Techie Homeschool Mom ~ REVIEW

 
I love unit studies with all kinds of cutouts, lapbooking, projects and adding cooking or field trips to round out the whole learning experience.  My two oldest kiddos loved that too, Kaden not so much.  He wants to learn based on need, not enjoyment.  Every now and then though we study something that he dives deep into and I love those moments with him.  Recently I was able to try out Famous Inventors Online Unit Study from  Techie Homeschool Mom.


A few years ago we did a Chinese New Year Unit Study and enjoyed it a lot.  As soon as I told him that this unit study was completely online and Steve Jobs was one of the Inventors listed he was like sign me up and let's go.

Each unit study is created by Beth Napoli, a mom of 5 who considers herself a "geeky homeschooling mom".  Beth created these unit studies as a way to take advantage of resources available online to educate her own kiddos, which later turned into her creating the Techie Homeschool Mom site for others to have access to these resources too.  And we love her for that! :)

Like I said earlier we decided to use her Famous Inventors Online Unit Study , here is a list of the included Inventors:

• Archimedes
• Galileo
• Leonardo da Vinci
• Alexander Graham Bell
• James Watt
• Charles Babbage
• Nikola Tesla
• Johannes Gutenberg
• The Wright Brothers
• Steve Jobs

I truly appreciate that these studies are completely self-paced course and you can decide when to start, how many days a week you work and when you finished.  Another super helpful thing too is that after enrolling, you have unlimited access to these courses for as long as you like.  Which means you can go back and review, use with other kiddos or redo later on.

This course is almost too easy to use.  Literally, log in and you have your courses easily available.  You click on the course you want and begin.  We decided to  just go with the flow and have a more organic approach to completing the lessons.  Kaden right away headed to do the Steve Jobs section first.  Each section has 3 lessons that are made up of videos, timelines, biographies, reading material, questions and projects.  Everything is done online, except obviously the projects.

 Some Unit Studies Available

Ancient Egypt Online Unit Study
Ancient Greece Online Unit Study
Ancient Rome Online Unit Study
Famous Artists Online Unit Study (Vol. 1)
Famous Artists Online Unit Study (Vol. 2)
Famous Inventors Online Unit Study
Solar System Online Unit Study

Some of the things we learned and were surprised by.

Steve Jobs-  The most awesome thing Kaden enjoyed was watching the release of the 1st iphone and his 7 rules of success.  The project for this section was to dissect a computer....by far Kaden's favorite project.  We have tons of computers laying around because my husband is a computer engineer.  But, if you don't have one to dissect the video is a great back up plan to at least watch the process.

Leonardo da Vinci shocked us the most.  I did not know about many of the things he invented like scuba gear or the triple barrel cannons that later inspired machine guns into existence.  There were many more too like the parachute.  His design was more of a triangular shape with exact measurements.  We had fun making our own parachute as a project.  Kaden launched army men, pieces from a sponge and a feather to see what happens with different weights.

Overall I was impressed, this course was simple to use, full of worthy information not just fluff and fillers.  I think it's a perfect course to use with your elementary and middle school kids.  This would be a fantastic summer time course to keep the learning going year round.  And the kids will have fun while working independently or with a parent's help.  I would love to try a few more out, especially during our move this summer so Kaden can still have structured learning time.  The best part is it's all online.... since most of the classroom stuff will be boxed up.

Make sure you click below to read what other reviewers had to say about the unit study we did or any of the ones I've linked up above.  You can also say hello to Techie Homeschool Mom on social media too.

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