Can we use another Bio text with Apologia labs?

[momtolgd]

Our co-op is hoping to do lab classes next year using the labs from Apologia Biology. (No teaching from the text, just the labs in class.) We have heard that the text is quite wordy, however, and that doesn't work so well for us. I was wondering if anyone could recommend a text we could use at home while doing the labs with the co-op? Oldest DS will be in 9th.

 

Thank you!

[Mom22ns]

Sure, you could add Apologia labs to any Biology course. They won't necessarily line up as far as the lab being what you are studying at the time, but you'll probably cover everything that the labs cover. I have always considered Apologia labs to be the weakest part of the courses, but I haven't looked at the Biology labs to see if that holds true. 

 

You might want to take a look at the lab list and compare it to whatever you choose. See how useful they would be and if you might want to do some additional labs on your own. It would give you a base though to allow you to call your Biology a lab science.

[G5052]

I like the BJUP texts (recent versions have two volumes), but their tests can be tough because they're pretty detailed.  One option is to let your student make a "notes sheet" and use that for the test.

 

I also like the Christian Liberty text, but we used it for only one quarter with DIVE and the DIVE tests, and switched to BJUP because it correlated better.

 

You'll of course have to figure out how to line things up because Apologia covers less than those options.  Both BJUP and Christian Liberty cover human biology, which Apologia handles in their Advanced Biology text, not the basic one.