run, students can use it on pretty much any device (PC, laptop, tablet) as long as there’s an internet connection, which can be good news for homeschools with more kids than computers.
Interestingly, the program is also (at time of writing) still offered on CD.
This can be a good option for parents who either live in an area with poor internet connectivity or who simply don’t want to leave their child alone with an active internet connection.
On the downside, as we’ve mentioned, Exploration Education isn’t the most modern looking online learning platform we’ve ever seen.
It can look a little old school, which may be a distraction for some students who are used to fancier graphics.
Similarly, it does lack a few features that some other learning platforms may have, such as adaptive questions, automatic tracking and grading and virtual labs and tools.
That said, Exploration Education does have a significant advantage over other learning platforms, as far as homeschools may be concerned, in that it has no real expiration date for online access.
Typically, other digital and online homeschool courses limit learning to 12 months or so before requiring parents to renew a subscription.
As it does not do so, Exploration Education physical science courses can be used again with younger siblings years later, which can be a significant cost savings for larger families.
Independent learning
Finally, with its easy to understand digital lessons and detailed step-by-step experiment and project guides, we feel that a lot of Exploration Education learning can be done independently by students.
By and large most students can access the Interactive Student Text on their own, reading and/or listen to the lessons, watch how experiments and projects are set up, try their hand at doing the same, and follow the guidance provided to fill out their logbooks in an organized and sensible manner, all without a lot of constant parental involvement.
While students at the very youngest ages will obviously need a little more oversight and help, the program can significantly reduce the amount of time and effort that parents will have to spend teaching physical science overall, with most of their time being dedicated to administration and oversight of lessons and projects.
This can all be very helpful for busy parents, those who are more uncertain about their ability to teach science, and those who have to teach multiple students at once.
How it Works
For the most part we found Exploration Education to be a pretty straightforward physical science program to work with.
Each course contains 36 chapters representing about a year’s learning.
At the Elementary level, the program contains 36 lessons, 36 experiments and 4 projects and is designed to be taught about once a week.
The Standard course, meanwhile, contains 108 lessons, 108 experiments, 7 projects, and is designed to run 3 days a week.
The Advanced course, which contains and builds upon materials in the Standard course, contains 180 lessons (72 new ones), 144 experiments, 10 projects, and is designed to fit a 5 day a week schedule.
Each course in Exploration Education is also divided into sections, chapters and lessons.
Each section covers a broad topic in physical science (such as machines and energy, forces and motion, light, etc), with each chapter (about 3-5 per section) based around a concept in that topic.
The mixes and compounds section in the Advanced course, for example, contains chapters on molecules, compounds, PH and salts, crystals and chemical bonds, chemical reactions and the results of reactions.
Each of these chapters, in turn, contains about 3-5 lessons, many of which contain short experiments and demonstrations, which as we’ve mentioned are usually based around common and easily sourced household goods.
Students begin each lesson by logging into the Exploration Education website using an included code and accessing their Interactive Student Text.
These introduce the relevant science learning through a easy to understand text (or narration at lower levels) and lots of visuals and illustrations.
At times, students will be given lesson questions, which they answer either online and in their logbook (or in just their logbook), which parents can correct using their teacher’s guide.
Following this instructional component, students are often given an activity or experiment.
They can watch or read a step-by-step illustrated guide to setting these up before trying it themselves, which makes things a lot easier and less error prone on the whole.
Following this activity, students then either turn to their workbook exercises or logbook to review concepts, answer questions and fill out their observations and results.
As they go through each chapter, students work towards completing a relatively complex project.
Using kit materials and the instructions and templates included, for example, students may build gliders, steamboats, rockets, solar devices and more.
In doing so they typically apply the concepts they’ve learned in some way.
For example, while working on the glider students will review and apply concepts such as glide ratios, thermal currents, the Bernoulli principle, distance and displacement and more.
At the end of each section, there are typically two quizzes, a general section review and a vocabulary assessment.
This vocabulary assessment is actually a pretty good addition to the program, in our opinion, as lessons tend to introduce topics using plain language and these quizzes can help ensure students learn the proper terminology a bit more.
Finally, Exploration Education also includes a quarterly exam that parents can administer, usually covering 2 or so sections of learning.
These tests can add more comprehensive review and assessment to the program, which some parents may prefer.
As there is no final exam or midterms, they also offer a system of more frequent but ultimately less high-stakes assessments, something more test-shy students may prefer.
How Rigorous and Comprehensive Is Exploration Education?
