I have had the treat this spring of using the
Apologia - Exploring Creation with Botany curriculum. (Thank you, Apologia, for providing me with this curriculum to review!)
I have been eying this particular Botany curriculum for a few years, but my kids were a bit young, so I wanted to wait until they could appreciate it more. They are 5 and (almost) 7 now, plus I decided it would be more fun to do this study with friends and the group has a couple of 8 year olds in it. These Exploring Creation books are said to be for K-6th grade, so this was a perfect time for us to start!
We school year round, so I have always had vision of being able to do a botany study in the spring and summer when we could actually be outside exploring the nature that we are learning about. Usually my grand ideas end up falling flat, but this one is actually happening!
 |
| Studying botany right in our back yard! |
Once a week, three other families come over to my house and we have class in my back yard. I set up a table, throw a big blanket on the grass, and we are ready to go! Here is what a typical class looks like:
Arrival Activity
I bought the
Co-Op Guide to help me turn this curriculum into a fun group experience and one thing that it suggests is having an arrival activity each week. This is a fun way to start the day, and gets the kids thinking about the topic that we will be learning about. Some of the ideas have been: making tissue paper flowers, making a Q-Tip Bee, and taking seeds out of a melon and estimating how many there are. Our
nature journals also have a coloring page each week, so I let the kids do that at this time too. Sometimes I use this time to review what we learned the last week and let the kids share any extra pages they did in their nature journals.
 |
| Pollinating flowers with the Q-tip bee! |
Class Connection
After the arrival activity, we all run across the yard and sit on a blanket that is on the grass. For some reason this is my favorite part of the morning =) This class connection is also an idea from the Co-Op Guide, but I have tweaked it to suit our needs. We sing a song, review our memory work, and I give the kids time to each share about something nature related they saw or did in the past week. The kids really enjoy this time and I do too!
Teaching Time
Next, we head back to the table for teaching time. This is when we really dive into the content of the chapter. So far we have covered topics like seeds, fruit, and pollination. You will notice that all of the pictures in this post are from our pollination lesson. I take a really hand-on approach to this because all of the kids in my group are in the lower age range for this curriculum. I love that I can pull out the information that is appropriate for them, but if you had older kids, you could really dive in deep and learn so much more!
 |
| Hard at work drawing and writing what they just learned about pollination! |
Usually this time will include a page or two in the nature journal. We have labeled parts of a plant, traced leaves, drawn flowers, and made up stories. There is so much available in the Nature Journal for each lesson that we don't even get to it all. I tell the kids that they can do the other pages at home if they want to.
Since we are doing our lessons outside, I always include a nature walk of some sort. We have collected leaves, looked for certain types of flowers, pollinated flowers, and more! This gives the kids a good chance to get up and move around since our meeting time is pretty long.
 |
| On a nature walk, enjoying God's creation. |
Review and Snack
The last part of the day consists of a snack and a review time. We send the kids to play for a few minutes while we set up the snack. Since the topic is plants, there are always so many great opportunities to incorporate the theme for the week into our snacks. Now, I am not a fancy, creative pinterest-worthy kind of mom, so I'm not talking about cutting strawberries to look like bees or designing an edible garden. I'm talking simple ideas =) The week we learned about seeds, we ate seed butter on Ezekiel Bread (which is made from seeds and other stuff). When we talked about fruits, we ate all kinds of fruits and veggies, after discovering which veggies were actually fruits! The week we studied pollination was especially fun! The kids got to be pollinators by transferring "pollen" from a powdered sugar doughnut to a plain one.
 |
| The kids loved pretending to 'pollinate' the doughnuts! |
The Co-Op Guide always has a good picture book suggestion, so we read that while the kids eat. Then we do a final review and add a lapbook type piece to our journals. Sometimes this time will include a little experiment for the kids to see in action what we have been learning about.
 |
| Finishing up the day (with the healthy part of our snack) drawing a story about pollination. |
There are just so many options in this curriculum. Honestly, I wish that I could take two meeting times to cover the material, but since I am doing it in a group, meeting once a week for a longer time works for us. You can get a better idea of what is all included by taking a look at sample pages of the
text book,
notebooking journal, and
junior notebooking journal.
I love doing this study as a group and I love being able to do it outside, surrounded by our subject matter!
The material covered in the text book goes pretty deep. If you only have a Kindergartener or 1st grader, I would probably wait a couple of years to do this study. If you have older elementary kids and younger ones, then it is great because you can have the older kids read the chapter and fully participate in all the activities. You can just include the younger kids in the parts that are interesting for them.
Would You Like to Try Apologia Botany for Free?
When I was ordering the books for my class, I accidentally more than I needed. Instead of returning them, I thought I could bless one of you with a set!
One person will win an Apologia Exploring Creation with Botany textbook and a notebooking journal (regular level, not junior). So, enter below for a chance to win! (Don't see the raffelcopter widget?
Click Here.)
a Rafflecopter giveaway
