Science Question

Have you checked out God’s Design for science books by Answers in Genesis? It is designed to cover three topics in one year. For example, the God’s deisgn for life series includes a book for plants, a book for animals and a book for the human body. If you follow their schedule, you can complete all three books in a year. The lessons are set up more like a textbook, but they are very interesting and always include a hand’s on activity. Each lesson starts out with a short summary page for beginner students that has less detailed info but covers the main point of the lesson. Then there is the main lesson page for older students that includes all of the detailed info about the lesson. A challenge activity is also included for upper level students. The lessons are short and to the point. If you buy the newest editions, they are in full color and the photos are wonderful. We completed the plants and animals book with my boys aged 7,11 and 12. The animal book was fun and we completed a notebook with pictures and activity pages. 

You can see detailed examples of the curriculum on the Answers in Genesis website or on Christianbook.com.

Tammy

Have you checked out currclick.com and their science categories. You could turn a “lapbook” program into a notebooking one. (I’m not a fan of lapbooks, either, but have used them a time or two). There items are geared for unit studies, so maybe you could pick one topic, do the notebook/lapbook portion, then add in living books?

You download the “study” and print it, no shipping involved. Just a suggestion.

The books are not consumable. The teacher book comes with a CD that has printable worksheets and activities for the kids. We shared two books between four of us but we could have just used one and it would have been fine.

Hopefully, you find something that works for your family.

By the way, does it cost a lot to ship to Israel from the U.S.? I have two of the AIG plant books and the teacher guide with CD that I would be willing to give you free if you covered the shipping costs. Just an idea? 

We have always done unit studies for science and sprinkle biographies in along the way. Nature study is a constant with farm life a daily opportunity to always learn something new.

Somewhere along the way, I found a few series that were a great fit when combined with library books from both the fiction and non-fiction sections. I used Master Books (Wonders of Creation) as a spine for each unit study. The Exploring series was alternated with these off and on. I did this to expose my kids to quizzes with multiple choice, fill-in-the-blank, and T/F type questions. They’d requested something like this as friends and relatives in public/parochial schools talked about it. They were a hit.

My oldest daughter (almost 17) talks about how age plans to use them with her children some day when she has a family because she enjoyed them so much and liked their emphasis on creation.

We haven’t completed our collection and many more titles have been added since we first began using them. http://www.masterbooks.net is listed as a source for purchasing these books. They’d be easy to set up in the CMO. Here’s a link to my original intentions for using them during a year’s time.

http://homeschoolblogger.com/notetoself/781355/

It actually takes a while longer depending on life and the depth into which you study each unit. And, I opted for Chemistry 101 instead of Freindly Chemistry. Our family just never latched onto Apologia. We’d rather use non-fiction resources by authors in each field of study than using a textbook type approach. It seems to keep our interest better.

We changed it up a bit due to being part of a CC campus, but we will pick up where we left off this summer and continue in a CM style fashion.

We do enjoy the Apologia books very much. I would recommend getting two of the books and switch every couple of months to not get bored with one subject area. We have done this with Anatomy and Zoology 1 and 3. It has worked well for us.