Biology 101 Review

I have mixed feelings about Biology 101 vs. Apologia.... so this is long and rambling, lol.  

Basically, the main difference is there is not as much content in Bio 101, and you are instructed to get library books to fill in.  

There are great videos in the course, but as best as I can remember, the segments range from about 20-45 minutes, and there is one segment per chapter of Bio 101.
So how long it takes depends on how many books, etc, you add in.


►If I had to do it again, I would choose Apologia for 2 of my children, and Biology 101 for the other, no matter how much work it was for me.  As a Mom, you do what is best to help your child learn. ♥ =)

--It was a lot of work for Mom, gathering materials to fulfill the assignments, but you may email me to ask for my notes of what I did, and that may make it a bit easier.  =) 

homeschoolersresources@gmail.com

We did use parts of Apologia's elementary books as well as Biology for some of the reading assignments, so that will be great if you already have those on hand.  And I have videos posted on this blog, although that was during the 2013-2014 school year, so I cannot guarantee they are all still working links.  We also did some of Apologia's experiments as well as a few others I had come across.

One thing that I liked about Biology 101 better than Apologia was that Apologia has those first 4 chapters that have all these long names and memorizing which phylum, class, etc, that certain organisms are in... organisms we've mostly never heard of before!

And I knew my dyslexic ds would be lost with all that.  He is super smart!  But reading takes a long time, and he learns much better with video.  

I did like a lot of Apologia though...  It is definitely more thorough than Biology 101.

Now that I have learned more about Biology in general (I had forgotten much since high school), I lean toward Apologia more, but I would probably give more help/hints on tests for the first 4 modules (maybe multiple choice, or a word bank), and for module 6 - definitely 3 weeks for that module! Tons of vocabulary.  

If one chose to use Apologia for LD kids, or simply a child who learns better by other ways than reading, I would give even more help, and substitute videos when possible, and try to do more hands on, and continue w/ multiple choice or word banks.  

Definitely would use the audio CD!  And pre-teach/review the chapter... that helps so much.

--You *may still be able to email Apologia and ask for the alternate tests.  Those have multiple choice already in them.  You can use them for the test, or for review.  Or vice versa, and use the original tests for review and discussion.  

--For our family, Bio 101 worked for the kids I had in my class at the time (but we did use a lot of online video and videos of things I had at home)... but it was also a lot of work for the Mom.  Lots of work... But worth it for my dyslexic kiddo, and I *definitely would do it again for him.  =)

If a child was going to college, I would only recommend using Bio 101 as a supplement.  But if they've already had a great background in biology topics, they probably wouldn't need it.   

I used it as my spine, but had to fill in a lot.  (So it was a thin spine, lol.)  Which is what it's set up for, but it did get tiresome looking for books.  Fortunately, I did have a few of the Apologia elementary books on hand, and Apologia Biology, from which we did some of our reading.  So we read a lot of those, but got to pick and choose.

I think age and background in a subject has a lot to do with whether they can manage Apologia Biology, as well as learning ability.
Biology 101 can work well for younger children, but for high school, it is more work to find suitable reading materials, unless you use textbooks. 

Hope this helps!  =) =)
Marty