Our girls LOVE learning about all types of animals. We recently had the chance to review Nature's Beautiful Order from Memoria Press. What an eye opening nature curriculum!
The Nature's Beautiful Order takes a look at the branch of biological science that looks at plants and animals and the worlds they live in. It is meant to encourage a love of "nature's beautiful order". Nature's Beautiful Order makes the lives and bodies of animal life more understandable, instead of harder to understand. If you have a child who loves animals, Nature's Beautiful Order helps to encourage a love of biology with them.
Through 18 lessons, Nature's Beautiful Order introduces your student to the topics on what an animal is, ocean animals such as lobsters and sea urchins, bees, Canadian geese, groundhogs, even farm animals and humans. The writers Christopher O. Blum and John A. Cuddeback included the works of some of the greatest biologists of all time, including John James Audubon and Jean-Henri Fabre.
We received the Nature's Beautiful Order set, which includes the Student Textbook, Student Guide and Teacher's Key. You can purchase all 3 items in a set for $45.00.
Nature's Beautiful Order was written for Grades 6 - 8. This middle school science level book really delves deeper into the animal kingdom from invertebrates. In fact when we began reading it, I was not actually expecting the material to be as deep as it was. I was expecting an animal fact book. This set is extremely easy to use. I spaced out a chapter per week as a read-aloud with the girls.
We would read so much of the chapter together out loud, and then I matched up documentary videos on the animal and or it's life cycle for us to watch. In some cases, we even filled out a chart to go along with it.
Caty is much younger than the suggested age range, and she enjoyed sitting in on the read-alouds and videos, but was way too young for the Student Guide. Lydia and I used the Student Guide to reinforce what she was learning about in the reading. The questions in the student guide are more than just asking for facts from the reading, but also provide thought provoking questions asking students to look into their own opinions of material read.
The pattern of the questions in the student guide follow through how the information is laid out in the chapters, making the material easy to research for answers when necessary. Lydia could do this work independently in most cases. I sometimes had to do help her refer back to the book or draw out an answer on a question meant to make her think.
There is a lot of important information provided in Nature's Beautiful Order. The recommended age is right own track. Lydia is just slightly below the recommended grade level, and I could tell a few times where there was too much information/facts for her attention span. I had to follow a more simplified plan at times.
Nature's Beautiful Order is a definitely classical approach to a middle school biology program. I was not disappointed. Just like other Memoria Press science materials, I would definitely recommend Nature's Beautiful Order for families. The price is also very budget friendly. In fact, we really like several of the Memoria Press products. Currently we are also using Memoria Press The Book of Tress (a study of botany), and I'm really enjoying the explanations and diagrams. Memorial Press definitely provides homeschool families with great science programs that allow them to fully explore the wonders of the world, at an affordable price!
Several members of the Homeschool Review Crew were given the opportunity to review various products from Memoria Press. Take some time to see all that Memoria Press has to offer by visiting the link below.
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