Lifepacs Science or Apologia Elementary?

[LNC]

My children are going into 3rd and 5th. They both love science - they want careers in medicine. We do great with library science books, but terrible with curriculum! Scheduling, experiment planning and notebooking are all challenging for me in science only!

 

We do really well with workbooks. Easy to tote (lots of hospitalizations and appts.) and schedule. We use CLE for math, reading and lang. arts - it has been a lifesaver!

 

So, I'm considering Lifepacs for the same reasons. Also, we have a local lab for Apologia 7-12(advanced)courses. I just want to give them some exposure to science topics and feed their passion with library books. Lifepacs would enable me to have them in their own grade level and I could buy the kit for experiments ready to go. Then my son would have his science until 7th grade.

 

Apologia Elementary books look wonderful and very thorough! I already own Astronomy and Botony - I had planned on including them with our studies the last two years but never got to them. I would keep them together, but then have I would have trouble bc there are so many zoology books and then the upcoming anatomy, chemistry and physics books to cover by 7th.

 

It boils down to this - wonderful and thorough but always feeling behind and frazzled or workbooks that aren't as thorough but done consistently!

[Pongo]

Those are 2 really different programs. You have Lifepacs that look like workbooks without the text (although I know its incorporated:)with a broad overview skimming over many things.Apologia is the text without workbooks, with a small scope , but more depth.

 

Do your children like workbooks, AO certainly looks workbookie?

What makes it not get done? I know that of ALL my subjects if I could shelf history I would. So I had to, for the sake of getting it done, use something that was scheduled because I did not want to put that much time and energy into it. I love read aloud's, and crafts but work pages, tests and quizzes nope, not for us. I like discussions but not picking apart EVERYTHING they read.

 

What will make YOU, make science more consistent? because it doesn't really matter what you get, if you have to be the one that leads the science class then you have to make sure it something YOU will do.

[mchel210]

By far...I would choose apologia or something else before choosing Lifepac. I dont think they really teach a broad range of science. I wasn't pleased at all with them. It was very broad and didnt get into science deep enough. (just my opinion) Esp. if you have science based kids.

 

Apologia was very nice but I would switch up every few weeks or semester so you dont get tired of studying the same topic all year.

[LNC]

I have curriculums that utilize notebooking, and we get behind on the notebooking. They read lots of library science books and get a lot of info from them.

 

My daughter is going into 5th - I would like to cover before 7th grade Apologia General:

3 zoology books,

1 anatomy book

1 physics and chemistry book

That doesn't seem doable in 2 years!

 

Having a box of experiment supplies ready to go would be great - I would spend lots to get those for every Apologia book. I also like the idea of having them exposed to a wide variety of topics each year and at their own grade level. Lifepacs just get terrible reviews everywhere though....

[AudreyTN]

Have you seen Considering God's Creation? You could use it to supplement any science program... or you could just go through the workbook (which are more like notebooking pages) and use library books.

[Ellie]

I used three levels of Alpha Omega science--4th, 9th and 10th--the same year, and hated all three such that we didn't finish any of them. Don't foist them on your dc. Really. Blech.

[HollyDay]

I have to agree with the other posters about not choosing LifePacs. Compared to what is out there - LifePacs fall short of the mark.

 

Apologia 7 is a great program, but we personally did not do very well with the elementary series. Honestly, expect for Astronomy, dc found them to be boring. Science went from being a great time -to being dreaded.

 

Have you considered BJU? What I did when I used BJU elementary was to chose one grade to teach both dc. Usually, we chose the oldest. We had one year where it seemed we were always at the doctor - or the orthodontist - or the lab - or etc., etc... I still used BJU, but I did not use the TM much at all. Yes, we missed out on many experiments. But, we learned a lot, dc enjoyed the program, and they retained much more than I had hoped.

 

If you want a literature based program, consider Noeo or RealScience, or even BF History of Science.

 

You could do Noeo level 2 with both dc. Notebooking failed for us in this program - so we just didnt do it. Again, dc liked it, learned from it.

 

I have not looked at RealScience until recently, so I cant give any details on that.

 

BF History of Science is a really nice little program - I did it in just over a semester - and the dc enjoyed it! You would have to check the TM, find what books to read for the lesson and pack it in your "to go bag".

 

HTH some

[LNC]

Lifepacs are out after this thread & searching the boards! I started a new post about BJU science.

Thanks for the advice!