HOMESCHOOL CURRICULUM COMPARISON: Apologia Vs Answers In Genesis

[Music] hi my name is leilani i am a former public and private school teacher i do homeschool evaluations for the state of florida as well as test administration and i am currently homeschooling four of my wonderful kids well all of my four wonderful kids one of which has down syndrome so i am working with the whole special needs homeschool environment now today what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna compare two very popular courses for elementary school in science and that would be apologia exploring creation and answers in genesis god's design both of them are elementary curriculums i have taught through these books for over six years at a homeschool co-op where i've taught science elementary science as well as middle school science i have read all of the apology or curriculum except for the new one that just came out with the nutrition and i have done over half of the answers in genesis god design curriculum and there are so many benefits to both of these curriculums and some have more that they can offer than the other one and vice versa so i'm just gonna go through that right now as well as talk a little bit about the companies and what they have to offer and then you can kind of make a decision what you want to do this year and you know let's get started like now now both of these companies have a lot of similarities and a lot to offer both of them are christian both of them teach a creationist perspective and both of them obviously have homeschool curriculums apologia is really going to focus on having a solid curriculum for all grade levels specifically to be honest high school is very strong but i'm not going to talk about high school and talk about their elementary which is also very good they also have notebooking journals as well as some online programs for high school answers in genesis has an endless amount of information resource books magazines they have their curriculum they have vbs so their audience is a lot wider they even have a museum up in kentucky well too to be exact so they're both different companies but they do have curriculum for elementary school let's first look at apologia apologia has eight books for their elementary series and they do go in a specific order they say you don't have to but if you look at the material you can see that the astronomy curriculum is really designed for the younger elementary school student while the chemistry book is more designed for the sixth grade student the original intent for these books is to walk the elementary school student through the six days of creation now obviously they've got more than them because they've expanded their library but it does start off with astronomy and of course when you read it it does sound like it's geared to a kindergarten first or second grader the second book that you're gonna do is botany and of course you don't have to follow you know that which book order you want to do but like i said this the language in here i would say is more geared to that second grader second third grader next on the creation list is your flying creatures that's going to be your insects and your birds and even bats this i would say third grade level in my opinion then you're gonna have your swimming creatures and this is going to be a little bit more advanced gonna be more for your fourth grade level next you're gonna have your land animals right here so this is more for the upper elementary and then after that comes human creation because we were the last ones created in the six days of creation of course they do have their seventh book which is going to be your chemistry in physics and then the new one that just came out that is based on nutrition all of these books have approximately the same kind of format they're like 14 chapters long and you read it you read it to your kid and there's some questions at the end i don't know let's pick a book now let's first look at botany which i believe is written more for the younger grains of course you're going to learn about taxonomy seeds flour pollination fruits leaves stems trees and it goes really in depth which is really cool the lesson is going to start with reading it highlights the vocabulary words and you just read it you read it to your kid like i said apologia very charlotte mason like and the way she writes this book is as if she is talking to her child and you're just kind of a fly on the wall but it kind of feels like she's talking to you so for example do you like to have things organized do you like it when all your shirts are in one drawer your socks are another drawer and your pants are in different door drawers it makes life a lot easier when we are organized you get about halfway through the lesson they're going to ask you a question what is biology what is botany and then they start with notebooking activity they're really big with notebooking and nature study and that's totally a charlotte mason thing then you can read through the second section of the lesson and whenever you see a try this it's usually some kind of hands-on experiment and then at the very end of the lesson you have another what do you remember with some more questions and this looks like they have a little bit more reading [Music] what do you remember it actually this one broke down in three parts usually it's two parts but here you have another remember notebooking activity and then a project you're making a light hut and a growing summer herbs you have some directions of course if you don't like this activity for whatever reason it's not like you have to do it you can always go to like pinterest and find something that you like but it's a really good activity and if you do want i will show you this at the very beginning of the book they do lay out a nice little chart for you this shows you exactly what you need for each week so you can kind of prepare in advance if you need to go out buy some supplies then of course it's going to repeat that same pattern when you get to lesson two there are no tests there are no quizzes but there is a journal that goes with each of these books that come in super duper handy now apologia knows that you can't always follow that suggested schedule because we have multiple kids and let's say you're teaching your fifth grader anatomy but you want your first grader to know it as well so what they did is they created these journals and i have both of them because i taught at the