Can anyone compare Apologia Astronomy & God's Design for the Universe for me?

[Annabel Lee]

So I finally did a little research, looked at some online samples and tables of contents from different curricula. If I am going to use a purchased science program next year, I've narrowed it down to the God's Design for Heaven & Earth series, Apologia Astronomy w/ God's Design for the earth science part, or Elemental Science. I've emailed Pata with some of my questions about Elemental, but I thought some of you might have used the other 2.

 

How do God's Design & Apologia compare for astronomy? I noticed historical figures like Copernicus, Galileo, & Newton in God's Design table of contents, but the Apologia table of contents *seems* to go deeper with each planet. It could just be that they have more sub-headings than GD listed in their Table.

 

I plan to use a classical approach in my expectations for my kids no matter what curricula I purchase (or not) - I can tweak something for that. I would like to be able to get extra books from the library for supplementary reading - but not b/c a curriculum isn't meaty enough. I'd really like it to incl. mentions (at least ) of scientists throughout historyto tip me off that it's time to check out a book on that person for further reading. I like experiments alot, but plan to teach first and use the experiment as a way to cement the lesson for grammar stage, not the other way around (i.e., I don't want a text that asks "what do you think will happen" to my 1st grader when he truly doesn't know what will happen and therefore cannot form a good hypothesis).

 

I do want something that includes as much as possible, that goes as indepth as possible. I will probably tweak and pick and choose what topics we cover if there's too much for our time frame. On that note, do you think doing the entire God's Design Heaven & Earth series in 1 year is too much? Was it meant to be that way? What about doing the 2 GD earth sci. books and the Apologia book for astronomy? Too much? The apologia site says to take a whole year on it, but that would screw up my nice neat 4-year cycle plan. :tongue_smilie:

 

Thoughts, suggestions, experiences? Any are more than welcome!

Edited May 13, 2009 by Annabel Lee
spelling & grammar, as usual ;P

[Annabel Lee]

:lurk5:

[hapahaolekids]

:lurk5: Thanks for asking this. I'm leaning towards GD right now since it can be used for grades 1-8. Also, the new colored curriculum is on special right now:)

[Karis]

God Design, here. love that I can use it up through 8th and a fan of AIG

[abrightmom]

:lurk5:

[ChicoryChick]

The only GD that I have used was "Planet Earth" and that was before they updated and put it into color and we didn't care for it. (I heard it was one of the dryest ones so their astronomy might be great). We do love the Apologia' Astronomy (and other Apologia books) and it does mention Ptolemy and other astronomers, but you can always add in more biographies if you wanted to.

[t-hat]

Have not used GD, but we love apologia here and the Astronomy course was a huge hit. We did it over one semester with my 4th grader and met with 5 other 3-5th graders for projects and notebooking. The kids learned a lot about astronomy and stayed VERY engaged for 12 weeks! There is definitely not a ton of biographical content, just an overview of some of the main astronomers and how they tie in to discoveries and such. More on the planets and their composition, orbits, etc. But for me it was the perfect balance of solid science that was fun and engaging - which has convinced us to use apologia through the elementary years.

 

Hope this is helpful in your decision making process.

[daybreaking]

Have not used GD, but we love apologia here and the Astronomy course was a huge hit. We did it over one semester with my 4th grader and met with 5 other 3-5th graders for projects and notebooking. The kids learned a lot about astronomy and stayed VERY engaged for 12 weeks! There is definitely not a ton of biographical content, just an overview of some of the main astronomers and how they tie in to discoveries and such. More on the planets and their composition, orbits, etc. But for me it was the perfect balance of solid science that was fun and engaging - which has convinced us to use apologia through the elementary years.

 

Hope this is helpful in your decision making process.

 

Would you give me an estimate for the amount of time each day and week that was needed, in order to finish the course in 12 weeks? (This is for everything - reading, narrating, notebooking, projects, etc.) Thanks!

[t-hat]

I would say total reading the chapter time was about 45 min to an hour, broken up into two days or so. Then we worked on notebooking after each time reading for about 15-30 min. And the projects we did in one day for an hour or so. So I think 3 hours a week is reasonable.

[dkholland]

I love to sit down with my children and read Fulbright's books!

 

I liked the looks of GD, so I bought it this year and we have been getting through it. My dss are not getting as much out of it, as Apologia elementary. one of my beefs is that they throw in terms that my dss do not already know. for ex. This week we are reading through the chapters about weather and in reading about the troposphere, the explanation went on and on about protons and ions and other terms that my boys have not studied. For us, this program has been quite dry. We usually cannot wait to get out our science and I think this program is killing a little of our excitement.

 

I definately wanted a christian worldview program. but, GD has to state their agenda on every single page. I understand they want to teach and make their case to those who are not young earth, or creationist, but even I get tired of them constantly telling us this is why this proves an intelligent designer. I DO beleive in ID and we talk about it all the time at our house, but i feel like some of the chapters are written to the parents and not for an elementary student.

 

I am not bashing this program. It is just a little bit of a let down after usingg the fulbright boks. Plus, I am not a science person. I would suggest getting a peek at both programs and see which writing style you like because they are very different.

