We are using Saxxon math. It's okay. Ds is in first grade. I'm not over joyed with it. Do you love your math program? If so what is it? and/or does saxxon get better? It just seems pretty slow. On the one hand I think that's great for building confidence, but on the other I feel like it might not be a great challenge. He loves the worksheets though....

I guess I'm just wondering what other options are. Nothing TOO pricey!

I really like Horizons. The early grades (up through 2nd) have no religious references, if that's not your thing. The higher grades do.

I find it to be quite inexpensive as I just buy the workbooks on their own. The first year I used it I bought the whole shebang and never used the teacher's guides.

We LOOOOOVE RightStart Math!

Saxon is boring for a lot of kids (and parents). Umm... I like Singapore, which we use. I also like Math U See, but that's more if you don't want to teach math. It's DVD-based.

Both Jacob (my ds) and I love Math U See. We both love the DVD lessons (they are short--generally just a couple of minutes each). Jacob gained a ton of confidence in math this year because of MUS. It went from being his least-liked subject to his second favorite (he likes his SOS Bible lessons the best) subject. Go figure. :)

We love Singapore.
Saxon is great for Algebra and up but IMHO it is too dry and repetitive for the earlier years

Another vote for Math-U-See here...we just started it this year and Katie and I both love it.

We like Singapore math. Looked and tried some others ,but found we rolled with it the best. It changes up so much, and it's not boring. We added Intensive Practice workbooks to add some more work in.

We use MUS and Singapore. I use Singapore as a supplement in between MUS books, as my kids finish them really fast. This gives them a little bit of review and time for the math to really sink in. I love, love, love MUS and I like Singapore, especially their word problems.

We are on our third math program. We tried Saxon and Right Start Math and neither worked for us. We are now using Math U See and we love it. I am going to disagree with MamaXT about using it if you don't like to teach math. My kids do watch the video with me, but I do the teaching. I see the video teaching me how to teach my kids. I like the fact that the program shows me how to teach my kids instead of just giving me a page or two of instruction that I read, and I like that they only use the blocks and not a huge box of manipulatives. We plan on staying with it for a long while.

I am going to disagree with MamaXT about using it if you don't like to teach math. My kids do watch the video with me, but I do the teaching. I see the video teaching me how to teach my kids.

I watched the demo disk and that's what he said on that - the DVD is for the parents to show them how to teach their child. However many parents have switched that over to having the DVD do the teaching for them. If we got the program I could see letting my child watch with me, but I wouldn't just send my child into the livingroom to watch it alone.

We also use MUS. We started this year (1st grade) and my dd has gained so much confidence! It sinks in with her now. We watch the DVD together and I help her as much as she needs it, but usually after the 1st worksheet, she is ready to do the other days' work by herself. I've been amazed at how quickly she catches on to the concepts now and her work is almost always 100%. Math is not her strong point, nor is it mine.

I watched the demo disk and that's what he said on that - the DVD is for the parents to show them how to teach their child. However many parents have switched that over to having the DVD do the teaching for them. If we got the program I could see letting my child watch with me, but I wouldn't just send my child into the livingroom to watch it alone.

Maybe this depends on the age of the student. I started off watching the DVD and then "teaching" Jacob. Then we started watching it together. By the end (we finished this year's math last week, lol), he was choosing to watch it himself and be a self starter. This didn't bother me at all because he was mastering the material.

I'm going to order the next math (pre-algebra) in the next couple of weeks. Perhaps that will be a bit more challenging for him and I'll need to be right there watching it as well so I know how to teach the material.

I think in reality, a lot of people use the DVDs to do the teaching. I assumed that was the intent, because that's how all my friends did it. Shows what I know. Doh! I really do like Mr Demme's methods and his teaching ideas. It's a great program, but my kids thought it was too slow-moving, at least at the level where we tried it in co-op. We dropped out of doing the MUS. But, now that I think about it, most of us were right there on top of the kids when we did it, reinforcing what Demme said on the DVD and helping the kids understand.

