Are your kids fascinated by all of God’s incredible creatures that liver underwater? If so, Exploring Creation with Zoology 2: Swimming Creatures of the Fifth Day is a great book to check out.
What is it?
Exploring Creation with Zoology 2 is a science curriculum geared towards kids in K-6th. It is the 2nd book in Apologia’s Zoology series, but you can easily use it before book 1 (Land Animals). The curriculum offers a hardback student text book, a student notebook (junior or regular based on age), and an audiobook CD. The textbook is composed of 13 chapters, and each chapter can very easily be completed in a week. Every chapter offers a hands-on experiment plus a suggested clay animal to make for an ocean box craft. It is written from a Christian and young earth perspective.
How we used it:
We used the textbook, but we did not use the notebooks. We felt like the notebooks were a bit vague as to what you were supposed to write down. We like something more concrete. We instead found worksheets on Teachers Pay Teachers that have worked great. We also did not buy the audiobook. My kids prefer that I read books to them so that we can stop and discuss what we are learning as we go. The student notebooks have a suggested schedule which recommend doing science twice a week. We tried that, but we felt like skipping days caused us to lose continuity. We decided instead to do science M-Thur every other week. We alternated it with history on the alternate weeks, which worked great for us. I typically read the textbook to my kids on Monday and Tuesday. On Wednesdays we would do the experiment and the worksheets. (We bought a kit that contained the supplies for the experiments which made my life so much easier.) On Thursdays my kids made their clay animals for their ocean boxes. They always loved Thursdays!
What We loved:
- High Quality Book
The book is beautiful. It is a very well put together hardback book, and the stories are nicely illustrated.
- Well written
The book is written in a conversational style and is fun to read. While parents will enjoy reading it out loud to younger students, older students should have no trouble reading it themselves.
- Christian Perspective
We loved this books emphasis on pointing kids to God through science. The author was very intentional in pointing out ways that creation and science point to God as the creator.
- Conversation Starter
One of my favorite aspects of this curriculum is how many great conversations it started. We often found ourselves stopping to discuss what we had just read and researching questions that came up. Often something we would see would make us curious, so we would head to Youtube to learn more.
Our Conclusion:
I think all of us enjoyed this curriculum. My animal loving daughter probably loved it more than my son, but we all learned quite a bit. While it was fun and interesting, I don’t know that we learned anything really important that we need to know long term. My kids don’t plan on going into the field of science, so most of this knowledge was just for fun. If you have a child interested in marine biology, this book would be a great fit. If you have a child that isn’t going into a science field and isn’t interested in marine life, you could skip this book and be just fine. Overall, it’s a fun book that really brought out curiosity and a desire to learn more in my kids, and I’d say it’s a fun way to spend a year of elementary science.