When I was homeschooled I didn’t love science. I couldn’t keep amphibians and reptiles straight in 4th grade. I didn’t care about atoms in 8th grade, and by high school I simply didn’t care about science anymore. To my mother’s credit she didn’t give up, nope not even when every experiment we ever did failed if she was present for it. Every. Single. One. Eventually she laid out a plan and left the room. (I didn’t have Friendly Biology).
I learned Chemistry by standing in the kitchen and making red cabbage indicator. I made, what my family dubbed, “the best tapioca pudding ever”, which I can only take their word for. I don’t like tapioca pudding. Which, in short sums up most of how I feel about science.
I love nature, as long as it doesn’t slither. I love knowing the names of the flora and fauna around me. I love learning about the ocean, but I still don’t love science. And, as a homeschooling Mamma that worried me a little bit. I didn’t want to pass on a hatred of a subject to my kids just because I couldn’t find my own enthusiasm for the subject.
It left this Mamma feeling kinda dizzy and deeply overwhelmed. I was blessed with a firstborn child who’s natural curiosity and desire to learn means about the only thing he finds annoying, spiders excluded, is a person who thinks school is boring. Ah-hem.
So, I would buy him Apologia science books, hand him the audio lectures, take him to the store to gather up the numerous supplies needed for experiments, and wish him well. It worked for us for many years. He thrilled at learning about the human body in 7th grade. He was wowed by the history of science Dr Wile covers in General Science. Morgan enlisted me to be his “helper” for every experiment in Physical science. He delighted in all of it! Then came biology.
Suddenly my son’s love for science didn’t seem so bright, and one day we had a little chat about the lack of accomplished science lessons. He confessed that he was finding the Biology book overwhelming. Which was surprising to me, because when he did complete a lesson he was scoring well on the tests!
Friendly Biology Homeschool Science
Considering his love for learning I took his small complaint seriously, and went hunting to see what else I could find that would fascinate him and equally educate him. A fellow homeschooling Mamma, with some kind of magical degree in biology, recommended Friendly Biology homeschool science to me.
Now I confess I’ve heard of this “friendly” curriculum before, but the name made me think perhaps it wasn’t for us. You’ve all heard the saying, “Never judge a book by it’s cover”, right? Well let me introduce a new rule to you, okay? Never judge a curriculum by its name.
How We Used Friendly Biology:
I ended up purchasing Friendly Biology in our second term of the school year. It was slow in arriving, but we were blessed to be able to purchase Dr Joey’s video lectures for his Biology promgramme which allowed our son to be off and running right away.
His love for science returned pretty quickly. He set about making a marshmallow inferno, and then growing himself a pet potato. Yes. Really. Before long he was asking me if I was aware polypeptides. He learned about his milk allergy, he no longer groaned about science.
Friendly Biology is exactly what the title says. Friendly. Dr Joey has written a simple, clean curriculum that is very doable. My son would watch his video lecture on Monday, do a practice page on Tuesday and Wednesday, a lab & test on Thursday. Sometimes he’d do the test on Friday depending on the time needed for his lab.
The curriculum is written very much to the student, the lectures are beautifully done directly for the student as well. Dr Joey has a bit of review in the beginning for previous lessons, gets into his new material with slide shows, and then has a point at the end of the lesson where he reviews all the new material.
I would have my son pause the video at the “review” point at the end. Why? In the information to the teacher Dr Joey talks about how he uses the curriculum in the classroom to help his students succeed. He uses that review material before his students test. Sometimes my son would use it then, and sometimes he’d just be so caught up in a lesson he’d watch it with his lesson.
On average most of the lectures are only 45 minutes, without the review it’s 30-40. On days when he had longer lectures, I’d encourage him to pause at the 30 minute marker and take a breather. He could then return to it or wait until the next day to keep going. During the lectures my boy would take notes, pages of notes! Notes with sketches and acronyms and factoids and all kinds of things I could never make heads or tails of, but he could!
What We loved about Friendly Biology:
40% discount: So here’s a little known fact about Friendly. If you’re using ANY science programme and finding it’s just not working for you, Friendly offers you a 20% discount on switching to their curriculum. How’s that for super friendly?
Availability: Living overseas I appreciate that this curriculum is available through multiple difference sources allowing me to choose who offers the best international shipping!
