Hello everyone. It seems that this year I have a million questions. I’m a crazy woman for transitioning into traditional Homeschool a couple of months into the school year. What was I thinking?! Lol Anyhow, I need a science curriculum that I can use to teach my kids (grades pre-k, 1st, 3rd, and 5th) as a group. Is that possible? Am I kidding myself? I keep hearing about Apoligia but haven’t researched too much yet. Then I worry about next year when my one daughter will be in 6th grade. Will it be possible to do science as a group? Thanks in advance!
We use apologia for my first & fourth grader. My sixth grader does apologia (Physics) on her own but when I do science with the younger kids she joins in also because it’s interesting. Last year everyone did one apologia book together. So I think it it’s defiantly doable. We have loved it & used two other companies before apologia. Good luck with your adventure!
I used apologia with my 3rd and 6th graders a few years ago, but for seventh I did have them doing separate books, although most of seventh was human anatomy so I could have done that elementary book with my younger daughter and combined experiments a bit. This year my older is using “physical science” and my younger is using “elementary chemistry and physics” they cover a lot of the same topics but in different orders so we do experiments from both books together as either preview or review depending on if they have covered it in their own books yet.
Thank you for the reply. I like the idea of different books but yet some of the same experiments.
Curious as to what other companies you used and why the switch? I would love to hear your thoughts and experience.
We used Sonlight and A Beka before Apologia. Our religion has nothing to do with the companies I chose (because all three of these I believe have a strong viewpoint throughout) and even with Apologia I skip over some of the wording or paragraphs that are maybe too “flowery”. We have found Apologia to be the most interesting and engaging… (my kids and myself couldn’t bring ourselves to get excited about A Beka or Sonlight so after a few months we switched) I also like the “easy” to prep for experiments throughout the books. Hope that helps!
Thx so much 
We are currently using Apologia Zoology 3 for 2nd and 4th Grade and we have a preschooler who sits in sometimes and always participates in experiments. We got the notebooking journal for older kids for the 4th grader and the junior version for the 2nd grader, which has been good. The junior version has less writing and has coloring pages. The older one is jealous of the coloring pages in the junior, and the younger one is jealous of the crosswords in the one for older kids, so I guess it balances out. They also have coloring books for the preschool set although we didn’t get one of those. Apologia is specifically designed to use with multiple grade levels, but the content isn’t watered down because of it which I love. The notebooking journals are very helpful and also contain lesson plans for the different levels, as well as activities and experiment sheets, so I recommend them.
We also found a kit from a separate company that contains all of the supplies we need for every experiment, this has saved a lot of time. For each experiment I just go get the corresponding plastic zip top bag out of the box and we are ready to go. The cost savings in not having to buy full packages of supplies when you just need a few items is another bonus besides the convenience. Besides I’m not sure where I would go to buy an owl pellet anyway. We bought ours at a homeschool convention, but I’m pretty sure Rainbow Resource sells them too.
Awesome. Thank you for the reply. I’ll look into getting the supply kit.