Math

"Harriet hated math. She hated math with every bone in her body. She spent so much time hating it that she never had time to do it." — Louise Fitzhugh (Harriet the Spy)

Math is not my best subject, ask my Dad. He loves math and so does my father-in-law. I think they are strange (in the most kind and loving way of course :)). I remember in fifth grade the class being divided into two teams, one the math geniuses and the other team was, well, not the geniuses. Guess which side I was on? Yep, the not side. So as my grade sank farther and farther down my dad took this on as a challenge I suppose. Fix me and make me a math genius, or at least get me to understand fractions. So everyday I would do my math homework and he would check it and go over the answers with me. Pretty soon I was a math genius and on the other side of the room!...not really a genius but it felt good for awhile.

Fast forward to today.

I still am bad at math, let's face it I suck. So when I started looking at math curriculum for Caeden I was a basket case. I wanted something that would help me teach him, something scripted, something fun, something hands on, something that would give him a great foundation and help him love math! Wow...

This is what I got instead.

I ordered all of Saxon. All of it. I was sure this was the one. It was scripted (yeah for me!),hands on and had lots of review. Lots....of....review. At one point, actually it was more than one, it was days and days, anyway....we were counting apple seeds for the umpteenth time, Caeden was in tears. I was in tears. We were a mess. The apple seed math was driving us insane. The review was causing Caeden to roll his tear filled eyes into the back of his head. But I LOVE this program! I was so sad....

So we switched to Horizons Math, Kindergarten, since I heard it was advanced and he would have been lost in the First Grade Book. So then all of the sudden math was fun! It was colorful and he whipped through it and we were happy! And then we had the MID YEAR ASSESSMENT.

Duh-duh-duh...(that's music playing)

Holes, holes, holes.....The dang California standards had to get in the way of my math bliss!

Saxon goes to slow, too much review and he's bored to tears, Horizon goes faster but doesn't cover all he needs to cover in first grade.

So...we have a third math book in our midst. This time I have resorted to the school book. (Disclaimer: The charter school didn't make me do it.) Mcgraw-Hill California Mathematics.


[sigh]


Here is what I now love about this book. I love that it's colorful, hands on and it has literature links so I can add even more books to my library wait list (I'll need a bigger library bag, the library lady said so) and it has computer games linked for each lesson to help get the concept into that growing brain of his. The only negative is that I am now trying to make up for lost time. I don't speak "math". I am really bad at it. I try to explain something and I am pretty sure Caeden thinks I am speaking some other language, it sound like it to me (I miss you Saxon!).


So, Harriet...I feel your pain.