Price: As far as high school science programmes go, this curriculum is incredibly affordable without the discount. In fact I was certain I was doing my conversions wrong when I saw just how affordable it was!
Time: I love that my son can easily wrap up one lesson per week. With a lecture generally being completed in one day it meant that he could work other heavier subjects around his science never feeling overwhelmed with a workload. The practice sheets were short and simple, and if you have a child who narrates their lessons to you well, you’ll probably find that they can breeze through those practice sheets like my boys do.
The Friendly Biology Tests: All the test are multiple choice. Some of the answers are downright funny too. I appreciate this, especially with kids who have Irlen. My eldest is severe enough on the spectrum that I read the tests aloud to him and he selects his answer. These tests didn’t take very long to complete.
Friendly Biology Experiments: One experiment per lesson, until you get towards the end of the book, then there are less experiments.. but you know, I appreciate that too! It was also SUPER easy to get all the needed supplies locally. This is huge, because often we find science books call for some items that seem “common” or “everyday” but aren’t available here.
Communication: A few times we’ve had questions.. When my youngest began this curriculum he had a science experiment that was a TOTAL FLOP! I was shocked and kinda bummed. Was I now the Mom who couldn’t be present for science experiments?! Nope, Dr Joey read through all the information we gave him and pointed out where we’d gone wrong! We redid the experiment with success! He’s also very quick to answer any questions and advice us as well.
Durability: I’m not gonna lie, I’m always checking the durability of things. As the Mamma of two teenage boys, it’s just what I do. My eldest used this biology textbook and then it went on the shelf until the younger was ready for it. My younger son is HARD on things. I dunno, he just looks at things and they seem to fall apart sometimes. I’m rather impressed that this book has nearly {my youngest isn’t quite done at the time I’m writing this} made it through both my boys and the only “mar” is a tiny bent corner on the front of the textbook. No rips, the cover is not falling off. The spine is not destroyed. I don’t know how this happened. I found the book under a sleeping teenager once, and yet it survived!
Simplicity: I can’t rave enough about the simplicity of this programme. Seriously.
It’s simple, but engaging and has taught my children well. So much so that when my eldest made an off handed comment in the kitchen one day his little brother sighed dramatically and asked him if he’d slept through Biology because Dr Joey had clearly explained…
What We Didn’t Love
The Workbook: Now let me be clear, I had no issue with the workbook, but with kids with Irlen I would love a PDF version of this book OR a way to easily copy the worksheets onto my kids specially coloured paper. {As a side note, the tests ARE available in this format through the Friendly Science website!}
Bottom Line:
I am truly grateful for the fellow homeschool Mamma who pointed this curriculum out to me and assured me that it was perfect. She wasn’t wrong either. Friendly Biology was a fantastic fit for my family, with just the right mix of experiments, tests, and lessons. The fact that there are video lectures {or audio if you prefer} is just amazing for us!
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Greetings,
I am a missionary in Thailand. We have adopted 5 Thai children. The three oldest are homeschooled.
I am interested in “friendly Biology”. Do you offer a discount for missionaries?
Sorry, but I need to know as soon as possible as my friend, who is bring books back to me in Thailand, leaves the USA on the 21st so I would need to get it to her asap.
Thank you,
Diane
Hi Diane,
I don’t work for Friendly Science. But you could most certainly reach out to them via their Facebook account, they are very quick to respond! You can also contact them at: [email protected] or By phone or text: 308-870-4686. Their best hours are between 4 – 6 pm central time. And they state on their website that if they don’t answer the phone to jut leave a voice mail. I know that might not be easy if you’re working with an international call though.
What was a typical weekly lesson plan like? Watch video, read, experiment ? In what order did he usually do these? Was reading scheduled all in 1 day or over the course of a couple of days? Just trying to get an idea of how to schedule each lesson out. Thank you!
It’s been a while Sabrina, but generally we scheduled it out so that he watched the video in one day, unless it was a super long video or had two parts. Then it was split over two days. It was the student’s job to take notes to study for the weekly tests with. They also did the experiments on their own, scheduled on a different day than the lecture.
The test was done on our final day of school for the week, and due to my children’s Irlen Syndrome, they often took it orally.
I hope that helps! 🙂