​Exploring Nature’s Beautiful Order

​Exploring Nature’s Beautiful Order from Memoria Press– A Review

We were very excited to review Nature’s Beautiful Order from Memoria Press, as we love their classical Christian curriculum.

Nature’s Beautiful Order is a science curriculum designed for children in 6-9th grades. The text starts off with the cat, fundamentally because it is an animal that has a body with a distinguishable head and limbs that are that are close enough to ours to be easy to relate to. Then the curriculum works down to the sea urchin and back up from the bee to man. This is a unique presentation, but really makes the more strange animals understandable to students.

The curriculum compares the approaches of many early natural historians (including Cuvier, Mivart, John-James Audubon, Jean-Henri Fabre, and even Aristotle). This allows your child to see the underlying similarities and differences between the various approaches that scientists in the past have tried to categorize and organize and explain the animal world.

Will It Enhance Your Homeschool?

The lessons are a wonderful addition to any homeschool.

Each chapter will open your child’s eyes to the beauty and majesty of the animal kingdom, as you explore nature guided by some of the great naturalists of all time.

This is more than a natural history curriculum. Your child will learn the history of science as well as learn the fundamental key to science: creating and testing methods for categorizing and understanding the world around us.

Each chapter reads like a story. Your child meets the animal and learns about the parts of it which are unique, and those which are similar to other animals or to man. All this is narrated in large part by the words of the great natural historians.

If you use this curriculum, your children will learn the fundamentals of Zoology (that is natural history). They will also expand their vocabulary and learn Greek and Latin words and prefixes important to the study of biology (scientific naming, identification, and description).

What Comes With This Product?

This curriculum includes a text as well as a student guide and teacher key. You will need a student guide for each child, as the guide is primarily a set of comprehension and discussion questions to accompany each chapter of the Nature’s Beautiful Order Text.

Nature’s Beautiful Order Curriculum consists of

• Nature’s Beautiful Order Student Guide

• Nature’s Beautiful Order Teacher Key

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Chapter 1: What Is an Animal?
• Chapter 2: The Lobster
• Chapter 3: The Cuttlefish
• Chapter 4: The Sea Urchin
• Chapter 5: The Bee
• Chapter 6: The Trout
• Chapter 7: The Frog
• Chapter 8: The Turtle
• Chapter 9: The Canada Goose
• Chapter 10: The Miracle of Flight
• Chapter 11: Day’s Herald Bird
• Chapter 12: Birds at Home
• Chapter 13: The Groundhog
• Chapter 14: The White-Tailed Deer
• Chapter 15: The Carnivora
• Chapter 16: Farm Friends
• Chapter 17: Man the Upright Animal
• Chapter 18: Man the Steward

Suggested Use

Memoria Press does not suggest a pace through the curriculum. This could make things challenging if you are just starting out your homeschool, but Memoria Press designs their curriculum around a pace of one hour per week science lessons. Given that there are 18 lessons in the text, you could progress through the curriculum in an entire year and spend the time learning the vocabulary and understanding each animal deeply. Or, if you have a strong reader, you could go through the curriculum at a pace of one lesson a week and have the time to add another Memoria Press science text. Your child is meant to read the chapter (or you can read it to him), and then follow up by completing that lesson comprehension questions in the student workbook.

Can Read Lessons Aloud To Include Younger Children

There is so much to learn in this curriculum, you may wish to read the lessons along with your child. I found that even with the amount of zoology and biology background I have, I still learned a great deal about these wonderful animals. That, for us, was an experience that was wonderful to share. Also the story-like writing in this curriculum makes it very family friendly and I could easily see reading the text aloud to a range of age groups, even though you might only use the student workbook activities with your older child. The young ones may not understand all the terms, but they will still enjoy the story of the animals.

Time Required To Teach This

Preparation Time: 30 minutes (read material, make notes of some of the vocabulary) I have a biology and zoology background, so I did not need to prepare at all ahead of time, but I still learned a lot.

Teaching Time: 45-60 minutes (The time here depends on how much you or your child stop to review the vocabulary along the way.) When we first started, I found myself stopping every paragraph or so to question my children to see if they were understanding.

Student Guide: 30-40 minutes (This curriculum is designed for your child to work independently through the workbook)

How We Liked It & How We Used It

My children are captivated by this curriculum. We read the text aloud in our homeschool because the writing is so strong and story-like, and because I love zoology. I was a biology major until the sirens of physics called me to become a biophysicist. This book is absolutely delightful. The text is so balanced – covering many naturalists and their viewpoints, not just the one-size-fits-all approach of most science books.

Additional Related Resources

• Memoria Press published an article entitled: “Knowing What Nature Is” by Christopher Blum that is available to read on their website. It gives you are really good view into the methodology and the approach of the curriculum.
• Memoria Press has a forum that allows you to ask questions and compare ideas with other homeschooling parents.

Overview Of How This Curriculum

General Features

• Made for Homeschoolers
• Easy to Adapt To Your Homeschool
• Adapts to Teach Multiple Children (Multiple Ages)
• Works with Gifted Children

Works with these Age Ranges

• Middle Years (6-8)
• High School (9-12)

Good For These Educational Styles

• Classical
• Eclectic
• Unit Study
• Charlotte Mason

Subjects Covered

• Language Arts
• Science

For Kids Who Like

• Reading
• Writing
• Discussion
• Independent Work

Additional Memoria Press Products Reviewed by the Homeschool Review Crew This Week:

Lots of Latin!

• Prima Latina Complete Set
• Latina Christiana Complete Set
• First Form Latin Complete Set
• Second Form Latin Complete Set
• Third Form Latin Complete Set
• Fourth Form Latin Complete Set

Science

• The Book of Trees
• Nature’s Beautiful Order