Apologia Biology Lab Kit

[stlily]

For those of you who used Apologia's Exploring Creation with Biology, which lab kits and materials did you purchase and from where?  I'm looking on the Rainbow Resource site and it looks like I'll need a 1) microscope, 2) Prepared slides kit, and 3) Dissection kit. Does that sound right? Is the kit from Home Science Tools compatible?  Thank you.

[....]

DS15 is using Apologia Biology this year.  I didn't buy much, because we already have so much science equipment around here.  But, there is the prepared slides kit you mentioned and I bought that (and I thought I bought that from Rainbow Resource, but I see it there on HSTools website, also).  The dissection stuff, I planned to buy as the dissection labs start popping up in the book, because there aren't any dissections right away and I didn't want a bunch of dead critters in my bedroom until Thanksgiving, YKWIM?  I planned to order those from Home Science Tools.

So far, we've only needed things we already had around the house.  You need access to pond water in the beginning of the book.  I would make sure you have slides and coverslips, lens cleaning paper...pipets, methylene blue or some stain, iodine (I think we needed iodine at one point).  

One of the labs in the beginning did not work for us and I can't remember which one, specifically, but I think we were supposed to see cells and we couldn't.  So, I made my own slide with a sliver of onion skin, stained it and we were able to see some incredible cells with cell walls and nucleus, etc.  

[MerryAtHope]

I ordered either from Sonlight or Rainbow. We already had a microscope, so I just ordered the prepared slides and the dissection kit.