Apologia Educational Ministries is very well known in the homeschool community for their science and worldview curriculum. They also carry other types of curriculum and offer a variety of homeschool help and encouragement books for parents. We have used many, many products from Apologia in our homeschool. I was very excited when I heard that they were releasing a high school health curriculum and more excited when I was chosen to review the brand new Exploring Creation with Health and Nutrition by Dr. Laura Chase. We received the Health and Nutrition Basic Set to use and review.
Exploring Creation with Health and Nutrition is a high school level course. Very mature 8th graders may be able to take this course so the suggested age range is 8th-12 th grade. There are 3 components to the course: a hardcover textbook, spiral bound paperback student notebook, and a downloadable solutions manual. To complete this course your student will also need occasional access to the internet to do some research and in module 12 your student will need a cushioned floor, athletic shoes, and an exercise ball to complete some of the activities. This course can be completed over an entire school year by working 3 days a work or in one semester by working 5 days a week for about an hour each day. A suggested 3 day a week schedule is included in the front of the student notebook.
Topics covered in this course include:
Module 1: Who Am I and Why Does Health Matter?
Module 2: Physical Influence on Thoughts and Feelings
Module 3: Mental and Emotional Stability
Module 4: Interpersonal Harmony
Module 5: Treasuring Your Senses
Module 6: Processing Nourishment and Hydration
Module 7: Food Science I- Macronutrients
Module 8: Food Science II- Micronutrients
Module 9: Lets Look at What You Eat
Module 10: Delivering the Oxygen
Module 11: Let's Move
Module 12: You're Stronger than You Look
Module 13: A War With Infection
Module 14: Peace in Difficult Times
Module 15: The Gift of Reproduction
The textbook is a 440 page hardcover book. The text is written to the student. It has all of the student readings, full color photos, illustrations, and drawings, and On Your Own questions. At the end of each chapter you will find the solutions to the On Your Own Questions.
The student notebook is 365 pages and spiral bound. In this book you will find an introduction explaining what to expect in the course and a suggested schedule. For each module there are blank pages for taking notes, On Your Own questions with spaces for filling in the answers, several projects with spaces to complete them, study guide review questions and spaces to answer. In the back of the notebook you will find the tests for the modules except for 9, 12, and 14 that do not have tests they have evaluation guides instead.
The downloadable solutions guide is found on the book extras site. It is a 52 page downloadable PDF. It contains the answers to all of the modules review questions. There is also an 8 page download that gives all of the solutions to the tests. The book extras site also has links to other websites if your student wants to do more research on a particular topic.
The cost of the Basic Health and Nutrition Set is $85. Each student will need their own notebook so if you have more then one student taking the course you can purchase additional notebooks for $39.
I have been using Exploring Creation With Health and Nutrition with my 14 year old son who has just started 9th grade. He is using this as a full year course and has been working on it three days per week. For a product review we usually only have the product around 5 weeks which put us into the 3rd module. To get a more complete idea of the course, I have read several of the other chapters on my own and looked over the projects in the student notebook.
I have been very impressed with every single product I have used from Apologia Educational Ministries so I had high expectations for this course. I was not disappointed! This is a thorough course that covers many aspects of health and well being including physical, emotional, spiritual, social, and mental. The text is written to the student, topics are very well explained and illustrated by pictures, charts, and graphics. No advanced preparation is needed and students can complete the work with no teacher involvement though the teacher should look over the students work and grade it. Apologia is a Christian company and I love that the fact that we are designed by God is talked about throughout the text along with Scripture verses. I think that subjects that may be considered "touchy" such as vaccinations and circumcision are handled very well in the text with the topic being presented and the author not taking a particular "side." The module called The Gift of Reproduction is very well done in my opinion. Information is presented in a very factual, tactful way.
The student notebook is an important part of the course. It allows students to keep all of their notes, answers to the On Your Own Questions and Study Guide answers all in the same place. Plus all of the projects are included in the notebook. There is a great variety of projects to make the lessons become more personal to the student and shows them how the information relates to real life. Some of the projects include: doing research about a particular topic and writing paragraphs about what they learned, thinking about certain circumstances in their lives and writing about it, filling in charts, keeping a food diary, searching for and recording different household items, recording exercise, sleep, and dental hygiene, and more.
This is definitely a high school level course and that is the age Apologia recommends it for. One of the reasons is because of the mature content that is in the book. But another is because the text is written towards high school age students and I believe that younger students would struggle with the reading and the assignments.
Even though parents do not have to be involved in teaching this course, I have talked with Alex each day about what he has learned. We have had some great discussions over the last few weeks. We have talked about Nature verses Nurture and how God created us all to be different. We've talked about his strengths, weaknesses, and natural preferences. We used the Decision Making Practice project to make a decision of whether or not to take goats to the district fair (he decided yes.)
Exploring Creation With Health and Nutrition is an outstanding health course for high school students! If I had one recommendation I would love to see an audio CD offered as well. I think it
would be very helpful for dyslexic students or those that are auditory learners.
To celebrate the release of Exploring Creation With Health and Nutrition by Dr. Laura Chase, Apologia Educational Ministries has a free activity book for you to download called Whole-Health God's Design For Your Body Mind and Soul. By downloading the e-book you will also receive the FAQ's and a chapter sample of Exploring Creation With Health and Nutrition.
To see what my Crew Mates had to say, stop by the Crew Blog!
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