Apologia Anatomy Notebooking Journals

A label-it page from the Anatomy Noteboking Journal by Apologia

As you know, my children have been working through Apologia's Exploring Creation with Human Anatomy book this past year in our local co-op (See our Human Body Page for details.) One of the options available is a notebooking journal that goes along with the book. Since many families are starting to plan their curriculum for next year, I thought I'd share my opinion on this component.

 The journal comes in two formats: a junior version and the regular version. I purchased the junior version to see if it would work for my K-1 co-op class. The majority of my students were kindergarteners who were beginning writers and readers. 

Pros:

- wonderful coloring pages

- primary writing lines

- personal person project

- everything already printed out and bound

Cons:

- still too much writing for my young kindergarteners

- as a co-op group, I would not be utilizing many of the pages due to time

According to the Apologia website, this junior journal is perfect for:

• Younger students that have not yet mastered handwriting
• Older students that are delayed in handwriting mastery
• Older students with learning disabilities
• Students that are new to written narration

 I think the ideal age-range is 1st - 3rd for this book. If my students would have been a little older, I probably would have used this option. You can view samples of the junior anatomy notebook and get an idea of the types of pages that are included.

I also purchased the regular anatomy notebooking journal for my 9 year old daughter.

In fact, we had our whole older anatomy class (3rd- 6th) purchase the notebooking journals.

When the teachers and I looked through the journal we were impressed by the quality and the variety of pages that were included. We had considered piecing together notebooking pages like we did before Apologia came out with these journals, but once we saw the format, we knew it would be an ideal resource for the kids and for us.

Pros:
- no need to make copies so we saved on ink and time trying to find pages
- no loose pages; everything is bound which makes a wonderful keepsake for the year.
- narration pages
- copywork pages
- diagrams
- review pages
- mini-books (nice that it wasn't all journaling/narration)
- experiment procedure sheets
- personal person project

Cons:
- would have loved some older kid versions of the coloring pages too!

Personal Person Project

The coolest component is the personal person project. While learning about the body, students made their own model. Transparent overlays were used showing the different systems. I love that it was all included in the book. All the students had to do was cut out the overlays and glue them on.

I think having the journals in this class was a time-saver and helped the students learn and retain the information that was taught. I am thrilled with the quality of the journals. Of course you could teach this class without the journal, but I sure wouldn't! It is a very valuable teaching tool. Apologia has sample pages on their site for you to check out for yourself.


Check back tomorrow (Friday 4/13/2012) for a chance to win your own anatomy textbook plus notebook journal!