How religious is TGTB Mammal unit study?

[Anne Elliot]

Title says it all. My son wants to learn more about animals and our library doesn’t have much. But we’re secular homeschoolers. How much black sharpie would I have to use? 

[SilverMoon]

I wouldn't touch it and can't answer the actual question. Would you interested in other book recommendations? 

[Green Bean]

nm. I realized my ignorance was showing. My apologies.

Edited September 30, 2023 by Green Bean

[JessinTX]

I'm a secular homeschooler as well and I've used several of their science units and find them to be very usable. I don't have the Mammals unit so I can't speak to it specifically, but I've used Birds, and I'm currently using Geology and plan to use Weather and Water later this year. 

I enjoy the scripted nature of them (it gives me a starting point) especially the little intro activities they do (sometimes art, sometimes a poem, sometimes a little mini-demonstration.) The visuals are fabulous and I like the notebooking pages. They have a lot of really fun hands-on experiments and demos that my girl loves. But they also have videos of a lot of them so if you just aren't up for the mess or the hassle you can still see them done. 

The religious references are not overbearing. A brief mention here or there. And the guides are meant to be read aloud by you for "family style" learning, so it's easy enough to skip a bible verse - or mostly what I find is references to "God's creation" which I just substitute "nature" or something. You won't have to mark out tons and tons of stuff. Honestly there are many lessons I don't have to touch at all. I could be wrong, but I'm not remembering anything in the student pages that I wasn't comfortable with. 

I always preview the videos. They are very nicely done but do usually have some religious mention in there. If it's not too much I'll use it anyway. There was one (and I can't remember the topic now) that I skipped because it seemed a bit much. 

The units do come with these little non-fiction supplemental readers - and there are others you can purchase in addition - I will skip those because they tend to be a little more heavy handed. And there are so many other great children's books it's easy enough to find something else to use. 

This year I'm pairing TGTB units I mentioned with Blossom & Root's Earth and Sky curriculum for her literature suggestions and video suggestions. 

So far we've enjoyed the combo.