We also use Saxon and really like it. :o)

We use Modern Curriculum Press Mathematics. It's just your basic workbook, but it works great for us. It doesn't require much teaching and no prep time, but ds learns a lot from it.
I've sometimes supplemented with Miquon, but it's a little harder & a little more work for me.
DS is also signed up for Bigmathtime.com and he enjoys that sometimes.

We use Oak Meadow, and it is the first math we have done that my ds really LOVES. My ds is in 2nd grade, and right now it basically just has the kids doing problems with whatever manipulatives you like and the parent making up a story about the problem. Like for 12 divided by 2, I would make up something about a boy who went for a walk and found 12 rocks and wanted to share them with his Mom. How many did they each get? At first my ds uses real rocks and counts them out for each problem but after doing them a few times he has caught on and learns his math facts that way. ~Hope I explained that somewhat clearly, lol.

I tried MUS with him and while I thought the idea behind the whole program was great, it just wasn't my ds's learning style. But if your ds likes worksheets, he might do really well with it.

We used Saxon last year for 1st grade. I really like that it was scripted and that there was a variety of math problems. This year we're using Math 2 for young Catholics. It's ok. It teaches one math concept and then moves on vs. the spiral concept of saxon. DD has really struggled with this. We actually took a week off to review subtraction problems a few weeks ago as she was getting frustrated. I think our biggest problem is sometimes she has no less than 36 problems on a page. IMHO that is just to many for 2nd grade. My 5th grader only has 25 or so problems per problem set in Saxon 65. I'm thinking we may go back to saxon next year. Iwas really tempted to change back to saxon this year but I've spent so much on HS this year that I just don't want to put any more money into it until after Christmas. I know I totally didn't answer your question.
Peggy

We have Miquon and use it as "something fun to do." I love it. It's very open-ended (as open-ended as math can be, LOL) and teaches them HOW to think, is not about memorizing, etc. DS likes it as well, he thinks it's a puzzle book. :)

I've used Saxon for the most part, for about the last 12 or so years. A couple of times I tried to use MUS or something else, but always went back to Saxon. If the repetition is the only thing that is unsavory to you, then just do every other lesson, or only the front side and not the back.

I *love* our math program, but they don't have curriculum yet for early elementary grades. We use Teaching Textbooks. Sam started last winter/spring in Math 7 and he's now in Algebra I. He really loves it and is learning a lot.

As a supplement, he uses Life of Fred Beginning Algebra, and he also really likes that. Some people use it as their sole curriculum. I think that LOF also has elementary math, but I'm not positive. We didn't use anything formal before starting with Teaching Textbooks.

Tara

I *love* our math program, but they don't have curriculum yet for early elementary grades. We use Teaching Textbooks. Sam started last winter/spring in Math 7 and he's now in Algebra I. He really loves it and is learning a lot.

As a supplement, he uses Life of Fred Beginning Algebra, and he also really likes that. Some people use it as their sole curriculum. I think that LOF also has elementary math, but I'm not positive. We didn't use anything formal before starting with Teaching Textbooks.

Tara


nak

ditto this. I looked a LOF last night and I think it will be perfect for my ds.

We aer using K12 and I am looking into supplementing it with Mammoth Math for speed recognition of math facts. We might be getting a set of the wrap ups as well.

I used Singapore Math for K and 1st Grade, but switched to Math U See because I didn't think that Singapore went into as much depth as I would like. Now we are using MUS Beta for my son and Alpha for my daughter. I absolutely love it. The teacher workbook has been helpful for me because they give you several ways to explain a problem. My kids love to watch the DVD's. We all watch them together at the beginning of each unit, but like the other poster said, the DVD is NOT teaching the kids, parental teaching and reinforcement is necessary. The DVD is mostly instructions for using the manipulatives, which I like because it took me awhile to get used to using the manipulatives myself. I love, love this program. I really hope that we experience the same satisfaction with the higher levels.