Apologia Science

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  • mommy25
    Member

    What does Apolgia Science look like in your home? I have a daughter who does not really care for Science (we have never done formal science). She is finishing her 7th grade year and we were looking at getting the General Science course for her.

    One of my concerns is the experiments. Can you do this course w/o doing the experiments. I am not science oriented and I don’t think she will take control of the experiments on her own. I have several other children that I am teaching so it is important for her to be able to do this somewhat on her own. I thought of having her read and then take notes about what she is reading but will this be enough?

    Thanks 🙂

    Karen Smith
    Moderator

    The Apologia science courses are written to the student so there is minimal teaching, if any, that you will have to do. There are questions scattered throughout the modules and study guide questions at the end of each module that should give you an idea of how well your daughter is understanding the material. There is also a test for each module. Answers, with explanations, are provided for all module, study guide, and test questions.

    The experiments in Apologia’s general courses are not difficult and only use items you can easily find in a store. They are written with step-by-step instructions, including telling the student to clean up. You can skip the experiments, however if your daughter is planning on going to college, she will need to do the experiments for several of the high school level courses (biology, chemistry, physics, etc.). Colleges want lab work as part of the science course and completing the experiments counts as the lab work.

    Susan
    Member

    We used General Science this year and it’s going well. I will say that I could not just hand the book to my son and he do it alone. He loves science but he had trouble in the beginning. Some of the vocabulary the author uses he struggled with. But now he’s understanding more than I do. (I’m not a science person either).

    The experiments are really fun. He could probably do them alone but we usually do them together. We have a lab notebook he writes the experiment in and what he learned. We bought a science kit from homesciencetools.com. It had just about everything we needed to do the experiments. It didn’t include your common household items. It was well worth the money so I didn’t have to run around town trying to find everything.

    Also we haven’t done every experiment. There were days we just couldn’t do it but we would read the results and talk about it to make sure he understood. For the most part, the experiments are very enjoyable and not too difficult to do.

    I will say I won’t be using this for my daughter. We’ve been using Abeka this year (6th grade) and she is really enjoying it and learning alot so we’re sticking with it. She’s not a big science person and I feel Apologia might not suit her. I personally like Abeka. I like the way it’s written and it has nice illustrations. There are a few experiments scattered throughout but we just read about them.

    This is way more info than you probably need but I hope it helps!

    Susan

    csmamma
    Participant

    My 13yo ds loves Apologias “General Science”! He does this independantly including the experiments.

    Like Karen said, the text is written directly “to” the student and the author even goes as far to tell him/her to clean up their mess after each experiment. 🙂

    I don’t have my ds take the tests, as long as he narrates what he’s learning. Also, I have him complete the study guide after each module, allowing him to use his text to refer to as needed. Then, he checks his answers when he’s finished.

    We used Apologias Elementary Science courses by Jeanie Fulbright before starting General Science and I really feel that these prepared him well.

    Blessings!

    Heather

    mommy25
    Member

    Thank you all so very much! I will probably look at the Apologia and the Abeka at convention this year (It’s this Friday! Yeah!)

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