Purposeful Design ~ A Book Review

Jay Schabacker at Purposeful Design offered the Schoolhouse Review Crew the opportunity to read his book, Purposeful Design: Understanding the Creation and review it along with the curriculum written for it.  Why purposeful design?  Because our Creator made this world with the intention of housing a special creation.  Human life.  Every day of creation, God said it was good.  When He had completed creation, He looked at everything together and declared it "very good."




Mr. Schabacker is a former aerospace scientist, a businessman, and theologian.  Many people don't think about science when they think about creation.  God spoke... ta da!  This creation of God's is all about science.  It's incredible!  Understanding creation and how it's "science-y" is very important.  Things would just not work the same if everything about creation wasn't just so.  Some of the questions answered in this award winning book are:

• What if the earth didn't revolve around the sun at its current speed?  
• What if it didn't rotate on its axis at the precise angle?  
• What if it was made up of too much water?  
• How do plants help us?  
• Why does ice float?
• Why is the moon important?  
• Is it really made of cheese? 

OK.  Maybe not that last question, but I think we all know the answer to that one already. 

There are seven chapters, each coinciding with a day of creation, as well as the preface, introduction, and epilogue, all followed at the end with a Bibliography and Recommended Reading list.  This 94 page book is a delightful addition to any homeschool or Sunday school library.

Purposeful Design's accompanying curriculum, Young Explorer's Club, is available free of charge.  If you are educating from a young earth point of view, your homeschool will be greatly enhanced by this curriculum.  It does not take long to complete.  You can easily break each chapter into two or more days and spread it out over a couple of months.  The only thing I did to supplement the course workbook for my punks is provide a word bank for the fill in the blank exercises.

Isn't the piglet squid looking fat and happy?

The glossy pages are loaded with photos and illustrations to enhance the text.  We liked the "What if?" pages which explained what would happen to the earth if just one thing was different; the earth's spin axis, the amount of water on earth, or the moon's distance or size varied.  After a bath, Mal asked where the water goes.  He thought we must use it again, otherwise how would we get more?  I pulled out the book and went over the water cycle with him again.  He had a real reason to apply the information for himself and that makes a world of difference in what he remembers.

Read an excerpt of the book on http://jayschabacker.com/excerpt/

This gorgeous book is suitable for all ages.  The Purposeful Design Young Explorer's Club curriculum is for elementary ages and up.
Order Purposeful Design here for $18.95 (that's 25% off retail).  If you order 10 or more copies, there is significant savings.


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