One of the challenges of homeschooling my gifted son is keeping him engaged and challenged. He bores easily as he consumes information as rapidly and easily as my 5 year old does an ice cream cone. My son loves science, but finding science texts that are written from a Christian worldview isn’t always easy. He wanted to explore the option of doing homeschool health and nutrition this year, so I was absolutely delighted to get my hands on the Apologia Exploring Creation with Health and Nutrition set.
Homeschool Health and Nutrition
Teaching Homeschool Health and Nutrition
Although he is only 10, and in 6th grade, my son has already read the entire Apologia Young Explorers series for fun. Yes, for fun. And he has read each of them multiple times. Well, except Botony, which isn’t his favorite. He’s only read it once. The rest he takes to bed to read. Literally. Knowing how much he has enjoyed them, I thought that Apologia’s newest curriculum, Exploring Creation with Health and Nutrition would both keep him engaged and challenged. It is a high school level course, recommended for grades 8-12, and can be be tailored to be completed in one or two semesters, depending on your student. As I mentioned in my Homeschooling 6th Grade post, he is taking a college level astronomy class as well.
Homeschool Health and Nutrition Basic Set
The Apologia Health and Nutrition Basic Set comes with both the student text book and student notebook. Students need both the textbook and the student notebook to complete this course. For those teaching to multiple kiddos in the home, the Health and Nutrition Student Notebook is also available separately. This is awesome, since we’ll use this again in a few years for our 9yo.
Homeschool Health and Nutrition Textbook
The Apologia Health and Nutrition textbook has 15 modules and covers the physical, nutritional, emotional, and spiritual aspects of growing into a healthy adult. This course is designed to teach health as stewardship, which is important to us. We believe that the body is a temple, and should be cared for as such.
The text covers the human body systems, sense, genetics, temperaments, and physical influences on thoughts and feelings. It also covers mental illness, emotional stability, value of others as God’s design, our culture, gender roles, conflict resolution, and so much more. In nutrition, students will learn about macro-nutrients, micro-nutrients, exercise, and proper diet.
The fifteen modules in this text cover:
- Who Am I and Why Does Health Matter?
- Physical Influences on Thoughts and Feelings
- Mental and Emotional Stability
- Interpersonal Harmony
- Treasuring your Senses
- Processing Nourishment and Hydration
- Food Science I – Macronutrients
- Food Science II – Micronutrients
- Let’s Look at What you Eat
- Delivering the Oxygen
- Let’s Move
- You’re Stronger than you Look
- At War with Infection
- Peace in Difficult Times
- The Gift of Reproduction
Yes, the reproductive systems are covered in detail. Including (respectful) illustrations with descriptions. Marriage, sexual misconduct, pregnancy, and sexually transmitted diseases are discussed, as well as substance abuse and pornography. PLEASE assess your students maturity level to determine if the course is appropriate for them.
We’ve discussed many of these topics as an ongoing conversation in our home, in an age appropriate manner, as various family members have dealt with them. We’d much prefer teach these topics from a creation standpoint and Biblical worldview. Given our son’s insatiable curiosity for all things science (except botany), and inclination to read things better suited to those well beyond his years, we believe he can handle this text.
The textbook also comes with a password for Apologia Book Extras, which includes additional resources for the course.
The resources are divided by module, and there are plenty of options.
The resources are from external sources, so be sure to check them out before assigning them to your child.
Homeschool Health and Nutrition Student Notebook
The Health and Nutrition set also comes with the Health and Nutrition Student Notebook. The student notebook includes over 50 projects cover materials such as nature versus nurture, personal temperament, good decision-making skills, boundary setting, analyzing food intake and activity levels, creating good hygiene habits, keeping a sleep record, as well as so much more.
The projects are interesting and stimulate the curious mind to research, which I love. My son chose to research the Manning family for his nature vs nurture project in the first module. It provoked some interesting dialogue about nature vs nurture, as our family is built partially through adoption.
Our Thoughts
I would recommend this course to anyone looking for a quality health and nutrition course. As a parent, I appreciate that Apologia is extremely thorough in the text. As my son reads a ton of science based literature, we constantly have to review material and discuss how it lines up with what we believe. I appreciate that the Health and Nutrition text is written from a Biblical worldview. I’m not concerned about the text contradicting our tenets of faith.
My son said , “So far, I enjoyed the temperament test the most, because it helped me learn about my personality and understand myself better.” He is finding the course to be challenging, so we may take more than a year to complete it, but he’s only 10, so that’s acceptable in my opinion. 😉
Apologia is also currently offering this free activity ebook for download. It has some fun activities, including a health and nutrition word search.
Apologia Science
Have a younger student or one that isn’t quite ready for the topics covered in this text? I’d highly recommend the Exploring Creation with Human Anatomy and Physiology text. Be sure to check out Apologia’s entire Young Explorer Series for younger students, as well.
