Friday, April 20, 2012

Review: Amazing Science!



One of my favorite discoveries from my time serving on the TOS Homeschool Crew has been a company called Math Tutor DVD.  We've reviewed four videos for them -- Young Minds and Basic Math Word Problem Tutor in 2010, and Pre-Algebra Tutor and the Texas Instruments TI-83/TI-84 Calculator Tutor last year.  We have also purchased a number of other DVDs from them.

Well, this year, things have changed.  They have a new name, Science and Math.  And that name should give you a clue as to what changes are taking place.

I was thrilled, thrilled, thrilled to get the chance to review volume 1 of Amazing Science!  Consisting of two DVDs with 23 experiments, this is one of those items I think every family ought to have.

My kids loved it too.  Everyone from the six year old to the fourteen year old.  The 6- and 8-year olds were the ones who did the most with it though.  Particularly the 8 year old.

Richard would put the DVD in, watch an experiment (or two or three) and start gathering supplies.  For the most part, the supplies are things that are already available in our house, though a couple of things we had to make a point of grabbing, like a can of soda.

The very first morning, Richard & Trina watched about a half dozen of the experiments, and then Richard set up the first one on the DVD -- Color Changing Milk.  We had some seriously souring milk that I was about to throw out, so he asked if he could see if this would work with "chunky milk" or not.  I thought that sounded perfect.

Here is his setup:

This is really pretty basic.  Milk in some sort of dish, add a drop or two of food coloring, and then use a cotton swab dipped in dish soap to see what happens to the fats in the milk.

The food coloring makes it so that you can see what occurred.



The best part about this DVD is that after doing the experiment, Jason then goes through and thoroughly explains the science behind it.  Okay, Trina doesn't like this part, but she's only 6.  The rest of my boys do.

When Richard accompanied me to pick up our Bountiful Baskets the week after we received this DVD, he was delighted to see that there were a couple of lemons in our box.  He immediately told me we needed to get a galvanized nail and a copper penny.  I couldn't remember AT ALL why, but he knew we had to do the Lemon Battery experiment.  I did not get photos... so here is one from their website:



We did not disassemble a calculator to see if we could make it lemon powered, but we did hook it up to a multimeter to measure the voltage.  (Yes, we do happen to have a multimeter laying around, but would have to go out to purchase a can of soda.  Your family's common household items probably differ from ours.)

The other best part about this DVD is that I have had to do practically nothing.  It is so self-explanatory.  When they did a couple of experiments involving candles or matches, Richard got a big brother involved, so I didn't even have to do anything with that part.

Like everything I have used from this company, the DVD is worth far more than its price tag.  $19.95 in this case, or you can purchase it as downloadable video for $17.99.

I'll repeat -- this is something I would recommend to absolutely anyone with children.  Here's one of the experiments -- one we did NOT do:




To see what my fellow crewmates had to say about Amazing Science! click the banner here:


Photobucket

Disclaimer:  As part of the TOS Homeschool Review Crew, I did receive products as mentioned above for the purposes of a review.  All opinions are my own.  For more about my take on reviews, visit my blog post here.

1 comment:

Debbie said...

I remember you wondering what you would do with your lemons last week!

This DVD looks like a lot of fun!