Homeschooling: Apologia - Astronomy

When I originally began planning for our first year of homeschooling, I asked several moms for advice - some face-to-face and others via Facebook groups - and whatever they told me I was trying to soak in like a sponge. One curriculum that was highly recommended my many was Apologia for science. After looking through a few of their books at a friends house and finding a good online sale, I decided to jump in and go for it. 

Apologia's Exploring Creation series is set up so that each year you dig deep into one particular topic. They options are: Astronomy, Botany, Zoology 1: Flying Creatures, Zoology 2: Creatures of the Sea, Zoology 3: Land Animals, Human Anatomy and Physiology, and Chemistry and Physics. You can do these in the order of God's creation by taking Astronomy first because the universe is where he began, Botany next because plants followed, then animals which would be in the Zoology book, followed by humans which is Anatomy, etc. However, the books are also designed so that you can pick any one of them up and begin with it. I really liked this structure because if you are homeschooling multiple children, the curriculum works across the grade levels and I can do the same thing with all of them and just cycle around to make sure eventually they all do each book. 

Being the perfectionist type though, I, of course, wanted to start right at the beginning and work our way through the set. In hindsight, though it worked out pretty well for us, I should probably have begun with the zoology texts because Caleb is such an animal lover and would have been over the top interested. (Needless to say we are skipping over Botany next year to get into some of the animal books.)

Many people just purchase the textbooks, but since I was just started out and there was a sale, I decided to get notebooking journal they offer to accompany it. I've heard that they provide a lot of supports on their website page to take the lessons farther and some opt to do that versus buy the book; however, with little ones I didn't know how much time I've have to explore the website and print out things and having a notebook to lead us sounded pretty helpful. In all honesty, I am hard pressed to decide for Caleb if this was the best route or not though. He is a auditory learner so he did great absorbing the material as I read it to him aloud from the textbook, but I really liked the extra boost the notebook gave him as he was challenged to go back and review the information and vocabulary he had learned and apply it in a variety of ways. On the negative side though, he hated doing a lot of the coloring pages and written work. As a kindergartner we were already doing so much in the way of handwriting for both Language Arts and math that I think he just didn't feel like fooling with another worksheet. It definitely wasn't a waste, but for his learning style, I'm not sure it was the best fit either.

That said here's a glimpse of what they offered:

1. For each chapter there were two coloring sheets with Bible verses at the bottom. At the beginning of the year I was torn about whether or not to make him complete these. I thought coloring was good fine motor practice but I wasn't sure he really was learning all that much from them. Was it worth the battle? Later in the year though, I loosened up. If he wanted to do a sloppy job of coloring, I let him because I figured at least he was developing his muscles to some degree. I noticed actually that when I let up a bit, he began to take more pride in his work. He really liked to make sure that the colors he used matched up with what was the "right" color of the planets in the book, etc. which was great as he learned to go back and use the text as a resource.

2. After the coloring pages, there would be a few pages for notes about the chapter. Based on the Charlotte Mason approach, children are supposed to be asked to orally narrate back to someone else what was read to them. These fact sheets provided an opportunity for written narration as well. Since writing was difficult for Caleb and I didn't want to exasperate him, I decide to let him tell me what to write word for word and then he would go back and fill in the illustrations. This was definitely a good practice because it sealed in so much information and it was a chance for me to glimpse what he'd absorbed. If he forgot some of the material, we'd look back through the pictures in the text, which often sparked his memory, or we'd reread portions as necessary, which was great for teaching him how to research/study.

3. Following that was usually some type of copywork. For each chapter, they provided a Bible verse related to the topic for the kids to write. Again, I knew this was going to be trying for Caleb at this age and skill level, so I edited it. At the beginning, I went through and highlighted a few key words out of the verse for him to copy, then I started doing phrases, and finally we ended with bigger sections of the verse. I loved how they incorporate God and his Word so much into their curriculum, and I also loved to see how far he grew in his ability to do the copywork over the course of the year.

4. Vocabulary review was also included each week. Caleb often enjoyed these activities which may include a little cutting and pasting or a crossword puzzle to keep things interesting.

5. Often the minibooks (found often at the end of each chapter) provided for the kids to cut out, construct, and fill in also helped review either the vocabulary or important facts from the chapter for another round of exposure. Brain research tells us that the more that we access information we've learned, the deeper it becomes ingrained in our minds. This was a perfect way to promote just that.

