As a homeschooling family we feel that teaching our children from a Christian Worldview is important. We primarily have been integrating this into our subjects ourselves UNTIL NOW. Recently we were given the opportunity to use and review What on Earth Can I Do? by Apologia Educational Ministries. What a great product to help us teach what Christian Worldview to our children while having fun and learning a lot of about God and the world around us.
What is Christian Worldview?
If you are one that has heard the phrase Christian Worldview but really haven’t wrapped your head about what that really means, one of the great things about this curriculum is that it has a wonderful explanation of Christian Worldview right in the beginning of the book. In fact, the book has all kinds of great introduction materials that I found fascinating to go through in the beginning (also necessary to go through before beginning this curriculum). Plus its an entire Biblical curriculum teaching you and your family about what it means to be a good steward of God’s word.
What It is and What We Received
The What We Believe series from Apologia is a Bible-based, student-directed curriculum to help your children learn scripture and learn to see the world God intended to it be seen. They learn to view the world with the Bible as their guide. The What We Believe series features interesting, hands-on activities to help understand and apply God’s word into our world teaching Biblical Worldview from an early age. What On Earth Can I Do? is Volume 4 and the newest in the What We Believe series. It helps the child recognize where they fit in the God’s world and what they can do to be a good steward of God’s world while developing a healthy, self-image today.
We received a complete set of Volume 4 What On Earth Can I Do? set. Like most of Apologia’s curriculum, the set included a hardback What On Earth Can We Do? hardback book, a What On Earth Can I Do? Notebooking Journal, a What On Earth Can I Do? Junior Notebooking Journal, and a What On Earth Can I Do? Coloring Book. Meant for grades 1-6, this is a full Bible-curriculum for your homeschool and makes a wonderful homeschool resource for teaching Bible and Biblical Worldview to you and your family. It can also be used a family devotional as it is a rich, engaging curriculum with lots of wonderful opportunities for family read-alouds.
How It Works
Coloring while listening to reading
At first, all the materials and chapter breakdowns seemed a little overwhelming to me, to be honest. The beginning of the What On Earth Can I Do? hardback book has, not only an explanation of Biblical Worldview, but also a very good “How to use this book” explanation including a lesson plan. This information was vital to getting started. Each lesson is long, but broken down into many bite-size parts. It is designed to allow the child to work at his or her own pace and the text is written to the student, not to the adult. There are 8 lessons in all, which does not seem like a lot but there are MANY parts to each lesson making it a complete study designed to take as long as your child takes going through it. Here’s how each chapter is broken down.
*The Big Idea – Each lesson has an introduction to the lesson. Additionally, it includes a little bit of review of what the lessons have been talking about up to this point. It’s the part that tells us about what we are going to focus on in the lesson.
*What You Will Do – This section states the learning objectives for each lesson. These are 3 or so points that the remaining part of the lesson will bring home. For instance, here is an example of the lesson objectives from lesson 1:
1) You will recognize that you are part of God’s story
2) You will understand that with God all things are possible
3) You will be encouraged to surrender every part of your life to Him.
*Short Story – Each lesson has a short story with young characters interacting in today’s world to help show worldview in action.
*Think About It – Questions that can be used to measure your child’s comprehension. You can use them as you see fit to go over the story and, not only see what your child remembers from the story, but dig deeper into the subject and discuss the story on a real-world basis, seeing how them understood situation and how they felt about such a dilemma or situation. I liked these questions a lot. It helped us start a wonderful conversation on these topics. The Notebooking Journal has a place to answer these questions; however, we used them as discussion.
Words to Know and Hide it in my Heart Notebooking
*Words You Need To Know – This section has vocabulary words used in the section. This was helpful to my daughter. There is a place to use and work with these vocabulary words in the Notebooking Journal. The Junior Notebooking Journal has a wonderful “fill in the blank” type of practice with the vocabulary words.
