To enhance our study of the human body last year we used an excellent, inexpensive resource from Teacher Created Materials.  My Body is a book of reproducibles representing each of a child’s body parts.  You can also see the full table of contents and a product sample at the above link.

Before beginning the book, kids lay down on butcher paper and have their body traced and cut out.  Then throughout the semester the child learns a few things about a particular body part, and then colors in and cuts out the body part.  Each body part is fastened to the child’s paper body.

In the end, they have a life size cut out of themselves with all their body parts attached.  Of course, the boys couldn’t resist getting a little bit creative with their body drawings!

I first used this book when my 14 year old was in Kindergarten and he loved it.  In fact, we still have “his body” in storage and it was fun to pull it out as the other boys were working on their bodies last year.  This activity was a hit with all of them.  It could be a stand alone science activity for a preschooler or kindergartner, or part of another science program for an older child.  We did not go in the order that the My Body book suggests, but instead we tied this in to the lessons we were doing in God’s Design for the Human Body.

Last year we decided to take a break from our traditional Apologia Young Explorers science curriculum.  I have used that program for years and absolutely love it!  But after completing all but one of the books in the series I was ready for a change.  I’m sure we’ll go back to them in the future with the younger boys, but for now my grade school aged boys are using the new curriculum from Answers in Genesis, God’s Design.

God’s Design is set up with shorter books, and you are encouraged to try and complete 3 books per year.  Each overarching topic (God’s Design for the Physical World, for example) includes 3 books, but I chose to purchase the curriculum “piece meal” so I could customize our study with 3 topics we had not done yet. My boys were longing to study the weather and I felt they needed to study the human body, so this was a great option for us.

The three books we chose were The Human Body (from God’s Design for Life series), Weather and Water and Our Planet Earth (both part of the God’s Design for Heaven and Earth set).  All three of my younger boys loved the chance to study some different topics, and I found it refreshing to try a new format for a change.

The lessons in God’s Design are much shorter than in Apologia, allowing us to quickly and easily fit science in even on busy days.  I did not find it to be as thorough as Apologia, but for my little boys I felt it was a fine introduction, and they were grateful for the shorter lessons.  The books are designed for use by a wide variety of age groups; there is a very brief “beginners” lesson, followed by a more in depth reading.  Some days we did just the beginner lesson, and other times I added to it with additional facts from the lesson for older children.  This was a good fit for my preschooler, 2nd grader and 4th grader.

Some lessons had true “experiments” and hands on activities, while others had a worksheet for the kids to fill out.  We liked this variety, though sometimes the worksheets were geared toward older children and then we didn’t do anything to supplement the lesson at all.

It is very important to me that experiments be easy to carry out and that they teach scientific concepts.  There are few things I hate more than “busy work” experiments which require a lot of time to plan and pull off and make more mess than they are worth.  To me, this is one of the real strengths of both Apologia Young Explorers and God’s Design Science:  they both have fairly simple, useful experiments which reinforce major concepts.  As usual, I gathered all science supplies in advance into our Science Box so that there would be no excuse for not doing experiments.

We had fun with the experiments, and the kids learned from the short, interesting lessons.  The colorful pictures in the newer editions of God’s Design were a must for us; you can get the older version a few dollars cheaper, but we loved the bright pictures and it was worth paying a little extra for the newest edition.  We liked this series so much that we decided to spend another year using God’s Design, this time doing the God’s Design for Chemistry and Ecology series.

*UPDATE* APRIL 5, 2011* We have not enjoyed the God’s Design Chemistry nearly as much as the other God’s Design books. The content was too dry and technical for my young boys, and there weren’t as many experiments as we were hoping to find. I prefer the chemistry book Adventures with Atoms and Molecules for this age group.

As I mentioned before, this series doesn’t seem to me to be as thorough as the Apologia books are.  My science lovers really enjoy Apologia and it has served us well for years.  I definitely want to return to it as my little boys get bigger!

