![]() ![]() ![]() It has addressed everything I desired without overwhelming First Son at all. In terms of skills, I've found Saxon math to be exactly what I hoped. I could easily tell if he needed more work in an area and would extend the lessons as necessary. I also quickly realized we didn't need the assessment days. I'm so glad I'm not in a room full of kindergartners trying to teach math! Everyone was much happier when I skipped lessons that did not challenge him at all. Looking back, it seems obvious that any kindergarten program would need to be modified at least slightly to reach First Son where he was in knowledge and skills. I had to modify the calendar part a little, but after a few days the rhythm of the calendar was easy to discern. At first, I thought this would destroy my goal of simplicity, but I realized it would be easy to just skip a lesson. Eventually, I had an epiphany: We did not need to complete every lesson. After his eagerness to begin, he was groaning every day I pulled out the book. In the beginning, I was a little disappointed in how First Son responded to the math lessons. I don't think I'd consider it a complete review, but you can find those in lots of places. Now, we've completed nearly 50 lessons and I feel comfortable reporting back on how it has worked for us. (I can't remember where, but you can find some details here.) Eventually, however, I purchased Saxon's homeschool math for kindergarten. I can't even remember now how I specifically picked just one because I distinctly remember thinking many of them would be adequate. These could be handmade or purchased, but I wanted physical things First Son could hold in his hands and move around to demonstrate the math concepts.Īfter quite a bit of research and talking with Kansas Dad, I limited our choices down to ones I thought addressed our needs and goals. First Son was working on his handwriting separately and I wanted him to spend math time focusing on concepts, not worrying about how well he wrote his numbers. They certainly have more usefulness as the student grows. While I think worksheets can be extremely valuable for practice and memorization, I don't think they contribute to understanding. To address a wide range of skills including (but not necessarily limited to) reading a calendar, telling time, the concepts of addition and subtraction, shapes, sorting by various characteristics, counting forwards and backwards, counting by twos (fives, tens, etc.), counting money and learning the values of dollars and coins, and concepts of volume and length.I tried to identify our math goals and criteria: I was looking for security and simplicity. It's a linear subject and lends itself to a package. I chose from a number of sources for our other subjects, but I liked the idea of using something packaged for math. I did not want to have to plan math lessons at all.I was not confident I could identify all the concepts or develop lesson plans for them. I didn't want to worry that we were covering the "wrong" material or insufficient material. ![]() I wanted to purchase a math program for our kindergarten year for two main reasons: I've read enough discussion boards and reviews to know they are each loved fanatically by some devotees and dreaded by those who tried them and found themselves floundering. There are a few very well known homeschool curricula available for math. ![]()
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