Review of Apologia's Anatomy & Physiology
In school I never learned much about human anatomy. Perhaps it was slightly mentioned but it just never sunk in. So I was super excited to get to review Apologia’s “Exploring Creation with Human Anatomy and Physiology”. Apologia is a company that produces Christian learning materials with a huge emphasis on Science though they also have a language arts program. I loved how they bring God’s word into everything!
First of all, lets discuss the format. This set comes with a “textbook“which actually reads like a really interesting story, a notebook journal with all kinds of awesome things inside (there is a Junior notebook for younger students or the regular one for older ages), and an optional mp3 disc which has the book on audio for you!
The textbook is hardback and full color! Honestly, its an awesome read. I learned so much from this and the language used makes it really easy to retain the knowledge. For example on the study of cells the different parts are likened to parts of a city (example, Golgi~grocery store, mitochondria~power plant). This made so much sense to both me and my 7 year old son. We actually made a salt-dough cell with all the different parts. The book covers everything from history of anatomy, cells, first microscopes, skeletal system, muscular system, digestive & renal system, health & nutrition, respiratory system, blood, cardiovascular system, nervous & endocrine system, senses, integumentary system, lymphatic & immune system and ends with your growth & development. Its divided in 14 lessons that could take about 28 weeks at 2 days a week. Of course you can tweak it as needed, which is exactly what we did. Since I’m doing this with a 7 year old we went much slower than an older child could go. My plan is to continue this with him through the summer and then in about 2 years redo it with the older anatomy journal while I go through the Junior journal with my next son.
(here’s my son’s salt-dough cell)
Speaking of Notebooking Journals, these are super neat! In the front there is a suggested set of lesson plans, saving you time. They have all kinds of projects, mini-books and experiments to carry out. Speaking of experiments you can purchase an optional experiment kit and have all the ingredients for the experiments carried out in the course. We used the Junior Anatomy Notebooking Journal. It has copywork of Bible verses and coloring pages with verses that go along with each part you are studying. It also has places to record what you’ve learned after each section so you better retain the facts. The regular Anatomy Notebooking Journal is a more advanced journal for older children. It has many of the same features but more indepth questions and projects. It also has creative writing assignments. These are really fun and definitely help reinforce learning! I would have loved these as a child!
We also got to review the optional mp3 audio-book. This would be super helpful to busy moms and dads, because you could listen on the go. Its read by author Jeannie Fulbright and she does a good job! Her voice is easy to listen to and she speaks naturally as if she were simply telling you a story not reading out of a textbook! This would be great for the whole family to listen to on trips in the car as she is very interesting!
a few of our notebooking pages
Over all, I was extremely impressed with Apologia! I had heard great things about them and they definitely exceeded my expectations! I will be using them in the future for many more science courses! I hope you’ll check them out, I don’t believe you will be disappointed! (they also have downloadable sample lessons!)
Don’t forget to check out the other great reviews below!