Well, I was all set for my son to study Physics next year, but I think we're going to use this book as our main text and study Physics at another time before he "outgrows" this book!

www.brightideaspress.com

Bright Ideas Press
PO Box 333
Cheswold, DE 19936

1-877-492-8081

Christian Kids Explore Biology is a one-year curriculum written for children in grades 3-6. It should be noted that it is easily adaptable for younger students as well. There are 8 units – Biology Basics, Plants, Birds, Mammals, the Human Body, Reptiles, Insects and Water Creatures. These units are broken down into 35 weekly lessons which include coloring pages, hands-on activities, experiments and memorization lists. Each lesson consists of a Teaching Time and a Hands-On Time. The lessons are set up so that you can cover each section over two days. This is a nice feature for busy parents who don’t have time to allot for science each day of the week.

Let’s look inside the book to see how the material is covered. First off, when beginning a new unit, there is a complete listing of the vocabulary that the child should be learning as well as a list of materials needed for each unit. I love it when these material lists are included because then I’m not scrambling at the last minute gathering items needed for experiments. I randomly chose Lesson 26 – Turtles, Tortoises and Terrapins – to discuss in this review. The lesson begins with the text in Teaching Time. Vocabulary words are bolded for easy recognition. In the sidebar is a Bible verse as well as room for the parent or student to make some notes. There is not a lot of reading and it is recommended that you supplement your studies with some books from home or the library (I would do this especially for viewing "real" pictures of the topic at hand). There is also a coloring page/diagram in every lesson. The coloring pages are reproducible if the parent doesn’t want the child coloring in the book. Personally, I’m going to let my child color in the book because this will make a nice keepsake to look back through!

After the child reads the text, there is a Review It! Section. (This is not in all of the Lessons – many of the lessons have an immediate Hands-On activity following the text reading.) Next is the Hands-On section and, in this chapter on Turtles, we have the Unit Seven Wrap-Up which consists of 15 questions to answer about ALL of the previous lesson in the unit – this could be used as a test for older children. The Hands-On section in a lesson that is NOT a Unit Review may consist of a mini-Bible study, a simple experiment, a research topic, an art activity, a search-a-word puzzle, a game to make and play, a map activity, etc. At the end of a unit, there is a Writing Assignment section – In Lesson 26, this is a creative writing activity for the child to complete in their science notebook. That’s it! What an easy-to-use and complete format! I went ahead and randomly chose another lesson just to compare and I opened the book to Lesson 33 which covers Crustaceans. In this lesson, the Hands-on Time is a cooking lesson with shrimp – how fun (and delicious)!

The next section in Christian Kids Explore Biology is a set of Appendices which contain the following: reproducible forms and maps, memorization lists by unit, Scripture memory cards (more about these in a minute), reproducibles for an Animal Kingdom ABC book, additional coloring pages, recipes, supplemental activities and, finally, the Answer Key and a Suggested Reading List for the parent. The Scripture memory cards are very nice. I would copy them onto cardstock and have my child color them in and then laminate them and store them on a ring together for future review. I am impressed with how much fun my son and I will have studying Biology next year. In keeping with the Classical approach, the child is encouraged to keep a Science notebook where they will file away their vocabulary lists, reading forms, coloring pages/sketches, reports, field trip forms, etc. There is one thing that would be a nice addition to the book – perforated pages – this would make it MUCH easier for the parent who chooses to reproduce the pages for use with multiple children. However, at only $29.95 for the entire book, I think the parent is still getting a great value for the money spent.

-- Product Review by Kris Price, Assistant to the Publishers, The Old Schoolhouse Magazine, LLC

... Kris ...