The subject that I have the hardest time finding curriculum for is Math. I did very well in Math when I was in school, although I admit I didn't like it very much, but I struggle with finding the "perfect" Math curriculum. I don't even mean for my family as a whole, but for each individual child. I started out using Math U See and I really liked it, but I did feel like it left quite a few things out in the younger years that I thought were important and I had to add on my own. I switched and went to Horizons after a recommendation, but it was too distracting for my younger children and was full of busy work that we never were going to do. Then, we switched to Abeka. It is affordable and my 9 year old likes it, but it is written for a classroom not a homeschool, and again is full of busywork that we will never do.
Recently I reviewed Math Mammoth with my 2nd grader and really like it so far. I am thinking I will be using it for all of my boys next year, but that still doesn't solve my Math trouble with Chelsea (14). She is having a terrible time with Algebra. I think most of her problem lies in the fact that she never "got" a lot of the concepts from PreAlgebra. She became very good at guessing which multiple choice questions were the correct answer, but when it comes to solving the equations, she can't remember which steps go first.
So now we have decided to revisit PreAlgebra, but we will not be using Abeka. I really think with Math especially you should stick with a curriculum if it works for your child, even if it has some short comings. Chelsea was very successful when we were using Math U See. She is an independent learner and likes watching the video lessons without having to wait for me to teach. Right after the holidays she will be starting PreAlgebra, and then we will move on to Algebra after she has proven to be proficient in all off the basic concepts.
What about you? Have you found the perfect Math curriculum for your child?
2 comments:
We really like Time4Learning :) It goes to 8th grade which I believe covers algebra ( we are only up to 4h grade ourselves )We have also done Abeka in the past but, I agree too much busy work ;)
Happy holidays from web-schooling family of four who geek out learning with web-based curricula, multimedia electives, and an online writing tutor!
We tried Saxon with Makayla for 3 years and she didn't click with the spiral approach. She couldnt' keep straight what to do with 11 new concepts thrown at her before one review concept. We switched to MUS and love it, but I agree it leaves out things in the early years that we've often just tried to add in ourselves (like money and measuring - there's not a lot of practice with that). The Math Mammoth books on those topics can be fun.
With my others so far we're loving MUS and have no plan to switch. I think one part is just taking the time to really master the material. Makayla started with Alpha in 3rd grade, so we were 'behind'. She's in 5th now and tackling division with Delta. The slowing down has paid off. I would like to gather Math Mammoth's topic books for some other practice here and there - just another way to reinforce things when needed.
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