Question For Elementary Apologia Users

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  • July 21, 2011 at 5:08 pm
    Heather
    Participant

    Okay, so it is only day 4 of our school year with my 4th grader, 1st grader and Kindergartener and once again, I’ve realized that the lofty ideas that I’ve planned out for the year may not be very practical.  Anyone else do this?Surprised

    I’ve planned Apologia for 4 days a week hoping to get through Swimming Creatures this year, but it really is alot of material to cover!  We are doing Mystery of History, which I can tweak down to 3 days a week from its recommended 5 days with no problem, but with Apologia scheduled at 4 days and nature study on one day, our days are really long.

    I am thinking of taking swimming creatures down to 2 days a week, but we’ll not finish the book this school year if I do.  If you are using Apologia for elementary, do you pick and choose lessons instead of covering the whole book in order to keep the weekly lessons down?  Do you do one book over 2 years (I really don’t want to do that)?  Do you just have long lessons?  How do you do it?  I didn’t realize there would be so much material to cover.

    Thanks!

    July 21, 2011 at 5:12 pm
    LDIMom
    Participant

    I understand!!! We tried to cover TWO apologia books last year with my 3rd grader and 6th grader. We got it done but we had to cut out a lot of the hands-on stuff which really is one of the things we loved our first year using it. This year, we are doing just ONE book (Botany) which is MUCH shorter than Zoology 3. It is one of their longest books at around 250 pages. I just looked this morning when I made out our schedule and realized Botany is much shorter. We do science on Tuesday/Thursday. History on Monday-Thursday. We go to Community Bible Study on Friday mornings, and a LEGO group once a month on Friday afternoons so I gave up on doing anything else on Friday except our group morning time and CBS (and LEGO group or a trip to zoo or whatever else we feel like doing Friday PM).

    I wouldn’t worry about it and would slow down (wish we had last year as I think we didn’t get the most out of it but I wanted older DS to get through all 3 Zoology books before moving on to Apologia General Science this year). I would also cut back the days if that is what will work best. One of the beauties of HSing; make changes as needed and better beginning of year than later.

    July 21, 2011 at 6:29 pm
    Jennifer
    Member

    I started out thinking I’d do Apologia Anatomy with my boys up to 4 times a week.  Then realized two is better.  I thought I’d put Spanish on the schedule, and piano as well.  But then I took them off.  Embarassed  I realize I need my schedule to consist of what I absolutely HAVE to do…the very minimum.  Then, when I do those other things I can be happy that I excelled,  Laughing  instead of looking at my schedule feeling like I failed.  For me I’m homeschooling 3 school aged, 1 preschool, and a one year old.  I don’t want to put too much pressure to get it all done and ruin the actual journey.  They’ll learn tons and we’ll all be fine whether I do the minimum or if I add in the bells and whistles.  It’s going to be a great year. 

     

    July 21, 2011 at 8:10 pm
    HeidiS
    Participant

    HAve you guys seen the lapbooking pages that go along with Apologia? I think I got mine from currclick and it made the whole year much more fun and more manageable as the lessons seem a bit shorter? Plus dd liked making little books about everything she was learning about so it made it much more pleasant for her and she was more engaged. We did this with Land Animals and we both enjoyed it a lot..

    July 21, 2011 at 8:27 pm
    grace4today
    Member

    Heather, I actually finished the swimming creatures book in half a year with my fourth grader(I started it late)> I didnt really follow any daily lesson plan. Somedays we would read a little and other days she would ask me to KEEP GOING so we would read more. We did not read every day either. I think you will be able to finish it in a year doing 3 days a wk………..maybe just read a little more each day. I dont know if you use the CM planner but I just scheduled each chapter and marked “worked on” each day and then “finished” when we completed each chapter. Oh and I would give her more than one day to complete the notebook asignments too. Hope that helps,Wendy

    July 21, 2011 at 8:34 pm
    sheraz
    Participant

    So the notebook pages are really time-consuming?  I am debating about which one to start with and got the notebook that comes with it from Apologia, but I don’t want to spend hours everyday doing science.  I am trying to figure out how to schedule it – I was only wanting to do it twice a week but from everyone’s posts it sounds like three days a week is better, with extra time scheduled for notebooking?

    July 21, 2011 at 9:30 pm
    csmamma
    Participant

    Have you seen Jeanies Notebooking Journals? She has recommended schedules in them – 2 days a week for 28 weeks. Blessings ~ Heather

    July 22, 2011 at 12:15 am
    grace4today
    Member

    I did not use the notebooking journal.I didnt know there was one till this year. I just used the notebooking suggestions at the end of each chapter and it was not too time consuming. Somedays my dd could finish it quickly other days she was just slower so we took more time to complete.I also shortened some of the assignments:)

    July 25, 2011 at 11:04 pm
    Heather
    Participant

    Thanks again ladies, I had scheduled it over 4 days per week, but found that I can double the lessons and get it down to 2 days pretty easily.  I did this today and it worked just fine! 

    I printed the notebooking pages from the Apologia website and they are working well also.  I am just picking and choosing which ones to do (there are so many!) and on days we choose not to workbook we just narrate orally.

    Thanks again!

    July 26, 2011 at 10:23 am
    Renelle
    Participant

    Hi,

    We only use our Apologia Zoology1 2 days per week & we have the notebooking journal as well, but I don’t expect a pile of work, we just use it as a method for narration or recording of science experiment facts and we pck and choose what we cover.

     

    Warmest wishes Renelle

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