Apologia vs. anything else...what do you think?

[Yolanda]

I didn't know how to word this quite right so bear with me!

 

Just wondering what all the hullabaloo is with Apologia! :confused: I've perused a Zoology book of my friends and while it looked fine, I don't remember it jumping out at me and saying 'You've got to buy me, NOW!' :D

 

So, can you tell me what Apologia has that others don't?

 

Can't the same things that are taught in 'A' be gained via library books?

 

Do you use it as a reference and end up using other books to go along with it?

 

If you don't use Apologia, tell me what you use and what you like about it.

 

 

Thanks!

 

Yolanda

[asta]

For 6-8, we used library books, the Discovery Channel (they also had books back then), and LIFE. We de-weeded a big garden plot with hand tools and hoes. We chose seeds based on our geography/weather and planted them. We took care of them, and mourned when the squirrels got ALL the corn.

 

We went to museums. We walked around our neighborhood and city looking at fungi, plants and trees. We joined the botanical garden and went there in every season. We went to the zoo. We tracked storms and weather on a big map and with the NOAA site.

 

And then, in 9th grade, we started Biology. NOT with Apologia. We actually used a book by Hoagland called "Exploring the Way Life Works", along with labs I came up with and Digital Frog.

 

As I type this, kiddo is doing the SAT subject test in Biology. If he scores anywhere close to what he did on the College Board's practice test, he'll be able to go into any science program he wants (apparently, the Bio is the hardest of the subject tests).

 

HTH

 

a

 

(who does not like Apologia's style - at. all.)

[Closeacademy]

I think the big pull with Apologia is the fact that it is filtered through a Christian lens. Personally, I found the Astronomy book dead dull and it even turned my child who was wild about space off of the subject.

 

Library books and experiment kits are fine. But if you worry that the library books may not have a creationist point of view then Apologia seems safe. At least in the early years.

 

:001_smile:

[8filltheheart]

We use whole books until late middle school. (either ones we own or library books) We use textbooks starting in 7th or 8th grade (just depends on the child and what they want.) Apologia is not in my textbook selection criteria.

 

As for what we do use......

My 7th grader this yr completed 2 of CyberEd Plato's courses (life science and physical science). Next yr he is doing Kinetic's COnceptual Physics.

 

My 9th grader this yr used Campbell's biology. Next yr she will be doing Prentice Hall Chemistry. She will probably use the Conceptual Physics course in 11th. (She wants to go to culinary school, whereas rising 8th grade ds wants to go into engineering and will be taking a completely different route for high school science.)

 

FWIW, I don't worry about gaps in K-7 at all. Their science choices are interest driven.

[VanessaS]

FWIW, I don't worry about gaps in K-7 at all.

Gotta second this completely. Science in the early years is about learning to observe and interpret what we see in nature and to learn the rigors of the scientific method. The actual content isn't that important.

 

Not a big Apologia fan here. :o I know that I'm in a minuscule minority on these boards. I'm Catholic (and an engineer) so I tend to see science as a way to discover the beauty of God's creation (the opposite of the "creationist" philosophy that pits science and religion against each other). The more I learn about the way the world works, the more in awe I am. Unfortunately, the homeschooling academy that I want to send my children to use a lot of Apologia stuff. We'll deal with that when we get there. :tongue_smilie:

 

I'm also a big fan of whole books so I would tend to want to read a separate book on each topic and just use a textbook as a spine. I have a bit of a Charlotte Mason bent.

[Orthodox6]

Don't worry Vanessa. I "don't touch the stuff", either ! :)

 

DH, the children, and I all independently of each other voiced our annoyance and frustration with both content and "style" of Apologia textbooks.

 

I'm down to only one student, and she is happy with RS4K, which I hope to follow with "The Rainbow" science.

 

 

Not a big Apologia fan here. :o I know that I'm in a minuscule minority on these boards. I'm Catholic (and an engineer) so I tend to see science as a way to discover the beauty of God's creation (the opposite of the "creationist" philosophy that pits science and religion against each other). The more I learn about the way the world works, the more in awe I am. Unfortunately, the homeschooling academy that I want to send my children to use a lot of Apologia stuff. We'll deal with that when we get there. :tongue_smilie:

 

I'm also a big fan of whole books so I would tend to want to read a separate book on each topic and just use a textbook as a spine. I have a bit of a Charlotte Mason bent.

