What on Earth Can I Do? Junior Notebooking Journal
What on Earth Can I Do? Coloring Book
Apologia books are written so you do not need a teacher's guide. The textbook is like a conversation with the kids. You truly can just open up and start reading. Every once in a while, there are additional activities that require some prep work or supplies, but mostly you can just sit on the couch and read with your kids.
We took turns reading because I'm trying to get both T and P to be more confident oral readers. This isn't easy reading, but isn't so hard it's frustrating for P. Each lesson has part of an exciting fiction story in it, as well as lots of history mixed into the lessons. It was so cool to see the kids recognize all the history figures and places from their time in CC. Once it mentioned the Boer Wars and the both said, "in Africa" before I could keep reading. Those in CC know why...but it's part of our timeline. There are lessons about Hitler, Churchill, and Beethoven mixed in...all people they just learned about. One new one was Charlie Chaplin, who they enjoyed learning about, and we looked up youtube videos on him during lunch that day. lol. It was neat to see how all these people are part of God's story and had responsibilities to be good stewards of their lives too. Some chose to follow God and some didn't, but they are all part of His story.
Each day, we spent about 30 minutes reading aloud (and the kids would color when they weren't the ones reading) and then would move to the corresponding pages in the Notebooking Journals. The normal and Junior notebooks were similar and some pages were exactly the same, but they were on their own levels. There are samples of the journals on their site that you can download to decide which one is right for your kiddos. The set is recommended for grades 1-6 and I'd guess the Junior journal would be for grades 1-3 and the normal one for 3-6 (there is some overlap so look at those samples and use your own judgement). I liked that they were similar enough that you could use them together - they were doing basically the same thing, just maybe P didn't have as many questions.
They really enjoyed the little mini books in each lesson. These are in the back of the journals and you cut them out and fill them in, then glue them into the journal on the correct page. It was a place to reflect and no right or wrong answers. For those that get frustrated having to be "right" (like in the crossword puzzles and such), this is a fun activity. For those that want to just fill in the blanks, this could be annoying - haha. T and P are both more on the creative, free thinking side and both liked these a lot. There is also a page in each lesson to keep track of prayer requests and praises. This is good for the kids to keep track of to look back on later and see how God answered their prayers. I also like that the journals mix in vocabulary and Bible memory work. The "think about it" questions really do require some thought and not just multiple choice questions, so there is some writing involved here too. With so much history in it too, you could even count this as history for the elementary kiddos. I love when subjects overlap. This is truly helping the kids get a Biblical Worldview, like it says. Touching on all these subjects with Bible - love it!
We are really enjoying this book. We finished the first two lessons and then jumped to the 5th, just because I wanted to get into it before we started summer. It is titled, "Where does your time go?" Yikes! It's easy to get caught up in the busyness of life and the day be done before you have done anything productive. This is a convicting lesson for ME and I hope we can make some positive changes in our family's time schedule after we finish this lesson.
$24 for the Junior Notebooking Journal
$8 for the Coloring Book
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