But we were having a hard time getting through an Apologia book in one year.  We are still spending a lot of time on the 3 R’s and history and literature also take their fair share of time, so this has been a great compromise for us.  On days when we have more time we can do the longer lesson for older kids (which is still much shorter than a typical Apologia lesson).  On days when time is short we can do a simple one page overview geared toward early elementary aged children.  I felt the kids learned plenty, and that it held their interest well this year.  If this sounds like it could be a good fit for you, I encourage you to click on the links above to view samples of the curriculum on the Answers in Genesis website.

Finding the Best Price

One drawback to this series (as opposed to Apologia) is that it is more expensive, costing almost 3 times as much as the elementary Apologia books.  For example, Apologia’s new Human Body book (not available last year when we started with God’s Design) costs $28 at Rainbow Resource, and is meant to take an entire year to complete.  The AiG Human Body book costs $19.75 but is only meant to last 1/3 of the school year.  Each of the other two books needed to complete the year cost $19.75, as well.  And you’ll need the teacher manual with the supplemental CD of worksheets and quizzes, which costs $23.50 (one teacher manual is good for all three student books if you stick to books within one series).  So the total cost for one year of the God’s Design Science is over $80. Since I did it piece meal and needed two different teachers manuals, it cost me about $100 for the year.

So if price is a big factor, Apologia is the better choice.

With that said, the best price I’ve found online is at Rainbow Resource, coming in at about $5 cheaper per book than the publisher, Answers in Genesis, for the individual student books.  Rainbow doesn’t appear to sell the student/teacher/CD Rom combo pack, though.  So to truly maximize savings, you would need to purchase one student/teacher combo pack at Answers in Genesis (selling right now for $32.99) and the other two student books from Rainbow Resource ($19.75 apiece), bringing the total cost for a year of this curriculum to $73 plus shipping (the entire curriculum costs $89 at the Answers in Genesis site when purchased as a complete set, or $85 for everything when purchased from Rainbow Resource).

Keep in mind, too, that if you purchase the teacher set with the CD Rom you don’t need the additional student or teacher test/quiz packets; the complete set comes with a disc of reproducibles which you can print off for multiple students, so you’ll have all you need without purchasing those additional supplements.

One more note about price:  Rainbow Resource does give free shipping if you spend $150 or more, and their price is typically the best on just about EVERYTHING.  So you might just go ahead and buy the whole set there, along with whatever else you need, and get the shipping free.

It’s that time again! We’ve started back to school. Have you? We’ve left the Ancients behind, and have moved on to the Middle Ages. New books, new projects, new feasts await.

But first, I always have to get organized. One of the most important things, for me, is to get my history and science boxes set up. I hate it when we have to skip experiments or projects because we were out of vinegar, or I didn’t have Epsom salts on hand!

Here’s a picture of what my younger boys have in their science box. My oldest son gets his own box of supplies, since he is using a different curriculum than the younger boys are.

Sure, it takes a few hours at the store to pull all this stuff together. I guess I could let the boys use tinfoil, salt and baking soda from the pantry. But would you trust your kids to search here on their own?

You can read more about how I set up these boxes in my post Gathering Supplies in Advance.

Since then, we have enjoyed several of the books in the Apologia Young Explorers series. Mrs. Fulbright manages to teach a lot of great science in an interesting, engaging way. The pictures and text are captivating and understandable even for my 4 year old, and the experiments were simple enough that my 10 year old could do many of them by himself when necessary. Apologia takes an immersion approach to science, focusing on one topic for an entire year. Through immersion, kids can really learn a lot about a particular area of science, as well as the scientific method.

The Young Explorers series is appropriate for Kindergarten through 6th grade science. It incorporates several excellent components. In addition to the great photos and clear information, there are opportunities for the child to narrate back what they have learned. We retain what we can explain, and this element helps solidify the information in the child’s mind.

We have also really enjoyed using Nature Notebooks. Each book in the series gives very clear instructions for making and keeping a notebook of pictures, drawings, poems, original writing, and other “findings” that relate to the material studied. The notebook is very personal to each child, enjoyable to make and a great keepsake for years to come.

My oldest son has moved on to Jay Wile’s Apologia science for older kids. This curriculum is available as a textbook, but he prefers the full-course CD Roms, which interface like a website. He enjoys doing all his reading online, clicking here and there for video demonstrations and audio pronunciation of terms.

