Apologia Physical Science: need help figuring out what we need

[abrightmom]

My rising grader is coming back home for 8th grade (yay!). As this was JUST decided this week I'm furiously pulling together his course of study.

 

He is adamant about using Apologia Physical Science and I'm a bit stumped as to what we want or need.

 

These are required:

Text

Solutions & Test Book 

 

Optional:

Notebook. Is this a tidy way to keep his work in one place? Does this replace something (i.e. doing work on notebook paper)? If one doesn't use the notebook then how is the student's work being completed?

Tutorials. I looked at Red Wagon. What is the purpose of this? Is there a lecture he can listen to? Does this give him a schedule of assignments? Does this replace using the notebook? Any advantage to this versus just using the text/notebook? 

Schedule. MFW has a schedule. I like how organized it is. Would he use this in lieu of the notebook? 

Supply Kits. 

 

Other questions:

How much time must be devoted to this weekly?

Are there other tutorial options besides Red Wagon or Apologia Academy?

 

  

 

 

 

[mschickie]

I love the journals.  It does make it a little easier to have the questions there and then to just answer them right underneath.    There is also a section for lab write ups that is well laid out for you.

 

We do not use any of the tutorials just the multimedia cd which shows some of the experiments and some additional video.

 

I make my own schedule so I would not need to buy one.  There is a schedule in the journal too so you could just follow that if you wanted.  Now my dd does the labs at our co-op but this is how I have our schedule laid out.  Each module takes 2 weeks.

 

Week 1: Mon-Thursday read module and do the questions (how many pages depends on the length of the module)Friday labs at co-op

 

Week 2: Mon, lab write ups and start study guide questions, Tuesday finish study guide, Wed . study, Thursday Module Test, Friday: labs

 

 

[abrightmom]

I love the journals.  It does make it a little easier to have the questions there and then to just answer them right underneath.    There is also a section for lab write ups that is well laid out for you.

 

We do not use any of the tutorials just the multimedia cd which shows some of the experiments and some additional video.

 

I make my own schedule so I would not need to buy one.  There is a schedule in the journal too so you could just follow that if you wanted.  Now my dd does the labs at our co-op but this is how I have our schedule laid out.  Each module takes 2 weeks.

 

Week 1: Mon-Thursday read module and do the questions (how many pages depends on the length of the module)Friday labs at co-op

 

Week 2: Mon, lab write ups and start study guide questions, Tuesday finish study guide, Wed . study, Thursday Module Test, Friday: labs

This is helpful. :) Thanks for showing me how simple laying out a schedule can be.

 

I'd prefer streamlined and simple (i.e. no tutorials). We don't have a co-op option so would I need to plan a Lab Day at home? Are all of the labs necessary? Are some of them shown on the multimedia cd? That would be nice!

 

We'd purchase:

Text

Solutions & Test Book

Multimedia cd

Journal

 

Any thoughts on pre-purchasing a lab kit? 

[mschickie]

The labs are necessary.  You probably would not have to do them all but you want to do most of them.  I have not seen the physical science cd yet (dd is doing it this year) but normally they just have the more difficult labs on there.  I would plan one day a week to do the labs and you should be able to do 1-2 labs each week.  That is how our co-op does it and the class is only 55 minutes.

[abrightmom]

The labs are necessary.  You probably would not have to do them all but you want to do most of them.  I have not seen the physical science cd yet (dd is doing it this year) but normally they just have the more difficult labs on there.  I would plan one day a week to do the labs and you should be able to do 1-2 labs each week.  That is how our co-op does it and the class is only 55 minutes.

Thanks for clearing this up. (It would be so nice to have a co-op to do labs with  :thumbup1: .)

[Holly]

I totally wish we had a coop for labs!  I'm just starting this with DD and I have the text & solutions/test book, & daily lesson plans (from Rainbow Resource).  

 

I also picked up the Knowledge Box Central NB pages, which were part of the Currclick Pay-What-You-Want sale a week or so ago.  I'm not sure how much we'll use these though...I mostly bought them for the lab report pages.  lol  We were supposed to do the first lab today, but I don't have a 9V battery or copper wire.  Off to a great start already.   :leaving:   I'm hoping to pick them up this week and complete the lab on Monday.  I'm planning on walking DD through the first Module, then going from there.  

 

The text says to start with 30 minutes per day, then adjust the lesson times from there.  I'd also love to here a "real time" suggestion from others!  My DD can be a bit pokey with written work, so I can see it taking her much longer!

Edited August 6, 2016 by Holly

[mschickie]

We did General Last year.  I think they way I broke it up was she had to read at most 7-10 pages a day and sometimes those pages are taken up with the lab which she just had to skim until they did it at the co-op.  The answering of the questions would take her 15-30 minutes depending on how many there were.  I never had her do the added Bible questions in the journal, just really the on your own and any added charts/graphs that might be helpful for studying.  We just did the study guide question not the addition help questions in the back since she did not seem to need them.

 

I know I am very blessed with our co-op and that she is in the correct cycle for the labs.  The person who has traditionally taught the sciences in the past has a son in the same grade as dd so our sciences always line up.  If not dh would have to do them (which he would enjoy, but the scheduling is hard).

 

 

If you are not a house with lots of weird science supplies around I highly suggest getting a supply kit for this and then gathering up the missing supplies all at once.  It just makes it easier for you in the long run if you can just grab the supplies from one spot.  We would do this with our older child since she did not want to do group labs.

[gratitude]

Christian Books sells great supply kits for Apologia labs. We have used them for some of General and the Elementary series. They put the supplies in labeled lesson / Module bags. It helps so much to have it all right there, and then the labs get done. My son did the labs for General Apologia on his own. The lab write ups I helped a little bit with, but not much. The notebook was helpful.