We recently found Berean Builders science for our homeschool, and we’ve been enjoying it so much more by adding picture books to supplement the content. I’m so excited to share with you how we do this as well as a list of books!
Berean Builders is plenty on its own, but I tend to get bored by textbooks. Adding in picture books makes a subject so much more exciting and engaging – this goes for my children but also for me teaching it! As you read this I’ll fill you in on what Berean Builders is, how we schedule it, and of course I’ll share a full picture book list for the current unit we are working on!
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About Berean Builders
Berean Builders is a scripture based, homeschool science curriculum that is presented through a timeline of history starting with creation in the first textbook. You can read more about their philosophy and explore their other texts on this website.
Every lesson comes with a hands-on activity to help discover the information that is taught in the lesson. There are no worksheets with the text, but instead you are encouraged to keep a science notebook of your discoveries. At the end of every lesson there are questions for discussion for a variety of ages. So, this curriculum is great for the whole family.
The introduction of the text provides a couple of options for completing the curriculum in a school year. They suggest completing a lesson every other day OR two days a week. However, they encourage planning in a way that best suits your family even if it’s less than what is suggested. (We only do it once a week – more on this later)
Our Experience and First Impressions
The first lessons we did in this book were so exciting! The activities included were things that I could do with materials around my house and we were all amazed at the results. For some reason I was doing the lessons daily. Maybe I felt the need to catch up after being so relaxed about science that year, but I can tell you after a couple weeks of that I knew slowing down would be the the better option.
The activities included are really quite simple, but having to put them together every day (or even every other day) became a little exhausting. I found myself wanting to skip science altogether. So this year I knew I needed to pull back a bit and not worry about finishing the text. Instead we would take our time and set a goal for completing science once a week.
Once we aimed for one lesson a week, the curriculum felt like a much better fit, but I was still feeling like I was missing something.
Adding Picture Books
We recently started a history curriculum that was picture book focused, and it has been the best. It makes our lessons whole-family friendly and so much more fun and engaging. I really wanted that feeling for science! This is when I started to think that adding in picture books for science may be helpful to our family.
The lessons in Berean Builders are not that long, but the information is packed in there. I don’t think this is a bad thing, but I think that my children (ages 3-10) would benefit so much better from that same information presented in a picture book. There’s just something about a picture book that makes a topic so much more interesting and easy to remember.
Once I added picture books in, our progress through the text slowed down even more, but I knew it was the better fit for us. There’s something about science that can get overwhelming at times. Experiments and messes make it hard to complete, especially if you have little ones. Approaching science with a slow mindset made me feel like the subject was so much more do-able, and I quit skipping it all the time.
Notebooking
We try to do some notebooking when we read through the textbook lessons. I keep this very simple! I ask my children to draw what they are observing from the activity. Then, we use the questions at the end of the lessons to help us narrate what we just read. My older ones write on their own. One of my younger ones tells me and I write her response.
I have a video about how we did this with little half sheets of paper at the end of last year. This was really great because I loved the small paper. This year my oldest daughter really wanted a notebook. So we are doing the same concept, just putting it on notebook paper.
Scheduling
I am always adjusting our schedule, so it’s totally possible that in six months I’ve made little tweaks to what I’m about to share with you. However, I want to explain the pattern that is working for us now for science.
Science is a part of our afternoon loop. We aim to do it once a week. I do not try to read the textbook and a picture book in one sitting. My kiddos would never last that long. So, the better option is to alternate. One week we do the textbook and the activity. The next week we read a picture book about the lesson. I love this because then we don’t do an activity/experiment every single week. Don’t get me wrong – they’re super fun and meaningful, but as a mom of four young kids, it can get tricky to throw that together all the time.
I’ll be completely honest – the more and more I work on my picture book lists, the more I want to stick with just that! So I can see myself slowly starting to do the activity in the text, but then read the picture book instead of the textbook. Many of the picture books present a lot of the same content, just in a friendlier way. We all enjoy reading them so much more, so I just feel like that’s probably what I’ll end up doing for the majority of the lessons. The book will become my guide instead of my main source if that makes sense.
Picture Book List
I’m so excited to share this picture book list with you. I heard from so many of you that it would be helpful, and I’m excited to finally get it to you. The one I’m sharing with you is the current unit we are working through. The first unit we completed the textbook only. It wasn’t until halfway through unit 2 that I came up with the picture book idea.
So, the following list is for Unit 3 of Berean Builders: Science in the Beginning. I’d be willing to share more lists like this if I knew there was an interest. So, if you do find this list helpful to you, can you let me know? You can comment on this blog – or, even better, shoot me a message on social media. Follow me @simply.learning.together on Instagram and let me know how you like the picture books.
Most of these books can hopefully be found at your library. Many are also on YouTube. You can also find links to all of the picture books for this science unit in my Amazon storefront. Use the link below to download the list.
