Science4Us.com Review

Vendor: Science4Us.com Product: Science4Us.com Online Subscription Price: $7.95/month per child Age Range: K-2nd Grade
Science4Us.com is a online program that teaches an elementary science curriculum. There are modules for each topic studied but they also offer instructions for hands on learning to go with it.
Each module completely teaches the topic to the child.  There is also a teacher section for the information you need to further assist that topic as well as the hands on activities to go with that topic.  It also checks off the tasks once they are completed. We worked on living and non living things then jumped on to weather.  There is several different topics to choose from and you  can choose any grade range you need to suite your child.  The parents section tells you everything you need to know as well to help them.  This is great for the young learners or even as a review for your older children. Once the child is logged in it is very easy to navigate the area you want.  When in your teacher account you assign the child the areas you want him/her to learn.  Then when the child signs in they see the topic and watch the initial introduction to the lesson.  Then there are different tasks they can complete by picking and choosing as they go. Below is what your child will see when they log in.  There is also a cool little music player that was a neat little add on to the page.  At the bottom of the screen there are instructional videos which are great.  There are so many cool features in this program that it is hard to find them all without some help.  This is how I learned how to assign modules to her.  Also it only takes one teacher account and you can have multiple children accounts.
When in the program you may think you need to stay with the child the whole time but really it is so easy they can do a lot on their own.  My daughter that I used this with is 7 and still does not really read.  I was worried about this and how much I would have to help her.  Everything was read out loud to her and then when there was a review with a question and she had to pick the answer it also read the answers when you moved the mouse over them.  She really loved this because it made her feel more independent and not so upset that she couldn't read it.  Each thing was simple to use and navigate.  There was fun little games in each module too, this made my 7 year old happy, learning by fun.  The graphics are great, the voice that is used is a bit annoying and my 7 year old mentioned that at first as well.  Sometimes she had a hard time understanding what it was saying but I think she got used to it because she eventually stopped asking me what it was saying.  
We do science almost everyday so we got a lot of use out of this program.  I think it was great that I could get her logged in and then she could go at it.  On the weekends I would go in and assign her the things I wanted her to do (giving her the option on which topic she wanted to learn).  Then I also could prepare the hands on activities for us to do as well.  The offline work worked well with what was being taught in the lessons.
I loved the notebook section.  It showed all the work that she had completed and I could add in any notations that I wanted, maybe like things she needed to work on.  It also showed me the vocabulary words, which allowed me to randomly quiz her verbally on them.

The only thing that disappointed me is I thought that the hands on would be more experiments and not just paper work.  Though they were usually fun ones, it is still hard to get my 7 year old to do worksheets.