This post contains affiliate links.
We may earn a commission if you make a purchase through these links.

Okay, so I am SUPER excited about this review! I’ve used Apologia before to teach Astronomy and I really liked how they lay out the lessons and include a lot of hands on activities and experiments to go along with what your learning. I just knew we were going to love their other topics as well!

Today I am reviewing Exploring Creation with Human Anatomy and Physiology from Apologia. This included the following items:

First I want to talk to you about the textbook. This thing is laid out in such an awesome way. You know how some textbooks are all words and they are just so boring and monotonous to read? Well the Apologia textbooks are NOTHING like that! It is a beautiful hard covered text full of colorful pictures to go along with the lessons. There is nothing boring or monotonous about it!

At the front of the book is an introduction section that briefly explains how to use the book and gives a link and password to the course website. The website provides links to more resources for each lesson to further your learning. There is also a detailed list, broken down by lesson, of all the items you will need to complete the activities. Most of the items are every day things most of us will have around our homes already.
Throughout each lesson the text is broken down into manageable sections. There are a variety of Try This boxes mixed in that provide quick and easy activities to do. Dispersed through the lesson, at natural pauses in the reading, are questions printed in blue that give your child a chance to review and explain what they have learned so far. At the end of each lesson are three review sections: What Do You Remember?, Notebooking Activities, and Personal Person Project. There is also a larger project or experiment to wrap up each lesson with a great hands-on approach.

I also want to mention the audio CD that is available to go along with the textbook. It contains an audio recording by the author, Jeannie, of all the lessons. I don’t know about you, but I can get pretty tired of doing all the reading to my children through out the homeschool week. With the audio CD, I can pop it into the computer and turn on the audio for the lesson we’re on (the audio is broken up into small sections, so if you need to stop in the middle of a lesson, it is easy to resume later). The audio doesn’t read out the Try This sections, but does make note of them so that you can pause the audio to complete them, and then continue on. One thing that I really want to mention about the CD is that Jeannie’s voice is easy to listen to. It’s not some bland professor-type voice reading without expression. It actually sounds like a fun teacher reading to you, full of expression. This makes it so much easier to follow along and be engaged with the reading.

Lastly, but certainly not least are the notebooking journals. There are two versions, the regular Human Anatomy Notebooking Journal and the Junior Anatomy Notebooking Journal. The first is meant for children in upper elementary (grades 4-6) while the 2nd is geared towards lower elementary children (grades K-3). They are both fairly similar, but with the Junior version offers coloring pages and simpler versions of the various activities inside the notebooking journal.

For example, for lesson 2 the notebooks have a diagram of the skeletal system. The regular journal is blank, requiring the student to label the different bones on their own (using the reference diagram in the textbook). The junior journal points to the different bones and even gives the first letter of the bone name that is to be used, making it easier for younger ones to complete the same activity. You can see a comparison in the photo below. The page on the left is of the regular journal and the page on the right is the junior journal.
Another example, shown below, is a crossword puzzle. You can see the regular journal on the left has more words to use, and there are no hints given. In the junior journal on the right the puzzle uses fewer words and gives some hints by having some of the letters already filled in the puzzle.
Some other great features in the notebooking journals are:

  • Descriptions and instructions on how to use each page in the journal.
  • A suggested schedule for working through the lessons.
  • Answers to the vocabulary activities.
  • Field trip sheets.
  • Minibooks.
  • And Personal Person templates.
The quality and ease of use of Apologia’s science programs makes it an easy choice for homeschoolers. The different level notebooking journals makes it easy to use the same program with multiple age groups. I know that we will continue to choose them for all of our science needs as we continue on in our homeschooling years to come.
To learn more about Apologia and their wonderful science programs, be sure to check them out on social media:

 

Also make sure to read some more reviews, just click on the image below.