“Into exile, I must go. Failed, I have.” – Yoda, Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith
Saxon 1/2 is being banished from Padawan Learner’s homeschooling routine. It is a completely poor fit for him. I know, I know. There are legions out there who just love this program, who swear by this program, who think it’s the best thing e.v.er … I am not one of them. Granted, it’s an easy math program for parents who don’t want to do math with their kids or for kids who want to do math by themselves (being pretty much a self-teaching text), but it’s an absolute disaster for kids who don’t learn best by rote memorization and who always want to know “Why?”. This was the deal breaker for Padawan Learner.
Every day, he’d be cruising along feeling all smart and sassy, following along with the straight and narrow explanations in the book, until the problem sets took a left turn or he ran across one on the following days’ review sets. He became a first class “number plugger” when the problems looked exactly like the examples but get him into a different type of situation and he was lost. Obviously, the Saxon method isn’t teaching him to think about using these numbers and methods flexibly to solve a problem, or how to translate the information and processes into dissimilar situations.
So we’re moving on.
While I look into other materials that might work better for either this year or for next, I’m taking the Saxon 1/2 book and making real-life projects, puzzles and “chew on these” questions out of the information that he has been learning and what he would be studying in the coming weeks. I’m emphasizing the relationships between topics – area and per unit costs, LCM and ratios, for example – and building them into challenges for him to sift through, puzzle over and figure out. I’ll be there to help him make sense of the mathematics, giving him nudges and clues along the way, but ultimately he seems to grasp concepts quicker, more easily and more deeply when he’s allowed to chew on them as part of a larger whole.
We use Math U See. It is good for the boys. Breaks things down..
I also have a “why”, and “how” kid. There are days it can drive me crazy!!
Never liked Saxon either, even with my son who is a sequential learner. SOOO boring! My right brained kiddo used Time4Learning math, and my older son uses ALEKS and I am a big fan of both.
BTW…so glad you stopped by my blog so I could find yours!
We’re using Singapore. I jumped the DD to be at the same level as her older brother when she was giving the answers to his examples before he was. We’ll deal any gaps as we get to them. We started the year with New Elementary Math (actually middle school – early high school), but switched to New Math Counts which was a better fit for them visually and pacewise.
I like that there are pretty good samples and placement tests online for Singapore. The scope and sequence is different.
The sequence we’re using covers algebra and geometry, but not one topic per book. It shows how they’re interconnected – the section introducing algebraic expressions quickly uses geometric formulas, for example. Later in the book is a section of geometry.
Singapore is big on word problems, introducing multi step early on.