Little Bits of Life: Journey Homeschool Academy 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.

For summer school we tried out Journey Homeschool Academy we used the Experience Biology: Elementary. This course can be found by clicking here Experience Biology: Elementary. The course is geared towards kids that are 6-12 years of age. The program does acknowledge God as the creator but does not seem to go much farther than that. The program currently has 16 lessons and they are adding additional lessons as they are completed. There will be 30 lessons in total when the program is finished. This course can typically be completed during 1 school year is you are doing 1 lesson per week. Program cost is $129 and covers the entire immediate family.

Current completed lessons offered are:
Lesson 1: What is Life
Lesson 2: The building blocks of life
Lesson 3: The secret code of life
Lesson 4: Fueled up
Lesson 5: What's in a name
Lesson 6: Biomes Everywhere
Lesson 7: Itsy bitsy teeny tiny creatures
Lesson 8: The junk drawer kingdom

Lesson 9: The fungus among us
Lesson 10: What is a plant
Lesson 11: the wide world of plants
Lesson 12: Mean green energy making machine
Lesson 13: Roots and shoots
Lesson14: The reason for flowers
Lesson 15: It begins with a seed
Lesson 16: Amazing animals

This is probably one of the simplest programs to use. First your child watches the video lesson. There is only one log in for both parent and student. So you log into your online portal and let your kids watch a video lesson about basic biology principles. Next they will do a fun activity or assignment to help them connect the video to the world around them. If you need a little more your child will then explore books from the recommended reading list. You can do some or all of them. You can use them as a read-aloud or for independent reading assignments for each child.

There are 30 videos in the Experience Biology: Elementary and tons of hands-on activities to help your child bring the lesson to life. You will also find some memory work extras and copy work to use as needed. Lessons take around 15 minutes to complete, they are quick enough for those kids that loose interest quickly yet packed full of information. The girls dove right into these videos' and work pages. The girls enjoyed the video lessons the most but felt the worksheets were a little to easy for them however they are both at the upper end of the age range for this program. I felt like the videos were engaging and covered a decent amount of information for the given age range. You can take the lessons a little farther by using the resources and supplemental items that each lesson offers.

Some of the activities were activities that we had done in previous years so the girls felt they were not challenging enough. They said they would like to see more activities and maybe offer some activity options that would be a little more challenging for the kids in the upper age range of the program. For us I don't believe the program would last us a full school year. Just because we do science 4-5 days a week. For a family that just does maybe a weekly science lesson or stretches out the lesson over a full weeks time you could get it to last a hole school year. Over all I feel like this is a great budget friendly program for kids that are close in age and grade level. I hope you will click the link below and see the other programs that the crew members used.