Currently, my oldest child is independently completing Fascinating Biology from Fascinating Education. They also offer the following courses: Fascinating Chemistry and Fascinating Physics. It is recommended that the courses be completed in the following order: Chemistry, Biology and then Physics. We reviewed Fascinating Chemistry a little while ago and our boy is becoming more interested in biology, so we decided to review biology this time. We received a 12 month subscription for this review. If you do choose to complete Biology first, there is a short chemistry course, Chemistry Pre-Course for Biology, that contains six lessons, that can be completed first, at an extra cost.
Fascinating Education offers online courses that are delivered to your child via video lessons. These courses are developed by Dr. Margulies, a retired neurologist. He is also an author of three books, has a legal degree and is an expert witness in the field of neurology. The videos use bright, simple illustrations as well as text to teach students.
Fascinating Biology is geared towards high school students but can be used by middle school students if you feel they are ready. The Fascinating Biology course includes eighteen lessons that are broken down into small, manageable pieces to increase learning as you can see on the left hand side of the picture below. This clear, step-by-step approach will have your child wanting to learn.
Each section also comes with a glossary section, which you can see in the picture above, next to the menu. This contains words that are used in the lesson and their definition, which can be quite handy at times.
Each of the 18 lessons, comes with their own script or full transcript. I printed this out for our boy who loved to read along while watching the videos. After watching the videos for each lesson, our boy then read through the script again to make sure he understood what was being taught before he attempted the test. The videos are roughly around 45 minutes each and are jam-packed full of information. In the longer lessons, there are ‘Catch our Breath’ slides which are great for reviewing what you have learnt in the lesson so far. At the end of each lesson there are ‘What you know so far’ that is a summary of the material that was learnt during the video lessons. This is a great way to review before proceeding onto the test. To pass the test, your child needs to have a score of 80%. If they don’t pass the first time, they can continue to retake the test until they do. The questions are multiple choice, focusing on the most important concepts from the videos.
Overall, it is a great biology curriculum. It would be great to have some hands-on activities but the videos are extremely helpful. I love that the full transcript is included and that you have the ability to stop and start the videos and rewatch them as you need. There is also the option of jumping around the lessons, instead of completing them in order, which is great if you are looking at brushing up on your biology.
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