TOS Review: Apologia's Exploring Creation with Zoology 3: Land Animals of the Sixth Day

Holy hippopotomas, Batman!  Could it possibly get any better than Apologia's Exploring Creation series?  This is our fifth book in this series and we love each one more than the previous!  My kids seriously EAT. THIS. STUFF. UP!!!!!



On the knowledge buffet we have for you Exploring Creation with Zoology 3: Land Animals of the Sixth Day by the amazing Apologia Educational Ministries.  When I told my children we would be reviewing this they literally jumped up and down!  Folks, that's always a good sign to a homeschooling Momma!

If you're not familiar with this particular series of science curriculum, let me first assure you that it is absolutely painless to plan and implement.  Each book begins with a few pages to get you started.  The first page is litterally entitled "Need Help?" and lists contact info for mail, email, website, fax, and phone!  This is followed by an introduction that walks you thru lesson increments, narrations, notebooking, projects and experiments, a course website with lots of fabulous free resources, and then a comprehensive list of materials needed for each lesson's experiment.  If that wasn't enough, Apologia makes notebooking journals (an upper elementary and a lower elementary version signified by "Jr") and lab kits for each book in the Exploring Creation series.  We received the regular notebooking journal and the book to review.

Now- let's talk about our experience with this curriculum.....WE LOVED IT! (Ok, I think you got that already! How 'bout some nuts and bolts?)  We completed a lesson a week.  I would read half of the lesson on Monday and half on Wednesday.  As I was reading, the kids were drawing and making notes in that section of their notebooking journal.  When I was finished reading, we would answer the first half of the review questions and crosswords together- finishing them up on Wednesdays.  Fridays are a great day for experiments for us and the first experiment has you bringing out the M&Ms!  There's a reproducible scientific speculation sheet in the front of the book, but my kids used the one in the notebooking journal.  Experiments are generally pretty easily executed and require materials often found around the house.

Now, I'm going to take a minute to say that I don't think I would consider doing this curriculum without the notebooking journals.  My kids absolutely love learning with their hands and these puzzles/games/handwriting/lapbooking sheets are essential in their retaining what I'm reading to them.

What??? Oh, I'm sorry......did I forget to mention the LAPBOOKING SHEETS in the back of the notebooking journals for each lesson??!!!!!! *swoon*

With the intro, carniverous, and caniforms lessons under our belts, Abby and Ben are dying to continue the book- but alas, we must finish Zoology 2 which we've already been working on all year! (Swimming animals!)  But please let me encourage you to give this science curriculum some serious thought.  It is all we have used for elementary school (Zoology 1 {Flying Animals}, Astronomy, Human Anatomy, Zoology 3) and I haven't one single regret!  My children know more about animal life, anatomy, and space than I ever did at their age- and they've retained it!  The textbook sales for $39 and the notebooking journal is $24 on the Apologia website.

Please let me hear your thoughts if you give it a go or have any questions- and please see what my friends on the Crew had to say!