Apologia Zoology 1

If you are reading this blog you should know this about me. I am not good at keeping my blog updated. That is probably obvious. I had been wanting to review our experiences with Apologia Zoology 1. It has been in my drafts for a while so I'm bringing it out even though we finished nearly a year ago. See, I told you I'm not good at updating.

The science book we are using is Apologia Elementary Zoology 1, which includes flying bugs, bats, flying reptiles, and birds. Of course there are many science programs out there, including Sonlight, but I felt that Apologia can be taught over many age ranges, which has been my greatest struggle. Since the book doesn't come with a schedule I've had to create one for us. There are plenty on the web but they are easy to create. There are 14 Lessons so we took two weeks to do one lesson. You can find schedules and even tests on the yahoo group elem_apologia_science. A few questions I had about Apologia Zoology I:

What age range is recommended? The Apologia Elementary Science is created for ages 6-12 but I believe it is recommended for 2nd-6th grade. We had a good variety of ages: 6, 9, and 12. It turned out to be everyone's favorite subject, especially the younger two.

Can I change the order around? I posed this question on the yahoo group and none other than Jeannie Fulbright answered me. So I feel certain in recommended that you should change the order depending on where you live. We began with Lesson 1 since it dealt with classification. Then, since we start homeschool in Late July/early August, we studied bugs first and the birds in the spring. The sections on bats and flying reptiles we studied in January.

Do I have to do Zoo 1 before Zoo 2? No, but you will miss the section on classifying animals. You can check out a sample of that section on Apologia's website. You can also get some flashcards and a lab list here. Before you decide to skip it, however, I would just go for Zoo 1. If we had skipped it we would have missed some joyous times together.

Some science links that I have found useful

General information and help:

Apologia
Yahoo Group
Jeannie Fulbright's website and blog

Lapbook/notebooking tools:
Knowledge Box Central's lapbook
Live & Learn Press Notebook

Experiment supplies:
Apologia Zoology kit at Home Science Tools
Ants Alive for ants, of course
Insect Lore for butterflies and other insects
Educational Science for butterflies and butterfly plants

Just for fun:
The great backyard bird count

Supplemental movies include Microcosmos, Planet Earth, Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill and Winged Migration. Just for fun movies are Stellaluna, Bug's Life, and Fly Away Home. I can't say we watched all of them. I do remember we watched a documentary on the Monarch butterfly migration and the kids were bored to tears.

Some supplemental picture books include Stellaluna, All about Turkeys, Make Way for Ducklings, The Beekeepers, and Audubon, the Man Who Painted Birds.

Some chapter books are The Honeybee Mystery (Boxcar Children), Insects do the Strangest Things, From Caterpillar to Butterfly, and Watch Honeybees with Me.

Obviously, there are many more supplemental items but I thought I would give you a few for ideas. I'll post some pictures and more review in the next post. I'll try to be quicker with that one.

It finally happened!!

I have been waiting all year to hear the magical words, "Read some more, Mommy." During our reading of "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" my son exclaimed, "keep going!" I've heard of such things happening but never in our house. It's sometimes hard to hear groaning during school time (though I sometimes feel that way, myself) and it is hard not to take it personally. It was so wonderful to hear that my son was truly enjoying our time together. Now that we are reading "Winnie the Pooh" he can't get enough of that, either. Yay!

Scrumdidlyumptious

Well, we went through some very busy times for the past few months. Just trying to get the hang of things and finally getting my photos uploaded. A few things have changed since my last post. We have completed the insect segment of Apologia zoology. I have a post dedicated to our science that I will add later. Sonlight spends a lot of time on the Civil War. This is fine but we Southerners already spend so much time on it. After a visit to the Harriet Tubman museum we are going to quickly finish and drop a couple of the readers/read alouds to be able to do a unit study on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I am still going to do history and math but we are going to read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, learn about making chocolate, the history of chocolate, and even doing some math and science. I have incorporated some language arts through creative writing. It is the first unit study that I have done on my own so I hope it goes well. I have read a lot about homeschoolers getting burned out in January so I concocted this scheme to avoid the blahs. So far I'm not sure it has worked for me since I spent much of our vacation time make the plans. LOL!

