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Apologia Science:
Quality Creation Science Courses
Apologia Science courses are creation-based and homeschool friendly. After all, both Dr. Jay Wile and Jeannie Fulbright the main authors have been homeschool parents.
Both were inspired to write science courses because they could not find curriculum that worked for their own families. Both are dedicated to glorifying God through His creation.
Before she became the authoress of the Young Explorers Series now published by Apologia Science, Jeannie Fulbright was a homeschool mom who just wanted a science curriculum from the Creation viewpoint that was user-friendly and used classical and Charlotte Mason methodology.
Nothing suitable was available, so she became inspired to write the courses herself. Her first two books came to the attention of Dr. Wile, who came to an agreement with Jeannie to take over the editing and publishing.
There are now 5 books in this series geared toward Grades K-6:
- Exploring Creation with Botany
- Exploring Creation with Astronomy
- Exploring Creation with Zoology 1: Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day
- Exploring Creation with Zoology 2: Swimming Creatures of the Fifth Day
- Exploring Creation with Zoology 3: Land Animals of the Sixth Day
Using the Charlotte Mason Method, every lesson is organized with a narrative, notebook work, an activity, and a project. The student notebook is emphasized in the lessons. The books are packed with colorful pictures, and diagrams to enhance understanding, while the activities and projects bring the lesson to life and using simple household items.
Apologia recommends taking an entire school year to do each book covering about 2 lessons a week. Parents may read the book to the student or children with a 4th grade reading level can read the books for themselves.
You may already have discovered this new resource for Jeannie Fulbright's Young Explorers Series - Lapbooks!
Cyndi Kinney has done a fantastic job of putting together these beautiful lapbook kits. I noticed when I visited recently, that there are now kits for many of the upper level Apologia books as well. Here is her site:
Lapbooks?? Knowledge Box Central
To read my short overview of lapbooking click this link:
Lapbooking Information
Each Apologia Science Junior High and above course has available:
- the student textbook with reading, instructions for labs, "On Your Own" exercises, and 15-20 "Study Guide" questions at the end of each chapter. The text is extremely readable with a conversational tone, yet quite sufficient for college-prep work. There are lots of helpful diagrams and pictures to help explain concepts. Labs are done simply and lab kits are also available for purchase from the publisher.
- a Solutions Manual (yes, you will need this) has test questions and answers for each chapter, as well as answers to the "Study Guide" questions.
- a companion CD-ROM for each title contains interactive multi-media such as videos of experiments, close-ups of a variety of organisms, identification of different components on 3-D models, and pronunciations of words with which students are probably unfamiliar.
- OR the complete course is available on CD-ROM including all three of the above components.
- an audio CD of just the text being read is also available for some levels.
From Apologia's website:
"Knowing which courses to offer your students at the secondary level and when to offer them can seem difficult. In reality, course sequencing for junior high and high school isn't that hard when you know one important fact: A students mathematical level is the key factor for his or her success or failure in the Apologia high school sciences. If you make sure that your child is well-prepared mathematically for the science course he or she will take, you will have gone a long way toward assuring your student's academic success." Here is a chart, also from the website, showing the guideline's for course progress:
Biology, Chemistry, and Physics = These courses can be spread over 2-4 years for the student who is not science-oriented.
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