What kind of feelings do the words “chemistry” and “physics” stir up within you? The past few weeks the children and I have been reviewing Apologia Educational Ministries Exploring Creation with Chemistry and Physics ($39.00). While, for many people, their feelings toward these subjects are anxiety and fear, children don’t seem to have these feelings as they don’t even realize it is a big deal to be studying topics like this. Studying elementary chemistry and physics is a whole new world to me. I have been amazed at how the children have learned the new concepts and retained the vocabulary words and their meanings. The Exploring Creation with Chemistry and Physics Notebooking Journal ($24.00)and the Exploring Creation with Chemistry and Physics Junior Notebooking Journal ($24.00) have really helped the children to reinforce the concepts that are taught in the textbook.
This curriculum set is recommended for children in grades kindergarten through 6th grade. The notebooking journal is more appropriate for upper elementary children that have mastered reading and handwriting well. The junior level notebooking journal is full of beginning handwriting and early reading activities and is perfect for early elementary students that have not mastered handwriting skills yet. The junior notebook is still working for my second grader but he will soon be ready to move into the regular notebooking journals to help give you a better idea of which works for each level. The junior notebooking journal has the dashed three line handwriting spaces, coloring pages, and less writing space on the blank pages. The regular notebooking journal has crossword puzzles using vocabulary words from the textbook, writing spaces with only the bottom line marked, and no coloring pages.
This book is FULL of experiments, too many to accomplish for one family. I love the flexibility to pick and choose activities based on the supplies we have on hand and the concepts that I feel the children might need more help understanding. We have been reading the textbook aloud as a group and then working through their notebooking journals after we are done reading for the day.
We have done fun experiments that have taught us about density and buoyancy. We saw that an egg will float in salt water and yet not in fresh water. We watched as multiple liquids of different densities formed colorful layers in a beaker. And the kids had a blast constructing boats out of aluminum foil and seeing whose would hold the most pennies before sinking in a pan full of salt water. To make some of the experiments a little easier I turned to my homeschool science resource friend YouTube to find some great videos of the experiments that we didn’t have items on hand to accomplish.
And while we have mastered (I think) lots of definitions that have taught us about the basics of mass and matter and how they relate to the world around us we are looking forward (again I think) to studying other fun topics such as simple machines, atoms, light, magnets, and even simple machines with the help of this great elementary chemistry and physics book from Apologia Educational Ministries.
You can read about how other families are using this book over at the TOS website using the image below. I hope that you will take time to read the reviews and consider this great homeschool science option from a Christian perspective.
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