Living Learning Books Science vs. Easy Classical - thoughts please

[Renthead Mommy]

I need to chose between Easy Classical Science (Animals, human body & plants) and Living Learning Books Level one science (animals, humans and plants). This is for first grade.

 

Can anyone do a comparison of them? What you loved and hated, pros and cons? General thoughts? Amount of time needed each week?

 

This if for a first grader. Please keep in mind, that we are overseas in Okinawa, so I can't just pop into a Wal-mart type place for things that I might need. Also, we have an "okay" library system, but nothing great for kids. I do have access to the elementary school library.

 

Any thoughts would be very helpful.

 

Thanks.

[WTMindy]

I need to chose between Easy Classical Science (Animals, human body & plants) and Living Learning Books Level one science (animals, humans and plants). This is for first grade.

 

Can anyone do a comparison of them? What you loved and hated, pros and cons? General thoughts? Amount of time needed each week?

 

This if for a first grader. Please keep in mind, that we are overseas in Okinawa, so I can't just pop into a Wal-mart type place for things that I might need. Also, we have an "okay" library system, but nothing great for kids. I do have access to the elementary school library.

 

Any thoughts would be very helpful.

 

Thanks.

 

I don't know about Easy Classical, but we used Living Learning Life Science and liked it fine. I think it is something a person could pretty easily pull together on their own if they had time, but it was nice to have it all laid out for you. The projects are fun, but they are more "crafty" type things as opposed to projects that contribute to the learning. Does that make sense? For example, when we studied ants, one of the projects was to eat ants on a log (peanut butter on celery with raisins on it). This was fun, but it didn't contribute to learning anything about ants.

[LadyAberlin]

I'm using LLB 1 with my pre k right now and we have enjoyed it. I think that Easy classical will be more meaty and I plan to use it in 1st.

 

Just wanted to add that you really need the library for LLB1 I don't know about EC.

[Tess in the Burbs]

I first got LLB b/c I was going to use it for K. It was 'cute' but the list of books were often not in my library and we had a good library then. I wasn't interested in the computer links at that time. But I didn't feel like it was a complete 'program'.

 

I got Easy Classical this last year to try science again in hopes we would actually do it. I used it with a 5.5 year old(doing 1st grade) and just turned 4 year old(doing K). It was a hit! Reading was just enough but we could have done more. coloring pages weren't too babyish. The activities were varied and easy to implement literally at that moment if needed. (I will say the next one couldn't be done 'on the fly')

 

We enjoyed science with Easy Classical. By the end of the year the kids were doing 'experiments' in the kitchen with the plants and starting to write down what they did/saw. It was a perfect 1st grade science for us. And with the older books listed it's easy to add more to the program if you wanted.

 

I loved the shopping lists(I never needed to go get anything but worms) and library lists. But honestly, when the kids wanted more books on the topic we just went to the library and got our own books on the subject. My kids like to pick out their own books. But the few I did find in our current town's library were good choices. but I think anything on the current topic from a library would suffice :-)

 

I can't praise Easy Classical enough. The core books they use are great(Usborne and Evan Moore) and it got done here this year. We liked it so much we ordered the 2nd grade level for this upcoming year and are so looking forward to starting!!!

[Linda...inOwasso]

We didn't care for LLB earth science/astronomy. Maybe I'm just lazy, but I didn't like having to request the books from our local library and *hope* they arrived during the week I was teaching that topic. I also felt it was rather unprofessional. I've seen free unit studies and plans other homeschool moms have put together that were put together much better than LLB.

 

I hate to give negative responses, but that was our experience. Best of luck to you :)