Apologia Exploring Creation with Botany Supplemental Resources

Apologia Exploring Creation with Botany Supplemental Resources. We modify traditional homeschool curriculum to make it more Montessori, more hands-on. Apologia Botany was one of the easiest curriculums to accomplish this with. This curriculum seemed to dovetail perfectly with the Montessori Botany works. If you have students that like to do workbooks, they have one. Although we did not use it. I’ll detail how we did this below. First let me reiterate here, Apologia is such a well-rounded and full curriculum, you would not have to add one thing to their curriculum for it to be a full science curriculum. These additions are not because this curriculum lacked a thing… it is because we chose to teach our children with a Montessori pedagogy… which is a LITTLE (not a lot) more hands-on. At the link below, not only will you find the Table of Contents, but you will also find a sample chapter for botany. Go check it out, you will understand what I mean about not needing to add much to this curriculum.

Before starting, I highly recommend you first read Michael Olaf’s description of Montessori Botany from 0 – 12 years old. It really helps us have a goal in mind when teaching Botany. Maria Montessori said it so beautifully:

How often is the soul of man, especially that of the child, deprived because one does not put him in contact with nature.

There is no description, no image in any book, that is capable of replacing the sight of real trees, and all the life to be found around them, in a real forest. Something emanates from those trees which speaks to the soul, something no book, no museum is capable of giving. The wood reveals that it is not only the trees that exist, but a whole, interrelated collection of lives. And this earth, this climate, this cosmic power are necessary for the development of all these lives.

The myriad lives around the trees, the majesty, the variety are things one must hunt for, and which no one can bring into the school. — Maria Montessori

Now that you understand what we are trying to accomplish and I have pointed you to the foundation of a botany curriculum, lets dive into Apologia Exploring Creation Botany curriculum. Here is a link to the Apologia Table of Contents

I have copied the details from the Table of Contents onto this post to make it easy to reference the supplemental works (if any) that we used for each section. One of the first things we (my best friend and I) made were the nomenclature (3 part cards) for each chapter. I will create a link for these at each of the chapter headings below.

Botany Lesson 1 (note, I have to upload them as pdfs, the word files are too large). A large part of Lesson 1 is introducing language and concepts, so there will not be much in addition to the nomenclature cards for this lesson). I will do my best to provide free resources, but some of the works we used were not free, I will link to the products that we used if you choose to purchase them.

Latin (In nomenclature cards)
Botanists: (Botany Degree Employment)
Taxonomy: There are 1000 different things you can categorize to help your children grasp taxonomy. Here is a link to a blog where they actually classified Legos (and they were using the Apologia Botany curriculum as well). I created several Taxonomy charts. One that is in Taxonomy chart(because the children can use the shades to determine what comes next in the list) and also Taxonomy chart 2 I made a control for these to be a self correcting works.
What Do You Remember?
Notebook Activities
Experiment: Shoe Taxonomy. We created two different charts for the children to document their shoe taxonomy. Shoe Taxonomy. Shoe Taxonomy Chart and Shoe Taxonomy Chart When I find the pictures of us doing this experiment, I’ll post them here as well! It was fun! Shoe Nomenclature Cards.

Phyla Phyla of the Plant Kingdom
Vascular Plants. We used lots of charts from different places. Encylopedia Brittanica,Wikipedia, and Ag Arizona; Vascular Interactives
Try This. This Try this is a study of the midrib of a leaf. We used Parts of a Leaf Nomenclature, Parts of a Leaf Puzzle, Parts of a leaf NAMC Manual, Parts of a Leaf from Montessori Etc, leafpuzzleandcards, We always loved making these leaf crafts. Be sure to check out my Pinterest Boards for more Botany Art projects
What Do You Remember?

Nonvascular Plants Plant Kingdom Nomenclature Lesson Wikissori; Plant kingdom Graphic Organizer; Vascular vs NonVascular experiment
Paper Towel Activity
Moss: Moss Lifecycle; Moss Experiment; Two different experiments for moss
Seed Homes Seeds: types of seed plants; types of angiosperms (Very affordable); Free Types of seeds nomenclature cards; Parts of a Seed Free
Angiosperms Flowering Plants Nomenclature Cards Free; Parts of a Flower Free Nomenclature Cards; More free parts of a Flower Cards
What Do You Remember?

Gymnosperms
Seedless Vascular Plants
Nonvascular Plants
What Do You Remember?
Notebook Activity

Project Note: Some Items above are linked to my Amazon affiliate account. The very small amount of money that we make from our affiliation with Amazon is used to augment our curriculum needs. Some photos shared are courtesy of Amazon.