Lab Requirement in AP CS A The official course description for AP Computer Science A, a high-school level course focusing on OOP using Java, details a 20-hour lab requirement. College Board provides three labs ready-made for teachers to use in class -- Magpie, Picture Lab, and Elevens -- but does not specify that these have to be used to satisfy the requirement. This page gives an overview of the labs along with student guides. Completing year one with these labs (and indeed AP CS A as a whole), I am reflecting on my experience with them, and I am now curious about what else is out there. 

This review from one publisher raises some serious questions about the inclusion of the three exemplar labs. In particular, their conclusion states the following:


  In our opinion, one or two activities from Magpie and Picture Lab
  might fit into a typical AP CS A syllabus. Elevens is best left for a
  team project after the exam (unless the Development Committee decides
  to make it a new case study). Implementing the labs in their entirety
  in an AP CS A course would wreak havoc in the syllabus and may derail
  the course.


Have you found these labs insufficient and/or overly time-consuming in line with this particular review? If so, how did you address this in order to meet the lab requirement?
I looked at them when they first came out and decided not to use them. Did go through and look at the topics and make sure that we're covering everything we need to in class. But between labs that I've written or purchased we've got a pretty good set of assignments that covered everything that the AP provided labs hit on.

The 3 AP labs also lean more towards projects instead of simple labs. I prefer to do a lot of small, single method labs. Especially early in the year. We do larger scale projects later, and they overlap a lot with what AP provides.

And not really part of your question, but I can't imagine only spending 20 hours on labs through the year. We probably hit that goal within the first month of the year. 

Edit

Following up on a comment asking about lab sources...

The best labs are past AP exam FRQs. My goal every year is that by the AP exam we've done every past FRQ in class as a lab, quiz, or test. We start in September. Going back to 2004 there are 45 FRQs if you don't include the GridWorld ones. I generally assign them as in class assignments though since there are solutions posted everywhere online. If they're assigned to be worked on outside of class they'll be daily grades which have very little grading weight in our district.

Another good, and cheap, source are programming packets from old contests. UIL, the organization that runs academic and athletic contests in Texas, sells past tests on their website. You can buy a PDF with all the tests from a year for $4. There are 5 or 6 tests a year with 40 multiple choice questions and 12 programming problems in each test. Only downside is that they're not sorted, so you'll have to go back and figure out where they fit. And some are more data structures problems instead of AP-A. ACSL also sells past contests on their site.

And our district buys curriculum from A+ Computer Science. Best thing here is that it's a complete curriculum - labs, project, quizzes, tests, slides; everything. I use this mostly for the written tests because I hate writing multiple choice questions, but I also tweak some of the labs a little and use them.