No matter which series you choose, a list of everything that will be needed for the experiments is conveniently included in the beginning of each book. I appreciated that most items were easily gathered from around the house. Science experiments added greatly to our understanding in each book, and none of them seemed like the “busy work” we had experienced in other science curriculum.

Other highlights include the incorporation of Latin scientific terms, answers in the back of the book for all questions, and a reproducible sheet where experiments can be described (procedure, hypothesis, results, etc). Dr. Wile and Mrs. Fulbright both write from a Christian, creationist, young-earth perspective. Young Explorers books each have internet helps provided, with links to tons of sites that provide more information.  My dyslexic child also appreciates that the jr. high and high school level courses are available with an audio recording, so he can listen to the text while he reads.

Apologia Academy  has launched online courses, and Apologia also offers pre-recorded lectures (in an on your own online class option) for all science classes, 7th grade and up.

I can’t imagine a better science curriculum for my children.

Apologia website.

“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” Philippians 4:8

If you’ve been following this series, you know that Whatever is Lovely has turned out to be a very broad category! I’m glad to finish it up with this post on Nature Study. After this post, I’ll be moving on to the next part of the Home Library Builders series, Whatever is Admirable: The Classics.

Every home library should have a significant section devoted to nature study. Time spent outdoors, admiring and observing God’s creation, will shape a child’s soul. We read in Romans 1: 20 “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”

As our children are learning about the God of Creation through the Bible, let them also learn about God’s creation–and thereby more about the nature of the Creator Himself–through time spent outdoors.

The Nature Study library should have books and field guides to help us identify and learn more about what we find outdoors. It should also have Living Books which inspire the imagination and increase love for God and His world. Also, good biographies about famous naturalists belong on our shelves, as they help us gain insight into how man can be faithful in his dominion over the earth.

A Word of Caution

One must be cautious in purchasing books for a Nature Study library. Many science books are overtly or subtly evolutionary in nature. As a Christian creationist, I don’t believe that evolutionary books have a place on my shelves. I prefer to save the teaching of evolution for my older children, when it can be compared side by side alongside creation, in order to teach them what we believe and why, as well as how to defend their beliefs in our secular society. I don’t want to always have to pause as I am reading to my younger children to refute claims about evolution. For this reason, I am careful when purchasing books to choose titles that have no bias whatsoever, or books which have been written from a Christian creationist worldview.

I am also cautious about the tone of my books. Many modern-day children’s books have such a strong conservation message that they seem to place the creation above man. I am teaching my children to protect the environment, as this is our responsibility in exercising dominion over the earth. But many nature books go much further than this, causing feelings of guilt and fear that seem to me to have a political agenda more than anything. Typically the older classics don’t have this tone, but many secular science books written for children in the last ten years do.

A “Must Have” for Every Library

One book that belongs on any nature-lover’s shelf is Anna Botsford Comstock’s Handbook of Nature Study.
We have had this book for many years, and it has served us faithfully on many occasions. When we caught a praying mantis, this book told us what to feed it. When we see an insect we don’t recognize, there are copious drawings to help us make an identification.

Nature Study Outdoors

A kind reader commented that she likes my digressions. Please allow me a rabbit trail…A simple way to do Nature Study is to take a leisurely walk outside in the yard or at the park. Let the children find whatever draws their interest: insects, pine cones, flowers, interesting leaves, a bird perched in a tree, or anything in nature that captivates their attention. Spend some time observing what you find. Use a field guide or the internet to learn a bit about what you’ve found. Take a few minutes and let the children draw what they see, to the best of their ability. They can write or dictate a few notes about what they learned, or copy an appropriate poem, hymn, or Scripture verse alongside their drawing.

This kind of nature study can be done in as little as an hour a week, but the memories–and the nature notebook–will be treasured for years to come. For some inspiration about how an hour spent observing nature can yield rich conversation, humorous memories and an opportunity to disciple your children, read this post, written last year after our evening spent watching a lunar eclipse.