[erinfontenot]

I agree about the Astronomy Apologia. Kind of dull. So it turned me off of using Apologia again this past year. We started doing the suggestion for 3rd grade in the WTM book for chemistry. It was way over their heads and kind of boring. A friend of mine loaned me the Apologia Swimming Creatures of the 5th book and my kids went nuts looking at it, begging me to read it to them. So, we dumped the chemistry in late October and we are almost done with Swimming Creatures. It was awesome. We checked out tons of additional books from the library, watched IMAX movies and went on several field trips. The knowledge that we all gained from the Apologia book was extraordinary. i have lived in Florida since I was 11 and didn't know a fourth of this stuff. Anyway, we are going to do Apologia Land Animals of the 6th day this year. I like the way the books have everything broken down. You can go to the yahoo group for elementary Apologia and get tons of ideas for free and notebook pages. We did awesome notebooks this year. They also have full lesson plans on the yahoo group. You should check it out. good luck with your search...

[Orthodox6]

What "flips the coin" for many families is that the Apologia books can be handed to the student to study all by himself. I have not seen any other science series with that feature.

 

When I said that we dislike the "style", I mean the distracting "jabbery" narrative. That is a helpful feature for some learners, so I'm not disparaging that. We reacted similarly, years ago, when somebody talked me into purchasing "Journey through Grammarland". The material droned on-and-on, never just getting to the point.

 

I don't know about the "junior" series, whether the same holds. They are written by a different author, too, so maybe I might like them [ ?? ]. Any observations as to whether the junior books differ noticeably ? (TIA)

[siloam]

I didn't know how to word this quite right so bear with me!

 

Just wondering what all the hullabaloo is with Apologia! :confused: I've perused a Zoology book of my friends and while it looked fine, I don't remember it jumping out at me and saying 'You've got to buy me, NOW!' :D

 

So, can you tell me what Apologia has that others don't?

 

Can't the same things that are taught in 'A' be gained via library books?

 

Do you use it as a reference and end up using other books to go along with it?

 

If you don't use Apologia, tell me what you use and what you like about it.

 

 

Thanks!

 

Yolanda

 

Yolanda,

 

We have used the Botany, Zoo 1, Zoo 2 and Zoo 3 books. The reason why they work here is because my kids only want to study animals or plants (I have two that want to be vets), no human body allowed-especially no human body, no astronomy, no physics, and no chemistry. I think I might get away with earth science if I tried. There just isn't a ton of earth science at my 6yo's level, KWIM? Oh and I don't have library access. :001_huh: They watch the magic school bus shows all the time, so can't really read those. Most programs that focus on Biology have a large human body component and half the other programs focus on all 4 science field yearly. It just becomes very challenging to find a program to do with my kids that they will enjoy.

 

The Apologia books get the job done painlessly.

 

Heather

 

[coffeefreak]

Yolanda,

 

We have used the Botany, Zoo 1, Zoo 2 and Zoo 3 books. The reason why they work here is because my kids only want to study animals or plants (I have two that want to be vets), no human body allowed-especially no human body, no astronomy, no physics, and no chemistry. I think I might get away with earth science if I tried. There just isn't a ton of earth science at my 6yo's level, KWIM? Oh and I don't have library access. :001_huh: They watch the magic school bus shows all the time, so can't really read those. Most programs that focus on Biology have a large human body component and half the other programs focus on all 4 science field yearly. It just becomes very challenging to find a program to do with my kids that they will enjoy.

 

The Apologia books get the job done painlessly.

 

Heather

 

 

:iagree:

 

I didn't like Apologia when I started looking at it 3/4 years ago. I didn't like the in depth study of one subject, I thought the books would be above an elementary school level etc, etc, etc. Then, a friend let me look at her Botany book and my daughter's eyes lit up. We've used it all year and I now own all the other books. My girls LOVE them. So much, we can't decide which one to use next year. It's just one of those things. Sometimes, we look at a curriculum and it doesn't appeal to us. The real question is, will it appeal to our children.

 

Blessings!