How 'bout those Gators! After an upset with Alabama they came back with a vengence! Now that is how all the games should have been. Alabama had better win the championship!

Math Problems

Well, we've hit our first major snag. Our 3rd grader has been having trouble with the Horizons math. It has something to do with the approach because she excelled at Math last year at public school. I let her do some Teaching Textbook samples and she loved it. The only problem is that they don't have the 3rd grade version released yet. She "passed" the 4th grade placement test but I'm hesitant to buy it and have a similar issue with her. Right now I am having her study her multiplication facts and if the 3rd grade version isn't out when we are done, then we'll take our chances on the fourth grade. I wonder if Sonlight gets them as soon as they have them on the Teaching Textbooks website?

I found a couple of free multiplication games online: multiplication.com
Coolmath4Kids (looks like you can print flash cards here as well)

I'm sure there are more but those are just a couple I came across quickly using ye 'ol search engine.

Notebooking the 50 States

I decided to included a study of the US states to supplement the girls' American History unit. I mean they just go together, right? I began searching the web and came across a fantastic lens in Squidoo. Jimmie has really written a a wonderful resource. Check out all her lenes if you want to learn about notebooking or lapbook. Most of my links are from her lens. A few of my favorite links for this study include:

1. 50 States Notebooking Lens by Jimmie - Lots of info, freebies, printables, pics. Also instructions for a salt dough map.


2. Notebook Nooks State Study pages on Currclick - Individual pages for each state. These cost around $20 depending on if there is a sale running or not.


3. Our 50 States Email Newsletter - Sign up to get a weekly newsletter about 2 states. Easy way to organize and lots of info and printables. Sent by date of admittance into the union.


4. Printables for each state. Includes map, puzzles, coloring pages. The state bird and flower pages are really beautiful.


5. State information - Great, easy to find info from Enchanted Learning.


6. Crayola Coloring Pages - Cute pages include state bird, flower, and flag


7. Information on Native Americans by state.

I also joined a yahoo group to exchange postcards. This seems like a great group where kids exchange postcards from other states. I can't find postcards anywhere, though. Seriously, if Wal-Mart doesn't have it I just don't know where it is. Visitor's Bureau, perhaps? I really think this would be a fun thing for the kiddos. They could be writing letters and mailing as well as learning about the states. Now if I can only remember to find these while I'm out.

I figured for a 3rd grader it would be fine to simply color the pages from Crayola. She also likes to do a US map floor puzzle. Here she is working on her pages and showing off a couple of her favorites:

Rachel's work is a little tougher for a 6th grader. She does a few pages from Notebook Nooks notebooking pages. She has to find the state on a US map, find a few facts about the state, and color the state bird and flower. Plus, I've included a Native American study. Using this website she prints out the state map of Native American tribes to include on a notebook page. Then she picks one tribe from that state and writes a couple of paragraphs about them. She is also collecting state quarters.

When we are finished I think we will have a cute notebook filled with great information.

Thoughts on Sonlight

Now that I am a seasoned homeschooler with 3 weeks under my belt, I am ready to give an overall impression on the curriculum that we are using. To make things easier for my independent workers I have put sticky notes on each book with their assignments Mon-Fri. This has worked well, especially, for the readers and the history workbooks. I didn't use them for math or language arts as it is easy to keep up with one lesson per day.

This review is for Sonlight's Core only. This includes the History, Geography, Bible, Readers, and Read-alouds.

Overall, I'll give Sonlight an "A". Sonlight's Instruction Guides are invaluable and I don't need to do anything to prepare for a lesson. The daily assignments are all done! I still love the literature. History is fine but I'm hoping it will get more interesting for the girls. Calvin is enjoying Core K. I wish I hadn't felt confused by the number on the core. I really didn't want my 3rd grader doing a Core K. Coming from honors in public school it seemed beneath her grade level. But she is very interested in the Core K that her younger brother is doing. I feel I could have had her do the core along with him. She could have taken more advantage of the internet links provided and I could have used the read alouds as readers for her which would have saved a little $$. I can't say that veteran Sonlighters hadn't told me that because I got lots of input from friendly people on the forums. Sometimes, though, they just ended up confusing me even more because I just couldn't see it.