Many times these opportunities are seized, spur of the moment, when the children find something while playing in the yard. If you plan a few outings to observe nature with your children, you may find that they begin to spontaneously find things to observe as they begin to notice the world around them more and more.

Nature Journals

Back to books! It is always fun to browse what others have done in their nature notebooks. I was blessed to find a copy of Edith Holden’s The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady
at a London thrift store (for a quarter)! It never ceases to amaze me the treasures that unknowing people throw away. If you’ve read the Charlotte Mason Companion, you know what a find this was.

Ms. Holden kept her journal month-by-month, with watercolor drawings of the birds, flowers and plants she saw on her nature walks. There are also poems and related folklore for each month. This is the type of nature journaling that appeals to me, where drawings and related text are combined. When we kept nature journals I liked to have the children copy poems, hymns or pertinent Scripture verses alongside their drawings. I found a few copies of Holden’s book available online, used, for $6 here, and many public libraries also keep this classic on the shelves.

You can also find good ideas for nature journaling, and ideas for teaching children how to journal, in the book Keeping a Nature Journal by Leslie and Roth.

One resource that is helpful in teaching simple drawing techniques is Mona Brookes’ Drawing With Children. A couple of hours spent with this book will pay off with much more realistic nature drawings.

We have kept nature journals in the past, but this year my middle boys are keeping a notebook of their favorite birds. We have been using the North American Birds Notebooking Pages in the boys’ birding journals. We like the pages with a small thumbnail drawing of the bird, a blank range map, and a few lines for jotting down notes. The boys consult a field guide to color in the bird correctly, and they color the range map to reflect where the bird spends its summer and winter. Then they dictate information, such as when they first spotted that bird in the wild or an interesting fact they have learned about the bird. We keep these pages in page protectors in a 3-ring binder, with a free-hand drawing of the same bird on the facing page. They are also working on getting digital photos of birds that come to our feeder, with the goal of adding some photos to their notebook.

Field Guides

My boys have loved this project and they take great pride in their notebook. It is helpful to have some good field guides on hand when doing nature study. We absolutely love Kenn Kaufman’s Field Guide to the Birds of North America. I would love to get Kaufman’s Butterfly guide titled Butterflies of North America, as well. It’s on my Nature study wish list! The First Field Guide series put out by National Audubon society is a good one for kids.

We also love using Living Books for nature study. A Living Book is one that is written by a single author (not a textbook) in a captivating, conversational style. The book draws you in through its story and helps you to remember what you’ve learned.

Here are some of my favorite Living Books for Nature study:

We love the art book Linnea in Monet’s Garden, so I was thrilled to find Linnea’s Almanac and Linnea’s Windowsill Garden, both by Cristina Bjork.

Citizen Bird by Mabel Osgood Wright, which is out of print but available for free download by the Gutenberg Project.

Minn of the Mississippi and all the other Holling C. Holling books are wonderful. Each book has detailed drawings alongside an excellent story, weaving history, science and geography seamlessly together.

I do Naturalist studies with my children, similar to our Artist studies and Composer studies. I like picture books that introduce children to conservationists and naturalists, such as Audubon: Painter of Birds in the Wild Frontier and John Muir: America’s First Environmentalist.

Nature Study for Emerging Readers

Nature study books are perfect for emerging readers. These are books that my children can read aloud to me, or silently to themselves to improve reading skills. I use easy readers such as John Muir: Rookie Biography for emerging readers,
Christian Liberty Press Nature Readers (graded readers, progressing from level to level) and books from the Childhood of Famous Americans (titles on Muir and Audubon) for 3rd and 4th grade level readers.

I have not personally read The Boy Who Drew Birds or Into the Woods: John James Audubon Lives His Dream, but I’m planning to get them through Inter Library Loan. Others that I haven’t read, but which look interesting to me, include Gregor Mendel: The Friar who Grew Peas, John Muir: My Life With Nature, The Flower Hunter and Girls Who Looked Under Rocks: The Lives of Six Pioneering Naturalists (which includes a chapter about Anna Botsford Comstock).

