Friendly Chemisty - Review

Chemistry and me, we've never really gotten along. As a matter of fact, we really have never met. Growing up in Canada at a time where you only needed one high school science credit to graduate, knowing for fact I'd never take anything in university that would require anything other than the one credit, I opted to take biology.

The reality is chemistry scares me. There I've written it down. It's true.

And then I met chemistry. He's actually a friendly guy if taught that way. I was introduced to him by Hideaway Ventures and their Friendly Chemistry course.

When we received this course in the mail, Genius instantly opened everything, and wanted to start right away. So I gathered the few supplies we needed, and we began.

There is both a Teacher Text and Student Text, but quite honestly, most of what we did (up to the 7th chapter as I write this review), Genius primarily did on her own, only using the Student Text.

To give you an example of the fun things that are used in this course that make chemistry friendly and fun, we played "Element Bingo" (which to Genius' chagrin, Hubby kept winning!), burned marshmallows to basic elements and made elements out of Play-Doh!

Then of course there is Friendly Chemistry's patented Doo-Wop Board, that with the help of tiddly-wink type discs, teach the student atomic valences.

While this course gives the basic foundations of chemistry and in an extremely easy and fun way to learn, it is not as in-depth as you may find other curriculum to be. That being said, we will use it as our basic chemistry course in our home, and then take an AP Chemistry course following it, as I believe there is sufficient instruction in it to catapult into an AP course.

A lot of the activities that are used in the Teacher's Text for the teaching process are activities geared for more than one student. So if you have a couple of middle school or high school children, this would be a great chemistry course to use. Or it could be used in a co-op as well. With having only one child we skipped a lot of these activities because they just weren't feasible to do.

I have to give two thumbs up to this course because it taught quantum mechanics, spherical orbits, and orbital notation to a 12 year old, in a way that she not only understood it, but also could retain it; and for this previously fearful of chemistry, homeschool mom that is mighty high praise!

For more reviews on Hideaway Venture's Friendly Chemistry course, visit the TOS Crew Blog.