If you use Apologia for a first or second grader, and a general writing question

[Penelope]

How much do you require in the way of notebooking and experiment pages?

 

I got Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day to look at, thinking we might use it in a year or two. I didn't realize it was geared for K-6 and it's certainly well within his comprehension now. It has got us "covering" science more regularly which I see as a good thing, and is a good way to finish off our life science/habitat theme we've had this year. We've gone through 3 lessons so far.

 

Am I slacking by not doing the notebooking and experiment pages with him, though. It seems like it might be too much and suck the joy out of it. I am trying to ramp up his writing before second grade, though, and want to make sure I'm doing enough. Right now he does WWE and writes spelling words (along with a couple of dictation sentences daily) for AAS, and that's about it. We do history notebooking but that is generally me writing down his dication and him drawing a picture.

 

Any thoughts appreciated! :)

[razorbackmama]

We don't really do the notebooking at all right now, but we have in the past. I've had them narrate to me what they want to write, and then I write it down. We are using the lapbooks from LiveandLearn Press. I write those as well.

 

I write the experiment sheets also.

[Wendy in ME]

My Ker is just drawing pictures of the animals we have read about. I love Apologia because we are also being consistent with science for the first time ever and it works as well with my Ker as it does with my 6th grade ds. We cover 1/2 a lesson every week and read it aloud so that everyone gets in on it at the same time.

[Michelle @ Living Waters]

I've used it now for Astronomy and Zoology 2. We generally just read it out loud and sometimes I "quiz" them a little on past things to make sure they're remembering. So far, we haven't done any notebooking with it. But this year, we do meet with a group to discuss one chapter every two weeks. The host family assigns topics from the chapter for the children to write a short report on. I have my daughters (8 and 6) narrate their report to me and I type it at this point. This has been fun for them and very helpful.

[lmrich]

We just started using this too with my first grader. So far, she has written two lab reports, more like copying mine and has written a report comparing/contrasting zooplankton to phytoplankton (I kid you not, it was easy for her to do this), drawn and labeled the parts of a whale and is getting ready to write a mini report on dolphins and whales. She is rather motivated! When she does this writing for science, I don't make her write too much for the day. She doesn't like creative writing (my older daughter could write in her creative writing journal for six hours) so I think this will be her "thing". It also helps that she is trying to keep up with the older ones in science.

 

Have fun with it and go with the flow, if she resisted, I would not push her, but it is almost the opposite with her, she wants to use three sources when she writes a report, too, just like the older ones.

 

Linda