My daughter Louisa wanted to study astronomy for science in homeschool. She is 12 years old and has her definite preferences, so I began a search for some resources to help. I discovered Apologia Science books for grades K-6 grade. The chapters are fun to read aloud together, and they have experiments at the end that we had a good time doing. The experiments didn’t use any odd ingredients, so I could really pull them together quickly—I love that!
As part of the course, the student develops a Science Notebook that contains their writing “narrations” of the things they have learned and also illustrations, vocabulary, etc.Louisa is excited about the cool science notebook that she is involved making. With Apologia Astronomy, Louisa is learning fast, is very interested and is having fun!
One of the things I really love about Apologia science books is that I don’t have to always be running interference, and trying to explain our faith in a God who created the universe. That seems to be a dominant problem when using secular science resources. I am always faced with the Big Bang theory, the “trillions of years old” stuff, and trying to keep faith strong in the face of scientific “proof” that we are all evolved creatures living in an accidental universe. This book is fabulous for giving reasons to support faith in God while teaching science! One of the things we recently learned together was that Venus spins the opposite direction than the other planets in our solar system. The Big Bang theory says a big explosion set the planets all spinning, whirling out the same direction from a central “bang”. If this was so, Venus should also be rotating the same direction. I love learning facts that make Christians not feel so stupid scientifically!
My only regret is that I didn’t discover the Apologia science books in time to teach them all in my homeschool. Each book is very specific to one field of science: Botany, Zoology, Astronomy, Human Body, Chemistry and Physics…which is unusual for children’s science books. Most other elementary science textbooks cover a little bit in each area of science. But, I like them much better this way as we can really delve into each subject deeply and satisfy our curiosity thoroughly! There are enough books to do one each year from kindergarten through 6th grade, covering in depth all the fields of science! We loved our “Botany year”. We even dissected tulips, learning each part of the flower…fascinating for me too! These elementary Apologia science books are meant to be used an a family unit study, for kids ages K-6th grade, which I really appreciate. It is so much easier to teach all the kids at once on the same topic, and do the experiments together.
Another wonderful feature of these books is that they can be easily adapted depending on the age you are teaching. You can buy “notebooking journals” which are companion write-in study notebooks in two different levels of difficulty: normal and “junior” (for K to 2nd grade). These books can replace the notebook made during each school year and have fun activities to reinforce learning.
Excellent science from a Christian perspective!
Click on any book to learn more:
