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HOMESCHOOL REVIEWS
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Young Explorer Science Series:
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| Publisher: Apologia Educational Ministries Author: Jeannie Fulbright Review last updated: 2009 |
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At first glance, the Apologia Young Explorer books look like standard hardcover textbooks for the elementary grades. They're nicely printed with full-color illustrations. But the focus on a narrow area of science for each text and the methods of lesson presentation make these significantly different from standard texts.
The Astronomy and Botany volumes, with 176 pages each, address only those topics, digging much deeper into each than is possible in a typical textbook that aims to cover many different topics. Zoology 1 broadens out to birds, bats, flying reptiles, and insects in its 240 pages, yet these topics are somewhat related and few in number. Zoology 2 narrows again to only creatures that live in water (235 pages), while Zoology 3 (288 pages) tackles the rather broad category of land animals to study various orders of land animals including reptiles, amphibians, spiders, insects, worms, gastropods, and dinosaurs. This series uses an “immersion approach” with information, activities, writing, field trips, experiments, and other avenues to immerse the student deeply into each topic.
For those worried that their children are not covering everything, I have to say that I've always been a believer in depth over breadth when it comes to science. I think younger children learn more about science in general when they are really interested in and involved in a single science topic. They gather enough information on that topic to begin to appreciate science and ask deeper questions and look for applications. This then often carries over to self-exploration of other science topics.
Regarding methodology, Charlotte Mason's ideas are most evident in the use of narration. Periodically, after a section of text there will be a narration prompt written in italics such as “Explain what you have learned about flight muscles and birds in flight” (Zoology 1, p. 61). You might even want to prompt for narrations more frequently than the text does.
The writing style is very personal. The publisher relates that author Jeannie Fulbright “wrote each sentence as if she were chatting with her children, seeking to pass along her excitement for the subject and a love for God through engaging conversational writing style” (Apologia catalog, p. 9).
“What Do You Remember?” questions at the end of each chapter help to assess whether or not children are grasping the information. Parents can require students to write out answers or respond orally. Answer keys are at the back of each book.
To keep things interesting, the text is also broken up with “Try This!” activities. These are generally fairly simple activities that children can do for the experience rather than full-fledged experiments with data recording.
The full-fledged experiments as well as projects come at the end of each chapter. Two of the projects for each course are actually term projects. Term projects as well as some of the other experiments and projects are quite involved, but they don't require esoteric resources. Lists of the necessary resources are at the front of each book, shown chapter by chapter, so it's easy to plan ahead. Types of resources are matches, wires, empty soda bottles, red food coloring, Plaster of Paris, plants, Glycerin soap bars, and a pinecone.
At the front of each text is a reproducible “Scientific Speculation Sheet” to be used for applying scientific method and recording experiment information.
One other unusual aspect of this course is the creation of a notebook. Students can either use the new Notebooking Journal (described below) for those courses where one is available, or they they can use a binder to collect their notes, drawings, and records of experiments, projects, and field trips. Since the text tries to address the needs of students from grades K through 6, notebook activities are frequently suggested under separate headings for younger and older students. (Lapbooks are available from Knowledge Box Central that correlate with some of these textbooks.)
The intended audience is probably the biggest area of concern with the textbooks. The books are written at a reading level well beyond that of children in the primary grades. The texts include Latin and scientific names, sometimes including explanations of word derivations. There seems to be even more of this in Botany and Zoology 1 than in the other books. While this should be fine for students in the middle grades, it might be too much information for younger students. Personally, I would probably start with the Astronomy text if my children were on the younger end of the spectrum, then follow with Botany, then with the lengthier Zoology 1, 2, and 3 books. Parents will likely read the text aloud to younger students, while older students can do much of their reading and work independently.
An added bonus with each course is a password to a dedicated website with extra helps for each course. This information is provided in the front of the book with your course instructions.
The Young Explorers series is clearly Christian in outlook, continually reaffirming God's role as creator. Occasionally, evolutionary beliefs are addressed directly, but these texts mostly take a positive approach of teaching truth rather than attacking evolutionary error.
Overall, there is more activity and variety in these courses than in traditional textbooks. The format makes it easy for parents to provide an excellent balance of information and activity that should be very effective for science instruction in the elementary grades.
I mentioned the new Notebooking Journals above. As of October 2009, these are available for Botany, Astronomy, and Zoology 1. These are hefty (about 200 pages each), plastic, spiral, comb-bound books that actually become the student's notebook. You will need to purchase one for each student. While it is certainly fine if you want to create your own notebooks with resources from the website and elsewhere, these Notebooking Journals make the process much easier.
The Notebooking Journals include a number of activities and resources for each lesson. Four sections directly support essential textbook material and activities. "Fascinating Facts" provides space for students to write a "narration" of information from the lesson. "What Do You Remember?" reprints the review questions from the text, allowing space for students to write their answers. The notebook assignments, activities and projects in the text are supported with template pages in the journal. In addition, there are "Project Pages" for recording observations and other information, and for inserting photos from activities and experiments in the text. The other "tools" in the journals include Scripture copywork pages; vocabulary crossword puzzles; cut-and-fold miniature books printed in full color and in which students can write key information; "Dig In Deeper" assignments that expand lessons with additional experiments, activities, research, recommended reading and multi-media resources; field trip sheets for recording information about each trip; and a 50-question final review for the entire course. The latter tools, including the final review, are all optional. You should use whatever is useful, and then remove the pages not being used from each student's journal so they are left with their own personalized notebook. The resulting notebook will have much more content than could be compiled into a lapbook.
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