Latin

By his third year of Latin study, I could no longer keep up with him. It had gotten to the point that I would check his work with the teacher manual, but I couldn’t tell him why he missed anything. I would have to give him the teacher manual and ask him to figure it out! With three younger children to teach, this homeschool mama had no time to ‘learn Latin in a snap’. What a blessing it was the find Latin in the Christian Trivium!

The students and teacher meet once a week in a chat room to go over the new material and to cover any questions. Some parts of the class are done through text messaging on Windows Live Messenger, and other parts are done with a microphone.

This class is challenging: each of the four year-long courses are worth one year of High School language credit. But it is one of his favorite subjects, and I’m glad that my limitations did not need to become his.

Writing

Another online course we are enjoying is Write Guide. I feel perfectly capable to teach my son writing skills, and I have a great curriculum in Tapestry of Grace. My problem here is that many times, I didn’t find time to grade my son’s written work in a timely fashion. He would be left with nothing to work on because I hadn’t gotten to it.

Again, for me this is logistical. I have several young children who can’t do much, if any, of their schoolwork alone. I wanted the precious hours which I have set aside to teach my oldest son to be spent on discussion, worldview, Bible, philosophy and history. If things got too busy, writing was often one of the first things to go. Practically speaking, he wrote several first or even second drafts, but didn’t always get his papers to final draft stage.

The great thing about Write Guide is that I can still use my own curriculum and choose my son’s topics, but someone else will implement it! I sat down at the beginning of the semester and wrote out what kinds of assignments I wanted him to have and possible topics to choose from. This semester he focused on learning to write a 5 paragraph essay, a compare/contrast paper, writing newspaper articles and completing a long research paper. All topics, aside from the newspaper writing, were taken from our studies.

Each week I sent a note to the teacher, letting her know what my son was to focus on that week, and then she gave him the assignments. She checked all his work and kept him on task. He developed practical skills like formatting bibliography pages as well as stylistic skills in crafting his words. Best of all, because I was paying for this course, I was highly motivated to make sure that he wrote every single day.

Electronics

A couple years ago my son took an excellent online electronics class from Quick Study Labs. The students purchase an electronic snap kit from Radio Shack, and the teacher assigns them 5 days worth of homework and a quiz or test to complete at their leisure over the course of the week. The teacher is available to answer questions via phone call or email, if necessary. There are two levels of classes available for children ages 8 to 12 or 12 and up.

My younger boys loved watching their brother do the fun electronic experiments and they can hardly wait until they are old enough to take this class, as well. I know my oldest hopes to take another class in the future.

Apologia Science

All these online courses have been enjoyable for him. He has become so comfortable with them that he chose to do his Apologia General Science class this year on the computer. The entire course is available on CD-Rom and interfaces like a website. He can click a button to hear a word pronounced or to see a video clip. He steps away from the computer to conduct experiments, then returns to the computer to keep a log of what he used, what he did, what he saw, and what he learned.

There is a separate CD-Rom for the teacher with study guides, tests and answer keys. This course is also written directly to the student, so he is able to do the course on his own, without needing mom…as long as he has all his science supplies at hand (see my post on Gathering Supplies in Advance for help in that area!)

*Since this post was originally written, our son has also taken Apologia online classes through the Virtual Homeschool Group, as well as history and literature classes with Dr. Jim Stobaugh at For Such a Time As This.  We recommend both heartily!

I’m so grateful for my son’s online classes. He is able to continue growing and learning, even in areas where I am not strong. We have accountability in courses where we need it. He has enjoyed interacting with other kids in a virtual classroom, and it has been beneficial him to turn in work to an impartial adult for a letter grade. I know his teachers have pushed him to excel beyond what he thought he was capable of. I am freed up to teach my younger children much of the day, and the time I spend with my oldest son can be focused on those areas where interaction with me is most vital.

Have you used any online courses which you found beneficial? I’d love to hear about them!

The American Heritage dictionary defines synergy as, “the interaction of two or more agents or forces so that their combined effect is greater than the sum of their individual effects.”

Charlotte Mason had another term for synergy. She called it The Science of Relations.

