Apologia Science

I have been doing a series on the curriculum choices we have made this year, many of it brand new to us.  So far I have blogged about Excellence in Literature, All About Spelling, and Mystery of History.  Chelsea has used Apologia Astronomy and General Science a few years ago, but the boys have never used it before.  For the last couple of years we have used Abeka Science.  It really was not as in depth and hands on as I usually like, but it was free and last year having morning sickness all day for 6 months, I really wasn't able to do much more than read out of textbooks.  This year, we will be doing Apologia's Zoology 1 Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day with the boys and Chelsea will be using High School Biology.

What I love about Apologia Science:

• Creation based
• Texts are written to the student
• Full of fun, interesting,educational information
• Great hands on fun experiments to reinforce the lesson
• Notebooking exercises to go along with the lesson
• Hard cover text book with lots of great pictures
• Teaches uses the immersion approach so students have the opportunity to really learn a lot about a topic instead of just getting little chunks of information
• Elementary texts can be used with a wide range of ages

Cost is something that is very subjective and what I think is expensive someone else may think is very inexpensive, but I think Apologia Science is very affordable especially since they are hard cover texts that can be used my multiple children or resold.  Compared to other High School programs it was the most affordable that I found.  I bought my books at www.christianbook.com when they have their 33% off Apologia sale and got a great deal.

One question I have been asked is if the notebooking journals are necessary to buy.  No, they are not.  You can easily buy a 3 ring notebook and make your own (that's what we did before they came out with them.)  Each textbook has an online site you can go to that has many free notebooking sheets you can print.  I did buy one notebooking journal that I am going to have the boys work on together.  It is a very nice product to compliment the text book with a lot of fun activities. I think Nick (9) could easily do one on his own, but Alex (7) and Anthony (6) would be a big challenge so they will do it together and we will see how it goes.

I also decided that I am going to buy lab kits this year.  I have to buy the dissection kit for Chelsea anyway, and I know if I don't have the materials on hand to do an experiment when I need them or can't find what we need, the experiment won't get done.  I have seen the lab kits for as much as $80 which includes literally every single thing you need to complete the experiments.  I can handle having to provide some cotton balls or a tea bag, I just wanted a kit that had some of the harder to find materials.  I found this kit on www.homesciencetools.com and at $25.95 it was just what I was looking for.  They also have the dissection kit for Chelsea for $30.95 and I will be ordering both of those at the end of this month.

I am very excited to be using Apologia Science this year and can't wait for the school year to begin in a couple of weeks!