Although it is more hands-on than most traditional textbook-based curricula, and while it teaches its material in a more straightforward manner, we feel that Exploration Education is a surprisingly comprehensive and thorough physical science curriculum.
While perhaps written to be as understandable and approachable as possible for students learning on their own, the Student Interactive Text does introduce and explain all the relevant scientific concepts and principles in a fair amount of depth.
It also provides glossaries and related vocabulary quizzes, helping ensure that students learn and retain all the proper scientific terminology for the material they’re learning.
Further, the program’s workbooks and logbooks contain a lot of critical thinking exercises, topical questions for review, connections to the program’s experiments and projects, full lab write ups in later levels and even significant math practice.
When combined with the curriculum’s exploration-based learning components, we believe that all of this can provide fairly comprehensive and strong physical science learning.
How Easy Is Exploration Education To Teach?
Overall, we feel that Exploration Education is pretty easy to use as a science curriculum.
More of a self-paced and self-directed program, we feel its Interactive Student Texts can guide students through their lessons simply and effectively, and the logbooks and workbooks are rather intuitive and set up so as to guide students into keeping their observations and results organized and as clear as possible.
As a result, there is a lot less need for parental involvement and direct instruction with Exploration Education than with many similar science programs, reducing the burden for parents quite a bit in terms of time and effort, something that busy homeschools will appreciate.
Finally, unlike many other homeschool science programs, Exploration Education does make an effort to include a good deal of its project materials in each kit, which means that parents will spend less time gathering and organzing supplies for their child’s science experiments.
Is Exploration Education A Secular Science Program?
Yes, Exploration Education is a secular science program, with no mention of God, the Bible or religious topics.
It is, however, important to keep in mind that the program is centered around physical science, which tends not to involve a lot of the hot button or controversial issues that faith-based homeschools may be concerned about.
It is, in our opinion, a program that can be appropriate for secular, neutral and faith-based homeschools alike.
Pros and Cons
Pros
Supports independent study
While parents may have to oversee learning and guide or direct students here and there, for most students a lot of part of Exploration Education’s can be done by students on their own.
Not only does this promote stronger independent study skills, but it also reduces the amount of time and effort parents will have to spend directly teaching.
Lots of hands-on learning
Exploration Education contains tons of experiments, activities and fascinating (and more complex) projects, such as steamboats, rockets, scales and more.
As a result, it can provide far more opportunity for students to physically engage with their learning, which in turn can help them better understand and remember the concepts they’re learning.
Online and CD-based digital learning
Exploration Education is a digital science program that can be accessed anywhere and at any time and that provides engaging and interesting multimedia lessons.
Unlike many other digital programs out there today, the program can be accessed through a web-browser, making it accessible from pretty much any modern connected device, or as a CD, which can be better for parents who are uncomfortable with dedicated online learning or who have slower/unreliable internet connections.
Highly accessible lessons
With its highly-visual, narrated/text-to-speech lessons, Exploration Education makes learning very accessible for student of all abilities, such as very precocious science learners and those with reading difficulties.
Lots of fun projects
In addition to its many in-lesson experiments and demonstrations, each course in Exploration Education also includes a variety of interesting and more complex projects that really go beyond what are found in most homeschool science programs.
Students, for example, may build a basic banjo, a race car, a steamboat or a rocket – all of which integrate lesson materials and can capture their imaginations.
Makes physical science approachable and understandable
The interactive lessons in Exploration Education seem to go to great effort to make physical science more understandable, often using plain and straightforward language, ample visuals and hands-on demonstrations when introducing concepts.
Comprehensive and rigorous science learning
At the same time, while it is an approachable science curriculum, we feel that Exploration Education is also comprehensive and fairly rigorous.
Its curriculum is aligned to various state standards, it reinforces and tests students on scientific terminology, helps extend their learning through various thought-provoking questions and helps guide them into properly structuring their observations and analysis of their experiments.
Includes a lot of the materials for projects
Unlike most other science programs we’ve looked at, Exploration Education makes a fair effort at including a large chunk of the materials required for its experiments and projects, which means parents will ultimately spend less time shopping at the beginning of the year.
Cons
Not the cheapest program out there
An Exploration Education kit costs between approximately $64-159 dollars.
Although it’s not the most expensive science program, and while it includes a good amount of project materials, it certainly isn’t the most affordable either.
