A Few Notes about Apologia

One thing we will be continuing during our summer break is working our way through Apologia's Exploring Creation with Botany, by Jeannie Fulbright. Its just too much fun to give up, and the summer season is a good one for studying a variety of plants. One thing that the boys are loving about it are the hands-on experiments. Something that I love is the Botany Lab Kit that I got to accompany the book. It has made science so much LESS stressful and burdensome to me!

Almost everything we need for every project and experiment in the book is included, and what isn't included are simple things found in most households (measuring cups, water, etc.). The kit even includes tin foil and paper towels! So now we just open up the book and go with whatever is assigned for the day, with literally NO preparation on my part.

The kit comes with each lesson's materials sorted into labeled bags, so I just pull out the "Lesson 1" bag (or whatever lesson we're on) and get what I need out of it. I cannot even begin to describe how much I am loving this kit!

It is produced by Nature's Workshop Plus, which has a ton of other fun science and nature resources, but I was even more excited to find out that Christianbook.com carries it, too - since I am an affiliate, and all! ;-)

There are kits for each Apologia Exploring Creation book - Astronomy, Botany, and the Zoology series, as well. I really can't say enough about what a blessing the kit has been to me, so if you are using any of the Apologia Exploring Creation books, I highly recommend the investment!

Also, another fun Apologia development are the new Notebooking Journals for both Astronomy and Botany. My boys have always found blank notebooking pages a bit intimidating, so we've been using Live & Learn Press's Learn N' Folders. They make a great interactive notebook, but require a bit of planning and preparing effort on my part to print, cut, assemble, and glue them. After looking at the sample pages of the Notebooking Journals, I think we're going to have to give them a try when we begin Zoology (hoping that one for Zoology will be ready by then!) They look like just what we need to graduate into more "mature" notebooking, while still enjoying the process, and saving myself some time!