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I have never been
a fan of Saxon Math. I used it during my first
few years of homeschooling, because it was the
most well-known and most recommended program.
If I had it to do over, I never would have used
Saxon at all. My kids and I found it tedious to
slog through - it had such a public school feel
to it. Lots of added on extras, just so the
state standards got covered. At least that is
how I percieved the program.
In the early
grades (K-6) I prefer to use something like
ABeka, Horizons or Modern Curriculum
Press and then switch to the "Key To"
homeschool math series" for reinforcement in
fractions and decimals, and then switch to
Teaching Textbook after that.
My reasons for
this are that the very early grades (K-3) are
straightforward and easy to teach, and I never
saw the point in overwhelming a young child
with so many problems and exercises to practice
on the basics (except for drill work with
multiplication tables). Also, as the math
difficulty increased with things like long
division, fractions and decimals, my children
didn't find their explanations and examples to
be adequate.
When
my now 15-year-old son was 13, I got him
the Teaching Textbooks Pre-Algebra program.
There is a corresponding white board
lecture on cd-rom for each lesson in the
textbook. My son was able to understand
most things without extra help or
explanation from me. Face it, most
homeschool parents are not math majors and
don't remember much about Algebra (that was
only 20 years ago). It matters on how well
the explanations are done for us as well. I
couldn't count the number of times I have
looked at math lessons and had to
understand the explanations in order to
help my child.
Fortunately, with
Teaching Textbooks there was very little of
this, at least much less than I have had with
any other math program. I also felt that it
left my son very well prepared for the Albebra
course he is taking this year in tenth grade
and he is having no problems keeping
up.
It is true, the
Teaching Textbooks homeschool math program is
expensive. However,you could very well get a
bargain on a used program on E-bay. Also, I
have always saved my pennies to buy expensive
programs when it really counts, because you
will really appreciate the extra help with
those tougher highschool math
courses.
In summary,
forget about buying the $80 Saxon Math
Homeschool Kit (that doesn't even include
manipulatives) for your first grader with all
of the bells and whistles, when you really
don't need it. Instead, save yourself valuable
time, frustration and money by buying a
top-quality program, like Teaching Textbooks,
down the road, in the more difficult-to-teach
grades, when you will really need and
appreciate it.
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