God’s Design: Life for Beginners by Masterbooks (Curriculum Review)

Sheena Sy Gonzales

4 years ago

We are currently using “God’s Design: Life for Beginners” as our Science spine for my Kindergartener. Here’s an overview and my personal review!

About Masterbooks:

Masterbooks is a long-time publisher of Christian books, focusing mostly on apologetics and creationism. In 2012, they expanded to creating quality Christian homeschooling materials. They have various units for different subjects and grade levels.

Currently, we have the following (links direct to my reviews on all of them)

God’s Design: Life for Beginners (for K-2) and Life (for Grades 3-8)
Language Lessons for a Living Education 1
God’s Design: Heaven and Earth (for K-2) and Heaven and Earth (for Grades 3-8)

God’s Design: Life for Beginners

“God’s Design: Life for Beginners” is aimed at children in Kindergarten to Grade 2. It is a complete life science curriculum that covers 3 main topics:

Plants
Human Body
Animals

They have another book in this series called “God’s Design: Heaven and Earth for Beginners,” which focuses more on the Earth and astronomy (I know my space-loving 5yo would love that next!)

Why I Chose to Focus on Biology

One of my personal manuals in teaching is the book on Classical Education called “The Well Trained Mind.” In the book, the author recommends the following:

Year 1: Biology (what children can directly observe and interact with)
Year 2: Earth and Sky Science
Year 3: Chemistry
Year 4: Physics and Technology

And then doing another round for the years after, but with a more in depth focus. They matched it to their suggested history plan (Ancients, Middle Ages, Late Renaissance, Modern Times) and I plan on following this cycle for my children because I love the idea.

Content and Activities

As mentioned, “God’s Design: Life for Beginners” covers 3 main topics: Plants, Human Body and Animals. They cover a wide variety of topics per unit , as you can see in the photo of the Table of Contents above.

I know some topics might sound overwhelming for young children but they’re presented in a very friendly way! Each topic is usually just explained simply, highlighting a few key terms and features in 1-2 spreads (that includes the activity page already)

How We Use It

When We Started

We started using “God’s Design: Life for Beginners” in the middle of Luke’s Kindergarten year. We already finished Abeka’s Discovering God’s World (which I didn’t really like mainly because it was too simplistic) and was looking for another material to use as our spine for Science.

As our Science “Spine”

I use this book as our “spine.” That is, we read about the topic as presented in the book but we also go more in depth by reading other materials and working on more hands-on projects. Since each chapter is very short (which I appreciate,) I usually pair it with another book on the same topic. Some. of the books we use include:

Let’s Read and Find Out Science (Level 1 and 2 books)
Gail Gibbons books

You may want to check out this list of Science book sets that I recommend.

Frequency

I schedule this book for 2x a week. We linger more on some topics compared to others.

And since we started this mid-school year, I scheduled the topics in such a way that we’ll be able to finish the Plant unit by the end of the school year. I plan to continue with the Human Body and Animal Kingdom units for the first 2 quarters of next year instead.

Science + Nature Studies

Aside from this, we also do Nature Studies, which we consider a different subject in our homeschool schedule. Thought to mention this because “God’s Design: Life for Beginners” is not written in a narrative format (as some practicing Charlotte Mason moms might be concerned about,) but our book for Nature Studies is.

We use “Nature Stories” by Florence Bass. It is a living book (Charlotte Mason standards) and it surprisingly pairs well with “God’s Design: Life for Beginners” (note that it focuses more on animals and insects.)

Comparison: Life Beginners vs. Life

Admittedly, when I first saw “God’s Design: Life for Beginners,” I had the impression that it might be too easy for Luke (who was then 5.5 years old.) I expressed this concern when I was discussing with MasterBooks and they kindly sent me “God’s Design: Life” as well to check out! So here’s a comparison on the same topic:

The one on the left is the Beginners book (K-3) and the other is the one for older kids. “God’s Design: Life” has more details and more complex terms. It also comes with a Teacher’s Guide, so you get 2 books if you order that one.

Although I believe my son would be able to grasp the harder concepts presented in “God’s Design: Life,” I decided to stick with the Beginners one. I think it’s good to have a solid foundation in the basic concepts first before moving up and introducing more complex ones.

Overall and Things to Note:

Overall, I like using this as our spine. I feel it’s necessary to explore certain topics further using other materials, but that may just be my personal preference.

Here are some things to note about the material that I think you should consider before deciding if this will be a good fit for your family:

Christian: It is made from a Christian point-of-view. You can check out the publisher’s Statement of Faith for more details.
Creationism, Six-Day Creation and Young Earth: There are many ways to view Creationism and Evolution. MasterBooks is firm on their belief of Six-Day Creation and Young Earth.*

*I am still forming my personal solid thoughts on this topic and would not like to engage in a debate online. 😉 With regards to teaching my kids, I choose to use Christian-based curricula but I also present them opposing theories, and discuss these with them in an age-appropriate way. After all, one of my goals in teaching is to equip my children to be able to think for themselves based on truth and sound logic.

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Disclaimer: MasterBooks provided me with copies of “God’s Design: Life for Beginners” and “God’s Design: Life” for review. However, all opinions are unbiased and completely my own.

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