Our Home School Journey - Science

At the end of last year CJ started with one of the books in the Apologia series: General Science by Dr. Jay Wile. Dad took responsibility for this subject and every morning and evening for an hour they do science. During the day CJ will answer the ‘on your own questions’ and do the experiments, which he also needs to write down. This science curriculum is Creation based and constantly compares Creationism with Evolutionism and scientifically teaches the Bible truth. Since this year is the 200th birthday of Darwin, this really answers all CJ’s questions and gives him everything he needs to know regarding the scientific method of research, something often missed in the evolution model.

Apologia also has a Science Question of the Week Competition that runs every 12 weeks. These questions require a lot of research and the general knowledge he (and Dad) are gaining is amazing! During CJ’s first participation, he got 11 out of 12 questions correct. Read more here….

They are currently on question 7 of 12 and CJ has 7 out of 7 correct so far. At this stage only 6 students got all the questions correct and nerves are running high every time a new answer is submitted.

Since CJ enjoyed Apologia so much, I got interested in The Young Explorer series, which is the junior level of Apologia. These books are also Creation based and the names say it all. Exploring Creation with Astronomy (the 4th day), Exploring Creation with Botany (the 3rd day), Exploring Creation with Zoology 1 (Flying creatures of the 5th day), Exploring Creation with Zoology 2 (Swimming creatures of the 5th day) and Exploring Creation with Zoology 3 (Land Animals of the 6th day).

While searching the internet I also found the complete notebook lapbook e-books, specifically customized to be used with each one of the five books in this series.

A month ago Heidi-Mari and Josua started with Exploring Creation with Astronomy.

During Lesson 1 they answered questions like: Why did God create the Universe? They were introduced to some astronomy history, the work of NASA and did an overview of our solar system. Their assignment was to build a model solar system that hangs from the ceiling. Since we always overdo things, we didn’t use different size balloons as suggested in the book. They painted polystyrene balls of different sizes in a variety of colours

and hung it in the right sequence, in orbits, from a piece of cardboard.

Josua couldn’t believe that he could actually have so much fun! He is my visual learner who can never have enough fun!

The most amazing part was when Danika (turning 6 next week) looked at the solar system hanging from the cardboard, and had a breakthrough in her ‘understanding’ of the greatness of God. As she was standing ‘outside’ the solar system, she linked it with God that is ‘outside’ of our world, watching us, holding us, taking care of us. She will never forget His greatness. She will never doubt His presence, although she cannot ‘see’ Him. In her book, Gate-keeper of the Home, Nancy Campbell tells mothers to pray that each of their children would have a personal encounter with God, and that it will tie their hearts to God forever. This was definitely such a moment for Danika. I could see it on her face!

This post features on the South African Carnival of Homeschool Bloggers where South African home schoolers share experiences, ideas, philosophies and much more.  You can join the carnival too by heading to the South African Carnival of Homeschool Bloggers sign up page.   In the meantime, head to SACH Carnival #5 - Science and Natural Science for this week's carnival.  We hope you enjoy the carnival as much as we have!