I enjoy reading fiction. I enjoy science. I do not enjoy science fiction though. I do however, enjoy fiction books that have science facts in them. What? You’ve never read a book like that before? Well, let me introduce  you to a new series of books called Sassafras Science Adventures. This series is a living book science series from Elemental Science.

“Living books are usually written by one person who has a passion for the subject and writes in conversational or narrative style. The books pull you into the subject and involve your emotions, so it’s easy to remember the events and facts.” ~ Simply Charlotte Mason

I don’t know about you, but I love to find ways to teach my kids without them realizing they are learning something. Sassafras Science Adventures do just that! Not only will you learn about science, but there’s a little geography sprinkled in there too!

Sassafras Science Adventures Volume 1: Zoology

Paige Hudson, the author of Sassafras Adventures sent me  Sassafras Adventures Volume 1: Zoology to use in our home. Immediately my 11 yr. old picked up the book. This might be a common occurrence in your home, but my 11yr. old is not my independent reader. She started reading the book on her own! Some days I would read the book aloud and we would partner read. Eventually we made it a read-aloud for the whole family because everyone was interested! In fact, one day I was reading this book to my girls and I finished reading for the day. When I stopped, a voice from another room in the house asked me to keep on reading! I had no idea my 14yr. son was listening too!

Summary: Blaine and Tracey Sassafras had no interest in science. In fact ,their grades reflected it when they both failed to pass their science class. Their parents decided to have the twins spend the summer with their uncle Cecil, a well-known research scientist, with the hopes that the kids would learn a thing or two and maybe even grow to love science. What the twins thought would be a boring summer turned out to be anything but that. The Sassafras twins traveled the world learning about animals and encountered many adventures. Science would never be the same again for them.

What We Thought:

We enjoyed it! At each location the twins had to collect facts about different animals. Each location also held an adventure involving learning about the animals. It kept us wanting to read just one more chapter in order to see what would happen next! I mean we had to find out about the man with no eyebrows. 😉 It also isn’t often that one book fits the age-range of the majority of my seven children (written for K-6.)

The facts learned about the animals weren’t in-depth, but gave a great launching off point if you wanted to do a more detailed study. In fact there are two other resources that you could use with the book to make this a half-year science curriculum:

The Sassafras Guide to Zoology  and the Sassafras Student SCIDAT Logbook would help make this book a complete elementary zoology curriculum. The Guide is the Teacher’s Guide and the SCIDAT Logbook are notebooking pages that go along with the animals studied in the book. You can click on the images above to learn more about each product.

The books of The Sassafras Science Adventures series can be read alone or you can add in the activity guide and logbook to create full science curriculum. The completed series will contain 8 books, each designed to take half a year to cover.  Each title in the series includes the following:

• An adventure-style novel for a given area of science that can be used as a read-aloud for k-adult or independent reader for 4th-adult.
• A coordinating activity guide and SCIDAT logbook that are designed to help you create a full science curriculum from the Sassafras books. The activity guide includes narration helps, experiments, activities, vocabulary and so much more! ~Sassafras Science website

We just read the book and talked about several of the animals. For those animals we weren’t familiar with, we looked them up on the internet to see a real-life photograph. Each animal does have a SCIDAT card in the book with a hand-drawn image plus basic facts. It is a great book that can be used as-is or paired with the tools listed above for a complete curriculum.

I have one copy of The Sassafras Science Adventures Vol. 1 Zoology to give away! See the Rafflecopter for details.
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Disclosure: I was given a copy of the book to review. Opinions are my own.