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BJU Press Science series

Publisher: BJU Press
Review last updated: July 2011

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BJU Press' Science

If you want a traditional type textbook series for science in the elementary grades, BJU Press’s series is one of the better choices. Recognizing that children have different learning styles, they have incorporated activities to fit different styles.

Both textbooks and activity manuals are attractively printed in full color with plenty of illustrations. BJU Press sells the same editions to both schools and home educators, so you will sometimes have to adapt activities that expect that you have a class group.

Scientific thinking is heavily stressed with the scientific method introduced at first grade level. Scriptural principles are incorporated with science applications in the curriculum.

Activities are at the heart of many lessons rather than being presented as optional--especially at the early grade levels. Most activities are outlined in the Teacher’s Editions but data recording and some activities are done from the Activity Manual. That means these courses need to be taught—you cannot just hand your child the text to use on his or her own.

Each grade level has a homeschool kit that includes the student text, teacher edition, an activity manual, answer key for the activity manual, tests, and an answer key for the tests. You will need all components unless you choose not to test your children. You will still need to gather resources for experiments and activities.

The teacher editions are well organized and easy to use. All except the sixth grade course include a CD-ROM Teacher’s Tookit in the back of the teacher edition that will run on either Windows of Mac systems. Toolkits include reproducibles, rubrics, extensive science fair information, and similar resources, most of which are optional.

Each chapter has a number of lessons and concludes with a review lesson to reinforce concepts taught throughout that chapter. Chapters are also color coded so you can easily tell which lessons are included within a chapter in both the text and activity manual.

These courses do require lesson preparation and presentation time, but if you take time to follow lesson plans from the manuals, you and your children should find the courses very engaging.

While courses are written for particular grade levels, you can use one level for children over a two- or three-year span of grade levels with a little adaptation to suit their abilities. (It will be most challenging to do this for first and second graders who are still developing reading and writing skills.) Courses are challenging enough, that when you stretch to cover a range of grade levels, you should probably choose a level below that of your oldest student.

Grade 1 kit - $144

The text for first grade covers the following topics on an introductory level: senses, weather, seasons, health and safety, wild and tame animals, matter, sound, plants, “pushes and pulls”, and the sun, moon, and stars. The Teacher’s Toolkit CD-ROM includes sound files that are used with some lessons.

Grade 2 kit - $144

Topics taught in second grade include the nature of science and basic science methodology, living things, plants, fossils, earth, natural resources, how the earth moves, light, matter and how it changes, movement, and the human body.

Grade 3 kit - $143.50

Topics at this level include cold-blooded and warm-blooded animals, plants, ecosystems, matter, sound, energy in motion, soil, rocks, minerals, weather, the solar system, and the human body.

Grade 4 kit - $144

At this level, students study living things, insects, spiders, forces and machines, electricity and magnetism, light, the moon, water and oceans, weathering and erosion, the earth’s resources, digestion, and bones and muscle.

Grade 5 kit - $144

Topics studied in fifth grade are minerals and rocks, fossils and dinosaurs, matter, energy and heat, weather, biomes, ecosystems, sound, light, the respiratory and circulatory systems.

Grade 6 kit - $144

Sixth graders study earthquakes and volcanoes, weather and erosion, natural resources, cells and classification, animal classification, plant classification, atoms and molecules, electricity and magnetism, motion and machines, the stars, the solar system, plant and animal reproduction, heredity and genetics, and the nervous and immune systems.

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        • Learning Styles: all
          Suitable for:  group or independent study
          Audience:           grades 2-6
          Need for parent/teacher instruction:            moderate
          Prep time needed:           moderate
          Need for Teacher's Manual: essential
          Religious perspective:           Christian/Protestant

        Publisher's Info

        • Bob Jones University Press

          Greenville, SC 29614
          (800) 845-5731
          www.bjup.com