Dorinda

[NavyWifeandMommy]

I really wanted to just use Apologia series with my children but I honestly don't think its going to work. While my daughter enjoys reading the book, the experiments haven't worked out for us at all. I have joined the yahoo group and have been disappointed with it. Most of my questions were not answered so I left the group. Last year I used the Botany as a reference but never read the whole book. I am going to have her finish reading the Aplogia book that we are using and then we are moving onto Preparing Hearts For His Glory for science. The other day my daughter found the Real Science 4 Kids Pre Chemistry book that we used for 1st grade. She said that she enjoyed that book. So maybe after PHFHG we will use Real Science 4 Kids for 5th grade.

[Julie in MN]

Personally, I found the Astronomy book dead dull and it even turned my child who was wild about space off of the subject.

 

Funny how different we all are. My son & even *I* found the astronomy study fascinating. The author seemed to present all the random & even the boring stuff about astronomy in an orderly and understandable sequence. Pretty soon we felt we could speak using the "astronomy vocabulary" and we really "knew stuff" :)

 

Other astronomy books seemed to me to be random facts that impressed us for a moment & were forgotten. Or more advanced stuff reminded me of Charlie Brown's teacher saying wahwahwah ("This planet is made of these chemicals. This planet is made of these chemicals...").

 

We loved the Astronomy. It's the only one we've done. We did all of it, including creating a notebook & doing most of the activities. (We did it with MFW's RTR.) We keep the book on our bookshelf.

 

Julie

By the way, he was I think in the beginning of 6th grade.

[MIch elle]

Not a big Apologia fan here. :o I know that I'm in a minuscule minority on these boards.

 

 

:iagree:

[orangearrow]

We've completed two of the Apologia books (Astronomy and Zoology I) and will do the Botany this coming year. We LOVE notebooking and Apologia lends itself so perfectly to just that.

 

Science was my toughest subject to "find" something and stick to. A friend recommended I check out Apologia, so I bought the Astronomy book and - wow. Knocked my socks off.

 

I am Christian, but sometimes the God-Created center of the book is a little much for me, so I use it to open up the conversation for the kids and I to discuss evolution and creationism every time it comes up in the books.

 

My kids are finishing 5th, 3rd, and K this year and science is one of their favorite subjects. If it ain't broke, I'm not fixing it... :D

[Samiam]

We love Apologia as well, and I actually would prefer it NOT to have any Christian content. I choose to use it anyway because the books are so good.

 

We have tried several other sciences, including R.E.A.L., and K12. Both study a topic for a few weeks and then move on. At the end of the year, my son couldn't really retain any of it. I did love all of the activities in R.E.A.L., but one, I hate Usborne books, they are just tooooo busy, and it used Usborne as a spine, and two, it was like a "snippet of this info" and a "snippet of that info".

 

My son also learned so much with Zoo II, Swimming Creatures, it was amazing what he could tell me. We will do Astronomy this fall, and I have already pre-read most of it, and I didn't see a "dry" bit in it. I think it is really written well towards the level of a older elementary student to read on their own. I will probably end up paraphrasing it for my DS6 though, as it is a bit over his head.

 

I am waiting in tippy-toes for the Anatomy book to come out :))))!

 

So I guess, in the end, it's all a personal preference, but I really love the "immersion" style of these books....jumping head first into one topic and exploring all angles of it before walking away, unlike some of the other curriculums who want to hop from one topic to another.

[FloridaLisa]

Well, it may be that Apologia doesn't fit your teaching style or what you envision for science for your elementary age kids. It could be too that after all of the "hullabuloo", it didn't rise to your expectations.

 

It has fit well for elementary science for me because 1) I no longer had to pull together science units from hither and yon; 2) it has the meat of an elementary text, but reads like a living book; 3) the one (!) experiment per chapter extended the lesson, not me; 4) narrations could follow daily lessons through the notebooking or my assignment; 5) the pictures and text held the our interest.

 

One more thing -- I think it's a great *co-op* text and thus has led to even more "hullabuloo!" :001_smile:

 

HTH,

Lisa

 

[Caroline4kids]

I love it because it gets done! We read a small section and they narrate-- voila! done. :) My kids retain it and that is important, the most important things IMHO.

[Yolanda]

Thanks, everyone. I appreciate your thoughts.