Considering God's Creation New TOS Review

Considering God's Creation

Eagle's Wings
www.EaglesWingsEd.com

Teacher's Manual with audio CD  $29.95
Reproducible Workbook   $13.95

Designed for grades 2-7

Eagle's Wings also has math, phonics, Bible History, and state capital curricula

 Considering God's Creation is a natural science curriculum from a Biblical perspective.  It covers

• Creation
• The Universe stars, sun, and planets
• The Earth
• Rocks and Minerals
• Weather
• The Plant Kingdom
• The Animal Kingdom
• Animal Anatomy & Physiology
• Man

There are a total of 36 lessons in these units.

 Each lesson includes vocabulary, introduction, song/poem, activity, Bible Reading, Notebook activity, evolution stumper, review and digging deeper.  Many of these are very hands on and allow the student to explore and discover what they are studying.  The activities are fresh, exciting, and very engaging.  While there is a lot of coloring, cutting, and gluing the variety of projects is diverse.
 
The beginning of the teacher's book includes several pages describing the multi-level teaching process they have envisioned for the series as well as several helpful questions and answers and a general layout for a lesson. Each lesson is pretty much scripted for the teacher and contains just about all the information needed to present the lesson.  All the items needed for the lesson are listed at the beginning of the lesson, but are easy to find around the house.


The student notebook features all the notebook activities.  Each child needs their own book or you are given permission to make copies of the book for your own family. There are mini charts to assist with gathering facts about scientists, planets, clouds, and flowers.There are even charts to record information about animals seen at the zoo.  The zoo chart features thunbnail pictures of habitats, classifications, food, shelter, and special needs and a small world map to mark where the animal is from.  All the child needs to do is check the box by the appropriate picture. This would be great for beginning readers.

You may view several examples of several pages from the student book at Eagles Wing's web site.

How we used Considering God's Creation

My children had been asking to read about our bodies and had been talking about the life size versions we'd made when daughter was in 1st grade so when I received this book and saw it contained several sessions discussing the body I decided that was what we would focus on for our review. We also used some of the material from another review project along with this course.

There are 9 sessions covering the human body. We found we were able to complete each lesson, with the exception of the notebook activity in about 30 - 45 minutes. This included a few review questions from the body system we had studied the previous session.




One of the hands on activities is creating a paper model of the body showing the skeleton and major organs.  The children had a lot of fun putting this together.

Some of the organs are attached by a tab so that they can be lifted up to  look at organs underneath.

It is hard to tell in this pic, but son also added the veins and arteries to his body by drawing them in with red and blue pencils.

 

I did find that this project (as do several others in the book) had a fair amount of cutting. In the interest of time I cut out the pieces so the construction wouldn't be slowed down. Also my 7 year old doesn't cut as well as some of the small pieces required.

They also enjoyed putting together a cross section diagram of the digestive system and looking at Fingerprints.  We also tried the Fingerprint detective game, but I had to read the directions several times as I just wasn't understanding them.

The Science Detective or biography exercises are really appealing, but I had a difficult time finding information about the people who are recommended in the lessons.  My library had one of the resources that is recommended for this use, but it is a reference copy and not at a branch near us.  Maybe we can take a look at the book when we are in the area of the branch that has it.

There are other mini charts to fill in, which I found great as both of my children are reluctant writers; the less they have to do the better.

The vocabulary lists in the teachers book  also contains a note about the language of the origin and root word as well as the definition.  I really liked this feature as we are studying Latin and so many scientific/medical terms come from Latin and Greek.  My husband knows both of the languages so the children like to show off to him what they know about these word origins.

I would seriously contemplate purchasing some of the additional suggested resources.  From reading through the additional activities I can see where they would certainly add to the learning experience. I will be looking at the recommended list and see what may be useful as we continue using Considering God's Creation next year.

We did not use some of the Bible activities as they conflicted with our Lutheran faith.  However, we did use several during our studies and found them to be useful.

Read what other Crew Members had to say at the Crew Blog.







Disclaimer:  I received a free copy of the teacher's manual and student notebook for the purpose of this review.  I have not been compensated in any other manner.  All opinions expressed here are solely my own.