Review: Intro to Archaeology and Geology Curriculum Pack

I discovered Master Books a few years ago and was so impressed with their curriculum.  Their books had everything I was looking for: creation based, good information, and awesome photos and graphics.  We purchased several books for our homeschool and have enjoyed looking through them and using them as references for topics we have been studying.  One thing I had wished for though was lesson plans and worksheets to be able to use these wonderful books as a curriculum.  I was excited to see that Master Books now has both subject sets and full year curriculum for many different grade levels that include Parent Lesson Planners.  I was delighted to have an opportunity to review part of their 8th Grade Curriculum Set, Intro to Archaeology and Geology Curriculum Pack.


The Intro to Archaeology and Geology Curriculum Pack includes:

The Archaeology Book

The Archaeology Book is a 96 page hardcover book by David Down.  This illustrated book has 11 chapters:

1. What Archaeology is All About
2. Land of Egypt
3. The Hittites
4. Ur of the Chaldees
5. Assyria
6. Babylon: City of Gold
7. Persia
8. Petra
9. The Phoenicians
10. The Dead Sea Scrolls
11. Israel

There are also instructions on how to use the book and a glossary in the back.  The book also contains a pull out poster of Petra.

The Geology Book

The Geology Book is an 80 page hardcover book by Dr. John D. Morris.  This illustrated book has 8 chapters:

1. Planet Earth
2. The Ground We Stand Upon
3. The Earth's Surface
4. Geological Processes and Rates
5. Ways to Date the Entire Earth
6. Great Geological Events of the Past
7. Questions People Ask
8. The Future Earth

The book also contains a Bibliography, Glossary, and Index and also a fold out poster entitled When the Earth Moves.

Intro to Archaeology and Geology Parent Lesson Planner

This is a softcover 114 page paper back book.  The book has perforated 3 hole punch pages for easy removal.  Inside you will find a weekly lesson schedule, student worksheets, quizzes and tests, and answer keys.  The weekly schedule lists 2-3 lessons per week with a combination of reading, worksheets, and activities for each of the 36 weeks. Each lesson lasts approximately 30-45 minutes.  There is a worksheet for each chapter and quizzes covering 2-3 chapters.

You can purchase the Intro to Archaeology and Geology Curriculum Pack for $34.02.

I already mentioned how much I love boos from Master Books.  It can be very hard to find creation based science books especially in the area of earth science.  Everything from Master Books is creation based. That is not to say that evolutionary views are not discussed.  The Geology Book looks at uniformity and catastrophe and and compares the two views of earth's history to see which one makes more sense.  The Archaeology Book discusses the different time periods and secular dates. But these books give glory to God as our creator and view the Bible as an accurate historical document. The text is easy to read and understand and the books are full of charts, illustrations, diagrams, and photographs.

In this set, Archaeology is studied the first semester and geology the 2nd semester.  Lessons in the suggested daily schedule are numbered rather than assigned to days of the week.  In my opinion this makes planning easier if you happen to need to miss a day or if you (like me) or have school 4 days per week.  It is also only a suggested way to break up the lessons, homeschooling gives you the freedom to make changes depending on what works best for your schedule.

Each lesson has a list of words to define, questions to answer, and activities.  I was pleased to see a variety of activities included rather than just basic questions and answers.  Some of the activities were "hands on" type activities such as making fossils, starting a rock collection, making bricks, etc.. while others are more research type activities such as making a chart of your ancestry, researching the ancient Hittite civilization, researching the Bible account of the flood and more.

Answers to the questions , tests, and quizzes are included in the PLP.  Some may not think it is a good idea to have the questions and answers all in the same book.  But, the pages are perforated for easy removal and can be slipped into a 3 ring binder easily for your student.  Also Master Books allows copying within families so you can make copies if you have more than one child in or around the 7-9th grade age range that you wish to use it with.

The Parent Lesson Planner states that this one year course is worth half a credit for 7-9th graders.  In my opinion it would be a great science course for 7 or 8th graders or an elective course for 9th graders. If additional research and lab work was added in for a 9th grader, it could be turned into a full credit course depending on the amount of time spent working in the course.

I am so glad that Master Books took an already amazing product and made it even better.  I can't wait to see some of the subject sets they have available for 4th-12 th grade in the areas of History, Math, Grammar and Literature, Science and electives.  Full grade sets are also available for grades Pre-K, and 4-12th grade.

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of this curriculum pack for the purpose of writing a fair and honest review.  I received no other compensation and all opinions are my own.  I am disclosing this in accordance to FTC regulations.