Do you use Apologia science courses in your homeschool? Do you love the idea of Student Notebooks but are you looking for a cheaper option? Or, would you love to use an older edition of Apologia but can’t find the notebook to use with it? I’ve answered all these questions with a resounding YES myself over the years, so I’m excited to share with you my answer to Apologia notebook options – that is Knowledge Box Central.
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Do I Need the Apologia Student Notebook? Is it optional?
The Apologia Student Notebooks are created to work alongside the textbook. Yes, it is optional, because the On Your Own Questions, experiments, and module study guides are all in the textbook. But the Student Notebook provides one place to keep all those written assignments together. Plus, it allows your student not to have to rewrite questions.
The Student Notebooks are not required, but highly recommended from the publisher.
What is the Purpose of the Apologia Science Student Notebook?
So if the Student Notebook is not required, what’s the point? The Apologia Student Notebooks provide students with a structured way to engage with the material in the textbook.
Notebooking Method Creates Active Learners
Notebooking is an excellent method to use to help your kids be active learners and learn about how to find the most important points in the lesson. If you had to create your own lapbook or notebook, it would be too time consuming. That’s why many families love the done-for-you Student Notebooks that Apologia has created to go along with all their science curriculum.
Here are the benefits of these student notebooks:
- includes daily assignments and schedule
- all the questions are written in the notebook
- your student doesn’t have to re-copy everything from the textbook
- lab reports are formatted
- includes diagrams and illustrations to label
- helps students learn to take notes and organize information
- includes study guides and module summaries
Junior Notebooks for Elementary Students
The Jr. Notebooks for the elementary ages also include copywork, coloring pages, and age-specific writing lines for copywork and narration. The Jr. Notebooks include pages that function a lot like a lap book with pockets, items to cut out and glue, and so on. The benefit of these Jr. Notebooks is that you don’t have to gather and create your own lapbooks or notebooks to go along with the textbooks.
How does the student notebook enhance the learning experience?
Student Notebooks help foster active learning. But they also teach note taking and summarization skills. Can your students find the main ideas of each section? Do they know how to organize their experiment results in a lab report? What about labeling diagrams?
Yes, you can create your own student notebook with a blank notebook, but if you want a flexible bit of structure, then the Apologia Student Notebooks are awesome.
What types of activities and exercises are included in the student notebooks?
The Jr. Notebooks for the elementary ages include copywork, narration, puzzles, cut and paste activities, mini lapbook activities, coloring pages, and more. They include charts, diagrams, and places to record your hypothesis and results from science experiments.
The student notebooks for middle and high school get more detailed, with plenty of space for answering the On Your Own Questions and outlining what your student learns each day. These notebooks also include diagrams, charts, lab reports, module summaries, and module study guides.
What are the drawbacks of the Apologia Student Notebooks?
Apologia Student Notebooks are awesome (in my opinion!). But, yes, there are still a few drawbacks.
Cost for Consumable Workbook
While the Apologia Student Notebooks are excellent quality and very helpful for most kids, they can also be expensive. Since they’re consumable, you have to buy a new one for each child that completes that course. If you have a large family and want to be able to re-use curriculum, this may be cost-prohibitive for you.
Sometimes students won’t complete every page in the student notebook, leaving lots of unused pages, which also can add on to the mom guilt when you’ve paid for a student notebook.
Finding Notebooks for Older Editions
And one other issue that has come up recently is being able to find Student Notebooks to go along with older versions and editions of the textbook. For example, many families still prefer to use the 2nd edition Exploring Creation with Biology that was written by Dr. Wile. Apologia is now selling their newer 3rd edition high school Biology with Student Notebook and it’s very hard to track down a 2nd edition Student Notebook to go along with that older version.
Reusing Curriculum in a Large Family
You can teach science very inexpensively if you’re okay with buying the older editions, which people can hardly give away for free these days. Or, if you’re like me and you purchased the current edition for your oldest and then hoped to use it with all five of your kids – but they released a new edition a few years in – then you’ll love the Apologia notebook option I’m sharing in this post.
Is There a Cheaper Option?
Yes! You absolutely can use a blank notebook and your student can create their own student notebook for science. Or you can use free notebooking pages to create a custom student notebook using a 3-ring binder.
As I was looking for another option to the Apologia Student Notebook, I found other parents asking the same question!
Does anyone NOT buy the notebooks that go with the elementary Apologia science books? Is there a cheaper option?
Or, instead of starting with a blank notebook, you can use the Lapbook Journals from Knowledge Box Central to accomplish the same thing as the Apologia Student Notebook while on a budget.
Apologia Lapbook Journals from Knowledge Box Central
Knowledge Box Central offers the best Apologia notebook options as a digital version. Here’s what you need to know.
I just learned about Knowledge Box Central this year after using Apologia Student Notebooks for almost a decade! I wish I would have learned about this cheaper and more versatile option earlier.
Knowledge Box Central produces lapbooks and notebooking resources to go along with multiple different curricula or to be used with your own living books.
Since we already had Apologia’s high school Biology 2nd edition textbook and tests and answer key, all I needed for my current high schooler was a Student Notebook. The only 2nd edition notebook I could find online was over $80 used!
So one day I saw a mom comment in a Facebook group about Knowledge Box Central. It was exactly what I needed. That’s why I’m so excited to share it with you in case you’re in the same boat.
This resource is a digital file, which means that you will have to copy out the pages you’ll use. But once you purchase it, you can copy it for all your kids in your homeschool that need it through the years. And at the time of this writing, a student lap book journal from Knowledge Box Central is only $15!
The lapbook journal from Knowledge Box Central includes all the sections that would have been in the Apologia notebook – On Your Own Questions, Lab Reports, Module Summaries, and Module Study Guides.
What Resources Can I Find at Knowledge Box Central?
Of course, my favorite product from Knowledge Box Central has to be the Apologia Lapbook Journals. And, just so you know – you actually can buy a printed version through Christian Book Distributors or Rainbow Resource Center.
But they have a ton of other resources as well!
Here are some of their other resources you may enjoy:
- Financial Responsibility Bundle
- State History Interactive Bundles
- Artist Interactive Foldable Booklets
- Various Bible Lapbooks
- Holiday Bundles
- Home Economics Lapbooks
- Language Arts & Literature Resources
- Math Resources
- Music & Music History Lapbooks and Booklets
- Preschool Clip Cards, Sorting Pockets, and Activity Books
- Science Lapbooks
- Social Studies Resources
