Easy Peasy All-In-One Homeschool (EP) offers free curriculum. Outstanding! One of my Co-op friends uses EP for her kiddos. I was reviewing her portfolio; whenever I conduct a review, I also examine the curriculum. EP has high school courses, including Biology with Lab. It’s free! How is the course? It’s not bad; Apologia’s Exploring Creation with Biology is better.
EP Biology is based on Georgia’s Virtual Biology Course (GVB). First, both EP and GVB are fine courses; the content in both is a basic, Biology survey course. The content does compare to Apologia’s Bio course, especially if you use both EP and GVB. The devil is in the details. EP and GVB address all of the core Bio concepts; however, Apologia Bio has much more depth, especially with regard to plants and animals.
Both EP and Apologia have labs. Ep has four labs requiring materials, such as the Osmosis Lab or optional DNA Extraction, which are similar to Apologia’s experiments. The Reebop Lab is clever. Is Cat Genetics Lab really an experiment or a problem set? Some labs are virtual labs and an optional Virtual Frog Dissection. Apologia has several dissections, including perch and frog, with guides in the textbook. Here is EP’s lab report template; here is Apologia’s guide. There is nothing wrong with EP’s template. Apologia offers a greater amount of information.
EP and GVB offer a bunch of videos with questions. The EP lessons, such as Invertebrates, have text, terms, videos, and graphics. Apologia relies on kiddos reading the textbook and answering study guide questions, instead. Overall, Apologia just has more depth.
Let me make a case for Apologia Bio; used copies of second edition of Apologia and the test and solutions guide are very affordable. (I’m switching to the third edition because the families are switching; they worry about missing out on updated contents. The content in the second edition is fine.) Here is a daily schedule to follow because I know that is an important feature! The specimens and slides for Apologia Bio are costly. To save money, buy a set of specimens and dissect on paper plates or foam trays. Use a cell phone microscope with a basic set of prepared slides. Here the complete list of lab supplies. I use prepared slides—even for pond water. (We have a retention pond in our back yard; there aren’t many species in the water. Ask me how I know.) The purpose of slides is to learn how to observe and sketch slides; any type is fine.
As I said yesterday, there is nothing wrong with using any of EP or GVB’s materials. Why not use Apologia and resources from EP or GVB, especially for tough units, such as cellular respiration, photosynthesis, or genetics?
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