Peronally, my vote is to stick with the living books + nature study with children this young. I used to feel like we needed more ‘structure’ too, but the further we go with CM methods, the more I am finding myself able to let go of it.
IMO, the point of “science” in elementary school grades is not to cover every possible topic in detail, but to develop interest, wonder, awe, and observation skills. It’s possible you may have “gaps”, but any child who is interested and able to observe keenly will be able to pick these things up in later science studies. I think nature study and living books accomplishes this better than even a “conversational” textbook would. (Admittedly, I haven’t used the Apologia books, but I have looked at them and I didn’t particularly care for them. I would possibly consider them for a 5th or 6th grader with a keen interest in getting into a detail with a particular topic…but that’s just me. I know some people love them.) And living books doesn’t necessarily mean ‘light and easy’. If you take a look at the science and natural history selections that AO uses for Years 4-6, I think you’ll see what I mean.
My kids are are still young, so we haven’t yet transitioned from living books to a more traditional middle/high school science course, but when I was teaching 6th grade, I was part of a panel evaluating how the elementary science curriculum was preparing the students to tackle secondary science and actually had the chair of the HS science department tell me that he thought the science textbook we were using (a popular public school science option at that time) was way too much – it was covering the topics that he covered at the high school level. He too would have much prefered recieving students into his HS program who were interested and keen and had some simple skills like observing and measuring, rather than having been exposed to advanced topics and vocabulary too soon and getting turned off to science (which was what was happening).
HTH some,
Jen
