MAKE SCIENCE AWESOME! My best selling, award-winning science series published by Apologia is consistently rated the #1 elementary science curriculum.
Apologia Exploring Creation Young Explorer Books
Why is this the best-selling science curriculum?
Because my books are unique
- Your children will learn the evidence for a young earth and God as the Creator of the world.
- Not only will your children learn in-depth science, their faith will be strengthened and solidified.
- I wrote my science books as I was homeschooling, testing the concepts, methods, experiments and activities while using them to teach my own children.
- As a homeschool mother in the trenches, I know what works and what doesn’t work.
- The 7 books in my series are written using the proven Charlotte Mason model that I used with my own children.
- My science books use the Charlotte Mason Whole Book approach, immersing and grounding children in an entire field of science so that they can truly grasp and understand scientific concepts.
- Over the last 17 years, I have heard from thousands of moms and students (many now grown) telling me how much they loved science and developed a love learning after using my books.
How it all Began
In the beginning, as I frantically thrust myself into the world of homeschooling, my natural proclivity was to stir up in my children a passion for science that matched my own. Most of my college years had been spent as a pharmacy and kinesiology major before I decided to change direction and pursue a career in writing and I eventually earned a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. Although I knew I was called to write and speak, science was “my thing,” and I wanted it to be my children’s thing too. I was insistent they learn science the right way, using the Charlotte Mason methods I knew to be effective.
However, what I desired to happen and what actually did happen were miles apart. Let’s open a window to the past so you can catch a glimpse of my own beleaguered experiences as a mom trying to wade through the different science programs offered. You’ll soon come to understand why and how I created Apologia’s Young Explorer Series.
No Manual Needed
The first science course I purchased came with a very large (Can you say voluminous?) teacher’s manual. The instructions told me to read the manual and then verbalize what I learned to my children. This worked pretty well for the first few days. And then—boom!—real life happened. Everything took twice as long as planned, including dealing with my children’s tears, complaints, crying babies, and arguments. Contributing to the chaos of my early days of homeschooling were the nonstop laundry, the phone, and the nuisance of everyone expecting a home-cooked lunch and dinner every day! Faced with the complications of real life, I quickly realized I didn’t have time to read, study, learn or prepare a lesson for a subject that wasn’t one of the three R’s. Needless to say, science fell by the wayside that year.
Charlotte Mason eschews verbal teaching over the reading of engaging, living books.
So I knew that my perfect science course would not come with a laborious teacher’s manual. Rather, the course would teach me alongside my children. We would sit down together and discover science as a family while reading aloud. Science would be easy and enjoyable to teach.
Go Deep with Immersion
Early in my homeschool journey, I purchased a science textbook from a Christian publisher. But I found myself disappointed as the book skipped from one subject to the next at a pace that didn’t allow for real learning and lasting comprehension. My children were learning about the water one week, plants the next, and space the week after that. In the end, they didn’t really learn very much about any of the subjects we covered. The book had merely skimmed the surface, going an inch deep and a mile wide. Consequently, this was what the Third International Math and Science Study found was wrong with American education. When children don’t learn science deeply enough, not only do they not retain it, they don’t even like it. And they especially don’t feel confident in their understanding of science.
Charlotte Mason advocates a whole book approach, drinking deeply of the wellspring of knowledge found in each subject.
I wanted my children to love learning, enjoy the pursuit of knowledge and find satisfaction and confidence in their understanding of science. I didn’t want them to simply know the order of the planets and a few random facts about space; I wanted them to know the beauty of God’s majestic universe on a deeper level and to develop a truly abiding comprehension of astronomy. Therefore, my idea of a perfect curriculum would be one that immersed students in the subject. They would come to know astronomy well, building confidence in their mastery of the subject before moving on to another field of science.
One Book, Please!