co-op they have a junior journal and then a regular journal junior for those early elementary this one for your upper elementary slash sometimes middle school let's go ahead and look at these journals and we're going to go ahead and look at anatomy which from my experience as a teacher it's it's really good for the fourth and fifth sometimes sixth grade student so let's just check these out right now i opened it up to the first page of the first lesson and can you guess which one is made for the younger kids i mean you can even see the lines are a lot smaller this is great they actually have you draw a cell and label the anatomy of the cell and then they have the what do you remember questions which are actually the same exact questions that are in the book so if it means anything to you i mean really you don't need the journal but it's really helpful and there's actually a page i'm going to show you why it's it's awesome to get the book but going to the junior book and you go to the second page they have some drawing and some writing and look you can see the the the writing and once again same thing is the same worksheet you draw a cell and label its parts of course you can have big brother big sister help you out with that now on the next page you have some drawing and some writing through history and guess what both books have this so they can do it together course the younger kids didn't have those questions that they had to write out but i think it's important that the parents still ask those questions and discuss them with your early elementary school kids it's fun anyway because you get into really cool discussions next page your junior notebook has some copywork print and cursive depending upon which one your child knows the upper elementary kids have a nice lovely crossword puzzle and it's pretty challenging too but they also have copywork it also comes with this cell mini book which is in the back of the book and this is the page that i absolutely adore this gives you some more activities that you can do and experiments that you can do and it does a whole book suggestion and dvd section so yeah apologia very charlotte mason-esque this instead of that crossword puzzle has a really fun vocabulary lift the flap activity where you cut these out and lay them on top of the correct definition of that word this was super fun to do i actually did this with the fourth and fifth graders and they also have a cell mini book and they also have this which is identical absolutely identical and it's identical throughout from what i've experienced i should say that because watch there's an exception let me show you the mini book so what i love about their many books is they're all in color and to be honest they're exactly the same except the guidelines are different one is made for older kids one is made for your early elementary now i i love these mini books and extra activities that happen at the end of each lesson especially for the anatomy book i mean they're beautiful little cutouts and they're fun this is my favorite it's a personal person project and you're basically sticking the organs on the people of course you can pick which color you want and then i love it they're transparent and yes the early elementary one has them too how long does it take you to go through one book in this series because there are eight of them and you're not going to do this for eight years from my experience honestly you can finish one of these books in a semester if you really want to squeeze it in as a unit study you can do it in six weeks or seven weeks double up two lessons per week but it's really up to you how you do it i will say apologia is very heavy on the animals and nature studies i mean the botany book and then you have three books on animals and then the humans they don't have much of the chemistry and the physics i i know they do have one book and that's your exploring creation with chemistry and physics but they push it and shove it all into one book it's a very good book in fact honestly this is the only book i would really take the time to do in a year because it has more experiments than any of the other books they do have astronomy as well however that book is written for like i said the younger age and so i don't think the older kids are really going to benefit from that book and that's where i like i like to go over to answers in genesis because they really spread out the different types of sciences i think better however some people really want to focus on those animals and nature studies with the young kids and i understand that philosophy completely but really it's up to you how you want to do it just know that's what you get with apologia answers in genesis is going to divide these up into four different sections with a total of three books each so there's a total of 12 books and from my experience you can finish a whole section of three books in one year the section that i have currently in front of me is going to be the god's design for heaven and earth they also have gods design for life god's design for chemistry and ecology and god's design for the physical world this is god's design for heavens and earth and this is going to have your universe it's going to have your weather and water as well as our planet earth okay i know a lot of you are saying right now those are really uh undated copies yeah they are but i have seen the updated ones when i was trying to decide whether or not i was going to repurchase all these books and to be honest not much of a difference the the students some of the students did buy those versions and it really it didn't make a difference at all just the pictures were prettier and there were a couple things in there that were updated and that's about it now master books just recently adopted the answers in genesis guys design series in their curriculum you can actually purchase one book instead of three through master books i skimmed through them a little bit online with their examples and when i looked at the table of contents with these it i mean it was identical i think the the colored pictures and the design might be a little bit different i am going to be teaching a chemistry class so to speak for early elementary this year actually late elementary this year and i'm actually going to have the kids work out of the master books and so we're going to be purchasing that in the future i'm going to go ahead and compare you know maybe make a video if you're interested of