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Has anyone used both AO and Sabbath Mood science?
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I am specifically interested in AO Year 7 and Sabbath Mood’s high school program. I think I prefer the AO 7 books, but I like the idea of a guide for DD to follow, like SM has. Has anyone used both?
Hi Holly! 🙂
I really think using both would be overkill unless you want to pick and choose your favorites from each one. Doing both as written in one year would probably quickly cause science burnout.
I prefer the Sabbath Mood Guide books to AO books so far. Having the lessons all laid out and the scaffolding done for me has been wonderful! My daughter is really enjoying the guide and books used as well. We are doing the chemistry guide currently and plan on using the physics guide next term, followed by the astronomy guide for our 3rd term of the year. Nicole has spent so much time studying CM science and diving in to find the very best living science books for each age group and it shows!
I do have a few concerns but they concern the experiments which are both a strength and a weakness for me. I love that they are good experiments and all laid out for me. I love the idea of doing an experiment each day of the week. I’ve always heard that science should be done and not just read so this really resonates with me.
However, the logistics of carrying out all of the experiments takes plenty of forethought and planning. These are not my strong areas. Art and science experiments have always been the hardest things for me to get around to because they require so many hard to find purchases. We’ve mostly stuck with drawing for art because I can do pencils and paper. For science experiments, we usually end up having to hold off until I get all of the necessary items and until we can fit the time frame needed into our schedule. So far we have skipped all the science experiments and I am trying to schedule to do them all in one week. While I know this is not optimal, it may be the only way they get done in this house. I find it so hard to fit them into our normal routine.
Because the experiments take up so much of the guide (one every 3 days), it really is necessary to do the majority of them to really get your money’s worth and get a year’s worth of science for one grade.
We’ve always done at least a handful of experiments each year but have never managed to do the majority included in science texts and usually the text with a few experiments has been sufficient. I’m not sure that this will hold true with the SM guides. Again, I love the idea of lots of experiments but I’m not sure how practical it is for the average homeschool.
I would love to be able to just purchase a kit to go along with the guide. That would make my job much easier.
On second thought, I think I misunderstood your question. You are asking for opinions from people who have used both so you can compare, right? I thought you were asking about using both at the same time. Sorry about that.
I used AO year 6 science. We liked some of the books and didn’t find others to be very enjoyable. We tried the year 7 books but didn’t care for most of them. We are loving the SM books! One book that both curricula use is The Elements by Theodore Gray and it is great really good. I’ll have to go look at AO’s year 7 books to refresh my memory regarding specific books.
Also, above I said that SM guides include an experiment every day but I meant to say every week.
Okay, we liked Eric Sloane’s Weather Book and that’s it! I tried it with my daughter in 8th grade and she may have just not been ready for it. She much preferred Apologia’s General Science, believe it or not! She loves science now and enjoys reading all kinds of difficult science books-especially on space. We may have a completely different experience if we tried AO’s year 8 science at this point.
I think both are good choices. It really depends on how much time you want to invest planning experiments, looking up additional resources, and scaffolding the lessons. The SM guides do all this for you.
I used Sabbath Mood’s Astronomy this year for grades 7-9 and we really liked it. He seems to have learned a good amount but time will tell if he really remembers all that he has read and done and if it has sunk in. I think I’ll know better when we have exam day. 🙂 Granted I am still working on scaffolding a lesson. 🙂 However, I have loved the simplicity and detail that she has offered in it and that she includes all the links, videos, extra etc. all in one. We are planning on using it in HS as well. HTH 🙂 I do love some of the AO books and so this year I implemented a few and then we spaced this out with it as well. Next year though I might just do Sabbath Mood….sometimes less is better!
Thanks for the reviews! You’ve both been very helpful. Melanie, experiments are a weakness of mine too!
I think at this point, we’ll give SM a try next year. I feel like it will be more likely to get done consistently and the book choices seem like a better fit for DD.
I have not used Ambleside Online’s science, but have been using Sabbath Mood Homeschool guides this year and love them. I plan on using her guides next year instead of AOs plans (for AO7, 5 & 2) and I have looked extensively at AO science selections.
A lot of the books are the same/similar and both schedule multiple streams of science, and because of this I am confident both are solid CM plans. What I personally like about SMH over AO is the scheduled experiments, because this is also a weakness for me. I also like how SMH lays out the science streams better. AO schedules the multiple streams all year, so the student would be reading books on botany, astronomy, chemistry etc one day a week all year. Where as SMH suggests doing biology or botany one day a week all year and then doing individual topics (chemistry, weather, geology etc) three days a week term by term. Really it’s just a preference thing, it just makes more sense to me and we’ve liked to dive deeper on specific topics for a term.
Hope this helps!I thought I’d give an update since we’ve been using our SM chemistry guide for a few more weeks now. I feel pretty much the same way. I love, love, love the readings and scaffolding but I’m not fond of the experiments at all-at least not for the chemistry guide. They are complicated and require so many various things that we have yet to actually complete one even though I purchased some required supplies from Home Science Tools. I thought we were finally all set to try an experiment yesterday and we started to gather supplies. Then I saw that the experiment required a 2 quart jar with a lid. I didn’t have that, so the experiment was ditched, again!
I decided to buy a separate lab book that I’ve been looking at for years. It’s called Kitchen Science and is high school level (though there is a middle school level as well) and is all about chemistry in the kitchen. I will let y’all know how that goes.
The strength of the SM guide experiments is that they fit in perfectly with the lessons. Our new labs will be completely separate unless I can match a few topics somehow.
A lot of this may just be me. I am a keep it simple kind of gal and when things get too complicated, I’m done! The SM chemistry experiments are just too complicated for me. I kind of wish she would include more regular lessons and less experiments. Buying so many various supplies for an experiment every, single week could get a bit expensive, not to mention time consuming.
All of that said, my daughter and I love the rest of the guide so much that we consider it far worth it to look elsewhere for our lab component. Another option we’ve considered is buying an all inclusive high school level chemistry set.
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