Later, and I ordered a curriculum on one subject, but it included about sixteen different non-living books from a variety of publishers along with a detailed school schedule. My job as parent and teacher was to follow the schedule and read aloud certain pages from each book every day. The books were colorful and the graphics interesting, but the text was dull, dry and boring. Again, about two weeks into the school year, the realities of life and home education intruded upon my well-laid plans. Just getting through the basics was like slogging through knee-deep mud up hill! Every day I was exhausted by noon. I didn’t have the energy to put in the effort required to follow a complicated schedule that sent us scurrying from one book to another. (Where did those books run off to anyway? They were never where I’d left them.) Honestly, as much as I loved science, my kids needed to learn to read and do math. Science had to become easier, or it wasn’t going to happen. Sigh. Another year without science.
Charlotte Mason warns of the dangers of feeding children dry summaries of facts that would smother and deaden his natural curiosity and destroy his love for learning.
Our mistakes are valuable only if we learn something from them. I discovered that my perfect science course would not only have beautiful graphics, it would be written with an engaging and interesting narrative voice by someone with a clear excitement and passion for the subject—someone who would bring science to life for me as well as for my children. It would consist of a single book I could read from front to back, without jumping around or adhering to a restrictive schedule. My kids and I could cuddle up on the couch and pick up where we left off. Where, oh where, was this science course? The years were passing quickly, and we hadn’t done any science to speak of. Yikes!
Effective Experiments
In order to appease my aching conscience, that year I subscribed to a service that mailed out science kits every month. I soon learned that conducting experiments is not equivalent to an actual science education, especially when my curious children asked why the experiment worked the way it did. (I didn’t know.) We hadn’t learned the science behind the experiment. Doing experiments unrelated to what we were learning proved ineffective and unmemorable. A complete waste of time.
Lesson learned. My perfect science course would include only relevant experiments. There wouldn’t be an excessive number of them—only enough to solidify and assimilate the information covered in the text, thus increasing my children’s understanding and retention.
Creation Confirmation
Year three arrived, and my children were begging me to teach them about space. I didn’t remember much from my own schooling, so we went to the library and checked out 23 books on astronomy. We arrived home, gathered together on the couch and began to read. Within seconds, I was fumbling over phrases like “billions of years” and “the Big Bang.” Although I attempted to discreetly skip over those parts, I found that somewhere along the line I had accidentally taught my children to read. So they read what I left out and threw me piercing looks. “Why did you skip that part?” they demanded. I explained that we don’t believe what those parts are teaching. Confronted with skepticism from my innocent babes, I was at a loss. I knew there was plenty of information out there that disproved evolution, but I couldn’t articulate it clearly. My kids believed the printed page in front of them. After all, this book was written by a supposed expert. And so their faith was being destroyed as I taught them science.
Of utmost importance in the Charlotte Mason model is the development of the child’s faith, which must be cherished and nurtured.
The most important element of my perfect science course was conceived. It would clearly and definitively explain evidence for God’s creation in words my children could understand and believe. It would be a course that would encourage families to grow in their faith even as they learned about science.
Time-Tested Methods
The Lord began nudging me to take my passions for research and writing to another level and develop my own science course for my children. As I began, I set out to include the methods of education I had discovered to be most effective—ones that inspired not only a love for learning but also a long-term retention of the material. As you know, Charlotte Mason would be my mentor in this endeavor.
In addition to a single God-glorifying, engaging, visually appealing, immersion text with relevant experiments, I wanted my course to integrate narration, notebooking assignments and fun hands-on projects and activities. These were the time-tested, proven methods for increasing learning and retention. While other courses used the derailing methods too often found in traditional American education, I chose to embrace an educational methodology that works.
The result is the best-selling Young Explorer Series. The reason for its success? It was written by a homeschool parent while she was in the trenches. Someone who knows what it’s like to have a house full of rambunctious, playful people. Someone who is well acquainted with what a real homeschool day looks like. Someone who wants to make science a delightful experience for the entire family. Someone who understands your heart, your needs and your desire to have a successful, happy home school where your children thrive and grow in both their faith and academic achievement.
Visit Apologia to see samples of or to order my books.
Astronomy
Take your elementary students on a journey through the universe this year!
Exploring Creation with Astronomy investigates everything in space, from the sun and moon to the galaxies and space travel. The 14 lessons are written to the students using engaging prose that captures even the youngest child’s attention.
