CURRICULUM SHOPPING

Peter and I finally made our way out to a local homeschool curriculum store. There is so much available for homeschooling, but most of it has to be ordered online or through a catalog. We knew there was a store about 1/2 hour away that carried much of the curriculum that we use, but we hadn't taken the time to get over there before this week. It was nice to get to look through some of the books before buying them, a luxury unavailable on the web.

Here's what we came home with:

The science book in the middle, "Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day" in the Exploring Creation series is what we will be studying this summer. We're going to take a break from the "Swimming Creatures of the Fifth Day" so that we can study birds and insects during the season that they can be observed outside. The boys are trying to patiently take turns looking at this new book, but it's very hard!! We already started it yesterday. (We got it on Wednesday)
Above and below are some views of the pages of the science text. I could not say enough good things about this curriculum. Filled with incredibly interesting, read-aloud text and quality photographs on every page, no one can tear themselves away to move on to another subject. We are so thankful for Apologia, who put out this marvelous, creation-based teaching tool. You may or may not know how DIFFICULT it is to get good science books that don't teach evolution. We are strongly committed to keeping our children away from the atheistic teachings of evolution.

We picked up the last two of a series of 5 nature readers from Christian Liberty Press.

Another quality Christian science tool in the form of a reader (easy reading to do on their own). There are charming drawings all throughout (below) to help maintain interest. They are very well done and get high ratings with my children.

Next is some fun math to do over the summer. We are going to take a break from their regular math curriculum and do some fun review in these books.

Miquon offers fun "lab sheets" that are creative and different. I have used these to occasionally give the kids a break from the norm and a fun way to review the concepts that they've learned all year.

Peter picked three biographical books that happened to be in stock. These and the Streams of Civilization history book were the things that we got that we hadn't planned on, but happened to find. Two of the below books are put out by the same publisher as the nature readers, Christian Liberty Press. We have become fond of their books. They have a standard format of child-friendly, interesting text that is well inter-mixed with quality illustrations. The Ocean of Truth is a biography of Sir Isaac Newton. The other biography is of John Bunyan, author of Pilgrim's Progress. The third isn't exactly a biography but a bit of a compilation of many small biographies of inventions. Sounds funny, but when I flipped through it, I was instantly captivated. It looks SO interesting! The boys are going to eat it up. They will love to hear just how the Flintlock Rifle was made and be so interested to know exactly how the steam engine was first invented and how it works. A good find.

These are some illustrations of a portion of The Story of Inventions explaining how steel is made. Most pages have illustrations like this. It makes for very clear and interesting reading.

It always feels good to bring home more good things to study together.