I love love love love love Singapore's Primary Math program. *B* and I started 1A at the beginning of her 2nd grade year. She probably could have started 1B, but I wanted her to start from the beginning. So, we got to the end of 1B and I decided that maybe something else would work better. (I'm kicking myself in case you can't tell.)
I bought BJU Math 3. I felt that BJU would give me a little more guidance. It is an excellent program, but it seems that you really do need to buy ALL of the supplements to make the program live up to it's reputation. It just got to be too much!
So, I had this excellent idea (now I'm rolling my eyes) to try Saxon. Again, it's a wonderful program, just WAY TOO teacher intensive for me. Realistically, with 5 kids I can't really spend 1 hour each day with them individually.
After all of that, I finally went back to my true love. And I feel such peace about the decision.
Why do I love Singapore?
1. I can multi-task math time. Get one started, go to the next. Awesome!
2. I've always believed that math needs to rely on understanding, NOT memorization. I do see the importance of memorization, but I feel it is more important to know WHY you get the answer you get.
3. Plenty of practice without overloading my child's brain. BJU just didn't have enough practice. Horizons (which I used with *C*) had way way way too many problems even after I crossed 1/2 of them off.
4. It's fairly inexpensive.
5. The Home Instructor Guide (HIG) is not 100% necessary. The text books explain everything so well, you can use just the Text and Workbook if financially necessary.
Now that I'm at peace with all of my curriculum choices... I don't know what to do with my time!! :)
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Haha! Love that last line. :) If we're not researching curriculum maybe we'd have to clean the bathtub or something. Ugh!
ReplyDeleteI've enjoyed your synopsis on the math programs you've used. We're doing MFW Adventures and will launch into Singapore Math. I hope it suits my kiddos well. If not, I might look into Math-U-See. I'm only homeschooling one so this journey is still fairly new. My second child will start K when she's five (she needs time to grow in maturity unlike my oldest who was wanting to and able to learn to read at an early age).
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