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Has anyone used the student notebooks that accompany the Apologia book?

The Zoology book was my daughter's favorite book this year and I know she wanted to dig deeper.

I see that we're looking at Astronomy for RtR and I'm thinking of getting her the notebook, but will it be too much?

We love the student notebooks. But then, we enjoy notebooking. They are a great way to narrate the science learnt through the texts. If HOD assigns the whole text in it's program, then I will certainly be using the notebook along side. Actually, we may still get them even if readings are only partly assigned through the text. My children will like doing the accompanying pages. I could not say if it would be too much for you or not really. You are the best gauge for that. I will say, if you enjoy notebooking, they are great pages in both the Jr. and regular notebooks.

Are the complete Apologia texts used in the HOD guides that have them as resources?

The whole text are used except for some experiments are optional and with others Carrie substituted her own that didn't require as much prep time or materials. As far will it be too much you would have to decide that, but I think you would be duplicating things to a degree. The dc do notebooking assignments with the Apologia books where they create their own notebooking pages. The instructions are in the science box following and are done based on what they read that day. I know by drawing and writing his own pages it seemed to stick in my ds's memory. Also since the instructions are written to the student they get a good chance to work on following detailed directions.

Yes, the complete texts are used.

Yes the entire texts are used. Personally I think it would be overkill to add in the Apologia Notebooks. HOD already has the kids doing notebooking along with their science readings. My ds is doing CTC right now and his school days are very full. I can't imagine asking him to do additional writing.

Ah, see!? I love this board. Always good advice to be found. I am new and didn't know there was all ready notebooking involved! Guessed there would be experiments or activities. Awesome. So we won't be needing the notebooks after all
I think I will have to not offer my opinion on guide related stuff until I am more seasoned at hod.

I just had to chime in that my DD has used the Apologia notebooks in the past. This is our first year in HOD, and I feel like it is taking her up a notch to create her own according to Carrie's plans (and she loves it!)

When we did the Land Animals in CTC, I tried to also do the notebooking not knowing what all Carrie had them doing in the guide. We quickly dropped the extra notebooking work. HOD is complete as written.