She wrote, “Education is the ‘Science of Relations’; that is, that a child has natural relations with a vast number of things and thoughts: so we train him upon physical exercises, nature lore, handicrafts, science and art, and upon many living books…” As the child begins to see how one thing relates to another, he makes connections in his thinking which increases his knowledge of a subject exponentially.

To me, it is always ideal when the things we are studying in school work together to reinforce other things we are studying. I have tried to plan for more cross-curricular reinforcement this year, and the result has been well worth the effort.

Let me share with you about what we did today, by way of example. We are studying the first few chapters of Genesis this week during our Bible reading: the creation, the Fall, Cain and Abel and the flood.

Our hymn for the week fits perfectly with our Bible studies. This week we are working on memorizing I Sing the Mighty Power of God, which praises God for how His power and majesty are reflected in creation.

Some days after Bible reading we take time to go through portions of the children’s catechism. The children’s catechism is a great way for our littlest ones (ages 3 and 6) to learn basic Bible truths in a format that will stick with them for the rest of their lives, and this week is the perfect time to choose portions that relate to creation, Adam and the Fall.

The parent asks the question and the child answers.
For example, here is one that our three year old knows the answer to:
Question 17: Q: How did God make our first parents? A: God made Adam’s body out of the ground, and Eve’s body out of a rib from Adam.

And here is one that our six year old is working on:
Question 35: Q: Did Adam act for himself alone in the covenant of life? A: No–he represented the whole human race.

I have a copy of the Children’s Catechism in the sidebar of this blog, if you want to check out other questions! You can also buy a paperback copy of it for $1.25 at Great Commission Publications.

Our history, science and geography also relate to what we are studying. We are using two books for Geography in addition to our normal Tapestry of Grace Map Aids. I am switching back and forth between volumes I and II of A Child’s Geography, both by Ann Voskamp. Book I covers lots of geography topics. Today, to go along with our study of creation and Noah’s ark, we learned about what the earth is made of inside, Pangea, plate tectonics, and the names and location of all the continents.

Volume 2 covers several middle eastern countries. We used it for our study of Egypt for the past 3 weeks (when we were reading the book of Exodus), and over the course of the next 6 weeks we will use it to study Turkey and Israel.

For science we are reading some introductory books about dinosaurs and how fossils form (from a young earth perspective), using some materials from Answers in Genesis. Later this year, we will cover dinosaurs in more depth in our Land Animals science book. I thought about doing the chapters in that book out of order, just as we are doing for geography, but it didn’t seem very scientific. I decided to wait for further study of dinosaurs, knowing that reinforcement can also be useful after a span of time has passed.

I think our school days have been very stimulating this week, with everything fitting together so nicely!!

The main reason was the time involved in locating everything we needed to do an experiment. Frequently, after searching for an hour, we found that we didn’t have the necessary items on hand.

For the past few years I have been making science and history boxes over the summer. I am working on our history box right now.

I go through my curriculum for the year, looking at all the suggested hands on projects. I make a list on my computer of everything I need to do those projects. I put everything from Plaster of Paris to salt on my list. Once the list is complete, I gather all of these items, whether from the store or from my cupboards, and put them in the box labeled History Hands On. I will do the same process for Science Experiments.

I don’t want to interrupt my school day looking for a balloon, or find out that we can’t do a simple experiment because we ran out of vinegar. So I don’t leave even these common household items to chance. If we need them, they go into the box, even if it means having to buy an extra bottle of vinegar just for this purpose.

Of course next year, when putting my boxes together, I will cull leftover items from this year’s boxes first.

An added advantage to these boxes is that my kids can get the needed items together all by themselves. They don’t have to ransack the house looking for a spool of thread or a funnel. If their book says they need these items, they can be confident that they will find them in the box!

I take a similar approach to art supplies. Right before school starts I make sure that we have individual bins of markers, crayons and colored pencils ready to go. The kids check all markers and throw away any dry ones. They use an electric pencil sharpener and sharpen all colored pencils. Broken crayons are tossed in the garbage.

A small, plastic 3-drawer cart is stocked with computer paper, cardstock, primary writing paper, origami paper squares, page protectors and the like. One drawer holds stamps and ink pads, stickers, child scissors, glue sticks and other craft supplies.