Please help. I am trying to decide which math curriculum is better. Can anyone please tell me if they like Math-u-see or Saxon better and why. OR what other math curriculums are out there that are quality products? I'm open to anything right now. When we begin homeschooling we will have a preschooler and a 3rd grader. Your help is greatly appreciated!
Holy cow--how freaky is that......lol. Sorry, lol....I was JUST coming here to post the same question. I had seen info about Math U See somewhere else and was wondering the same thing. Curious to see some answers on this.
The criticism I've heard of Saxon is that it's a spiral approach, touching on concepts, leaving them before a child has fully grasped them and then revisiting them later on. Math-U-See seems more of a mastery approach, you don't move on until a child has mastered the lesson. That said I've heard of a lot of people that combine the two. Or MUS and Singapore math or Miquon and Saxon...A mastery or discovery program that's hands on with a more traditional workbook program.
I know people who love both of those curriculums. I am a fan of the Saxon approach for 4th grade and up. Saxon does a spiral approach which means you might do a lesson on addition(1-9) then time then subtraction (1-9) and then back to addition now doing double digits. Through each section you continue to do problems based on previous units. In course like Math U See they group the course to do most of the similar units together. Math U See is also heavy manipulative based. Either course is good it just depends on how your child learns best.
I don't have any experience with Saxon math but I can say that MUS is wonderful for my boys. They are 3(almost 4) and 5 and they are both doing kinder work this year. The MUS has been great for them, we are almost 2 months into our year and already my boys can add very well and my little one actually did some of his math in his head the other day. The manipulatives are great because it makes the concept something the child can see and understand. Also the teacher book and dvd help you to teach your child the lesson and then gives you fun little games to play to master it. We can't say enough good things about MUS here, but again no one math program is right for every child so your child may be different. My boys love hands on kind of stuff and worksheets...other children may not.
I have not used either of them, and my boy is only starting kindy. But from what I have heard, and am going on is that it really depends on your child. Some kids do great with workbooks, no manuplitatives, spiral approach. Others need to "get it" before moving on, and need hands on to figure things out, and workbooks drive them crazy. Or some combo of those above. Check out cathy duffy's review of both of these math's. It was really helpful for me. I am between Singapore, and MUS.
We use MUS and LOVE it! It's the only thing we've used so I can't really comment on the others, but we'll be starting Gamma this year and we haven't had any problems. I really like how easy it is to tailor to the child.... if they need lots of practice it's there, if they get it quickly it's easy to move on, if they need the manipulatives you have them, if they don't you don't have to use them.
We switched last year from Abeka to MUS. My dd is enjoying math again. While abeka is quite strong, it moved too quickly and covered too many concepts by third grade for her to keep up. She loves that MUS is focused on one topic (ex. multiplication) for long enough to fully "get it". What I also like about MUS is that when I talked to a sale rep at the local convention, he didn't push at all. He asked enough questions to help me decide where my dd should be, but left the ultimate decision to me. Even my two ds who aren't starting math yet, keep asking to watch the "block" movie.
