Love this Curriculum We absolutely love the Chemistry 4 Homeschool curriculum. I was apprehensive about teaching chemistry. Chemistry 4 Homeschool makes it very turnkey for me. The video lessons are fantastic. The instruction and exercises guide my kids in a way that they develop a true understanding. The lessons and assignments interest and challenge them. They love the course and say they feel a real sense of accomplishment when they figure out concepts, problems, etc.

Doable and Comprehensible This course has been an excellent fit for my tenth grade son, who is a reluctant student of science. His exact words are, "I'm not a fan of science, but this feels doable." Using the method of guided inquiry was a stretch for him at the beginning of the year because he didn't want to have to figure things out for himself and wrestle with the ideas presented. He wanted to be told the answer and move on to the next question. As the course has progressed, he's gotten much more comfortable formulating his own reasons for why something has happened or predicting what will happen based on info that's been presented. I am grateful that the course has helped him develop his critical thinking skills. The course consists of a workbook and not a textbook. I appreciate that the course is condensed in that way and that my son doesn't have to read extensively about concepts. I don't feel like he is lacking anything by not having a traditional textbook. Before starting the course, I compared the topics in Jason Neil's course to the chapters in a popular option for homeschoolers; I feel that this course hits the same topics. More recently I borrowed a test book and workbook key for another curriculum to see how I felt about the rigor of this course now that we're nearing the end of the course. The other course requires students to write definitions for many vocab words each chapter. Jason Neil doesn't require that but as I looked through the vocab, I realized that my son knows what the vast majority of the words mean because he's had to use them and apply them to complete his daily assignments. Looking at the workbook questions and test questions for the other curriculum, I felt that my son would be able to answer most of them. I've been learning chem right along with my son for much of the year and have found it interesting despite preferring literature and grammar to science. I love having daily videos to explain the concepts. Overall, the videos are helpful; I permit my son to watch them at double speed much of the time and that has worked well. The speed isn't too fast to understand and we can always pause and go back if needed. Significant figures have been a challenge for my son. We've had to go back and review them a few times. Sometimes he can't understand how Jason Neil rounds. I feel that's less a problem with the course and more a lack of understanding on my son's part. I'm satisfied with the course and plan for my other two children to take it when they are old enough. Nonetheless, there are a few things I would change or improve. Generally, there is only one lab day per chapter in the edition I'm using. That seems a bit light, especially compared to some other courses but has worked well for us. Additionally, it would help if there was a list of what materials the students can have available for the test, such as periodic table, famous ion sheet, calculator, etc). Not having studied chemistry for many years, it didn't occur to me that my son needed to have a periodic table to reference when he took his first test. Some chapters have required the famous ion sheet; at first I wondered if my son needed to memorize all of the ions but as I watched a few videos and didn't hear Jason Neil ask the kids to memorize the ions, I concluded that it was okay to reference the sheet during the exam. A calculator is definitely required for tests; that wasn't hard to figure out, but I have been unsure if they should memorize all the formulas or if they can write some on a notecard. For at least one test, the formulas have been at the top of the test but the last test my child completed didn't have any of the formulas listed at the top, making me think he was expected to know them. In that case, I exercised parental discretion and allowed him to copy a few onto a notecard so he could focus on doing the calculations. It would also be useful if there was a spot on the website that listed all of the labs, i.e. what day they are conducted in each chapter, so that my son could easily locate them in advance and print them and begin to gather materials. I'd also love it if the online portion kept track of where my son left off each day so he didn't have to scroll or if there was some sort of printable checklist to mark off course progress. Finally, the test answer key indicates the answers but doesn't show the math for problems involving calculations. It's so helpful that Jason Neil works out the answers in the daily videos; I wish it were also so for the tests. Overall, when my son has missed calculation problems on the test, he's been able to rework the problems to get the correct solution. That can be a bit tricky for multi-step problems. However, I will say that I recently emailed Jason to ask him to write out a solution for a test problem my son couldn't figure out and he responded within a few hours; he's very approachable.