Posted by EKS on 10:25 Sep 18
In Reply to: I'm interested in The Yound Scientists' Club, among other things... posted by Reya
We used Young Scientists Club last year (all 36 kits in one year) as sort of a general overview of science. I found it to be expensive (it is something like $15/kit if you get them shipped separately) and that the kits themselves were created with low-quality materials that were on several occasions broken and unusable. You can get them to ship the kits to you all at once and save substantially on shipping costs, but of course then you lose the excitement of getting a kit in the mail each month. I also thought they contained very little background information on each subject, that their diagrams were unprofessional looking, and that their explanations were sometimes "dumbed down" to the point of inaccuracy.
We are using Science in a Nutshell this year (see post below) and I like it much better. I feel strongly about letting people know about our experience with Young Scientists Club because it is really very expensive for what you get. I am not one to always want to save money on curriculum materials, and I am very willing to spend money on science kits, but every time we used a Club kit I got upset about how insubstantial it was.
Just my $0.02.