Apologia, Who Is My Neighbor--TOS Review

 

For this review we were able to preview Who Is My Neighbor in the What We Believe Series by Apologia. This series was made to help teach our children about the essential beliefs of the Christian faith.  This book focuses on helping children learn what it means to be “salt and light” in the world. The lessons encourage children to build a servant attitude based on these biblical truths:

*God created me to be a blessing to the world
*God chooses to work through me
*I can make a difference at home, in my community, and at church
*The church is God’s family
*The church is one body with many gifts
*I am an important member of Jesus’ body

 

 I was excited to get started on this review and teach our Christian worldview "on purpose." I found this series to be thorough and carefully laid out. Because the book series is aimed at children ages 6-14, I was able to use it with all our kiddos at the same time. We decided to follow the proposed lesson plan of three weeks per lesson, two days per week. I felt doing it this way helped the kids to "digest" what we were reading and talking about. On the first day we read two sections, read a short story (and discussed it) as well as talked about the questions in the "Think About It" section. Even though the older children are solid readers, I ended up reading these sections to all of the children.

The beginning readings talked about China, their customs and way of life. It was written in story form so the children were able to follow the events easily. Discussing the questions at the end were a way of capturing the essence and meaning of the story. 

On the second day (week 1) we continued on with studying words associated with what we were reading. One of my favorite sections of the chapter was the "Hide It In Your Heart" where the kids and I learned scripture. This is the day we brought in the notebook to reinforce what we learned.

 

 The notebooking journal  reinforces the information with questions, word searches, and other activities (to help kids further explore the topics in the book).  The three older kids (ages 13, 12 and 9) were able to work in the notebook and go over the things we talked about in the book. The two younger kiddos (ages 6 and 4) went to the coloring book (see below).

 

The coloring book had simple pictures that were associated with the lesson/stories we went through in the book. The little girls were able to work on coloring the pictures as we talked about things that happened in the stories and what it all meant. All of this was just in the first week! We continued on with the lesson plan each week and by doing it at that pace, I really felt the kids were able to grasp the information in it's entirety.

We look forward to continuing with this book and completing the lessons during our school year. We really did like it so much I'm thinking about looking into more from the What We Believe Series to continue through the entire school year.

To see what my fellow Crew Mates had to say about Apologia, Who Is My Neighbor series visit the Homeschool Crew Blog to read more.

**Disclosure: My review and opinion written in this post is entirely my own. This product was provided to me for free in exchange for my review as a member of the 2011-2012 The Old Schoolhouse Magazine Homeschool Crew.