Apologia: Exploring Creation With Biology - Home School Kit (old)

This course is designed to be the first high school science course that a home schooled student takes. Typically, it is recommended that your student takes it during the same year as Algebra I. The text is written in a conversational style, making it easy to read and understand. It contains student exercises (with detailed solutions), experiments designed to be done in the home, and tests (with detailed solutions). The course is taught wholly from a creationist viewpoint, with emphasis on the incredible design features apparent throughout God's creation. It was field-tested on 140 home schooled students in 22 different states, and the response was overwhelming. Parents who thought that their student hated science were pleased to find that this was their child's favorite course!

This kit includes two pieces. The first is a hardbound text, which contains all student material, on-your-own questions and solutions, laboratory exercises, and chapter study guides. A second book, softbound, is the Solutions and tests Manual, which contains answers to chapter study guides, tests, and test solutions.

A few things that we noticed about this curriculum and really appreciated are:

• Order of introducing topics. Most biology books that we've seen (even Christian ones) start out with cells and develop to more and more complex organisms. Although that's not necessarily a bad thing, it does seem to echo an evolutionary mindset. This does not follow that order.
  
• It's geared for home schooling families! The students who use it can be very self-directed.
  
• The experiments are broken down into three groups. One group uses only things commonly found around the house, and these are the only experiments required to complete the course. Microscope and dissection experiments are available but optional.
  
• Quality. Excellent—and both books are non-consumable!
  
• Cost. Though they seem expensive, these are actually very reasonable!
  
• The one "drawback" we can see is the low number of color photographs which make it more appealing to the eye—but that drawback is essentially taken away with one additional item (getting harder to find for this edition)—the Companion CD-ROM—which includes photographs and videos of experiments.