Meet Apologia Press, an up and coming science curriculum publisher designing materials specifically for homeschool needs. These texts are everything that I have wanted in a homeschool science resource. They are user friendly, high quality, interesting, and exciting science materials. Each book is hard back and made to last through many years of use in your home.
Strengths:
The elementary Apologia Science texts are a wonderful addition to a homeschool series of study. The wonderful thing about this curriculum, is that it can be used for multiple grade levels at one time. I have a sixth grader, two fourth graders, and a kindergartener who all used this text at once. These books are written to be read aloud or read by the student. The language is very conversational, making it a breeze to comprehend. There are full-color pictures placed throughout the book which perk the student’s interest in the subject matter. The Land Animals of the Sixth day is a particularly interesting text. We used this book last year for our science curriculum. With each chapter we studied, we went through and note booked the chapter using all kinds of interesting “scrapbook” techniques. This method really helped the kids remember all that we studied throughout the year. The Land Animals book presents the different orders and species of these animals in such an effective way that even a year later my children can still remember most of them. There are projects and review questions at the end of each chapter to encourage memory retention of the material that was presented within the chapter.
Weaknesses:
This is the second year for us to use Apologia Science, and we really have no complaints. We go through the books at a slow pace – making sure that we understand all that is presented in each chapter. We enjoy the interesting, yet in depth study. The only weakness that I could imagine is that if you are a parent who is interested in “formal” testing at the end of each chapter you may be disappointed. There is no formal testing. Yet, I have found that even without “testing” my children are retaining large amounts of this material.
Recommendations:
As I mentioned before, we have been using this series for quite a while now, and we plan on using it again next year. The children enjoy it, I enjoy it, and we are learning so much. If you choose to use Apologia Science make sure you check out their online resources. They have created several web pages that support the various science books that they have. These pages have links to internet based materials that support the subject matter, and also a large amount of “note booking” pages that can be printed for use with your science book. Apologia Press is doing a great job to meet the needs of homeschoolers with large families. We appreciate their work and recommend this product whole heartedly!
