Botany 101

This year, for the first time ever, we decided to try purchasing a Science curriculum for our home school.  We have primarily done unit studies in the past, and while I have loved all of our Science units, I am running out of time for planning and preparing.  I assigned Nick the job of teaching Science for the last two years, but he really didn't have the time for the job either.  Consequently, we decided to try out buying a curriculum this year.  After doing a little bit of research, we settled on the Apologia Christian Science curriculum..  They divide their classes into the seven days of creation.  Since we have already done quite a bit with animals in our animal classification units, we decided to try out their Botany Class.  It had received some of the company's highest ratings, and since we started using it, my kids have absolutely loved it. 

Actually, I have really loved it to.  It is very God-centered, even requiring the kids to keep a confirmation journal and make an entry after each chapter discussing something they learned in the chapter that confirms to them that their is  Heavenly Being over all creation.  The things the kids write about aren't often deeply profound, but little things--like the similarities in reproduction between plants and people, and the flower targeting powers of bees--are powerful proofs in their own right.  There have also been things in the text that have made me ponder and dig deeper into my understanding of the creation--like the fact the authors of this text believe the days of creation were each 24 hours citing the fact that the plants wouldn't have survived until the pollinators came about if the periods were thousands of years.  Never thought about the creation on those terms before, or how you would reconcile something like that.  Perhaps plants couldn't procreate either in their paradisaical state, but then, they produced fruit??  Who knows. It's interesting stuff, and I have truly appreciated how much it brings God into our study of Science.  I've never been a huge science fan--mostly because I'm too busy being obsessed with history and literature--but I have realized throughout this course that God truly is in every detail of this world.

Anyway, enough home school musings.  On to pictures.  We don't seem to remember to take pictures very often any more, but here are a few we have taken of the kids studying Botany during the first half of our school year.  

These collages show: the kids dissecting flowers, the kids making accurate play dough models of flowers, and the kids with their light hut.  They had to sprout bean seeds for one science experiment.  For a separate experiment they built a light hut and planted some herbs.  The bean plant that sprouted the best got planted and put in the light hut too.  When the herbs are fully grown the kids will be using them to make glycerin soap.