Through this in-depth study, your students will be able to answer questions that stump most adults: How do we tell a planet from a star in the night’s sky? What causes auroras? How does the sun’s light give us color? Why do we have seasons? How and why does the moon go through phases? And most importantly, how do thermonuclear fusion and short-period comets give us powerful evidence for a young earth creation model for origins?
Throughout each lesson, narration prompts encourage students to relate their new knowledge in their own words, increasing comprehension and retention. Included are creative and fun notebooking assignments and learning activities that further their experience with the lesson. Through experiments and projects, your students will engage in hands-on learning activities, such as building a small, but powerful rocket; constructing a telescope; experimenting to discover how a radar works; making a compass; and creating an actual model of a solar eclipse.
These and many more interesting learning adventures will become part of your child’s knowledge base as they become experts in astronomy over the course of the year.
In addition to reading, your children can now listen to Exploring Creation with Astronomy at home or in the car with the engaging, unabridged audio book read by Jeannie. A CD audio set and a MP3 audio CD are both available. To hear a sample click on the image below.
Increase your family’s enjoyment of Exploring Creation with Astronomy by making sure each child has his own Astronomy Notebooking Journal or for younger students, the Astronomy Junior Notebooking Journal. The journals include a daily schedule; fascinating facts and personal reflections pages; templates for completing the assignments; vocabulary crossword puzzles; review questions; activity documentation pages; Scripture copywork in both print and cursive; and fun lapbook-style miniature books that the students create. The junior journal has easier vocabulary crosswords, Scripture coloring pages, and primary writing lines.
The Astronomy Notebooking Journals bring your students’ learning and creativity together in one beautiful keepsake. To see samples of the Astronomy Notebooking Journals, click on the images.
Botany
Get ready to explore all things green and growing! From the anatomy of a tiny seed to the tops of the giant sequoias, your students will fall in love with the world God created right outside your door. In Exploring Creation with Botany, they’ll discover the fascinating inner workings of a flower by dissecting one, pollinating another, and growing their own to attract birds, butterflies, and bees. Your students will identify the plants and trees in your yard and will create their own field guides to match. From making herbal soap and tracking a leaf from its first days to its last, to exploring fern spores and measuring pollution with a lichenometer, your students will find the outdoor world full of fascinating facts and finds.
Nature walks, hikes, and camping will take on new meaning as you and your students comprehend the complexity and diversity God created within the Kingdom Plantae.
Exploring Creation with Botany
As with all the books in the Young Explorer series, every lesson includes wonderfully engaging text, narration prompts, and notebooking assignments that bring the subject to life. Students will make comic strips of pollinating creatures, write stories, diagram and illustrate roots from their yard and, of course, grow many things as they learn.
Your children will soon be able to listen to Exploring Creation with Botany at home or in the car with the engaging, unabridged audio book read by Jeannie. A CD audio set and a MP3 audio CD will both be available.
Increase your family’s enjoyment of Exploring Creation with Botany by making sure each child has his own Botany Notebooking Journal or for younger students, the Botany Junior Notebooking Journal. The journals include a daily schedule; templates for completing the assignments; vocabulary crossword puzzles; review questions; project pages; Scripture copywork in both print and cursive; gorgeous, full-color lapbook-style miniature books the students create; as well as additional projects, ideas, and book/video suggestions for each lesson. The junior journal has easier vocabulary crosswords and notebooking activities, Scripture coloring pages, and primary writing lines.
Zoology 1: Flying Creatures
How do bats use echolocation? Which insects do ants keep as pets? What are the stages of complete and incomplete metamorphosis? How can you identify insects from other arthropods? Which Biblical writers describe pterosaurs in their ancient texts? How do birds find their way during the thousands of miles they travel when migrating? Answers to these and many, many more interesting questions about the flying creatures God created can be found in Exploring Creation with Zoology 1.
Your children will begin by exploring the scientific aerodynamics of flight, as well as a comprehensive analysis of animal classification.
They’ll then fly to new heights with an exciting adventure of learning about birds!
Your children will not only learn how to attract various bird species to your yard but will also learn to identify them and begin their own “life list” just like birders across the world. Additionally, they’ll learn about birds’ diverse nests and nesting habits; their interesting domestic practices, songs, and calls; their uncanny feather design, as well as the miracle and mystery of migration. Included are experiments that use the scientific method to explore the preferences and habits of birds in your area.
