Homeschool High School Biology with Apologia
Growing up one of my favorite classes in school was my high school biology class. Not only was I excited about the content, but I had a wonderful teacher. Even though I thrived in biology in high school, when I began thinking about homeschool high school biology for my children, I knew I would be looking for a solid program to guide our studies.
Homeschool High School Biology with Apologia
Apologia Homeschool High School Biology is a creation-based high school science curriculum.
{I received free copies of these books and was compensated for my time in writing this review. All views are my own and I was not required to write a positive review. Please see my full Disclosure Policy for more details.}
Evolution vs. Creationism
Because it is often a topic of discussion with biology curricula, I wanted to take a moment to talk about how Apologia’s Homeschool High School Biology addresses the topic.
Apologia is very clear about being a Christian homeschool curriculum company and thus you can expect a slant in the direction of Creationism with biblical references and “creation connections” throughout.
However, they encourage knowledge of both sides, stressing that it’s important to gain this knowledge in order to have meaningful discussions.
In Module 8 of the Apologia Homeschool High School Biology curriculum they take a deeper look at the topic of evolution.
Topics covered include:
- Charles Darwin
- Micro and Macro evolution
- the geological column
- the fossil record evidence
Textbook & Video Instruction
Apologia offers not just textbook, but also video instruction via a thumb dive where Sherri Seligson teaches the course. Students watch the video, read the textbook, work in the student notebook, and complete labs.
This is like having Biology class taught right in your own home! Lectures, experiments, and complete explanations for all the labs are included on the thumb drive.
(This is not to say your student can’t do it all with just the text and notebook. However I do feel the videos are a really nice addition to the curriculum.)
Want to see the videos for yourself? Preview one HERE.
Earn Lab Credit
Apologia offers three types of labs for this course:
- household labs – use only common household equipment
- microscope labs – require a microscope and several prepared and blank slides (Check out this article I wrote based on our experiences to help you choose a microscope)
- dissection labs – require a dissection kit and specimens
The experiments are designed to be done as your student reads the text. Apologia recommends you do all the experiments, but at a minimum all household labs and either microscope or dissection labs can be completed.
If you choose to have your student do all the labs in Apologia’s Homeschool High School Biology Curriculum you can give your student LAB CREDIT! And colleges typically want to see at least two lab sciences on high school transcripts.
Independent Work
One of the many benefits of the Apologia Homeschool High School Biology Course is how it’s designed for students to use independently. This is important to me because I believe that by high school students should be able to work fairly independently with a parent who oversees and is there for support.
{To see more about the schedules and student notebooks take a look at my review of Apologia’s Homeschool Chemistry Curriculum}
Apologia is written in a conversational-tone, making it engaging and easy to understand. By using the video option mentioned earlier where the lectures, experiments, and complete explanations on all labs are included, and the detailed schedule inside the student notebook, Apologia really helps us set our children up to work independently.
