Apologia Biology Dissection Question

Susan, we chose to do all three segments, but then we have three science-oriented sons who are aiming at good colleges.  I do think it possible that a biology lab with no dissections would not be as favored.  But you are right–it is NOT fun.  🙂  I had a friend who used to teach biology help my sons with it.  But I do think if you made some effort at doing some coverage of material, and accompanied that with an explanation of why you did not do “real” dissections, that it might be OK–unless the child is destined for a career in biology or medicine.  In which case, the sooner over the squeamishness, the better.  LOL  There are “virtual dissection” things available online–try searching.  I do not know if they are all free or if there is cost involved, but these were developed for students who had moral objections to cutting up a frog.  A school near us uses these for those students. 

You do really want to do one really good lab course at least in high school, possibly more if you are aiming at a competitive school.  So I guess my answer is a qualified “yes, it’s ok to skip, try to find at least one virtual dissection experience–unless it’s your kid’s dream to do biology or medicine at Harvard–in which case, bite the bullet and cut up the frog.  🙂

We really enjoyed doing the labs from Quality Science Labs to accompany our biology and chemistry classes (we can’t afford the physics one!) but they do have dissecting in those, too. 

This depends on the school.  Community colleges are easiest; schools that see a lot of homeschoolers are next easiest.  But there are a lot of schools out there that view homeschoolers with at least guarded suspicion.  They want not only test scores, but as much info as possible on what the student did.  They want to know that they can handle advanced course work and that they can work well in classroom situations.  The more selective the schooll, the harder you have to work.  🙂  Those schools that have  many kids competing for every admission slot–homeschoolers need to have demonstrated what they have been doing.  I keep course descriptions, all sorts of evaulations, tables of contents from books used, portfolios of writing,  If your child wants to go to a selective school, you are going to have to demonstrate that he or she is at least as capable as all those public-school class valedictorians with 8 AP test scores, fifteen extracurricular activities and a standard GPA.

Thanks for the link Jenielle! This looks quite useful.