Good book on EC for young kids

We are doing biology this year, and it starts with origins. I’d like a book or two (picture book?) to teach more of an EC view for my youngest kids.

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BioLogos has some suggestions here:

I haven’t read most of them, but I think some focus specifically on science or faith, not necessarily both. “The Genesis of it all” looks interesting to me, so I might get that one at some point.

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The “God Made” Faraday Series are great picture books that cover real science!
I believe there are three: Space, Animals, & the World:

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There is Grandmother Fish, which I’ve mentioned a long time, but I got the feeling that BioLogos found it a threat. It’s a really good picture book introduction to evolution/common descent for the youngest of children.

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This is a great book. My boys love it.

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AMWolfe and family went nuts over this book! He had to read it every night. I think children really enjoy the interactive part, where they wiggle, make sounds, etc.

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Why do you think Biologos didn’t like it?

It was a BioLogos contributor, who is no longer employed with the organization. She was suspicious that teaching evolution to tiny children might undermine their religious beliefs. She seemed to think the author was trying to reach toddlers before they learned about God.

But this book is simply a science book (for ages 2-5) and doesn’t set up any faith vs science conflict. The colorful illustrations are very compelling. Here’s the original article

btw, the book used to be available as a free download when it first came out!

Interesting, I didn’t get that impression from the article at all. I thought Chris’ references to the book were more illustrative than critical. Not to mention she raises a good point. In the scramble to teach our children good science are we neglecting to ground that in a good, solid, Christian theology that will be a fertile seedbed for scientific curiosity? A great question.

On an aside, I could have done with reading this article a few hours ago. On the way home from the beach this evening, my son mentioned to his brother that God made the world in 7 days. Turns out, he he learnt this in Sunday School. What did I do? Well, I tried to explain the Big Bang, evolution, hermeneutics, and accommodation to my seven year old all whilst trying not to undermine his respect in his Sunday school teacher. :sweat_smile:

What I should have just said was that Christian’s disagree over how we understand Gen 1 but what we do agree on is… and then listed some of the things from this article. We could have picked up the origins conversation at a later date.

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Why would only Christian kids need a good, solid, Christian theology for scientific curiosity? You should see little kids on field trips to natural history museums. They are boisterous, enthusiastic, and very noisy!! Do you think experiences like this can trigger some kind of crisis in faith?

Never said that only Christian children need good theology.

And yet, this article is on a Christian website. It is logical to assume that, at times, content will be geared towards those who are already Christian, no? Neither do think that is an unreasonable expectation.

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Wow, I have struggled with that a lot. Good approach. I try to emphasize respect, too.

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I still think Grandmother Fish paranoia is just plain silly. Not much better than the Christian paranoia surrounding Harry Potter books, “A Wrinkle in Time,” or Ken Ham’s Billions of Years.

A bit further along, I would recommend Origins by Haarsma and Haarsma (http://origins.faithaliveresources.org/) as accessible to a high schooler or advanced middle schooler. It does a good job of respectfully and accurately surveying positions.

For younger children, I would emphasize the point that it all fits together. For kindergarten Sunday school, my son was supposed to draw a picture illustrating an aspect of creation, and he drew the creation of the moon through Theia crashing into the early earth.

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I don’t remember that one.