this version and the master books version and see how they differ and how they're alike so if you're interested in seeing that you know leave me a comment down below and if you leave me a comment saying you want to see it great i'll make a video if not you know hey we'll see what i feel like doing i love the way that answers in genesis writes so i really did have fun with with thinking about you know the creationism and how god's hand moves through that so i do i like the way it's written and the other thing i really like about answers in genesis even though it is in a form of a unit study they go through a lot more stuff it's not as in-depth so if you're looking at for example god's design for life versus apologia zoology okay i would go with apologia if you want to get more depth and they do spend a lot of time on taxonomy so you're going to be classifying those animals but in here you've got the chemistry and the motion and the physics and then when you get to astronomy i do want to point this out too i felt like their astronomy book is more in depth just just like because the apology astronomy book is geared more towards kindergartens and first graders so i i went through both of them with my kids i because i taught the astronomy at the co-op with my kids i did decide to go through the answers in genesis um our universe because i felt like it got more in depth but let me show you what the inside of this book looks like we are going to look at our universe which is not gonna take a full year but take one third of the year here's your table of contents just so you can kind of see what you're learning and they do go through each of the planets now the apologia book also goes through each of the planets but like i said it's done in a charlotte mason type way and that's pretty much all they do in the apologia book well they do talk about the sun and the moon but there's a difference this one actually talks about nasa this one talks about space exploration the apollo program it goes into some more history whereas the apology really didn't i really like this because it really breaks it down if you're teaching multiple kids for your younger kids at early elementary you just read that ask him this question you're done for your upper elementary you can read this as well but you read through this together do the blue and then do the red which are the questions for your middle school you're gonna go through all of basically the entire chapter knowledge of the stars that was only chapter one but they do have experiments in here for example this is a great one to do with both upper elementary as well as middle school and then back here this would be your upper elementary but then this would be your middle school and it's more of a researching the scientists and you research them love the special feature because they give you some history and some fun facts and so that's basically it and it just kind of repeats in that pattern lots of experiments it does come with a cd and this has some worksheets on it as well as the teacher manual some of them do come with an actual teacher manual and it just kind of gives you instructions and some more challenging questions that you can ask as well as some activities what did you know most of us that there are quizzes in this book it is more of a traditional way of learning like i said this covers more than the apology it does and it's it's basically coming down to to what do you want for your child now i will say there are 35 and some of you would say well if i do a lesson a week yeah you could do that it'll take you a year to do one book however i think it's totally feasible to do one lesson for two days or you could even do a lesson a day we were doing a lesson a day because some of these experiments are really really simple i mean blow up a balloon and rub it on your head or go outside and draw your shadow in the morning come in the afternoon draw chalk shadow again an evening draw it again and then compare the three super super easy activity and experiments some are a little bit more difficult one we had to make a flashlight um with currents another one we had to oh they just go on and on but some of them don't have experiments so for example when you get to the space program and you talk about nasa and space exploration there aren't really any hands-on activities my kids got created and built a rocket ship lego for those but like i said they vary from lesson to lesson i think it's totally fine to do a lesson a day or a lesson for two days so i hope this is really helpful when deciding which way you want to go both programs are absolutely amazing i am a huge apologia fan huge apologia fran but i love answers in genesis they're just so different and have so many benefits to both of them it's what you want for your child and what you want your year to look like so i hope this helps you make a decision on which route you want to go or if you don't want to go with this route at all hey at least you know right my name is leilani and do consider subscribing and joining us on our journey and click on that bell notification because whenever i upload a video youtube will then notify you that i have a new video up which happens usually about two times a week so once again my name is nilani and i'm gonna stick a bunch of videos around my face that i think you guys might enjoy and i will see you guys in our next video bye however i will say if you are going to do nutrition and anatomy with your child there is really only one option in my opinion [Applause] it's this book right here i do a whole video on it it's not apologia it's not answers in genesis it's a completely different company but it's really good especially for the upper elementary middle school and high school ages uh check out that video i'm not affiliated with him it's just really that good

Channel: Living With Eve

Views: 4,386

Rating: 4.884058 out of 5

Keywords: homeschool science curriculum, homeschool science curriculum 4th grade, homeschool science curriculum 5th grade, homeschool science curriculum for elementary, homeschool science curriculum grade 3, god's design for science curriculum, god's design science curriculum reviews, apologia homeschool, apologia homeschool curriculum reviews, god's design for science, how to homeschool, answers in genesis, homeschool curriculum, science curriculum, homeschool

Id: 0qRvh_0NPZc

Length: 20min 10sec (1210 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 21 2020