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Friday, February 8, 2013

Apologia Anatomy & Physiology TOS Crew Review

  

  This is a TOS Crew Review for Apologia's  
Exploring Creation with Human Anatomy and Physiology
Textbook, Anatomy Notebooking Journal and MP3 Audio Book.
by: Jeannie K. Fulbright and Brooke Ryan, M.D.

I received all three of these items for review.




Texbook- recommended for grades 4-6
Anatomy Notebooking Journal - recommended for grades 3-6 or for students who have mastered handwriting, can take notes, and enjoy upper elementary level activities.

Apologia does offer a 'junior' notebooking journal as well for the younger children who have not mastered the note taking, handwriting, etc for the same price.

Pricing:
Textbook - $39.00 Nice hardcover textbook.
Anatomy Notebooking Journal - $24.00  Consumable/spiral notebook
MP3 Audio Book - $29.00



Textbook ISBN: 978-1-935495-14-7
Anatomy Notebooking Journal
ISBN: 978-1-935495-15-4
MP3 Audio Book - ISBN: 978-1-935495-83-3




What Is This? -

This is an anatomy & physiology course in the Exploring Creation series from Apologia.  It explores the human body from the top of your head to the tips of your toes!  It explores the history of medicine, explains DNA, your cells, your body systems and so much more!  It shows how carefully and detailed God created our bodies.  This textbook is a nice hardcover filled with wonderful colorful illustrations.



It course contains 14 lessons.  This textbook has lesson plans to guide you.  Most lessons can be divided into 2 week segments.  (You are able to use this without the notebooking journal if desired.  But you'll want to  have a notebook of some kind to document what you have learned.)  You would read part of the lesson one day, and then another day do the assignments, projects and experiments.


The notebooking journal has lesson plans with additional activities for you to incorporate into the textbook lessons.  For example, they have 'cut and fold miniature books' to make, vocabulary crossword puzzles, field trip sheets, scripture copywork and much much more!  Depending on your family and ages of your children, you may take more time to accommodate your families needs than the lesson plan suggests for each lesson.


Each lesson has an experiment to do.  There is a list in the front of the textbook that shows the items needed for each lesson / experiment.



The experiments utilize household products that most homes already have and other basic supplies.  They do however require some supplies through specific sources.  They offer a science kit for this.  But keep in mind, you do not have to do every experiment, although they do recommend that you do a few to become familiar with the scientific method however.  A Scientific Speculation Sheet is provided for you in the front of the book to document all the experiments. (You are allowed to copy this for your family to use for all the experiments you do with the course.)

They offer a course website to dig even deeper into each lesson. The text has the course website and password in the front of the book for easy access.

The MP3 Audio Book is for your child to listen to an audio of the textbook on his/her MP3 player, computer or CD player.  Note: This is not a CD-Rom for your computer; it is an audio only.  This is wonderful for students who are auditory learners, slow readers, or other learning disabilities that make reading difficult.  It is also a great accompaniment to the textbook.

About the company -
Apologia Educational Ministries, Inc., is a family-owned corporation and was created by parents who wanted their children to have an creation based education that would deepen their Christian faith. The company offers K-12 creation-based science curriculum, inspirational books about homeschooling, retreats for moms, and online classes from Apologia Academy.  They even offer college classes in their Apologia Academy!


How we used this course & What I thought-

One of the wonderful things I really like about this course is that you can adjust the lesson plans to your families needs.  Apologia is great for this!  Lets face it, things come up.  For our family, to follow a formal lesson plan is very stressful for us.  So I was able to tweak the lesson plans to accommodate my 9 yr. olds needs.  For example, we took two days for reading including some activities as well.  The third day we did one of the bigger activities and the experiment.  So we used this textbook and journal three times a week most of the time.  However, some weeks, when we didn't have such a busy activity calendar, we used it everyday!  There is so much to do and you as the parent can determine which projects, experiments, etc. you want to do.  My son loves the experiments in this course and is learning so much!  I am learning a few things too! ;)  We incorporated the MP3 CD in when I would be called away to take a phone call or something of that nature.  This was very easy to use.  Our MP3 players are never around when we need them, so we just popped the CD into our computer and pressed play on the section we were on! 

There isn't really anything I didn't like about the course.  Although, I do have to say that I found it a bit overwhelming for my son in the that very first lesson.  That first lesson is all about 'cells' and he seemed like he wasn't really understanding what we were covering.  Even though they do have great explanations in the textbook, I just felt some things were a bit above his level.  That is just my opinion, so I would suggest no younger than grade 4.  As homeschoolers we know that every child is different, so your child may not have any issue with understanding.  Being in my 9'th year of homeschooling, I know that even if they don't grasp the context entirely, they are listening.  They will understand it at some point.  So I don't sweat it when one of my children doesn't quite 'get it' when first introduced.  

This course is recommended for high elementary & middle school ages children, but I could easily see a high schooler doing this course and receiving a full credit in Anatomy & Physiology!  You could always incorporate more writing assignments, essays or even research assignments as well.  Remember, the textbook has a course website for further research to dig in deeper to each lesson (as mentioned above in the description of this course).  In fact, my 10'th grader kept asking questions and trying to participate during our lessons.  This may be something he incorporates into his studies as well.

This would be wonderful for a large family!  If you have younger children than grade 4 and wanted them to do the course, they can do some of the color pages in the junior notebooking journal while mom reads to them.  This is great for the homeschool mom who wants to teach one subject to all her children (of several ages) at one time!

We both enjoy this course so much!  We are still using this and plan to finish it this schoolyear.  Our favorite part of this course is that the textbook has sections in each lesson called 'Try This'.  It is a little activity to do to help the student understand the lesson and to help them visualize what is being taught in the text.  The picture below is one of those 'Try This' section activities.  We are demonstrating how your brain has fluid between it and your skull.  We did this demonstration for our "100'th Day of Homeschool Celebration" at our local library.


Our family personally loves Apologia!  We have used several of their textbooks, CD's, etc.  My 10'th grader is currently using the Biology textbook and absolutely loves it!  Apologia offers so much more than the normal science curricula does with the Biblical Creation teachings.

Bottom Line -

I highly recommend this to any family who wants to deepen their Christian faith and have a great time learning about science and the human body in depth!

A big A+ to Apologia once again!



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Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this product through the Schoolhouse Review Crew in exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review nor was I compensated in any other way. All opinions I have expressed are my own or those of my family. I am disclosing this in accordance with the FTC Regulations.


4 comments:

  1. What a great review! I really like that you showed the inside of the book. I also really appreciate all the details of the course and how you used it. Well done!

    Warmly,
    Kate

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  2. The post is written in very a good manner and it entails much useful information for me. I am happy to find your distinguished way of writing the post.
    level 3 anatomy and physiology courses online

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you, we love this book! There is so much great information it couldn't possibly be put in one review! :)

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