BJU Press Distance Learning Earth Science Review

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Homeschooling a teen can seem overwhelming. You probably don’t remember much of what you learned in middle school and high school and you may be worried that you won’t be able to answer your teen’s questions. Science can be even more intimidating with scientific terms to learn and science experiments to perform. What’s a homeschool mom to do?

Well, BJU Press has helped homeschool families out tremendously by offering Distance Learning courses for homeschool students. This year, my 8th grader was able to take the Earth Science course from BJU Press and I’m excited to share our experience using it with you.

What is the Earth Science Course?

First, let’s take a look at what the BJU Press Distance Learning Earth Science course is all about.

BJU Distance Learning has two options for homeschool families. One is the online option which gives you access to the videos and parent resources online from July 1 of one year to December 31 of the following year. That gives you 18 months to complete the course.

The second option is using DVDs. With the DVD option, DVDs and parent resources are mailed to you. DVDs are leased for 13 months and can easily be returned in the original box they arrived in that also includes a return label.

Also included in the course is the Earth Science textbook, Lab Manual and student handouts that are mailed to the student and are yours to keep. I also purchased an Earth Science lab kit from Logos to go along with this course. I’ll share more about the Logos lab kit in just a bit.

What Did We Think?

All BJU Press materials start with a Biblical worldview and encourage critical thinking skills which are two things I look for in homeschool curriculum.

This course was academically rigorous while still being easy to use. My daughter was able to read the assignments fairly easily. The colorful pictures and diagrams helped hold her attention while clarifying difficult concepts.

My daughter’s favorite part of the Distance Learning Earth Science course was the video instruction. Mrs. Gillenwater is my daughter’s favorite BJU Press Distance Learning teacher. She does a great job of bringing science to life and keeping the student engaged. The videos are informative, and helped answer questions my daughter had after reading the text.

The lab manual was easy to follow with clear instructions and provided just the right amount of hands on activities to keep my daughter engaged and to reinforce what she was learning.

I loved that the online option allowed my daughter to take all her quizzes and tests online. These were automatically graded and stored for me to access later. The only grading I had to do was to check essay questions that were at the end of many of the tests.

Science is not my daughter’s favorite subject and studying about rocks didn’t sound appealing to her, yet she really enjoyed this course. She says that Mrs. Gillenwater’s instruction in the video lessons along with the hands-on learning from the lab activities brought a boring subject to life for her.

Logos Lab Kit

One of the things that made this course a success for us was having all the materials available to use for each of the lab activities. It would have taken me hours to gather up everything we needed and I probably would not have had them available when they were need.

Thelogos lab kit was a life-saver for me. My daughter had everything she needed to complete each of the lab activities. You can watch me unbox our Logos Earth Science kit in the video below.

I highly recommend purchasing the Logos lab kit so that you can actually do the labs and not get slowed down in the course because you have to wait several days (or weeks) to gather lab supplies.

Another benefit of the Logos lab kit is that it is tailored to homeschoolers. The original instructions for the lab activities are meant for a classroom setting. Logos lab kits alter the lab instructions so that the labs are easier and safer to complete at home. The supplies that are included in the kit match up with the altered instructions.

Find out more about the Logos Earth Science lab kit and how they have made things easier for homeschool families in the video below.