Talk to me about Apologia Zoology 1

[violamama]

So we just did our first day of this curric. It seems good, though it took about 45 minutes to read the 5 pages, narrate it back and do the notebook page (draw two favorite animals and write their genus & species name under picture). They have already memorized Kingdom Phylum Order... etc from CC.

 

I may be a wimp, but it seems like the future this is going to take a big fat hour... or seven. My boys are VERY interested in science and seem to have decent vocabularies for their ages, but they are 7 and 4. (Obviously, it's mostly the 7 year old doing the written work.) They did enjoy it a LOT today.

 

Do any of you follow the two days per week, two weeks per "lesson" schedule they outline?

Is it doable with my crew's ages/etc.? (And IF I should skip things, what would you skip?)

How are you liking it?

[Homemama2]

For those ages we read small amounts daily, only working 15 or 20 min. at a time. This usually ended up being 2 pgs., I think. We also narrated daily, not just when they suggested it.

[PachiSusan]

I used Zoo 1 with my 7 year old and we did less per day but did it every day. We were like ^^^^ - about 15-20 minutes per day tops. We actually never finished the book because she got really involved in our regular science book (we were using this as a supplement) and wanted to do that one more. We will be doing Zoo 1 this summer as a bridge.

[chicagoshannon]

We follow the schedule (but are doing astronomy). It does seem like a lot of reading some days. I generally will stop reading after a section and ask questions about what I just read. There is a ton of information and a lot would get lost if I didn't stop frequently for questions.

 

I'm hoping to use Zoo 1 next year.

[SebastianCat]

We cut the schedule in half, and did science 4 days per week. That was MUCH more manageable for my DD, who was 7 when we did Zoo 1 and is now 8 in Zoo 2.

 

My 10 year old, however, asked me at the beginning of the year if he could follow the schedule as written, doing science 4 days per week, and finish early. I was fine with his plan - he completed Zoo 2 in November, did a chemistry unit during December, and is now working his way through Zoo 3 the same way.

 

I say this just to let you know that for a science LOVING kid, finishing 2 books in a year is doable. But he does most of the work independently (except for narration and experiments).

 

For a 7 year old, I'd cut the assignments in half, and spread them out over a week. That way you're doing more like 15-30 minutes of science per day.

[skeeterbug]

I think that first lesson is extra long. Some are longer than others, so keep that in mind. I read until it feels we've done enough for the day, which may be more or less depending on my mood! FWIW, I don't make my 5yo notebook or listen to the reading, but he is all about being a part of the projects! Lately we've been doing science daily and I think that works better for us than two days a week like we were doing.

 

Eta: We've just finished astronomy and are starting Zoo 1 soon, but we started that first lesson back when we got the new book and journal because ds was excited about it. I remember that first lesson being long, it was in astronomy too.

[violamama]

Thanks for the input!

We might try for a while keeping up the schedule because we have two days per week with lighter amounts right now. (No swimming or music lessons on tues or thurs.) But it's nice to be reminded I can just split stuff up and do it to suit ourselves.

 

Thanks again, all!

[Chelli]

I used a schedule that a member of the boards here kindly shared with me. She divided the lessons up into smaller pieces (about two pages) and added in titles of books to supplement the reading. I also purchased the Zoo 1 lapbook to use with dd because she likes stuff like that.

[Holly]

We are using Zoo 2, but I had the same problem. We started out with 2 days/week, then I soon realized it wasn't working. Midway through the reading, I noticed a moment when they all quit listening as closely. I found a plan for daily readings and we switched to it. It is so much easier on all of us. I'm pretty sure I found the plan at the yahoo group.

[Rubix]

We spread each chapter over 2.5 weeks. We are using the jr notebook as well as a lapbook. So we read a section, do the corresponding lapbook parts and notebook activities. Depending on the length of the sections we may do several in a day or just 1 or 2. We usually do science 3 days a week. So each chapter is being split into 7-8 days. I think doing it over less days would be really hard. Doing the lapbooking activities really seems to re-energize the kids to listen again, as it gives them something hands on to do after each section.