Apologia Science

Hello. We have only used the Astronomy program. My boys were young, and we absolutely loved it! (See the end of this reply for why we no longer use Apologia.) The Apologia Notebooking Journals were just coming out so we didn’t use them. We did, however, use a free lapbook from a yahoo group for part of the year. I’m sorry that I can no longer find it. Our old computer died, and with it went all of my bookmarks. We started out loving the lapbooks, but about halfway through the Astronomy book, my boys became bored with and tired of the lapbooking. It was overkill, and they were not actually learning or retaining any more. They still enjoyed the Apologia Astronomy readings and activities. If I had it to do over, I’d do only the Apologia Astronomy readings and her suggested activities that are in the book. Sometimes they wanted to draw pictures of what we’d read. That worked great! So, it just depends on your family and what you enjoy.

I was skeptical about starting with Astronomy, but now I am so glad we did. It has really helped my boys have a better understanding of Geography as we study History. I think perhaps it gave them a better understanding of the universe, and made it easier to understand earth, the explorers, their voyages, and much more. I recommend starting with Astronomy — reading the lessons and doing the activities only. It’s a great foundation. Without any lapbooking, you could easily do each lesson in one to two weeks, especially with the ages of your children.

A friend gave us all of the Apology books, and I am very thankful. For all the wonderful things about Apologia, I no longer use it as our science program because, as you expressed, it does get boring to cover the same topic in that much depth for the entire year. I know that’s an unpopular statement. Most families go wild over it. However, I keep going back through the Zoology books and the Botany book, trying to plan on using them because we already have them. I just can see it with my boys. We love REAL books. As textbooks go, Apologia is great. But, it is still a textbook, and it does not replace real, living books.

We used Noeo Science Biology I  http://www.noeoscience.com/ this year. We enjoyed most of the books. The only problem I have with it is the use of Usborne books. It’s too “choppy”. There aren’t as many Usborne books used in the other Noeo programs, so I’m thinking about sticking with it for Physics next year. I have also looked at REAL Science Odyssey from Pandia Press www.pandiapress.com/real_science.htm . I just found that, and it looks great. If I don’t use the Noeo Physics next year, we’ll use the Pandia Press for Earth and Space. I wish I’d started with that. We’ll skip most of the Space lessons because we covered it in Apologia. What I love about Pandia Press REAL Science Odyssey is that there is a delightful banquet of books from which to choose. You don’t have to use extra books, but Pandia provides a great list of books if you want to use them in addition to the lessons that are already right there for you. You can download and use several lessons to try before you buy. They are wonderful.

FYI – there is a yahoo group for those using the elementary Apologia books.  I’ll be using Astronomy next year, but I joined now anyway.  I think it will be a nice added support.

How long do you block out in your schedule for Apologia? We will be doing anatomy with a 3rd and 4th grader. Thank you.  Kristina