Faith Schooling vs Apologia for K–5 reading, math, and science

The short answer: these two barely overlap

Apologia is best known for science, and that reputation is earned. Its Young Explorer series is eight elementary science courses written from a stated creation-based, biblical worldview, and its science line continues through Grade 12. Faith Schooling publishes no science at all — not a course, not a unit, not a supplement. If science is what you are shopping for, Apologia is the answer on this page.

Faith Schooling publishes the other half of an elementary day: K–5 reading and language arts, a dedicated grammar and writing curriculum, structured phonics, cursive, a complete K–5 math student-text sequence, and Bible through the free Apostolic Academy. Apologia's catalog does not offer reading or phonics for those grades. For many families the sensible result here is a pairing, not a winner.

What Apologia publishes for elementary grades

Apologia's elementary page defines the span as "grades K-6th, which includes children from ages 5-11" and names science, math, and Bible as its foundational elementary subjects.

Science is the Young Explorer series: Astronomy, Botany, three Zoology volumes, Earth Science, Human Anatomy and Physiology, and Chemistry and Physics. Apologia states the courses "can be completed in any order," that "you can teach science to your K-6 grade students together with multi-age family learning," and that a course can be finished "in as little as twenty-eight weeks" on a suggested schedule of two days per week. The method is Charlotte Mason: students are "asked to retell or narrate the information they just studied."

Math is Exploring Creation with Mathematics, for grades 1–6 — there is no Kindergarten level — described as mastery-based with spiral review, alongside a free placement test. Bible is The Word in Motion, Old and New Testament volumes for roughly grades K–8; What We Believe, the worldview series, is described as ideal for grades 4–8.

Worth checking before you assume otherwise: Apologia's language arts offering is a literature curriculum for middle and high school, and the elementary catalog carries no reading, phonics, spelling, or handwriting program.

What Faith Schooling publishes, and what it does not

Faith Schooling is Kindergarten through Grade 5 only, and deliberately narrow. Reading and language arts is complete: six full-year student textbooks totalling 8,952 student pages, each with a teaching guide, plus 210 weekly lesson sets, 300 original decodable readers, ninety-six phonics workbooks arranged by pattern rather than grade, and ten cursive workbooks. Mathematics is Building Number Sense, a complete K–5 student-text sequence, with coordinated workbooks and guides for Kindergarten through Grade 2 and a large practice library under every grade.

The gaps are not hidden: no science, no history, no geography, no foreign language, nothing above Grade 5. Families who choose Faith Schooling assemble those subjects around it — precisely the space Apologia fills best.

Side by side

Every Apologia fact below was read on apologia.com on 4 September 2026. These two catalogs barely overlap, which is why most rows read as a division of labour rather than a contest.

Where Apologia is the better choice

Science, at any grade. Not a close call. Apologia's elementary science is the strongest thing described on this page, and Faith Schooling offers nothing in that subject.

One publisher for all the years. Apologia's catalog runs from preschool materials through Grade 12; Faith Schooling stops at Grade 5. If you would rather buy from one house and never re-shop, that is a real advantage for Apologia, and our K–5 focus is a limitation rather than a virtue.

A child past fifth grade. Apologia's depth is in middle and high school — General Science, Physical Science, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Marine Biology, Forensics, and literature, with self-paced courses for grades 7–12 whose AutoGrade+ records grades automatically. Faith Schooling has nothing for those students.

Teaching several children from one book. A single Young Explorer course is built to be taught across a K–6 span together — a different economy from one book per child per grade, and for a large family a strong argument.

A Charlotte Mason home. Narration, notebooking, a year immersed in one topic — if that is your method, Apologia is built on it and our scripted reading lessons are not.

Bound books delivered to your door. Apologia ships printed textbooks and journals, with free shipping over $150 noted on its product pages. Faith Schooling delivers PDFs you print at home. If you have no wish to run a home print shop, buy the books.

A child already thriving in Apologia math. Six mastery-based levels with spiral review and a free placement test is a coherent program, and there is no reason to move a child doing well in it.

What each costs

Apologia prices observed on apologia.com on 4 September 2026, using Astronomy as a representative elementary course: textbook $55.00, Notebooking Journal $39.00, audiobook $18.00, activity videos $79.00, and a Build-Your-Own Set listed at $94.00, discounted to $84.60 that day. Math Level sets were $85.00 discounted to $76.50, and The Word in Motion follows the same pattern. Sales and package contents move, so build your own cart on their site rather than trusting figures dated last week.

How the pieces divide matters once you have several children: Apologia sells the textbook and the journal separately, and the journal is the book the child writes in, carrying a "suggested daily schedule for easy, consistent planning" plus guided pages for written responses.

Faith Schooling All Access is $39 a month, cancel anytime, covering one household, every child, every grade K–5. There is no annual plan for new members and no per-child fee. Printing is your cost rather than ours, and across a year of pages it is not trivial.

Creation, worldview, and how plainly each one says it

Apologia states its position openly under "Written from a Biblical Worldview": "We believe that the Bible teaches that God created the heavens and the earth out of nothing in six days. We conclude that scientific evidence points to the earth being young (i.e. thousands rather than millions of years old)." It adds that it respects Biblically committed believers who hold a different view of the earth's age, and that its textbooks teach evaluating evidence and testing hypotheses. You know what you are buying before you buy it.

Faith Schooling makes no argument about origins, because it publishes no science. Its convictions sit inside the academic work: each reading week is built on a phonics skill, a Bible figure, a virtue, and a verse quoted exactly from the New King James Version. Doctrine is stated plainly in the free Apostolic Academy and on our What We Believe page.

What you can read before you spend anything

Apologia product pages carry a "Flip Through a Sample" link and a Preview Samples tab, and the company publishes a free math placement test, a free homeschool planner, free ebooks, a learning-style quiz, and a free video series called Homeschool Bootcamp. The lesson schedule itself arrives with the journal you buy.

Faith Schooling's free tier is large by design, because it is how families judge the teaching before paying. The reading and phonics teaching guides read page by page in the browser, the first workbook of each phonics level is open in full, every grade's book shows eight sample pages, and the first three sheets of every practice set are open. HARVEST placement is free, runs in your browser with nothing uploaded, and takes about twenty minutes for reading. The whole Apostolic Academy — The Hidden Word Scripture memory curriculum, ten volumes of church history, study guides and printables — is free to everyone.

Who teaches, and how the day is paced

Both are parent-taught in the elementary years. Apologia's courses are read together with narration and hands-on work on a suggested two-day-a-week rhythm; its self-paced courses begin at seventh grade, and it notes that its Live Classes are "mostly geared towards middle school and high school students," with a few classes for sixth graders. No video teacher stands in for you in K–6.

Faith Schooling scripts the adult's part. A complete reading lesson is a 45–55 minute block — prayer, phoneme work, blending, decodable reading with narration, a timed drill, application, and spaced review — of which the child's written work is ten to fifteen minutes; cursive adds ten to fifteen more. A skill counts as mastered at 90% or better across five or more sessions on different days.

The practical upshot is a division of labour: Apologia for science, Faith Schooling for the daily reading and math. To test the pairing without spending anything, run HARVEST, read a Faith Schooling teaching guide, and flip through an Apologia sample.