A while back, our family received four physical products for this product review of Exploring Creation with Human Anatomy and Physiology by Apologia. I decided to do this review with my 6th grade son, Maris. Here is what we thought of these homeschooling materials. Bringing this post to the top so you can check out this great curriculum.
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Product Review of Exploring Creation with Human Anatomy and Physiology by Apologia
Apologia has many other Christian homeschool materials for sale other than this set, such as: Good Morning, God as well as Exploring Creation with Biology and many others. Their materials span grades Preschool -12. Their mission is to help parents educate their children as well as disciple their children to defend their faith. The four following products were all shipped quickly and packaged very nicely for shipment so they arrived in excellent condition. This is what the products sent to us looked like after shipment.
First I will mention the material that I did not use and why. The Junior Notebooking Journal is intended for a younger child that knows how to read and is an early writer. I am saving this to use with my daughter, Miranda. She is currently in first grade. I made myself a note for future homeschool planning to use it with her in third grade along with the CD and textbook as I feel that would be a good time for her. I love that there are large colorful photos to use. In Lesson 4, which is The Digestive System, there are big, colorful cutout pictures of food. What a way to make this book fun for a younger child!
A page from the book. #apologia #learningwithapologia @apologiaworld
This is a workbook that goes along with the program. I like that it is spiral bound as I do feel it makes the book so much easier to use, especially for writing when you can lay the book flat. My favorite part about this book is that it could also be considered part of a writing program as it has pages for copy work. I love that it has copy work for both print and cursive for beginning writers as a parent could have a child choose to do which one they felt comfortable with or they could do both.
Copywork page from Apologia book. #apologia #learningwithapologia @apologiaworld
There are coloring pages and small crossword puzzles for the child to do. I like to let my child color or do a puzzle while listening to reading and they can occasionally look at the text book next to them and I do feel like they are listening.
Audio CD
Yay! Now I will talk about my favorite part of the set! I was surprised and pleased to find out that this program has a person reading the book for me (in a pleasant, upbeat and friendly female voice that enunciates, may I add!). Usually, I do have him read out loud to me or I will read out loud to him and also have him read it on his own. This was such a blessing to us to have it read for us so we could follow along in the book as it was being read. If there was something he wanted to understand better, he would pause the CD and re-read the information in his physical textbook until it made sense to him or ask me what I thought. We only had to do that a few times. Overall, each topic was very well explained and clearly pronounced. How we used it was we had it playing on our laptop so the sound came out of those speakers while we would look at the book and have the workbook nearby. It would be paused for experiments to try, then restarted when we were ready to listen to more. You could put it on an MP3 player, if you have one.
My son working on learning human anatomy. #apologia #learningwithapologia @apologiaworld
Textbook
The textbook is broken up into fourteen lessons and spans 251 pages. In the back there are answers to the narrative questions, which is great because I don’t always know the answers and need help myself to see if the response was right. There are many “Try this!” sections, which sometimes are simple things like pronouncing words or slapping your hand onto a counter or pillow, or reading nutrition labels.
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My sixth grade son holding his Exploring Creation book. #apologia #learningwithapologia @apologiaworld
Other times, it is doing a science experiment and recording results. Usually, the science experiments have items that you would normally find around the house or that are easy to pick up at the grocery store, like Epsom Salt.
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A science experiment to try from Exploring Creation with Human Anatomy book. #apologia #learningwithapologia @apologiaworld
The science experiments help the child to ask and answer questions and even include a “control” experiment that doesn’t have anything done to it, so they can see the difference and learn and record what they see.
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My son working on a science experiment. #apologia #learningwithapologia @apologiaworld
There are many colorful photos and example pictures to look at in the book to make it more interesting for visual learners. I love that this is a Christian perspective and they often use a “created by God for this purpose” example. Questions will often be asked to get the reader thinking, such as, “What kinds of cells make muscles work?”
Standard Notebooking Journal
This is very similar to the Junior Journal, except that the material is more geared to, in my opinion, a fourth grader and up. Which is why I chose this journal for Maris to use. The activities to go along with the lesson are more challenging, like there are more words in the crossword puzzle, for example.
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Crossword puzzle from Anatomy Notebooking Journal. #apologia #learningwithapologia @apologiaworld
In the back of the journal, there are some heavy duty clear pages with a skeleton, body systems and parts of the body for the child to cut out and put together. This is what one of the pages looked like before it was cut out.
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Manipulatives to cut out from Human Anatomy book. #apologia #learningwithapologia @apologiaworld
Maris cut out a skeleton in Lesson 2 when he was studying the skeletal system. In subsequent lessons, he added body systems to it like the muscular system and the digestive system. They cling together (from static maybe?) and you can see the parts from both sides because it is clear. He is holding it against white paper here so it shows up better in the photo.
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The manipulatives in use and put together. #apologia #learningwithapologia @apologiaworld
There is copy work in both print and cursive with verses from the Bible in this book as well.
Maris’ Opinion
“I liked that I didn’t have to read it out loud. The ‘try this’ experiments that you could mix up food or use salt and baking soda were fun. I’m not really that interested in learning about the human body because I don’t want to be a doctor or anything, but it was neat to make the skeleton guy with the muscles and other systems on him. I did like that I could be doing the crossword puzzles while I was listening and that there is more than one. Some books for homeschool only give me one puzzle. Yeah, it was good.”
My Opinion
My favorite part of the program is actually the audio CD. I love that it can be read to my student so he can follow along in the book while I am busy teaching another homeschool student. I love that this program can be classified under so many different homeschooling subjects! As I mentioned earlier, there is part of a writing program in it with the copywork, which could be put under Language Arts. It is also Health, Science, and Religious Education. It also could be considered a bit of History because it will say things like, “scientists used to think this organ in the body was for… but now they know it is for…”, for example. In my state of Wisconsin, we are required to teach both Science and Health, as well as some other subjects. For Maris, I am classifying this as Health because I did not have much Health material for the year. This saved me gas money from not having to get as many books from the library! I really like the way Apologia presents their materials and that it is a Christian program. I recommend you give it a try in your homeschool.
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