Exploration Education is a hands-on science curriculum for homeschoolers in grades K-10. It focuses on project-based learning, allowing students to engage with physical science concepts through experiments and building activities.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), approximately 3.3 million students were homeschooled in the United States as of 2023, representing roughly 6% of the school-age population. Research from the National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI) shows that homeschooled students typically score 15 to 25 percentile points higher than public school students on standardized academic achievement tests.
What is Exploration Education?
Exploration Education started in 2002 by John Grunder, a teacher and homeschooling dad. This program offers a hands-on physical science curriculum for kids in grades K-10. It uses a project-based style, where 75% of grades come from experiments and building projects—not just from books. Each kit contains everything you need—motors, solar panels, circuits, chemicals—and includes online lessons and videos. Kids build real projects like race cars and steamboats while learning the science behind them.
What students learn
The curriculum dives into forces, machines, motion, energy, electricity, magnetism, sound, light, density, buoyancy, matter, chemical reactions, and thermodynamics. Instead of just reading, students get hands-on experience by building electric motors, creating chemical reactions, and making working machines. They do science like real scientists: collecting data, interpreting results, and forming hypotheses.
Strengths and considerations
Families love how engaged their kids are—hands-on projects spark interest in physics and engineering. Everything you need comes in the kit, so there's no need to hunt for supplies. The online lessons cater to all learners, with text-to-speech support. Kids can work mostly on their own. However, since each kit covers multiple grade levels, you can’t reuse it for the same child. Some families stretch the Advanced level over two years. Keep in mind, it focuses solely on physical science, so you'll need extra materials for life and earth sciences.
The bottom line
Exploration Education does what it promises: real hands-on science with little prep for parents. The complete kits solve the common homeschool issue of needing hard-to-find supplies for experiments. For kinesthetic learners, building projects helps them grasp concepts better than textbooks. Think about using it for your physical science year and add other resources for biology and earth science topics.