6. Some chapters included sections that really made him apply his new knowledge in unique ways. From creating a sun collage to writing about a day on Mars, they kept it interesting. Sometimes the concepts were difficult for him, like coming up with newspaper headlines for a Jupiter newspaper or writing a play about discovery Uranus, so I had to give lots of support. I'd try to figure out ways to simplify it to fit his ability level but sometimes we definitely got in over our heads and he was overly frustrated which I would definitely try to do differently next time.

7. The projects were probably far and wide Caleb's favorite part and the part that stressed his Mommy out the most. 

For him it was always a cool hands on experience, but for me it often involved a lot of time, materials, and mess. Thankfully, Dave is usually up for doing something sciency with his son, so I defaulted to Daddy as the project leader most  of the time. Sometimes this slowed down progress though if there wasn't time to do the project. By the end though, I determined to just move forward and go back to do the projects later if necessary.

For the first chapter, he was supposed to build a mobile. Thankfully, my cousin Stacey had purchased a Magic School Bus set for him that already had the materials to do this craft plus more! Definitely helpful!

On this activity he had to place the stickers on his charts so they planets were in the right order.

Then he build and labeled a 3-D model.

When learning about light and how we see colors based off how much light is absorbed by an item, we did a project where we separated colors from black using a coffee filter, a black marker, and some alcohol.

It didn't bleed out into the complete rainbow like it was supposed to even though we did it several times, but he got the idea.

We also learned how light from the sun that is focused can produce heat and melt things. This is why it is dangerous to look at the sun because our eyes are designed in a way that doing so focuses the light on our retinas in much the same way as a magnifying glass does. Even if you can't feel it, it is still doing permanent damage! 

We made good use of a big bowl of flour and some gravel from the driveway to figure out how craters are made.

Look at that smile.

The lesson continued as he made a model of Mercury with Daddy and made some craters with the end of his pencil. 

Daddy helped him see how the lava from Venus' volcanoes settle on the surface of the planet...

This project was right up Dave's alley - using radar! Since Venus is too hot for spacecraft to land there and it is impossible for them to even get into the atmosphere for long without burning up, they have to use radar to learn about the surface. Using a box with a Duplo box structure inside, Caleb had to use a skewer to poke through the foil to figure out what the surface looked like inside. 

You'll notice we do lots of school work in our pjs.

...and Mommy helped him learn about the layers of the Earth by making a Rice Krispy treat model with bubble gum for the core and melted chocolate as the crust.

Opening it up

8. Field trips were the final section in the notebook. We took two space related ones this year. The first was to Main Street in town where there is a giant sun dial. This went with the chapter on how the sun has been historically used to help people tell time. Secondly, we went to the Air and Space Museum which was Caleb's choice for the last day of school.

I really feel like I learned a lot personally from this curriculum as well. One of my favorite features in the textbook were the "Creation Confirmation" sections where they addressed a lot of the scientific debates about the creation of the world both in its source and the timeline in which things were created. I did not agree with the scientific theories that contradict Scripture, but having the evidence in front of me to show why most of these theories are seriously flawed really strengthened my faith and understanding. The way they portray this amazing universe as created by Him for His glory just left  me more in awe of him with each chapter. More than anything that is what I hope my children glean from this curriculum. 

And, while I love Apologia for all these things, I have to admit there are some pit falls. At Caleb's age, he is so into exploring his world and sticking with the same topic for an entire year could get boring and limited us somewhat. I broke away from in on several occasions to study other areas. For example, we'd go get a bunch of books on reptiles or sea animals and do a mini unit on it. Sometimes impromptu moments would just come up, like Caleb and Reid finding a grasshopper in the basement to trap and examine up close or Caleb drawing a picture of the life cycle of a plant. Science is all around us! 

We've also explored a ton of topics via the PBS show The Wild Kratts, the Planet Earth documentary series, and the Magic School Bus DVDs. All of these were requested frequently by my inquisitive little fella who is on his way to becoming a life long learner. Honestly, there were times when the Astronomy book became too intense for us (a five year old can only know so much about space, you know?) and around December or so I took several months off to just focus on other things. In the end, we still had two chapters left, but that is the beauty of homeschooling because we can just start right back where we left off and finish next school year. 

Bottom line, all in all I would highly recommend this curriculum and plan to continue using it but with continuing to supplement it with lots of other topics to keep a more well rounded course of study.