Digital Frog Virtual Field Trips

Digital Field Trip DVD series from Digital Frog is the next item we reviewed for the Homeschool Crew.  It contains virtual 'field trips' to three different ecosystems: The Wetlands, The Rainforest, and The Desert.  The Home Licence costs $125 for the DVD set.  You can also buy the ecosystems separately for $60 each.

Would you like to take a trip with your kids to learn more about The Wetlands, Rainforest, or the Desert?  With the field trip series you can do the next best thing.  There are so many colorful, interactive features on this DVD, I don't even know where start.  First, we worked mainly with The Wetlands (that is what Isabel is working on in Science) and The Rainforest (that is what Logan is working on).  This was a wonderfully timed review for us.  Since there are so many things to talk about, I am going to stick with The Wetlands for this review, but the others are similarly set up.

On The Wetlands field trip, you can start off by using the interactive map to locate where you are going.  Next, you can choose from the following categories: Quick Tour, Field Trip to the Bog, Study of a Bog, Wetland Types, Mechanisms of a Wetland, or Our Endangered Wetlands.   On the Field Trip, you can take a 360° tour of Lake Cloud from 9 different posts.  You will learn about things at each post and you can click on plant or wildlife (for more interactive features) that you spot on your trip. 



There are so many amazing places to go and things to do. You can choose to learn basic information or dig a little deeper and go in depth. I am so amazed at the amount of interactive information on this DVD.  

There are also interactive games available to learn play.  In Food Chain game, you click on an organism to identify it and you can either drag lines between what that organism eats or click again to learn more about it.  Any time during the entire DVD if you see your cursor with a T next to it, you can click and open a definition of that word and sometimes hear pronunciation.  Each time we use this, we find new features we haven't explored yet.

One of the great features on the DVD is a student workbook and teacher manual for each of the three ecosystems, and they are available in many different file formats.  The DVD looks like it was designed for upper elementary/middle school with all the text and workbooks, but it would easily be enjoyed by the whole family.  The only teacher preparation needed is to print up the workbook files.

I really like how everything is interactive.  It really keeps the kids interested in seeing what else they can click on (and subsequently learn).  It has been a wonderful visual supplement to our Life Science and we plan to spend a lot more time exploring.

There are several other products available from Digital Frog: The Digital Frog 2.5 ($85) and ScienceMatrix: Cell Structure and Function ($40).  

*Disclaimer* I received this product free of charge for the purpose of this review.