Several weeks ago, I received two DVDs from Library and Educational Services in their Go Science series, the first was Volume 2: Life Science, Weather, and the second was Volume 7: Engineering, Design, Flight. These are fun science DVDs that add a bit extra to our current science curriculum and provided about an hour of entertainment for each DVD for my older four children, ages 5, 7, 9, and 10. Charlotte is three and watched for a few minutes, but she wasn’t understanding and soon wandered off to her dolls. This is said to be geared for ages 4-12.
We didn’t use these for curriculum, but rather put them in during, you guessed it, laundry 
folding. We seem to have a lot of that around here. We watched each DVD in it’s entirety in one sitting (each, not on the same day! We don’t have quite that much laundry!), but they are broken up nicely into sections that watching less than the full hour would be pretty easy. The kids were mesmerized, and talked about what they’d seen afterwards. Ping pong balls in pressurized tubes and clouds and lung capacity, vinegar and baking soda and walking on eggs… it was all pretty interesting. The experiments done were quick and kept the kids’ attention well. Ben Roy does the experiments, and while we all giggled at how awkward he was in dealing with the crowd of children that watched his experiments and sometimes helped him, he did a great job in explaining what was happening and why.
These are done in life settings. VBS was mentioned twice, camp mentioned once, and while I don’t know if that was the setting for all of the DVDs, it seemed to be for mine. The kids are not always the same kids, but Roy did a fabulous job in reminding the kids and viewer that science points to our Creator. He consistently says the same line at the end of each small section, and while the kids giggled at the repetition, they remembered it!
At one point, the little character/Scripture lesson that is at the end of some of the experiments stated that we have to ask God for the things we desire. “God can’t help you if you don’t ask.” Whether this was a misspeak or truly what Roy believes, I don’t know, this is contrary to what I believe. God can do anything. He may not desire to, but He also may not say yes even for the things we ask for. I won’t go into theology… but even my kids caught that comment and wondered why he said God can’t do something.
Overall, Ben Roy’s passion for science and for kids was evident. The DVD quality is quite good, and many of the experiments were ones we can do at home. My kids were happy to see his vinegar and baking soda rockets shot off about like ours did… the potential is there, but they don’t always cooperate!
Each of the Go Science DVDs are $8.97, or the whole set of seven DVDs can be purchased for $59.82.
Library and Educational Services can be found on Facebook here.
To read more reviews of these two and the other five DVDs offered from Library and Educational Services in their Go Science series, head over to the Review Crew Blog.