*Hide It In Your Heart- Each lesson provides two specific bible verses that can be used for memorization or for copy work. We choose to use them as copy work. There is a place for this in the notebooking journals as well.
*Integrated Learning – This section has interesting articles related to the main text. For instance, in lesson 1 there is a reference to Charlie Chaplin in the story. Following the story is an article about who he was.
Homemade Tapestry
*What Should I Do? – This section is designed to provide an understanding of how the lesson applies to your child’s own life.
*Prayer – Each lessons ends with a prayer.
*Parables of Jesus – The final part of each lesson is a story adapted from a teaching story told by Jesus. The stories are faithful to the parables of Jesus, but adapted to cultural changes to help children understand better. . We used this as a family read-aloud
*Going Deeper – Discussion questions to encourage your child to think about the parables and what they mean for us today. We discussed these as a family.
*Make a Note of It – Assignments that are to be completed in the What On Earth Can I Do? Notebooking Journal or What on Earth Can I Do? Junior Notebooking Journal. For example, a section might ask your child to write or draw about some of the events that took place in a story. You can read more about these wonderful journals below.
*House of Truth – Four of the 8 lessons end with a hands-on memory aid called the House of Truth. Meant to be a visual model constructed one step at a time, this House of Truth is built by the Bible. This is a very interesting concept and one that we enjoyed “building.”
Find Out More in Notebooking Journal
There are 2 Notebooking journals available to go with the What On Earth Can I Do? hardback book – the What On Earth Can I Do? Notebooking Journal, designed from grades 3rd through 6th grade, and the the What On Earth Can I Do? Junior Notebooking Journal, designed for 1st through 3rd grade. The Notebooking Journals have some fun crossword puzzles, find a words, and color pages as well as lapbooking and mini-book extras that make it fun and hands-on for your kids.
The end of the What On Earth Can I Do? Notebooking Journal has a great list of additional resources and activities that correspond with the lesson. It includes Things to Do, Books to Read, and even Movies to see. I thought this was a great list to help continue the learning. We liked referring to the list for family movie night so we could continue our discussions.
Some lessons contain activities that require advance planning and materials. A list of materials is provided with each activity. Nearly all the materials are household items or can be easily obtained.
What We Thought
Overall, we really liked this curriculum. Apologies Educational Ministries has, once again, developed a great homeschool resource that can be used individually by your children or as a family. Though we have not used the What We Believe series in the past, we are sure to use it again the future.
Coloring Book page
Though the Apologia What On Earth Can I Do? series is designed for grades 1-6, I thought some of the topics were a little much for children under 3rd or 4th grade. My daughter did fine with most of it, and, obviously if you are using as a family devotional or doing as a group you can tailor it to your students needs.
There is a LOT of reading in the chapters, so we went through the chapters VERY slowing and a lot of the Notebooking Journal extras required a lot of writing, which my 3rd grader did not enjoy. We actually ended up switching my 3rd grader to the Junior Notebooking Journal and that was helpful but then some was a little too easy. We pulled from both for her and used the coloring book for my Kindergarten son to use while we were reading aloud. However, he isn’t much of a coloring boy so he ended up building with Legos while we read, which worked fine. Most of the notebooking extras for him we did verbally as he doesn’t write much yet. But he seems to comprehend the stories. However, obviously my 3rd grader got more out of the curriculum that my Kindergarten son.
However, overall, I think its a great approach to teaching Biblical Worldview to children. One thing my daughter didn’t like it the length of the chapters. I think she would have preferred shorter chapters so we tried explaining that the sections were chapters and she just needed to complete a section. She did better with this as we went through it.
What it Costs
Here’s the cost breakdown for this amazing curriculum.
What on Earth Can I Do? (hardback book) - $39.00
What On Earth Can I Do? Notebooking Journal – $24.00
What on Earth Can I Do? Junior Notebooking Journal -$24.00
What on Earth Can I Do? Coloring Book – $8.00
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