I have to add that I am suprised by how little the girls learned in public school about American History. Here is the conversation we had about American History:

Me: "Is any of this familiar to you guys? Have you heard of it before"
Them: "Well.....we have heard about Plymouth".
Me: "Thanks goodness you guys learned something at school."
Them: "Oh, we remember that from Charlie Brown Thanksgiving".

I was shocked that they knew so little about Columbus, Jamestown, and Plymouth. Good ol' Charlie Brown came through, though.

The geography seems fine. It makes since to look at the area we are studying on the map. It is pretty natural. Not sure how much is retained, though. Also, we sometimes forget and have to do it the next day or something. Personally, I love geography and fell that, in general, it is neglected.

The bible is adequate. The kids are certainly are more fond of the Bible stories from Core K than the Bible reading/memorization from Core 3+4. I do like Core 3+4 American Indian Prayer Guide with it's snippets of information about different tribes. I have been told that Alpha Omega's Lifepac Bible is very good so I might try them out for next year.

I am really loving the Kindergarten Core and feel it is a perfect fit for my 6 year old.

It is a wonderful core. I would certainly recommend Sonlight to a beginning homeschooler. So easy to do and so much help available. I find that the hours needed to complete the study (listed in the Sonlight catalog) is exactly right. They really have that down.

Off to a Good Start

We are into our 3rd week and hubby instructed me that it's been about a month since I've blogged and he want to read what we are up too.

I started our first school day on Friday, July 24. I wanted to get a feel how everything would go timewise. It seemed to work out well. I oriented the girls on what they were going to do most days and the things that they could do independently. They worked on reading, history workbook, language arts, and sometimes math while I worked with Calvin.

Calvin and I just finished reading the Boxcar Children, or as he called it "The Box Kids". I had never read the book and really enjoyed reading it to him. It was one of his favorite things to do besides his "fish book" which is his language arts. He told his daddy that he liked school and loved his new teacher. I'm not sure how long that will last but for now I'm eating it up.

The girls read a couple of books by themselves: "Pedro's Journal" about a boy about Columbus' ship, and "Om-Kas-Toe" about a Blackfeet boy before they had horses. They liked both of these books well enough. I read "Walk the World's Rim" to the girls as our read aloud. I thought it was slow starting but ended up getting hooked on the adventures of Esteban as he traveled with de Vaca. The girls, however, found it very dry and long. I wish that the core had started with something a little more interesting so that we would have a better start. We are just beginning "The Witch of Blackbird Pond" which, I'm told, is an awesome book.













My only thoughts right now, curriculum wise, are with the science and language arts. While I really love the LA workbook, I wish that the girls had more writing to do. I may try and find some journal starters or something. I do, however, LOVE Becky's cursive book. She is copying sentences that relate to works of art. Her book is absolutely gorgeous. Science has been pretty good and Calvin did love the experiments so I hope it will end up being fun. We just haven't got the hang of it yet.

Our second week was pretty good except two of the three kids got sick and it hit me on the weekend, too. Luckily, it was just a 24 hour thing and they (we) were able to catch back up. We even finished "Walk the World's Rim" and were thrilled. Later while doing her history workbook Rachel realized that Esteban was a real person. Although, I told her that when we read the story it just sank in her brain at that moment. Maybe even though it wasn't her favorite book she still learned something.

So far the kids are enjoying homeschool. Becky likes it because it is shorter and she can take snack breaks. Well actually, I think we all enjoy the shorter process. Rachel likes being a little more in control of her studies. She has been waking up early and getting started right away. I have been finding that it isn't as hard as I thought it would be. Sonlight makes the core so easy to do by laying out a daily schedule. I've made similar spreadsheets for math, language arts, and science so I know exactly what I'm doing everyday. The whole year is already planned! We have learned so much already. We've read 4 books, studied 5 different Native American tribes, discovered new lands with Spanish explorers, learned about scientific classification of animals, and reviewed math. Not bad for 2 weeks! I can't wait to see what happens next!