I am thinking of trying apologia next year and would love to hear your thoughts. I was going to start with zoology 1. Is that appropriate for 2nd grade and 5th, or not ? Also, I worried that the kids would get sick of learning about winged animals for an entire year. Did any of your kids get bored with it ? I also worried that they would miss out or get behind on other science topics such as plants, space, rocks/minerals, etc. if we only covered zoology for the year. Thanks
Personally, for science subjects, I've increasingly come to the opinion that interaction and teamwork are crucially important. Experiments become more exciting, mistakes can be noticed and corrected, and there's positive peer pressure to complete team projects on time. One thing I regret, looking back, is that my physics PhD research was not performed as part of a close-knit team. While I still very much enjoyed it, I would have learned much more if others had been working with me on a day-to-day basis. Right now, I'm building a full-blown interactive online course for Apologia's Physical Science book for which parents themselves can be the instructors and their children the students. I'm also building a self-study and a guided study (think tutoring) and a set of online quizzes for the same material. I'm hoping these things will bring the Apologia textbook to life and make science a whole lot more fun. We shall see.
Personally, I think the young explorer series should be done by semester rather than by year, meaning, you'd actually do zoology 1 AND 2 next year rather than just 1. That way they're getting something new every week. And no... it doesn't get boring. You don't spend the whole time on birds. There are insects, bats, dinosaurs, and you can even go on a tangent and talk about mythical dragons if you'd like.
we borrowed it from a friend and I am so glad I didn't spend the money on it. We (me included) were bored out our gourds with Flying Creatures. I really had a hard time trying to imagine this one book lasting us all year. Also I thought asking 2nd and 3rd graders to learn latin names and order and genus and species and phyllum etc was a little unneceserry. and boring.I couldn't even learn that stuff. But most of it, lilke the animal basics, my kids already knew. It was pretty much a waste of time for us.
We alternate with Real Science 4 Kids and Apologia by semesters. We did astronomy last year, and the kids never tired of it [they were 6 & 7]. We did a planet a week and then did each other chapter in a week each. We're doing botany this year, which has felt a little more weighed down for me personally. Some of that's my fault, though, as I planned incredibly stupidly; we started it partway through fall, so a lot of the plant projects are things we haven't been able to do. I think with Apologia and younger kids, you need to learn to take what you think is valuable and ditch the rest. There are some sections in a chapter that I drop if I think it's just 'extra' information that isn't really going to be retained in the long haul.
Thank you all for the reviews. I know alot of people praise it, but after looking at the website I wasn't really sure about it. I might get it if I can get a good deal on a used set. I think it would be good to supplement BJU science with.
We love Apologia! We did Zoo 2 last year with all 2. This year, the youngest 2 were going to do Anatomy but it wasn't released on time....but the oldest is using Ap. Gen Science.....the younger 2 we ended up bouncing around a bit but they're eager to start Anatomy when it's released....we did do some of the bugs from Zoo1 but we weren't really interested in birds since they had done parts of it at co-op. We've done a lot of space studies in the past and DS7 is doing parts of Botany at co-op now...so we're just doing this and that until we start Anatomy...lol.
