Making Apologia Physical more CM….

Hi Gina! We’ve done Apologia General Science, Physical Science, and just finished up Apologia Biology last year. There are a few things you can do to make it more CM style.

(1) Divide up the readings into smaller chunks and have your daughter narrate after each reading. We did this. I think it worked really well. You can take one module and spread it out over 2 weeks, some maybe even over 3 weeks.

(2) I opted not to use the Apologia tests and instead, made tests in a CM style. So I would have questions like “Tell me all you know about….” and so forth.

(3) For Biology, I did not have my daughter memorize all the vocabulary. There were some modules that had a ton of words! What I did was pick out the ones that I thought were the most important. And those are the ones she was responsible for learning. I would include those on the tests I made. I felt that being introduced to the terminology was important even though I picked out a select few in each module for her to learn; so I still had her write all of the vocabulary in the modules in her science notebook.

(4) As I mentioned, she narrated after each reading for the module. In addition to that, I regularly had her tell me what she had learned previously in the module. So say she started a new module on Monday. She would orally narrate after her reading on Monday. Then on Tuesday, she would do another oral narration for that reading. Then maybe on Wednesday, I’d have her narrate Wednesday’s reading and then I would ask her about Monday and Tuesday’s material by asking something like “Tell me all you learned about….” and so forth.

(5) I had my daughter keep a science notebook. It was a binder with sections for each module. In a section she would keep the list of vocabulary words, the On Your Own questions that she answered, and any other work I had her do like drawings.

(6) Also, you can add in one or two living books.

Since we did not do the Apologia tests, I did not have my daughter do the study guides. Occasionally, I would pick a question here and there from the study guide for review. But that was it.

I found that doing the narrations and making my own CM style tests instead of doing the Apologia study guide and tests, made it much more in a CM style. Not only that, but I felt that by approaching the material in that way, my daughter learned much more than if she had just read the module, memorized the vocabulary, and taken their tests.

I chose a different curriculum for Chemistry for this year and my daughter is really enjoying it. We are still doing narrations. And to the curriculum I’ve added in a few living books.

Hope that helps!

my3boys, I forgot that I also added in some videos here and there. Thanks for mentioning that! 🙂

I think I got most of my ideas from Rachel on this site…I’ll have to go back and look to make sure. 

I have written down:

Horrible Science series

Exploring the World of Physics: From Simple Machines to Nuclear Energy, John Hudson Tiner

Science Matters: Achieving Scientific Literacy

Millions to Measure

A Drop of Water (I have mod. 4 written next to it)

The Weather/Astronomy Book

Nova: Hunt for the Supertwister (movie on Netflix)

The Mystery of the Periodic Table

The Wright Brothers

Lise Meitner: Had the Right Vision About Nuclear Fission

Charged Up

I have The Alexander Graham Bell book (I think it’s recommended by SCM for Physical as a bio, but I could be wrong, I’m tired, and one on Thomas Edison.

HTH

I can check later to see where I got this list from.