In my quest to finalize Gracie's 3rd grade curriculum I am now comparing Considering God's Creation and Apologia. I looked at some samples online of CGC and like what I see. Can anyone please tell me their experiences with either??
I am using CGC right now with my 6th grade dd. We tried it out when she was in 2nd grade and it was too far above her reasoning at the time. She is enjoying it very much now that she is older. My son was more scientifically interested at a young age and he did well with learning the information; however, he did not at all care for how "crafty" it is. He doesn't like to color or cut 'n paste anything, so we only did the first couple lessons with him and switched to something else. Dd11 absolutely LOVES it for the same reasons ds couldn't tolerate it. :lol: Go figure. I'm interested in hearing about Apologia from others. I am considering it for my ds14 next year.
We are using CGC this year with my boys, and they love it! I usually leave out a little bit of the lesson because they are so young, and we move slower using the book as a two year course instead of a 1 year course. My boys love all the hands on stuff, the cut and paste, the activities, the explanations, all of it. The boys are doing 2nd/3rd grade level work, I honestly couldn't put them into a "grade" because we just work with abilities.
Brooke & Birbitt thank you for your input! Gracie LOVES science which is something I just learned in the last two months. It has become her favorite subject. Well that and math. I however am not a math or science person so this is weird for me. She does like crafts too so maybe this would be a good fit for us. Of course I still really want to hear from elementary apologia users.
There are lapbooks/notebooks for the Apologia stuff too, so the craftsy thing might be satisfied this way too. It's kind of funny - I have a 13yob student who claims to hate "crafty", although he likes to color and does it well, but since we've made a couple of "books" (simply by putting his pages into a manila file folder and stapling it together like a book) in a couple of subjects, he looks so proud of himself and his book and he couldn't wait to take it home and show his mom. We're probably going to start Considering God's Creation in January.
One positive point for Considering God's Creation is the cost. It is so afordable! I was so sold on Apologia just yesterday and then BAM! I see another curriculum! lol! On another positive note......I think I did finally decide on math! YAY! I think I'm gonna give CLE a shot. I think I'll get the first lesson and see how we like it. I am also getting the big math book at Sam's too for her to just have fun with.
We are doing Considering God's Creation this year, but moving very slowly and not doing science as often as my boys would like. They are 3rd and K, but the K is a science nut, and it seems to work well for us when we get around to doing it.
We are using Apologia Zoology 1 for my science loving second grader. He loves it so much that I put it at the end of the day so we can get other things done first. My dad was a science teacher for 40 years and he was really impressed with Apologia Zoology, how it's written to the student, how much information it contains and how much information my son is retaining. My son doesn't even care whether we do the crafty notebooking things or not. He's happy just to read and discuss the subjects. I also print out flash cards of science terms and he likes to act them out! When we studied ants, he set up an ant farm and spent hours observing them and using vocabulary he had learned. After reading about bird identification, he got out a field manual and spent a few hours observing birds at our feeder. I have no doubt we'll be using Apologia again next year!
I used CGC a few years back, with all three children. We took a year and a half to get through it. Phillip was only 3/4 at the time, which would have put the girls about 6/7 and 8/9. I liked that it was teacher-friendly, yet easy to adjust however I wanted. The big problem with it was all the VERY TEDIOUS cutting and pasting. I learned that it helped to enlarge some of the things that needed cut out, and print them out on cardstock.
I used cgc and became excited about science for the first time in my life! Then we did Apoligia astronomy last year and Wow talk about learning things I never knew! for 3rd grade I would suggest getting cgc and then when you finish it off go on to the apoligia because cgc is younger seeming to me than Apoligia. thats my opinion, and forgive my typos and cap mistakes and stuff I am typing in between conversations with my kids and my sister. lol sorry!
we are using CGC this year and my kids really enjoy it. My favorite part is the way it uses scripture to refute Darwinism and other worldly views. We tried Apologia(flying creatures) last year and we used it for about a month before the kids got completely bored with it. It's a good program for some people, but being hobby bird-watchers for years meant that the kids already knew all the info in the book. Maybe we would have liked some of the other ones better. who knows. at some point I may try to borrow one of the other volumes for supplementing certain topics but to use it as a core wouldn't work for us.we need more variety than to spend a year or semester on just one topic. That is my only problem with Apologia.