After becoming amateur ornithologists, your children will explore the world of chiropterology, the study of bats. They will be able to intelligently share with others the value of bats in our world while exposing the misconceptions that most people have regarding these docile creatures of the night. They’ll then explore the ancient world of flying reptiles, such as pterosaurs, discovering why the evidence points to a more recent extinction of these creatures. Following this, your children will become expert entomologists, exploring the world of insects. They will learn to scientifically classify insects they find in their yard by a simple glance at their wing structure and other important characteristics. In addition to designing experiments with flies, crickets, darkling moths, and caterpillars, they will also learn how to attract and catch insects for scientific study and are encouraged to begin a collection in keeping with the requirements of most college life science classes.
Your children can now explore God’s amazing flying creatures at home or in the car with the engaging, unabridged audio book read by Jeannie. A 9 CD audio set and a MP3 audio CD are both available. To hear a sample click on the image below.
Increase your family’s enjoyment of Exploring Creation with Zoology 1 by making sure each child has his own Zoology 1 Notebooking Journal, or for younger students the Zoology 1 Junior Notebooking Journal. The journals include daily schedules; templates for completing the assignments and activities; vocabulary crossword puzzles; review questions; project pages; Scripture copywork in both print and cursive; gorgeous, full-color lapbook-style miniature books the students create; as well as many additional projects, experiments, ideas, and supplemental book/video suggestions for each lesson. The junior journal has easier vocabulary crosswords, Scripture coloring pages, and primary writing lines.
The Zoology 1 Notebooking Journals bring your students’ learning and creativity together in one beautiful keepsake.
To see samples of the Zoology 1 Notebooking Journals, click on the images below.
Zoology 2: Swimming Creatures
From the rivers and streams to the mighty oceans, God filled the waters with animals great and small. Upon His Word, enormous whales sprung into being. At His command, billions of planktons leaped to life. On that day, millions of creatures like the strapping sea turtles, the skulking sharks, the delightful dolphins, and soaring squids gladly joined their fellow sea animals. Strong swimming salmon headed up the rivers past the creeping crayfish and the sluggardly snail. How joyously crammed with excitement was the fifth day of the earth’s existence!
Exploring Creation with Zoology 2 will take you and your family on an exploration into the wonders of the deep and shallow. You’ll begin with a big splash from the whales and dolphins then will spy on seals and meet manatees. You’ll swim with the sea turtles, snakes, and salamanders before peeking in on the primeval plesiosaurus and its ancient (or not so ancient) pals. Following your frolic with fish and sharks, you’ll uncover the world of crabby crustaceans, sea snails, clams, and their soft bodied friends: the octopus, squid, and nautilus. You’ll consort with corals and find flowers that devour plankton. You’ll see stars and feathers that walk, leap, and roll, and will discover dollars that disappear in the sand and sponges that really do clean. From the microscopic to the miraculous, no shell is left unturned in your student’s passage through the waters of the world. Various ocean creatures will come to life as your student creates replicas of the animals studied and places them in his own ocean box: a miniature hand-crafted aquarium.
Narration prompts are found throughout every lesson as are Try This! activities which give your students hands-on experience with the material in the book. For example, your students will experience the plight of a female sea turtle crawling on land, measure shark’s teeth to estimate their size, and complete an activity that explores why some animals fossilized during the flood and others did not. Among other experiments and projects, your student will try on blubber, investigate a shark’s ability to sense electrical currents, explore how a whale can hear sound waves on the other side of the world, and learn through experimentation which creatures make the best fossils. No matter how near or far you live from the ocean, you and your students will wonder at God’s hand in the creation of the amazing aquatic animals He formed and fashioned on the fifth day.
Your children can now listen to Exploring Creation with Zoology 2 at home or in the car with the engaging, unabridged audio book read by Jeannie. A CD audio set and a MP3 audio CD are both available. Click on the image below to listen to a sample.
