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When I was in Kindergarden and 1st grade, I was in public school, and in our school district, they use Saxon Math. When I started homeschooling in 2nd grade, we continued to use Saxon through 3rd grade.
I never enjoyed Saxon, and I disliked it more and it went along. To be honest, at this point, I can hardly tell you what I didn't like, or what the program was like. My main memory of that time was that each lesson had many, many problems which took a very long time to do.
At the beginning of 4th grade, it was obvious that Saxon was not the way to go, and so I switched to doing Singapore. I started in the 3B book, and went from there. The difference was incredible. Singapore has short lessons, and a workbook that you do the problems in, and it felt so different to me at that point. That isn't to say that I loved doing math, but it was a lot better.
There were some struggles, though. Singapore has a very visual method of doing problems, and they teach a very unique problem solving style that was pretty new to me. It was hard to get ahold of, and I never really understood it fully.
During 6th grade, we were running out of Singapore books (at 7th grade, they change to a different series, which is by the same publisher, but it pretty different), and started looking for other options. We went with Life of Fred. I actually never did Singapore 6B, but instead started the Life of Fred Fractions book, and the Decimals and Percents book. I did them both that year, and then, because I was only in 7th grade, did their Prealgebra with Economics book. It was a repeat of the previous LoF books I had done, but I was still a bit young to start Algebra. Life of Fred is very hard to explain, but it's a narrative bases math book that is based in providing real life problems and their solutions.
Part way through 7th grade, I did start Beginning Algebra, and then I started Advanced Algebra in 9th grade. I struggled through both books, and we supplemented both books with Lial's. Lial's, unlike Fred, is a traditional college math textbook, and it helped some, but I still felt pretty lost.
During the summer between 9th and 10th grades, we got Teaching Textbooks. It's a computer based program. You watch the screen (which looks like a notepad) and listen to the guy talk through each lesson. The notepad is like a whiteboard he's using, but it's also interactive at times. You then do all the problems in the computer program, and have you grade immediately logged.
For me, it's been really good. As much as I liked Life of Fred, I often felt like it expected me to make intuitive leaps that I wasn't ready for. There was also little review of past topics. I'm also a very auditory learner (at least according to the tests I've taken), and while I certainly don't want to use that as an excuse for not doing well, I think it's good to be aware of. Listening to a lecture of the same material covered in the textbook seems to be much more effective for me.
One thing I learned through this experience is that every program has their own way of doing things, and when you jump in at some point, those methods might be confusing. The key seems to be finding the way of doing things that makes sense for you. I think all of these programs are good ones, but some worked better for me than others. They might not be the same ones that work well for my sister, or my friend, or for anyone else.
I didn't go into much detail about any of these programs, because I just wanted to give a brief overview here, but if you have a specific question about one of them, feel free to leave it in the comments, and I'll answer it for you. If you have trouble leaving a comment, or don't want your comment to be public, you can also email me at readingwritinghighschool@gmail.com
I never enjoyed Saxon, and I disliked it more and it went along. To be honest, at this point, I can hardly tell you what I didn't like, or what the program was like. My main memory of that time was that each lesson had many, many problems which took a very long time to do.
At the beginning of 4th grade, it was obvious that Saxon was not the way to go, and so I switched to doing Singapore. I started in the 3B book, and went from there. The difference was incredible. Singapore has short lessons, and a workbook that you do the problems in, and it felt so different to me at that point. That isn't to say that I loved doing math, but it was a lot better.There were some struggles, though. Singapore has a very visual method of doing problems, and they teach a very unique problem solving style that was pretty new to me. It was hard to get ahold of, and I never really understood it fully.
During 6th grade, we were running out of Singapore books (at 7th grade, they change to a different series, which is by the same publisher, but it pretty different), and started looking for other options. We went with Life of Fred. I actually never did Singapore 6B, but instead started the Life of Fred Fractions book, and the Decimals and Percents book. I did them both that year, and then, because I was only in 7th grade, did their Prealgebra with Economics book. It was a repeat of the previous LoF books I had done, but I was still a bit young to start Algebra. Life of Fred is very hard to explain, but it's a narrative bases math book that is based in providing real life problems and their solutions.
Part way through 7th grade, I did start Beginning Algebra, and then I started Advanced Algebra in 9th grade. I struggled through both books, and we supplemented both books with Lial's. Lial's, unlike Fred, is a traditional college math textbook, and it helped some, but I still felt pretty lost.
During the summer between 9th and 10th grades, we got Teaching Textbooks. It's a computer based program. You watch the screen (which looks like a notepad) and listen to the guy talk through each lesson. The notepad is like a whiteboard he's using, but it's also interactive at times. You then do all the problems in the computer program, and have you grade immediately logged.
For me, it's been really good. As much as I liked Life of Fred, I often felt like it expected me to make intuitive leaps that I wasn't ready for. There was also little review of past topics. I'm also a very auditory learner (at least according to the tests I've taken), and while I certainly don't want to use that as an excuse for not doing well, I think it's good to be aware of. Listening to a lecture of the same material covered in the textbook seems to be much more effective for me.
One thing I learned through this experience is that every program has their own way of doing things, and when you jump in at some point, those methods might be confusing. The key seems to be finding the way of doing things that makes sense for you. I think all of these programs are good ones, but some worked better for me than others. They might not be the same ones that work well for my sister, or my friend, or for anyone else.
I didn't go into much detail about any of these programs, because I just wanted to give a brief overview here, but if you have a specific question about one of them, feel free to leave it in the comments, and I'll answer it for you. If you have trouble leaving a comment, or don't want your comment to be public, you can also email me at readingwritinghighschool@gmail.com
We had a pretty similar math experience in our house. Hated Saxon (spent nearly two years covering most of Saxon 4th grade.) Loved Singapore, then did Key to Algebra, and now Teaching Textbooks, which is going well. I thought it was a good follow-up to Singapore. There's no perfect math program, is there? - Autumn
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