Remember my recent post about Science DVDs? I was writing about my favorite Science resource, and how DVDs have been a staple in the Science education of my children. Imagine my delight when I was given the opportunity to review Awesome Science – Exploring Yellowstone with Noah Justice. We get to add to our collection, and from a Young-Earth perspective! I was not going to turn that down.
This series features a fourteen-year-old boy narrating fascinating facts and explanations for the beautiful and varied features of Yellowstone National Park with the Biblical genealogical timeline as the basis for all that he presents. Noah is young and engaging; this definitely attracted my children to the video. The scenery captured on this video was like streaming a visual feast. I don’t think I will ever get tired of exploring and observing God’s creation. I could watch the video repeatedly to just to see those beautiful views again! My thirteen-year-old stated that the movie was interesting and cool. My six-year-old was having a bit of trouble understanding the information as it was presented but he loved looking at the hot mud pits and listening to Noah talk. A ton of factual information was presented in this material. I didn’t even realize how many facts and definitions were presented until I read through the accompanying workbook that students can fill out during or after the video. The workbook is a series of fill in the blanks that correspond with each section of the video.
We did have a few observations about the video series that were less positive. Sometimes the narration sounded sarcastic and defensive. This weakens the credibility of the creation view of Science. If you are correct, you do not need sarcasm to make your point. I realize this is probably attractive to our tweens and teens, but as parents we were a bit put off. All of us agreed that the video was a bit monotonous in its presentation. The video was a steady stream of narrated visual feasting – I mentioned that before. At some point this feast just became overwhelming. The Amazing Science logo would sweep onto the scene every few minutes to provide a transition between areas of the park and a new topic of discussion, but even this became monotonous and was especially frustrating to our eight-year-old daughter.
My Bottom Line: Overall, I am pleased to add this video to our collection of Science videos, and I am sure my children will enjoy watching Noah Justice again. I love the Christian worldview presented and the facts presented to back up a young earth perspective. Anything that will reinforce these views for my children is definitely worth owning. I present the negatives even though they are minor — mostly in the hopes that these comments might have a positive effect on future productions by the Justice family. I want more videos in this series! The 30 minute video costs $14.99 and the study guide/workbook is an additional $3.99.
Disclaimer: I received this DVD for free through the Moms of Masterbooks review group in the hopes that I would provide an honest review of it on my blog. Here you have it.
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