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Can anybody compare (or review either) Science Shepherd Biology vs. BJU Biology?


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  • 1 month later...

My oldest is now in 11th. I started 9th grade with BJU Biology. After 2 months we moved to SS. Let me note that this is not the newest edition of BJU. I used the older edition that had 2 books.

 

I loved BJU. It is very detailed, colorful, and packed full of information. However, it quickly became obvious that it was too much material too fast. Dd was not retaining the information. She was struggling with the amount of work/reading/memorization that had to be done each day. She began to dread science, a subject she has always enjoyed.

 

We switched to SS. Dd loved it. SS is not as colorful as BJU. Most (if not all) the illustrations and diagrams are black and white. The pace is slower. The material is still challenging but the explanations were very good. There are no wasted words, every word "packs a punch". The review sections revealed that dd was retaining the info. I was tempted to skip some sections as we had already done the first 2 chapters of BJU. Fortunately, I did not skip anything. Over and over again, dd would have "light bulb" moments and say thing like, "thats what that means, or thats how that works." She began to enjoy biology.

 

I did use BJU as a resource due to the diagrams and illustrations. I also think they covered more indepth human anatomy and physiology than SS. To compensate, I made sure our health program reviewed A/P.

 

BJU's new edition is 1 text as opposed to 2. I don't know if that has affected the amount of material covered or not.

 

Both are excellent programs. I don't think you could really go wrong with either one. Just be aware of the pace and workload of BJU. I'm not saying it is a bad thing, for many, that level is a very good thing. For us, it was too much, too fast.

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