 

HTH and didn't offend:001_smile:

[Karis]

Just to say. I now have and really like BOTH.

[cyndyinohio]

Hoping to learn, too...

[siloam]

So I finally did a little research, looked at some online samples and tables of contents from different curricula. If I am going to use a purchased science program next year, I've narrowed it down to the God's Design for Heaven & Earth series, Apologia Astronomy w/ God's Design for the earth science part, or Elemental Science. I've emailed Pata with some of my questions about Elemental, but I thought some of you might have used the other 2.

 

How do God's Design & Apologia compare for astronomy? I noticed historical figures like Copernicus, Galileo, & Newton in God's Design table of contents, but the Apologia table of contents *seems* to go deeper with each planet. It could just be that they have more sub-headings than GD listed in their Table.

 

I plan to use a classical approach in my expectations for my kids no matter what curricula I purchase (or not) - I can tweak something for that. I would like to be able to get extra books from the library for supplementary reading - but not b/c a curriculum isn't meaty enough. I'd really like it to incl. mentions (at least ) of scientists throughout historyto tip me off that it's time to check out a book on that person for further reading. I like experiments alot, but plan to teach first and use the experiment as a way to cement the lesson for grammar stage, not the other way around (i.e., I don't want a text that asks "what do you think will happen" to my 1st grader when he truly doesn't know what will happen and therefore cannot form a good hypothesis).

 

I do want something that includes as much as possible, that goes as indepth as possible. I will probably tweak and pick and choose what topics we cover if there's too much for our time frame. On that note, do you think doing the entire God's Design Heaven & Earth series in 1 year is too much? Was it meant to be that way? What about doing the 2 GD earth sci. books and the Apologia book for astronomy? Too much? The apologia site says to take a whole year on it, but that would screw up my nice neat 4-year cycle plan. :tongue_smilie:

 

Thoughts, suggestions, experiences? Any are more than welcome!

 

Based on what you have said I would lean towards Apologia.

 

Now let me preference that with I haven't sat down and read either book (my oldest has read the CD universe on her own). I have personally read the GD Life texts, and the other two earth texts. I own the whole series. I have read all the Apologia text with the exception of the space text. My kids just don't like space for some reason. :001_huh:

 

The Earth series books have a short "Beginners" section made for really young kids that is only a couple of paragraphs long with a few questions. If your 6yo isn't into school that might be perfect for them. Then the lessons are about a page long, followed by 2-4 comprehension questions and then 2-4 thinking questions. Then there is a section for older children that is about half a page long, which you oldest could do. Vocab words are listed on the first lesson page, are in color through the text and then are defined in the back of the book. The activities vary, anything from worksheets, to games, to fill in, crafts to actually experiments. Often the upper level will have additional work/experiments, ect... but not every time. They do have special features through the book where they spend a page on a topic without any questions, activities, just a short biography, or informational piece. There are generally 35ish chapters in each GD book. If you were only doing this text then it would make for a sparse year as you only have about a chapter a week. If you were to do all the Earth books, or use living books to take topics in the Universe book deeper then it might work really well.

 

Apologia isn't as neatly divided. The divisions really are based on the content and they didn't worry about forcing the content to fit a certain limit. The Apologia text will have a lot more depth. Experiments are done at the end of each section, though occasionally they will have something in the middle. They have one big project in each book. Overall there are probably about the same number of experiments but less overall to do in Apologia (whether that is good or bad just depends on what you want). The main way of checking the child knowledge is narration. To that end there are a lot of different lapbooking and narration products you can buy for it and there used to also be a free one on her website. There are prompts in the book for this, but I don't remember any formal questions like GD has (it has been about 6 months since we have done an Apologia text).

 

Both are good products. I would say overall that GD is more like a traditional text and Apologia is more in line with the the living books/CM mindset.

 

Heather

[Annabel Lee]

Thanks for the helpful review, Heather! My OP was a year old, but it's good to hear some more about it. Since then, I got the Weather/Water book from GD (used, black & white ed.) and Apologia's Astronomy. I have to say that while the content of GD is good, I really like Apologia's format & the way they "speak to" the child much better. Apologia is not dumbed down at all but does not assume they already know of things like protons, etc.; as a PP mentioned. I, too, found the constant theme in GD of proving young earth ID (even though that's how we lean here) tiresome. Some of it makes for interesting bits of info. for me, but would bore my kids to death.

As far as what level in GD would be appropriate, my 6 y.o. is almost 7 now. He's beginning to think small chapter books the size/level of Magic TreeHouse are too easy. I accidentally gave him part of his brother's math lesson yesterday and he did it - I think I could test him out of 1st grade math w/ just a few stops and cementing of fact tables. So, I know the Beginner's level in GD would not be enough for him, yet even that level uses terminology developmentally inappropriate for his age. Bumping him up to the next level in GD would ruin him for science.

Now, a program that takes the time to explain ions, positive & negative charges, protons, etc. before delving into how these particles work in the troposphere (and explaining what that is, too) would be great for him. I lightly skimmed through a friend's NOEO grammar-stage chemistry & it looks like they teach larger concepts incrementally like that. I've read some very mixed reviews of the whole NOEO program though.

