Great Science Adventures, The World of Plants, is a program from Common Sense Press. The World of Plants covers the characteristics of plants, photosynthesis, transpiration, respiration, tropism, vascular and nonvascular plants, and much more within those topics.

Great Science Adventures is a multi-level curriculum. This program is intended to use with kids in grades kindergarten through eighth, meaning you can combine kids at different levels to complete science as a family. The content is coded so you can see at a glance what information and activities are appropriate for each level of student.

The content and vocabulary in The World of Plants is advanced enough for older students, but is presented in such a way that even young children can enjoy the program. For each lesson, important concepts are presented in an easy to understand bullet point form in the teachers section, and in a “Lots of Science Library Book” for the student. The “Lots of Science Library Books” are included in the manual and are reproducible for all your students. The library books are small 2 x 3 inch books your child can fold and color, and are 16 pages long

Lessons also include 3D graphics organizers, which help your child visualize the things they are learning. These graphics organizers are put together in a book/lap book and illustrate the concepts and vocabulary your child is learning

Lessons conclude with a list varied activities for you to choose from to give your child more experience with the topic. Some of the activities include experiments, dissecting plants and seeds, research projects, additional reading suggestions, cooking projects, crafts and more.

There are 24 lessons in this book, and Common Sense Press recommends you work through three of the Great Science Adventures books to make up a full year science program, however, this is such a full program that if you did every activity in the book, you could easily use it for a full semester class if desired depending on the skill level of your child

I really enjoy that I can use this program with all my children at once instead of trying to teach more than one program at a time. I have three children to teach, in the third, first and preschool levels. I have been printing a copy of the “Lots of Science Library Book” for each of them, and during the lesson, the littlest child colors hers. The library books have two sizes of font, large for younger children, and small for older children. I have my two oldest both read the books aloud, with the younger reading the larger font, and the oldest reading the smaller font, so all the information is covered during the lessons

Then, we do the graphics organizers together, and I take extra time while the younger children are coloring to make sure my oldest understands the vocabulary and concepts at the deeper level.

There is still content that is too advanced for my oldest child, but that is okay due to the non-consumable nature of this program. I can re-use it in a couple years when the children are older, and just dig a little more deeply into the material, and do the more advanced activities we bypassed this year.

It does take a bit of work to photocopy the “Lots of Science Library Books” and graphics organizers for your students from the hard-copy edition of this curriculum, so if you want to save some time you may want to consider purchasing the e-book version of the student materials so you can just print what you need for each lesson.

I feel like this is an incredible value for the price because the one book works for all my children, and I can re-use it again and again as we study The World of Plants. This program is wonderful for anyone who wants to keep all of their children together for science study. It is especially good for visual learners, but there are plenty of labs and activities to appeal to hands on learners as well.

Science time in our home has been simple and complete since we started The World of Plants. Everyone has enjoyed the coloring, lap booking and hands on activities, and we are all learning so much. The science is solid, with information I don’t remember ever being taught in school!

—Product Review by Heather Aliano, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, LLC, October, 2015