Math Curriculum

I meant to post something about this over the summer and I completely forgot!  Yesterday I received an email from a fellow mom that I would consider a veteran homeschooler, she writes:

"Amanda, I have been struggling over math for this year.  I have dragged my feet.  I must make a decision today to get something here asap.  I am considering Math U See and Teaching Textbooks  (for algebra 1).  Do you have any input?  Or can you recommend someone that might have some advice??"

Here was my response, I hope it might be of use to someone!

So, I have a friend that used Math U See for several years. Her son really struggled with math in part because of the curriculum.  She asked me to help tutor him for a little while and what I found in his pre-algebra and algebra CD was rather disappointing because they were teaching him tricks to get the right answer without the why and the how.  Bob Jones uses spiral learning, so seeing lessons covered one time and move on is not how we have ever learned - the MUS curriculum may linger on a topic for a week or so, but then they move on and the student did  not retain what they had learned. 
I would not use this curriculum for this reason.  Because there is limited written instruction, they do not cover topics in a way that encourages a thorough understanding.   I have seen a young man really struggle with it.  My friend switched to Teaching Textbooks, and her son is not planning to go to college, so it worked out for them.

I have two other friends who have used Teaching Textbooks.  Their complaints were similar to my experience with MUS, the information is learned and forgotten because of the manner of teaching.  Mastery is never achieved.  I had one friend's son in my Physical Science class 2 years ago and we were working on 7th grade fractions with the physics portion of this course.  Her son was very upset that he could not complete these problems and embarrassed in class. I talked to her  about it and she said she had used TT and felt she had fallen farther behind.  
The other friend posted her review of TT online a few weeks ago on her Facebook page.  While her kids like the easiness of the text and the lack of repetitive 'busy work' she said the same thing - the kids never achieved mastery of the topic and so she was not happy with the curriculum because she had to constantly add to it.  Without spiral learning, I don't know that mastery can be achieved in any subject. 

So, we use Saxon Math with the DIVE CD.  The Saxon math is repetitive because it uses the spiral method of learning.  This really isn't a bad thing, although students may complain about it.  Your brain is a muscle, you have to work it out to gain strength - you can't work out 1 time and then go win a race.  Students add skills all year, without losing the skills they learned previously. This is exactly what we are looking for because math is the language of science, engineering, and any other technical/engineering/scientific type of job.  This is where Macguines is gifted so we want to encourage and support him in a way that will allow him to have a GREAT foundation in Algebra - this is the building block to higher math, which is needed in many professions.   Macguines' plan is to go on to college and study nanotechnology.
One concern that many people have with Saxon math is that their newer texts they are aligning with common core.  This is true and I would not purchase a 4th edition text as they are full of errors and nonsensical, unproven methods.  I would, however, purchase the 3rd edition .  This edition is widely available, is well researched, edited(free of errors) and is proven to be a very good text.  

On a typical day Macguines watches the DIVE CD lesson.  He then completes the lesson in the book.  The lesson is 30 questions.  If Macguines is showing me that he isn't missing anything, and he completely understands the concept, I let him do only the odd ones (so 15 questions)  but most of the time he does all 30. 
Macguines will watch the video - about 10-15 minutes, and then complete the questions - about an hour - so Math takes about 1.5 hours, 4 days per week.  There are 120 lessons and in a year he will spend about 180 hours on math.   

I hope this helps!
Amanda