Apologia Science

I was sent Apologia Science Exploring Creation Zoology 1: Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day, an incredible science program for elementary-aged kids. Flying Creatures covers Animal Classification, Birds, Insects, and Bats.

This book is BEAUTIFUL. The book itself is a large, 240 page hardback. The pictures are wonderful, the text is clear, interesting, easy-to-follow, and engaging. When it first arrived my husband picked it up and spent the evening just browsing through it. Flying Creatures doesn't have the dryness that is often found in textbooks. It reads more like an interesting, non-fiction book. It is interspersed with just about the right number of activities and experiments, most of which only require things I have on hand or can collect easily. There are also notebook activities and activities for older students at the end of each chapter.

It is written clearly enough for my 6 year old to understand as we work through it together, or for my 8 year old to "pick-up-and-go" without much mom support. I like how it uses real scientific vocabulary, with pronunciations where needed. Ryan (8) likes all of the specific examples. He loves sharing what he read and learned each day and tends to read much more than I've assigned just because it is interesting. Often when I would read part to Tyler (6), he would say, "I already know that, Ryan told me." In fact, most of the time, Ryan would tell the whole family! This is one that I expect will be read numerous times at our house!

There are wonderful, on-line supports and resources for the Elementary Apologia books as well. There are lapbooks, schedules, and resource additional links. Each book has plenty of material for a full year science curriculum.

This series is one we will be continuing with and I can't wait to order the other books. Each textbook costs $35.00 and is made for independent study, so there is no additional teacher text needed. In addition to Flying Creatures, Apologia has elementary level books for Astronomy, Botany, Swimming Creatures, and Land Animals. Two more books, Anatomy and Physics and Chemistry are due out this summer. You can read more about the author, Jeannie Fulbright on her website here. I think you will be impressed.

If you want to learn more about Apologia's upper level courses, click here to see what the other crew members have to say.