Louisa wanted to study astronomy this year 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 have plenty of homeschool books on my shelves, as I have taught her 6 older siblings through the years, so I stacked them all up and looked through them one by one. Finally I found one with some obscure title that looked really good inside. 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! Part of the course is that the student develops a science notebook that contains their writing “narrations” of the things they have learned and also illustrations, vocabulary, etc. This is really working and is fun! Louisa is excited about the cool science notebook that she is involved making.
So, the big surprise was that while Louisa and I were sailing along, chapter after chapter, having a great time learning astronomy together in this unheard of book—it turns out that we are actually already selling this very same book in our bookstore. The copy I have has a different title as it dates from back before it became part of the popular Apologia Science series. But, it is really Apologia Exploring Creation with Astronomy!
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 do ALL the Apologia science books for elementary grades. They are very specific to one field of science, such as Botany, Zoology, Astronomy, etc. which seems weird for young children. Most homeschool science books cover a little bit of each area of science. But, I like them even better that way as we can really delve into the subject! The Botany book is particularly good. These Apologia science books are meant to be used an a family unit study, for kids ages K-6th grade, which I really appreciate, as it is so much easier to teach all the kids the same topic, and do the experiments together.
Anyway, we are really enjoying using Apologia Astronomy, and wanted to it pass on. Louisa and I think it’s great!
Comments on this entry are closed.