zoology FAST

i wanted to try out the apologia elementary science curriculum, so i ordered it through interlibrary loan. this is NOT the best way to use the curriculum, but i like to try before i buy, so this worked well for us. the book i received was from the library of congress - this means you get access to it for 3 weeks, no renewals, AND you can't take it out of the library!

well, i still wanted to see how my kids would take to this book because apologia has 6 elementary books and another 9 jr/sr high books and from what i had seen in the 8th grade text, i really liked the way it was written and the experiments.

so...

we did a 28 week (14 chapter) science curriculum in 3 weeks! again - NOT the right way to do it, but i work well with a deadline, so this is what we did.

every day we went to the library twice to read. when we came to questions, i recorded the kids' answers on my phone - after the book was gone, we would take time to write out these narrations for our zoology notebooks - making it last much longer than the 3 weeks we had the book.

every day we did the mid-chapter experiment and in the evening would do the end-chapter project with daddy.

we studied birds, flying reptiles, bats, and flying insects.

we built a bird house, bird feeders, experimented with feathers, bones, different bird seeds and locations of bird feeders & bird baths. we made "fossils" of flying reptiles and experimented with echolocation. we built an ant farm, brought ants back to life, and caught a variety of insects to inspect & study.

it was an intense 3 weeks! we had so much fun though and we continue to enjoy and learn from all our experiments that are in motion and the copywork we're still doing!