Increase your family’s enjoyment of Exploring Creation with Zoology 2 by making sure each child has his own Zoology 2 Notebooking Journal, or for younger students the Zoology 2 Junior Notebooking Journal.The journals include daily schedules; templates for completing the assignments and activities; vocabulary crossword puzzles; review questions; project pages; Scripture copywork in both print and cursive; gorgeous, full-color lapbook-style miniature books the students create; as well as many additional projects, experiments, ideas, and supplemental book/video suggestions for each lesson. The junior journal has easier vocabulary crosswords, Scripture coloring pages, and primary writing lines.
The Zoology 2 Notebooking Journals bring your students’ learning and creativity together in one beautiful keepsake.
To see samples of the notebooking journals, click on the images below.
Zoology 3: Land Animals
What separates people from apes? How can a Great Dane be related to a Chihuahua? Is there evidence that people and dinosaurs lived at the same time? What should you do if you encounter a bear? How can you tell if a snake is poisonous? Come find out answers to these questions and many, many more with Apologia’s Exploring Creation with Zoology 3!
This third and most thorough book in the zoology series takes students on a safari through jungles, deserts, forests, farms, and even their own backyard. Your upper elementary students will explore, examine, and enjoy the enchanting creatures God designed on the sixth day of creation.
Families will snuggle together and discover some amazing animals, from primates to parasites, kangaroos to caimans, and turtles to terrifying T-Rexs!
Narration prompts are found throughout every lesson as are Try This! activities, which will give your students hands-on experience with the material in the book. Some of these activities include: students taping their thumbs to their hands to experience life without an opposable thumb, practicing what they should do if they encounter a bear in the wild, cutting out a small world map and fitting the continents together to understand why similar animals are found in Australia and South America, and playing blind man’s bluff to track people by sound alone, just like jungle animals do. Additionally, your animal lovers will enhance their geography skills by recording on a world map where each animal about which they learn is found. If the animal is known to leave tracks, they’ll also learn to identify those tracks and to trace or draw the tracks for their own record.
As with all the Apologia elementary courses, notebooking activities are utilized to enhance your child’s learning experience and increase retention, as well as provide a record of their learning. Examples of the activities in the course include: creating a travel brochure for a person going on an African safari to explore primates, comparing and contrasting reptiles and amphibians, illustrating spider webs from your yard and home, labeling what kind of spider makes each web, and creating a canine newsletter with articles highlighting the interesting facts you learned about these particular carnivores.
At the end of each lesson are adventurous activities, projects, and experiments that engage your students with the material learned. After learning about rodents, your students will dissect an owl pellet and piece together a rodent’s skeleton, capture animal tracks in their own yard, engage in actual as well as simulated population studies, and create an animal trivia game that reviews all they learned in a fun way.
The crowning glory of this course is the many, many Creation Confirmations found throughout the text, which highlight animals and zoological data that can only be explained through a young earth, God-designed creation model of origins.
After your students finish this course, their understanding of animals as well as their faith in God will be strong and unshakable.
Your children can now listen to Exploring Creation with Zoology 3 at home or in the car with the engaging, unabridged audio book read by Jeannie. A CD audio set and a MP3 audio CD are both available. To hear a sample, click on the image.
Increase your family’s enjoyment of Exploring Creation with Zoology 3 by making sure each child has his own Zoology 3 Notebooking Journal, or for younger students the Zoology 3 Junior Notebooking Journal. The journals include daily schedules; templates for completing the assignments and activities; vocabulary crossword puzzles; review questions; project pages; Scripture copywork in both print and cursive; gorgeous, full-color lapbook-style miniature books the students create; as well as many additional projects, experiments, ideas, and supplemental book/video suggestions for each lesson. The junior journal has easier vocabulary crosswords, Scripture coloring pages, and primary writing lines.
The Zoology 3 Notebooking Journals bring your students’ learning and creativity together in one beautiful keepsake.
To see samples of the Zoology 3 Notebooking Journals, click on the images.
