We have used Apologia for science ever since we started homeschooling. I have loved its faith-based approach, the hands-on activities, and the way it immerses my kids in one area of science for an extended time of study. However, there is so much offered in this curriculum, I have sometimes felt there was never enough time for science. Over the years, however, I have committed to simplifying our homeschool. In doing so, I have figured out how to use Apologia in a way that cultivates a love and fascination for science without wanting to pull my hair out. This post focuses on the elementary level of Apologia curriculum. For a full list of all their materials, elementary through high school, go to apologia.com. I am not being sponsored by Apologia nor is this an affiliate link, so I will be completely honest about what I think is worth your hard-earned money and what isn’t. This is how we use Apologia in our homeschool: #1 We do science together. This is a subject easily done with multiple ages, which will save you tons of time and money. You only need one textbook for your entire family. #2 I let my kids pick what we do. If you go to Apologia’s website, they have many courses suitable for elementary grades, and you don’t have to do them in the recommended order. I even heard this from an Apologia rep at a homeschool convention! So, I usually give my kids two or three choices. For instance, before Christmas, we finished Swimming Creatures, so I asked them what they wanted to study next: flying creatures, plants, or space? They chose flying creatures, and that’s what we are studying now. I find that giving them input makes them more invested in the material and more eager to learn! #3 We don’t do science every day. I have said this before, and I will keep saying it: teachers in school don’t do every subject every day, so why expect to do so in your homeschool? While it’s important to do math and some language arts daily, subjects like geography, history, science, art, and music don’t have to be. In our homeschool, science days are Thursday and Friday. #4 We don’t try to finish a book in a year. We go through each book at our own pace. Who says you have to go by the school calendar anyway? We started Swimming Creatures last summer and finished it right before Christmas. In January we started Flying Creatures. To be honest, it took me a while to get comfortable with this mindset, but once I embraced it, I felt completely set free! #5 We don’t waste our money on the notebooks . . . anymore. Yes, for awhile I purchased the notebooks for each of my kids. However, once I had three doing science, that got really pricey because they aren’t cheap! Then, I felt a huge amount of pressure to do everything in the notebook because I had invested all that money. The problem is, there is WAY too much material in the notebook for anyone to possibly do. Trying to do it all sucked the enjoyment out of science for both me and the kids. Foregoing the notebooks was the best decision I ever made for this subject! #6 But that doesn’t mean we just read the book. I have a feeling you may be wondering the same thing I did - but how will I make science interesting and hands on? Won’t it be a lot of work without the notebook to guide me? You don’t need the notebooks to make Apologia interesting. It’s also not difficult to make it hands-on without it. Here’s how science goes for us: On Thursdays, I set our kitchen timer for 30 minutes (15-20 when they were younger) and read from the science book until it goes off. The material in the books is far from dry, I promise you! It’s written to kids in a conversational style, and there are tons of fascinating photographs. Sprinkled throughout the text are sections called “Try This!” These are simple activities, and we always stop to do them. It might be measuring how big a loggerhead turtle is by making an outline of it on your living room floor with string (they’re HUGE!) or trying to pick up a pencil with your thumb taped to your hand. When the kids were younger, I purchased coloring books that went with whatever topic we were studying to keep their focus as I read. Now, they no longer want to do the coloring books. When the timer goes off, we stop. (We have co-op on Thursdays, so our time is limited.) Fridays are experiment days. There is at least one experiment at the end of each lesson. Some lessons, there is a mid-lesson experiment. Or, I’ll choose a Try This! activity. Again, I don’t stress about how far we’ve gotten in the book or how many lessons we’ve completed. In elementary school, you’re not earning “credits” for a certain subject yet - you are exploring the world and learning to think like a scientist. Besides, if you start in kindergarten, even if you go slow, your child will learn all they need to know before they hit high school with this curriculum. #7 We don’t waste money on the lab kits.
Apologia actually doesn’t sell lab kits, but Home Science Tools and Nature’s Workshop Plus! sell kits that include most of what you need, ranging in price from about $70 to $125, depending on the kit. Yes, that’s a lot of money, and I just don’t think it’s worth it. All of the materials are easily purchased on your own, and a lot of it is stuff you may already have around the house. I also found that the materials were extremely cheap and sometimes didn’t work (like dead batteries). Plus, I ran into the same problem that I had with the notebooks. Because I spent all that money, I felt pressure to do every single experiment. I want the freedom to skip experiments if we want to without buyer’s guilt. The plus to having the kit, of course, is that you won’t have to worry about collecting materials ahead of time. Mostly. You’ll quickly find that not everything is included, and if you don’t pay attention to the “what you provide” sheet included with the kit, you may still end up unable to perform an experiment. All around, I still say don’t waste your money. The supplies you will be asked to use most often are the following, so make sure you have them on hand: a yard stick, measuring tape, empty plastic liter bottles, balloons, masking tape, paper plates, baking soda, vinegar, salt, juice glasses, large drinking glasses, glass casserole dish, large bowl, straws, string, clay, stopwatch, thermometer (just a regular one - not a celsius one), and empty glass jars (like what jam or spaghetti sauce comes in). As you can see, you probably have most of this stuff already! A Few More Thoughts: I said above that we do experiments on Fridays, but so far in Flying Creatures, we haven’t done any yet. This is because all of the experiments are bird related: testing out different types of bird baths and bird seed, making a bird feeder, leaving out nesting materials for the birds, and building a birdhouse. Since we started in January, I am waiting until the weather warms up. So, we’ve just been reading, doing Try This! activities, and bird watching (we’re using the Audubon Society’s free app - and it’s amazing!). Soon (maybe next week), we’ll spend several weeks making our yard ready for the birds and butterflies! I was also excited to see that our Hobby Lobby carries butterfly gardens, so we’re also going to watch the transformation from caterpillar to butterfly. Then there’s an idea I just read on Instagram (though I’m not sure I have the guts to try it) where you spend a month on each subject. So instead of doing geography on Mondays, history on Tuesday and Wednesday, and science on Thursday and Friday year round, I would do geography every day in January, history everyday in February, then science every day in March, then cycle through again. The point is: you can set up a schedule that works for your family and tweak it as needed. One last plus to using Apologia: it is so popular and commonly used among homeschoolers that you can easily find the books used at extremely low prices (and sometimes free!). Be sure to check with your local homeschool groups and used book listings online before you pay full price. I hope you have as much fun exploring God’s creation with Apologia as we have!
0 Comments
|
AuthorHi, I'm Melanie! I'm a homeschooling mom of three kids ages 13, 11, and 9. I have a BS in English Secondary Education from Asbury University plus 30 hours of gifted certification course work. I've taught in just about every situation you can imagine. Public school, private, homeschool hybrid, and private tutoring. The most important thing I've learned? One on one, individualized instruction can't be beat. Archives
July 2022
Categories |
Proudly powered by Weebly