Posted in HS4CC

MEL Medical: New Lab

Posted on by Jennifer Cook-DeRosa, M.S.

Some of you may know that I’ve used and written about MEL Chemistry (we used it as a high school science lab) and I just got an email that they’ve rolled out a new product called MEL Medical. It honestly looks AMAZING but let me share what I know.

First, this product hasn’t been released yet, so I haven’t seen it or used it. This is just an FYI type of post.

First a word about their Chemistry product…

I used MEL Chemistry and loved it. It’s a subscription-type science lab that charges a monthly fee. My 11th grader took an online college chemistry course that didn’t have a lab, but I did a search and discovered MEL. I ended up combining my middle-school son’s chemistry course with my high school (college) son and we used MEL Chemistry for both. It’s a bit expensive, but the labs were amazing and they send a lot more than you need…. so the strategy I used to keep costs down was to limit our science labs to Fridays. Each kit contains multiple experiments that can be conducted twice (or once each for two kids!) Each boy did their book work all week (from their own curriculum) and they did their labs together on Fridays. Even when both my kids conducted their experiments, we STILL had a lot of unused experiments (I’m serious when I tell you they send a LOT) so I just kept stock-piling our unused kits. By Christmas we had enough extra that I cancelled the subscription and we used our stockpile to get us through the rest of the school year. I wrote about this product (and others) in this post.

A word about their Physics product…

Last year I received an email that they launched a Physics Lab kit. They actually even sent me a free experiment. In my opinion, these experiments were really for younger kids. So, you didn’t hear anything from me about their Physics Lab kits since I didn’t think they lined up well with a high school student earning high school or college credit in physics.

Now…. MEL Med

I’ll copy/paste much of what I received in their newsletter. I HOPE this is an awesome product, especially for our families who might have teens interested in healthcare / medicine. I plan to email them and ask for a free sample to try and write about, but I haven’t yet. Still, I wanted to pass this along because it looks pretty awesome and they are only doing a limited PRE-ORDER sign up and not shipping until Christmas. 😉 If you sign up, let me know! I’d love to collect feedback about this lab.

Jennifer’s Advice

How to get high school credit:

I think this lab would work perfectly with a high school level Anatomy and Physiology curriculum (as science w/lab) or a Health curriculum. The labs won’t come with curriculum, so you’ll need to pair it up with something to build a complete program worth high school credit.

Cathy Duffy Reviews website lists a ton of curriculum suggestions that might work for your program. She has a page specifically for Anatomy and Physiology products, but some will be for lower grades. Note that some are religious and some are secular.

How to get college credit:

Study(dot)com offers a 3 credit course called Biology 105 Anatomy and Physiology

  • You can subscribe to their (cheaper) non-college credit learning option for this class during the months that your student is learning. Once they get close to finishing, upgrade your account to College Accelerator ($199) and take the webcam proctored final exam to earn college credit.
  • Blending Studycom with MEL lab: parent awards 1 high school lab science credit on the high school transcript in Anatomy and Physiology, the student receives 3 college science without lab credits from Studycom.

UExecl offers 3 different Anatomy and Physiology exams worth college credit. Note that the 6-credit exam covers both A&P 1 and A&P 2, so take either the 6 credit exam or the individual 3-credit exams. These exams are taken at home online with a webcam proctor.

Author:

Executive Director of Homeschooling for College Credit