Not the most advanced digital learning program
While the Interactive Student Texts are very functional and comprehensive in their teaching, they aren’t the most cutting edge learning technology we’ve ever seen in terms of their look and feel and may lack a few features that other learning platforms include, such as automated grading, adaptive learning algorithms, advanced virtual tools and so on.
Who Is Exploration Education Physical Science Ideal For?
Those looking for a very hands-on science program
Starting from kindergarten and progressing through its middle/high school level, each course in Exploration Education contains dozens of experiments, demonstrations, activities and projects that can really make learning more multisensory and hands-on compared to traditional textbook-based or lecture-style programs.
Those looking for a program that can support self-study
By and large a good deal of learning and activities in Exploration Education can, in our opinion, be done without a lot of direct and constant parental involvement, which can help students develop stronger self-study skills and can help busier parents quite a bit.
Those looking for a program that can make science learning approachable and fun
Through its use of plain language, illustrations, animations, and hands-on projects and experiments, Exploration Education can make learning physical science concepts a lot easier and more memorable for students.
Those looking for a comprehensive, standards aligned program
Exploration Education also includes a lot of logbook/workbook exercises and critical thinking questions that really make its science education pretty comprehensive and rigorous, despite its approachable lessons.
The program is standards-aligned and teaches and reinforces proper scientific vocabulary and includes all the relevant math connections that students will need.
Those who want a digital program but live where there is poor internet service
Digital learning can have a lot of benefits for students, not the least of which is the inclusion of more engaging and interesting multimedia lessons.
While Exploration Education is offered as an online program, the company currently also offers it on CD, which can be very helpful for those who live where internet service is slow or who feel uncomfortable leaving a child with an active internet connection.
Who Is It Not Ideal For?
Those looking for advanced digital tools in their learning
Although its Interactive Student Text is very useful and comprehensive in scope, Exploration Education isn’t the most feature-filled learning platform and may lack some of their more advanced features, such as scheduling, automatic grading, games, virtual tools and more.
Fans of parent-led or textbook-based learning
Not every student is a fan of learning through digital text and video and may prefer to be directly taught to or to read the materials from a standard textbook.
These students may not find Exploration Education’s blended digital format and lessons to be all that attractive.
Price
Note: Prices correct as of writing. All prices in USD.
Exploration Education is typically offered in rather convenient kits, which include everything that’s needed to teach the program, including the Teacher’s Guide, an access code to the Interactive Student Text (or CD, depending on what parents order), a workbook or logbook, and materials for the different projects.
While it’s not really possible to buy the materials individually, the company does offer spares (student texts and project supplies) that parents can purchase if they want to use the program with more than one child or if they lose or damage something.
The approximate costs of the programs materials can be found below.
Elementary Physical Science Course – $64.95
Standard Physical Science Course – $138.95
Advanced Physical Science Course – $158.95
Extra student access – $9.95-24.95
Extra supplies for projects – $59.95-114.95
As always, parents should check for the latest prices for this curriculum, as well as for any discounts or specials that may be offered.
Is It Worth The Price?
Although not the cheapest science curriculum out there, we feel that Exploration Education can be a great option for homeschoolers looking for a high quality physical science curriculum.
The program’s lessons provide a straightforward and understandable introduction to physical science, yet offer enough practice and activities to provide a thorough, standards-aligned and in depth exploration of the materials, including all the proper terminology and math connections.
In addition, its highly visual, narrated and often animated instruction manages to make learning chemistry, physics and earth science concepts a lot more engaging and approachable for students.
At the same time, its fun project-based approach allows students to see these sometimes abstract concepts in action and provide a lot of opportunity for students to get their hands dirty doing science, rather than just reading about it.
Finally, as the program relies on digital instruction and its materials are well-laid out and structured, Exploration Education tends to support independent learning a lot more than many other hands-on homeschool science programs.
Although younger students may need a little more help, and while parents will still need to oversee projects and the general administration of the course, this does allow busier parents to step back and be able focus on the myriad of other tasks that homeschooling can entail.
Bottom Line
Combining several STEM disciplines, physical science can be a fascinating subject for kids to study, but it isn’t always the easiest.
But with its approachable and visual digital lessons, plethora of hands-on activities and fun projects, interesting and comprehensive workbook/logbook exercises and plenty of opportunity for review, Exploration Education can be an excellent option for those looking for a program that can get students engaged with, and even passionate about, physical science.
About the Author
David Belenky is a freelance writer, former science and math tutor and a tech enthusiast. When he’s not writing about educational tech, he likes to chill out with his family and dog at home.