We tried CGC and just really didn't like it. I felt like it didn't go deeply enough into any of the subjects. My kids were not engaged. They both loved the elementary Apologia though. We bought kits from Creation Sensation so we had everything on had for the experiments. The kids loved the hands on work. I know so many families that have loved CGC. I think this is just an issue of personal taste. I have also loved other curriculum that friends have told me they detested.
Wow! Go ahead and make my decision more difficult!! lol! I don't know what to do. They both sound like great curriculums - how do I know what is best for us? Such a hard decision. At this point I am leaning toward CGC for this year and Apologia for next but an hour from now I'll be leaning another way I am sure.
One nice thing to consider is that CGC is not a very expensive curriculum, so if it doesn't work it's easy to change without much guilt of spending a TON of money! I really to love it though, and it's a great general science especially for younger grades because you can add too it with library books, extra experiments, more projects, etc. And at the end of the year you have a beautiful science notebook - we tear ours out, hole punch them and put them in a binder, it is easier than working directly in the book, and I like the look better
I can see this being a concern. My dd11 is not science-minded. It engages her because it isn't too deep and has activities that help solidify the information she is learning. She is getting a nice overview, which was our goal this year. There are "Digging Deeper" recommendations in CGC for those who want to dig deeper; however, we rarely do them.
We've used both. My oldest son used CGC for a little while many years ago, but he and I both hated it. He never liked cutting, coloring, or pasting, so it was a bad choice. The singing was so awful on the cassette that he literally begged me not to play it. I tried CGC again a little with dd a couple of years ago, adding it to Apologia, but I still didn't like it. She didn't do enough of it to know whether she liked it. :lol: We've used every Apologia elementary book except the human body one. We love them. Ds#2 used two of them. Dd and ds#3 are on their fourth book, which they'll finish up in January. We do lapbooks. We're doing Astronomy now, and there's free lapbooking stuff online for that, so I didn't even have to buy anything for that. There are lapbooking materials available from three different companies, plus Apologia sells a notebook that includes lapbooking materials. They may still have their free notebooking sheets available online, too. I love that I can just open the Apologia book and read to my children from it. My kids alternate narrating the short sections I read. Then we work on the lapbooking minit books. We sometimes skip experiments. My oldest son loves Apologia, and he has used Gen Science, Phy Science, Biology, Chemistry, Anatomy & Physiology, and Marine Biology. The first Apologia elementary book hadn't been published before he reached 7th grade, so he missed out on it. He would have loved that series, though. Ds#2 is now up to Apologia Biology.
There is singing in CGC??? I talked to dh last night about it. He in no way shape or form is involved in the process of choosing curriculum or having any part of lessons. He tells me to buy whatever I need but it is nice to bounce ideas off of him. Grace enjoys hands on stuff so I think she may like the cutting and coloring. And the price is right so if we hate it it wasn't too big of a waste of money. If we love it I heard it could last two years. I think I've talked myself into trying CGC. I do know without a doubt that I will use Apologia one day.
There is a CD that goes with CGC (included with the Teacher's Guide). It's cutesy little songs that go along with the lessons that help the kids memorize stuff. To be quite honest, we didn't use it much simply because that's not "my style". But it could really help, especially with younger kids. One thing I really liked about CGC is that is was VERY flexible, easily tweaked to meet my needs.
lol I forgot about the cd, we listened to it once and laughed , then went on without it> MY favorite part of cgc was the teacher book because it reads out exactly what to say and for someone who really hated science up to that point it made it easy for ME to understand what I was teaching!
I have used both and Apologia is our favorite here. My dd(12) loves it. In fact, she loves it so much that she said she will finish the whole book even once she starts the virtual academy. I think both are solid. I just prefer Apologia....personal preference. Jackie is right CGC is tedious. It also seemed my kids enjoyed Apologia more.