 

My vote is for Apologia now, if anyone cares to know.

Edited May 18, 2010 by Annabel Lee

[JadeOrchidSong]

After checking out the GD Human Body and Plant books at a used book sale, I decided that GD is not for me. I cannot vision myself using it with my kids. So I just ordered Apologia Astronomy for my ds7.5 and ds 5.5 for the fall. We are finishing up Songlight Science 1, which I don't like enough to continue.

And my co-op uses Apologia and I really like how the teacher taught the class.

J

[siloam]

Thanks for the helpful review, Heather! My OP was a year old, but it's good to hear some more about it. Since then, I got the Weather/Water book from GD (used, black & white ed.) and Apologia's Astronomy. I have to say that while the content of GD is good, I really like Apologia's format & the way they "speak to" the child much better. Apologia is not dumbed down at all but does not assume they already know of things like protons, etc.; as a PP mentioned. I, too, found the constant theme in GD of proving young earth ID (even though that's how we lean here) tiresome. Some of it makes for interesting bits of info. for me, but would bore my kids to death.

As far as what level in GD would be appropriate, my 6 y.o. is almost 7 now. He's beginning to think small chapter books the size/level of Magic TreeHouse are too easy. I accidentally gave him part of his brother's math lesson yesterday and he did it - I think I could test him out of 1st grade math w/ just a few stops and cementing of fact tables. So, I know the Beginner's level in GD would not be enough for him, yet even that level uses terminology developmentally inappropriate for his age. Bumping him up to the next level in GD would ruin him for science.

Now, a program that takes the time to explain ions, positive & negative charges, protons, etc. before delving into how these particles work in the troposphere (and explaining what that is, too) would be great for him. I lightly skimmed through a friend's NOEO grammar-stage chemistry & it looks like they teach larger concepts incrementally like that. I've read some very mixed reviews of the whole NOEO program though.

 

My vote is for Apologia now, if anyone cares to know.

 

The newer version are MUCH improved. With the old version we had left GD after the Earth books to do Real Science 4 Kids (which didn't work here either) and was trying to find something for physics when they came out with the new versions. Color and the updated material made a big difference for us. My oldest has now done the Body book, and is finishing up the 2nd physics text and has enjoyed them all, which says something because it was at her request that we quit using them the first time.

 

Part of it though is they just meet the need. I generally use Apologia and living books for our family science time, and then use the GD books to teach the kiddos how to study science themselves, pass tests, deal with vocab, ect...to prepare them for Apologia General in 7th. For those more academic purposes GD works very well.

 

Noeo also looks good. The only reason why I have never gotten around to them is my kiddos love animals and plans but HATE body. :confused: I can't separate that out with Noeo. Right now my plans are to do Apologia Botany then go through a bunch of Winter Promise levels with Apologia Zoo books thrown in between them. Not very WTM of me, hua? ;)

 

Heather

 

 

 

[Lovedtodeath]

The only reason why I have never gotten around to them is my kiddos love animals and plans but HATE body.

Emily too!:lol:

[wy_kid_wrangler04]

Have not used GD, but we love apologia here and the Astronomy course was a huge hit. We did it over one semester with my 4th grader and met with 5 other 3-5th graders for projects and notebooking. The kids learned a lot about astronomy and stayed VERY engaged for 12 weeks! There is definitely not a ton of biographical content, just an overview of some of the main astronomers and how they tie in to discoveries and such. More on the planets and their composition, orbits, etc. But for me it was the perfect balance of solid science that was fun and engaging - which has convinced us to use apologia through the elementary years.

 

Hope this is helpful in your decision making process.

 

 

We very easily stretched this course out for the whole year. We did add weather in with it with library books so that helped, and we did read alot of biographies on Copernicus, galileo and a few others that did help to solidify them for my dd. She loved the Apologia Astronomy! The notebook journal was a huge hit! We worked throught each lesson over 2 weeks with adding in reading from the library, then the 3rd week we did all the deeper studies, and logged onto the bookextras to learn more! My dd has learned so much its amazing! This is an awesome curriculum and we will continue using it for sure!!!!!:D

[wy_kid_wrangler04]

Thanks for the helpful review, Heather! My OP was a year old, but it's good to hear some more about it.

 

 

I have been seeing this alot lately! Who has been resurrecting year old threads??

[Guest]

My vote is for Apologia now, if anyone cares to know.

 

Awesome, I have vacillated over those two choices for a few years now (not needing one quite yet) and as it gets closer to choose, I am leaning towards Apologia, as well. I appreciate this post, even if it was older. :)

[Jeanne in MN]

Apologia hands down. I had both I could've used for space science/astronomy and skipped the GD for Apologia. We are using GD right now for earth science and it's just not as intriguing as the materials Jeannie Fulbright has put out. Apologia is meatier, but not to deep that you don't get it. It's very well done and one feels like they are learning. GD doesn't provide as much info on each topic as I'd like, especially when a chunk of nearly each lesson is used to prove creationism is right. I find myself supplementing with other books to help get the point across.