God's Design for the Physical World Set (MB Edition)

We really struggled with this curriculum when we first started it. I think that is because we were unfamiliar with the “God’s Design” book format, as this is the first of the series we have used. It took us a while to realize the glossaries for each unit were separate. The information and lessons in the book are really pretty good and practical. We have still struggled to find some of the answers to the questions (that matched the answer key), but my son is understanding the material overall.

I love Master Books, but this particular curriculum has been very frustrating. My 8th grade son has struggled tremendously with this curriculum because as some of the other reviews have stated, the answers in the teachers guide are not found in the book text. After much frustration and feeling like we were missing something, I came back to the website to find there is a video course to go with the curriculum. From what I have watched in the free preview videos, this is where the missing course material is at. However I was disappointed to find that the video course is an additional $65. We will be purchasing the additional video course, however I feel that it should be included in the price of the course, or the questions on the worksheets be geared to the material that is only in the book.

EDITOR'S NOTE:
The Master Books Academy course is completely optional and supplemental to the textbook course. It is not a required purchase.

I think you might find these words from Debbie Lawrence, the author, helpful to you.

"Hi, I am the author. The What Did We Learn questions are a chance to review the material covered in the lesson. The answers should be directly in the lesson. The Taking it Further questions are intended to help the child think beyond what was directly covered. Students are not expected to always get the answers correct, just to try to think of possible answers. You are welcome to skip those questions or use them as opportunities to do more investigation. I was hoping to encourage students to apply what they just learned. Using the answers in the teacher's guide is a great way to stimulate discussion and a deeper thinking about the topic."

I’m very disappointed with this book, however, I like Master books curriculum overall. This book is too advanced to group younger elementary grades into this. I trusted that since this book was available for the 4th grade curriculum, that it would be a great resource for my daughter to learn. It absolutely has not. We’re only a week into homeschooling and I switching books. Even when my child is in upper elementary, I don’t think I will reconsider. In addition, I tried to use the Master Books Academy course for the first few lessons and I am still quite disappointed.

My son is excited about this course. He is a Monster Jam fanatic and is looking forward to learning about energy, machines, etc. I am going to wait until next year though and use it with the Master Books Academy as I think he will get more of an understanding and be able to understand the formulas better. We will be doing more time in math for at least the 1st half of this year, so I am going with something less challenging this year.

We decided to "redo" Earth, soil, and sea (panel book) But, this time just with the MasterBook Academy. I am sure he will pick up information that we didn't get 2 years ago. We will do that 2 or 3 days/week and on the other days, he will do an element from "Elements of Faith". Just another reason why I love to home school!

My 7th grader is using this curriculum. She enjoys science, however there have been concepts in this curriculum that have been difficult for her to grasp.

I'm a science nerd myself and I discovered this series back when it was sold in separate books without all the fancy worksheets that are now included. I started using this with both of my kids (one was in grade 1 and the other in grade 3). I modified it to fit their age levels, but the clear writing, engaging experiments, and overall awesomeness made this series a joy to teach and my kids both loved our science classes. I usually covered two and a bit books a year (back when they were all separate books) and we finished the last one when my oldest was in grade seven and my youngest in grade five. The only major drawback was that is was REALLY hard to find a good science curriculum for the following years that wasn't just a general review of what we had already covered. ... my youngest is now in grade seven and we are using the high school Masterbooks series Survey and History of Science (Biology, Mathematics, Physics, and Chemistry). I have no regrets in using the God's Design series when my kids were younger. I have little science geniuses now. (yay!)

This course is difficult, but my 7th grade science loving son is really enjoying it. It is his favorite course this year.

The information is great, but it is a very advance curriculum. I would recommend for a kid in the older side of this range. It seems perfect for my 8th grader.

My 6th grader just completed this course. I gave it 3 stars because I REALLY like Masterbooks overall and use it for other subjects. I love how open and go their curriculum is. If it wasn't for that, I would have rated it lower. This particular course was a disappointment. First, it was too advanced for 6th grade. Students need to have a basic foundation in algebra to understand some of the formulas in this course. If not, it is confusing when they get to the section that teaches about force as the formulas and calculations are not well explained in the text and hard to follow. My second reason is the discrepancy in content. I found numerous questions in the course where I had to look in the answer key to get the answer because the content was not covered in the reading text. Some of the answers in the answer key were extremely detailed and complex and did not always match the reading text. As the "teacher" grading the assignments, I normally had to read the text myself to check my son's work because the wording in the text differed greatly from that in the answer key. It was a bit frustrating and made my job more difficult. I will continue to use MBs for history but I think we will go a different route for science next year.

I used this curriculum (God's Design for the Physical World) when my son was in 7th grade. We both enjoyed this curriculum. What I liked best, was that it did not overwhelm our school day. I've used other science curriculums in the past that were supposed to be 45–60-minute lessons, but instead took at least twice that long to complete. The God's Design series is very well organized, and the lessons are age appropriately timed. For my 7th grader, lessons took about an hour to complete. This curriculum can be used for 3rd-8th grade. Each lesson is divided into three, age-appropriate sections. Younger students will only do a smaller portion of the lesson, (just 1 section), while older students can complete two or all three sections in a lesson. Since my son was in 7th grade, he completed all sections.
This curriculum provides a long list of supplies needed for lab assignments. Even though many items are supposed to be common household items, I found myself buying a lot of stuff that we didn't have. You can view samples of the curriculum on the website, which I believe includes those supply lists. Note that I said plural - lists. The curriculum is broken into 3 sections, each section has its own supply list. Regardless of numerous supply items needed, the curriculum is a winner in my book. Physics is one of those sciences that requires a lot of items for experimentation. Don't let that overwhelm you! I planned ahead by making sure I had all the items needed at the start of the school year. I even included a bunch of those items in his back-to-school scavenger hunt. Finding such items as a prism, colored lenses, and tennis balls at the start of the school year can really get a child's curiosity awakened.
One suggestion: If you are using this for an older child (7th-8th grade), then I'd start with section 2, then go back to section 1, and then finish with section 3. The reason is because the first section includes a couple lessons with questions requiring a knowledge of beginning algebra (and another requiring knowledge of beginning trigonometry, I think??) At the time my son was taking pre-Algebra, but he hadn't reviewed equations of the type that were used in the Physics lesson. If I had done section 2 first, then my son would have reached that part in Pre-Algebra to be able to answer the Physics questions on his own. Instead, I needed to model-and-teach that part. (If you're planning on using for younger grades, this won't apply because they won't have to answer those questions.)
Overall, a great introduction/foundation to Physics, which could later be built upon in upper grades.