Chemistry and Physics
Discover the electrifying, exhilarating, and energetic world of chemistry and physics with the newest book in the Apologia Young Explorer Series: Exploring Creation with Chemistry and Physics. Get ready for physical science like you’ve never experienced it before! This course will bring shock and awe to your science studies as you investigate the wacky world of matter and energy. With hundreds of hands-on demonstrations that bring science to life, you’ll soon be an expert on everything under the sun-including the thermal and solar energy from the sun itself! From atoms to Archimedes, nuclear energy to Newton’s Laws of Motion, sound to simple machines, and anything that turns on, lights up, or shocks you, you’ll discover the elements God used to create everything around you.
Better yet, you’ll learn the interesting laws that govern the world He made and the physics that keep it in motion.
With easy to understand explanations, interesting notebooking assignments, and a plethora of projects and experiments, Exploring Creation with Chemistry and Physics will bring back the joy of learning for everyone involved! The projects will have you manufacturing a homemade electric motor, creating Periodic Table of the Elements cookies, building batteries from surprising substances, making a mousetrap car, and much, much more! Exploring Creation with Chemistry and Physics covers topics you’ll need to know in junior high, high school, and beyond.
Now you can listen to Exploring Creation with Chemistry and Physics at home or in the car with the engaging, unabridged audio book read by Jeannie. A CD audio set and a MP3 audio CD are both available. To hear a sample click on the image below.
Increase your family’s enjoyment of Exploring Creation with Chemistry and Physics by making sure each child has his own Chemistry and Physics Notebooking Journal, or for younger students the Chemistry and Physics Junior Notebooking Journal. The journals include daily schedules; templates for completing the assignments and activities; vocabulary crossword puzzles; review questions; project pages; Scripture copywork in both print and cursive; gorgeous, full-color lapbook-style miniature books the students create; as well as many additional projects, experiments, ideas, and supplemental book/video suggestions for each lesson. The junior journal has easier vocabulary crosswords, Scripture coloring pages, and primary writing lines.
The Chemistry and Physics Notebooking Journals bring your students’ learning and creativity together in one beautiful keepsake.
To see samples of the Chemistry and Physics Notebooking Journals, click the images below.
Apologia’s Exploring Creation with Anatomy and Physiology by Jeannie Fulbright
In the video above, Jeannie introduces you to her Anatomy and Physiology course published by Apologia. From the brain in their head to the nails on their toes, your students will encounter fascinating facts, engaging activities, intriguing experiments, and loads of fun as they learn about the human body and how to keep it working well. Beginning with a brief history of medicine and a peek into cells and DNA, your students will voyage through fourteen lessons covering many aspects of human anatomy and physiology including the body systems: skeletal, muscular, respiratory, digestive, cardiovascular, nervous, and more! They’ll study nutrition and health and how God designed their immune system to protect them.
They’ll learn about embryology and what makes them a unique creation of God.
As they work their way through the course, your students will have fun adding the organs about which they learn to their own personalized human figure included in the Anatomy and Physiology Notebooking Journal.
In addition to all this exploration, your students will enjoy scientific experiments and projects, such as testing the bacteria content around the house, finding their blood type, creating a cell model from Jello and candy, and even building a stethoscope! In keeping with all the books in the Young Explorer Series, the Charlotte Mason methodology is employed, using engaging and proven techniques including: narratives, narration prompts, and notebooking projects, all of which reinforce learning using proven techniques that strengthen retention.
Your children can now explore God’s amazing design for human physiology at home or in the car with the engaging, unabridged audio book read by Jeannie. A 9 CD audio set and a MP3 audio CD are both available. Click on the image below to hear a sample of the audio book.
Increase your family’s enjoyment of Apologia’s Exploring Creation with Anatomy and Physiology by making sure each child has his own Anatomy and Physiology Notebooking Journal or for younger students, the Anatomy and Physiology Junior Notebooking Journal. These journals include a daily schedule; templates for completing the assignments; vocabulary crossword puzzles; review questions; project pages; Scripture copywork in both print and cursive; gorgeous, full-color lapbook-style miniature books the students create; as well as additional projects, ideas, and book/video suggestions for each lesson. The junior journal has easier vocabulary crosswords and notebooking activities, Scripture coloring pages, and primary writing lines.
The Anatomy and Physiology Notebooking Journals bring your students’ learning and creativity together in one beautiful keepsake.
To see samples of the Anatomy Notebooking Journals, click on the book covers below.
