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Apologia Flying Creatures or SCM Learning About Birds with Thornton Burgess or Both?
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Thoughts, advice, sage wisdom welcome.
I have two boys grade 4 and grade 2. Eldest has done Apologia’s Astronomy and Botany and loved them (also did 106 Days of Creation Study and Outdoor Secrets earlier and enjoyed as well). Youngest has done Outdoor Secrets and 106 Days. He listened in on Apologia frequently and liked also, but hasn’t done any on his own so don’t know if he will love it or not like the eldest does.
The original plan was to run with Apologia until this new resource popped up and threw me a curve ball:) So now I keep going back and forth between Apologia’s Flying Creatures and SCM’s Learning About Birds with Thorton Burgess.
I’m fairly confident that my 2nd and 4th grader could do the LABwTB together. But think they might be able to do Flying Creatures together as well. It’s sort of a toss up, in my mind anyway.
I really want to do both with both the kids this year! Would that be way too much work or unrealistic? Would the two complement each other well since they involve the same subject matter? I don’t own either yet. We were able to do both Outdoor Secrets and 106 Days in a school year before. Apologias were closer to a whole school year depending on how much we slacked. If we did a whole year (not just school year) study, I wonder if it could work or if I’m just dreaming, lol.
Hi there! If you are drawn to both programs and are able to purchase them both, I think it’s perfectly feasible to do both. However, I wouldn’t worry about finishing them both in one year. Depending on how many days a week you do science, I would just alternate the readings from both programs. Many people do more than one Apologia book a year so adding to it shouldn’t be a problem.
However, you definitely don’t need both programs and it could be overkill for your younger child. Another option would be to do one program as a family and assign the other to your older child for independent reading-especially since he seems to love science.
I would caution against spending so much time on these studies that other parts of a well rounded CM education get left on the way side. I think if it were me, I would pick one program and start my schedule with it included. You can always add in more once you see how your schedule flows and if you have the extra time. I love the Thornton Burgess bird book so my preference would lean in that direction. My kids and I have so many great memories from our bird studies using this book. To this day we still call birds by the names used in this book and we smile at each other when we do. Maybe you could do a sample lesson with your kids just for fun and see which one they prefer?
I purchased the SCM Learning About Birds…guide as well as all the additional resources and it looks great. I’m really excited to get started with using it with my kids. However, I was at a used curriculum sale and saw the Apologia Flying Creatures book and the price was too good to pass up! So, my plan is to use the SCM guide and add in the Apologia guide where it may be necessary for additional info/study. I also thought about doing both somehow, but am worried that it might be too much for my kids…they are 8 & 6. But, as the year progresses, if I feel like maybe we could do more with the apologia, then I will add it in to our weekly schedule. Just not sure how yet. I like to do Science twice a week, so I thought about doing SCM one day and Apologia another, but that might become too confusing. If our schedule ends up allowing for it, I may just make room for more science this year because my kids LOVE birds and I’m sure they will benefit from both books!
Sorry, this response was probably no help whatsoever to you. 🙂 It’s sounding more like me just hashing out my thoughts! Ha!
We haven’t used Flying Creatures, but we’ve used other Apologia books. I think they are a very full science course by themselves. I know many families schedule it twice a week, but we had to use it daily or else the lessons would get too long for my DC. Their eyes start to glaze over after 20 minutes or so. 😉 Apologia plus nature study is the most I’d want to do in a year.
We haven’t used the Burgess Study, but I’ve looked through it for next year. It is a bit lighter than Apologia, so we’ll be adding in a science reading on days we don’t do the Burgess study (since my DC love daily science lessons). I picked a few books on a variety of topics.
Personally, I would lean towards choosing one program to study. I think you could easily add a bit more to the Burgess study, but I think adding Apologia would be too much.
For Apologia, you could do just the section on birds and not insects, or vice versa. We did the Burgess Bird book, along with the DVD Your Backyard: Birds and some coloring sheets, over the winter. We hung up a birdfeeder to observe them. It was a fun study. You could do that part of the year. And study a different topic, like insects, from Apologia for another part of the year. We have picked chapters in these Apologia books and the author says that it is okay to do, after covering chapter 1 about animal classifications. You do not have to do all of the chapters in order in elementary Apologia.
Zoo 1 has a bit more vocabulary and information than Astronomy and Botany. I think it is better for older grades, though it says k – 6th. I think I would do the Burgess Bird study with both kids and let the older 4th grader do the Apologia book on their own, if they are a good reader and have the interest. I have decided now to wait on Apologia until at least grade 4 with my children, and let them do it more independently.
I thought I wrote a response long ago, but don’t see it! Thank you all so much for your thoughts and advice! It helps so much to have others to bounce ideas off of and be a voice of reason. I think you all are right, trying to do both with both kids will probably be overkill. Perhaps we will add a few chapters in Apologia for my 4th grader or just make it an option for free reading if we decide to purchase that later, too. Whew. Almost done planning our upcoming year! Many thanks:)
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