Breaking down Apologia – Planning next year

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  • June 10, 2011 at 12:11 am
    Heather
    Participant

    Okay, so I am in the middle of our planning for next year…

    I am having trouble breaking down Apologia into bite sized pieces.  We have Swimming Creatures (my first year with Apologia) and it seems that we will have to do science 5 day a week in order to get through the book.  I know that getting the book “finished” is not the ultimate goal, but I have a science plan that I want to accomplish before my oldest gets into the upper levels, so doing one book per year is a part of that plan.  If I did science less often than 5 days per week, the portions are too large and I think it will be so much information that my kiddos won’t really be able to “chew” on it.  Does anyone have any suggestions as to how they’ve accompplished this? 

    June 10, 2011 at 1:14 am
    MrsC
    Member

    Heather-

    There is a daily lesson plan book for Swimming Creatures by Lynn Ericson that breaks the book into 110 days of lessons. The plan book is available at Rainbow Resource Center for $5.95. We will be studying the Land Animals (Zoology 3) and will be using the daily lesson plan book for that. Lynn does a great job of breaking the modules of each book into very manageable portions. I believe she has made a plan book for each of the Apologia books – even through high school. Here’s a link if you are interested: http://rainbowresource.com/product/sku/037898/1307668064-871838

    June 10, 2011 at 2:58 am
    art
    Participant

    Heather,

    I’ve used Apologia for several years now (for high school more years than elementary), and I would caution you not to force yourselves to finish the book if it’s too fast. We haven’t finished an elementary book yet. In fact, this year the kids and I picked which book to finish and which one to start when that one’s done. They are very in depth books, and I haven’t considered it necessary to finish one in a year’s time.

    I read the answer to the question “Is it Okay to spend a year on just a part of zoology?” on page vii of Swimming Creatures, and I got the impression that it isn’t Apologia’s goal to have the children become experts on Swimming Creatures but increase his ability to think scientifically.

    I think depending on the children it wouldn’t be very gentle to try to finish a book in a year, but some kids might be able to. My kids are 8, 9, and 12. It’s too much. We couldn’t handle it. Maybe your oldest could do part of it on their own depending on age. 

    My high schooler finished every book each year, but he’s very motivated and independent-and totally loves and understands science.

    Hope that’s helpful, by the way we LOVE Apologia-hope you do too!

    Angela

    June 10, 2011 at 12:48 pm
    Heather
    Participant

    Thank you for your advice!  I looked at it again this morning and things looked a bit sunnier!  I was able to break it down easily into a 4 day week.  When I make a schedule, I just like to break down the whole book at once into daily assignments.  Then instead of scheduling each “day”, we just work on each assignment, which sometimes takes longer than one day to complete…if that makes sense?

    Thanks again!

     

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