Homeschool Resources: Apologia Science

I have not been shy about admitting my deficiency in the realm of science.  That's my husband's strong suit, not mine.  So, you can probably imagine that teaching science to my kids is, well, somewhat intimidating.  How do I deal with this?  I just try to be completely open and honest about what I know, which is to say very little, and what I don't know, which is to say a whole lot. 

Being a non-science person, though, I found the idea of choosing a science curriculum overwhelming.  Fortunately, my husband was willing and eager to help me.  Something that is important to me in teaching science is that we worship the Creator as we study his marvelous creation.  Apologia Science helps us do just that.  From beginning to end, it is evident that the author loves God and his creation.  While it appears that you can begin wherever you want in this science curriculum (zoology, astronomy. botany, anatomy), we chose to start with Zoology 1, which covers flying creatures, including birds, bats, insects, butterflies and moths. 

The material includes a schedule which you can follow to complete the Zoology 1 course in 28 weeks, although you by no means need to follow this schedule.  Each chapter is packed with information about flying creatures as well as hands-on projects and experiments.  Creation Confirmations or things that we observe in flying creatures that evidence that they have been designed by an Intelligent Creator are included throughout the text.

I recommend purchasing the notebooking journal along with the text.  It has pages for students to write down important information from the chapter as well as record the results from their science projects and experiments.  There are even places for the students to draw pictures!  For each chapter, the notebook includes review questions, a crossword puzzle and copywork (a Bible verse that relates to the topic of that chapter) also.  Plus, there is a mini-book for the student to complete for each chapter.  The mini-book activities combine creativity with review and have been a lot of fun for Mary, as have the crossword puzzles.  She gets that from Gramps.

How do we use this curriculum?  We pretty much follow the suggested schedule.  I read the appropriate section aloud to Mary.  We take frequent breaks to discuss things that we found really interesting and record them (sometimes Mary wants to do this and sometimes I write what she dictates).  Usually, I can just let her loose with the copywork, review questions, crossword puzzle and mini-book activity, but sometimes we work on those things together because we enjoy working together.  We honestly haven't completed every experiment because, well, it was really difficult to do that with Matthew and Jonathan, but we are planning to complete the experiments in the spring.

I really love this curriculum and am definitely planning on continuing on with Zoology 2.  The author communicates her love for God and his creation on every page and writes in such a way that excites the reader, too!  This book has inspired us in many ways.  We now enjoy identifying the birds that come to our bird feeder, looking for eggs on the underside of leaves and even watching ant behavior (from a distance--they are fire ants after all)!