Ok, so I know I was just going to do living math with Rylee until fall, but I could see what little she was grasping fading away fast. So I decided to just slow way down with her McRuffy Math. Each day still brings us both to tears! I'm going to back track to square one with her and math. I thought about using McRuffy grade 1 again with her, but now I'm thinking of using Math Mammoth... I'm not sure which version I should go with though (I have both the blue and light blue sets already, so either is fine). Which one would you go with. I really thought the topic books at first, but I think it might be good for us to just start at the beginning of grade 1A and move ahead from there. Not that it matters a whole lot, both sets really seem to cover the same things, just in a slightly different manner.
Have you tried Math-U-See yet? That would be my first choice for a struggling math student. As for Math Mammoth, I would have her take the end-of-year test for grade 1. If she does poorly overall, start from the beginning of 1A. If she has mastered some topics, but struggles with others, I would use the dark blue books to fill in the gaps. The material is almost identical in light and dark blue, so you can't really go wrong either way.
There are several reasons we don't and won't use MUS. I strongly prefer a spiral program (though that is not why I don't like MUS). McRuffy is actually an awesome program, spiral, very hands on (manips come out to play every single day), very fun for the kids (built in board games regularly). I'm not sure what happened to dd's brain, McRuffy was making math make sense to her, all of a sudden she is lost somewhere. McRuffy is very advanced, what she finished in the McRuffy grade 1 book covered all of MM grade 2. I'm starting to think it just moved too fast for her and we just need to back up to review. I'm ok with maybe doing MM grades 1 & 2 now till fall then picking McRuffy 2 up agauin for her 3rd grade year. If she seems to finally get it with MM I will keep her with that. I just ordered an abacus for her and a Judy Clock since she killed our little hand one today in a moment of anger at the Math Gods.
I love Math Mammouth's mastery based sets! So inexpensive. You can use your own manipulatives. Love that. I've used the individual units for things when my kids were struggling with a specific topic (i.e. multiplication). Sometimes it just helps to take a breather from the curricula that's causing them issues, to step back and maybe do something they know and slowly adding in new things....then they feel more confident when they get back to their curricula. I think anything you choose to do - full 1A or just one of the mastery sets - stepping back from what's frustrating your student will be a help! Just my opinion.
