Teaching Creation: Using Science, History, & course – the Bible!

“Let's start at the very beginning! A very good place to start.”

Are you singing that with me?  Any Sound of Music fans out there?

What better way to study science, history, and Bible all at once than through Creation!

There are so many great ways to learn about creation.  We personally do things differently each time we study it.  Our first year of homeschooling I used a creation-based science book that had experiments all based on the different days of creation.  We also study creation each time we start a new cycle of history.  We study God's world in almost every subject — and of course, each time we look at the beautiful creation all around us each day.

In our homeschool, we love studying creation using both science and history as our foundation.  Here are a few ways we do things and the books we use to do so.

 Teaching Creation Using History:

The best way to learn history is to start at the very beginning — Creation!  Last year my five-year-old made a creation book.  We were using My Father's World's Kindergarten curriculum and had so much fun making our little creation keepsake.  We changed things up a bit (or should I use my favorite term “tweak”?).  Gotta love Pinterest when it comes to finding creative ways to teach just about anything. Here is what our fun little “creation book” consisted of:

My older kids were learning creation at the same time as part of their history lessons.  They put together a much simpler (less artsy) creation page. Of course, we all did the Bible reading along with it.

Almost any Bible-based curriculum is going to have some fun way to start off your year of ancient history with creation.  Sonlight, My Father's World, Tapestry of Grace, & more! There are so many curriculums out there that teach creation.

Fun Tip:
We created a history timeline for our school room.  There are books that have everything nice and neatly organized for you all within a notebook or book if you don't have the wall space.  Your timeline can be nothing more than poster paper that you keep adding to each year.  I created mine using three large cork boards and placed them on top of book shelves in my school room.  Timelines are fun to create.  Just start with creation, add key events, your family's birthdays, and “??” at the end with a label for Christ's return.
(Below: History Through the Ages & Rose Book of Bible & Christian History Time Lines)

Teaching Creation Using Science:

Using science as a base for teaching creation is so much fun! You can literally spend the entire school year studying all the various “days” of creation.  There's astronomy, botany, geography, anthropology, geology, biology, anatomy, and more! God is not only the Creator of life, He is the Creator of science!

Our first year of homeschooling my girlfriend and I teamed up to teach art and science.  She taught art and I taught science.  We figured we had both just pulled our kids out of public school mid-October, so why not work together to figure out what we had just gotten ourselves into.

Since our kids were young, I used a great creation science book called Big Book of God's Amazing Creation.  They have activities that follow the order of creation for ages 3-12.  It was so much fun!

This book was a perfect fit for us, especially for our first year.  The experiments were easy and well laid out.  They have a wonderful devotion style explanation to read after the experiment of how creation points back to God. I highly recommend using this book as either your main science book or as a supplement for some fun experiments.

Apologia

Many people use Apologia science books and spend an entire year studying just one branch of science — often in the order of creation.  I love their science books and journals.  There are a lot of fun activities in each book.  There is a TON of information for kids to learn in each one.  So this would be one curriculum that I would advise people to pick and choose which experiments you want to do and what information is most important for your kids to learn.  An example of this was in their Astronomy book, I didn't have my kids focus on learning all the names of the moons of Jupiter.  It was just too much.

Tips for Apologia: Their journals are great, but can be a lot of busy work.  I like taking it apart and just using the pages that I feel are most helpful and fun.  You can also add pictures of your experiments on the pages you choose not to use.  There are kits available for the experiments.  I got mine through Rainbow Resources.  Personally, the kits are a must for me to actually get the experiments done since they come with most of the materials you'll need right there in the box. Yay!

Answers in Genesis

If you are looking for creation-based curriculum for any subject, look no further than Answers in Genesis! I love AiG! They have amazing curriculum, books, DVDs, and more. We have used their material every year since we started homeschooling (& before).  In fact, Ken Ham is one of the big reasons we started homeschooling.  He spoke at our church and inspired us.  Like he said in his message, we agreed that we wanted God incorporated in every subject we taught.

God's Design for Life is an amazing science curriculum that is perfect for K-8th students.  Each books' chapters are organized with three sections: beginner, intermediate, and advanced. Their material is so easy to teach and for kids to understand.  I have found that it is much simpler to teach using AiG's science books than the Apologia books.  However, I do love them both.

Their Wonders of Creation series is incredible. The information and graphics are top notch. I've found that although the content is probably more for upper elementary students, my little ones LOVE looking through the pictures.  Looking at pictures sparks interest and imagination which is truly one of my goals as a homeschool mom.
(Below: Geology, Archeology, Astronomy, Ecology, Fossils, Cave, Weather, & our favorite — Oceans)

Teaching Creation Using the Bible:

Well, there is really no end to the Bible-based creation lessons out there. There are ABC books that go through creation, art books that go through creation — Oh wait, there is this great book I've heard of that teaches creation — THE BIBLE!  I do want to point out that AiG has a really great A is for Adam book & What Really Happened to the Dinosaurs? book that we really enjoy.  But nothing teaches creation better than the BIBLE!

I know there are a bunch of different Bibles out there to pick from for kids, but here are my favorite kids' Bibles.  We've even worn some of them out so much that we have had to replace them.  Our favorite is the Child's Story Bible by Catherine Vos.  This book is the perfect children's book for kids to understand the Bible. It goes through the whole Bible and explains things that are happening along the way.  We use it as a stepping stone for our kids to read from before we have them reading their “real” Bibles on their own.
(Below: Baby's First Bible, Tiny Bear Bible, First Step Bible, Beginner's Bible, Jesus Storybook Bible, Rhyme Bible, Child's Story Bible, & the Holy Bible — we use NLT version for easier reading for our kids).

There you have it! That's how we teach Creation! We use all kinds of various techniques and books.  I hope you have fun exploring God's creation with your kids!  Let me know if you come up with any fun new things that we should try out.

Frugal Friends Tip:

I love finding the best prices on my curriculum and books!  I'm sure we can all agree to that.  Aside from checking the price from the actual curriculum sellers, I also cross check prices at these three online stores: Amazon, Christian Books Distributors, & Rainbow Resources. There is usually free shipping with one of them and often sales.  (I love sales!)

 

Here's a Great “Pin”-able Image for You:

This post is linked on the following sites: My Joyfilled Life: Days of Creation Lunch, Titus 2days by Time Warp Wife, Cornerstone Confessions, Hip Homeschool Moms, & Teach What is Good.

 

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