math

We started the year out with Saxon math. I have heard so many great things about Saxon, from people whose opinion I respect. I tried really hard to like it, but it was just too slow. Part of the reason for pulling the girls out of school in the first place was to up the ante in math, so when they both would breeze through a couple of lessons a day, I started having doubts. So we skipped to the middle of the book. Still way too easy. Way too time consuming on things that they knew well enough not to have to continue practicing. So I jumped back on the Internet and quickly found an affordable math curriculum (with a sick feeling in my stomach every time I thought of the money I'd paid for Saxon) that used a direct teaching style, as opposed to Saxon's spiraling method. For the rest of this past year, we have been using mammoth math. http://www.mathmammoth.com/ It is great! We finally hit something that is right on their level; it's a bit challenging at times and it has enough practice. For the most part, the girls can read the explanations and proceed with the practice on their own. We usually do math first thing in the morning, the girls sit at the counter and work while I clean in the kitchen, or bake bread, or organize the never ending paper pile. If they have a question, they can ask. I can peek over their shoulders occasionally and make sure they are on the right track. They work hard for 45 minutes. To break up the time, we do a 2 minute timed test (which they strangely enough love). We get our timed tests at http://www.math-drills.com/ DD1 was able to memorize her multiplication facts in the first semester and for her, that was a struggle in the public school. She never really memorized her +/- facts. I love having the power to make a difference in my children's lives. We also supplement our math with daily computer math practice. We did the free games for a while, but I felt like it wasn't a good enough use of time to continue it for school (although for fun, sure!), so I looked around online a bit and found http://www.ixl.com/ which has lots of problems to practice, and is organized in such a way that I can correlate it with what they are learning in math mammoth. The girls don't always love the practice, they are not in game form, but they love the prizes that they win.

Homeschooling

I am a collector. I collect books, projects, pictures, holiday stuff. Mostly, however, I collect information. And the internet is a powerful source for information! I love it, but sometimes it is easy to go into overload, and my mind races around trying to remember everything. Which brings me to my other love, organization. I love to have things organized. My school binders were always well organized. My house used to be well organized (kids undo faster than I can redo). My personal computer folder is very well organized. My two passions, collecting and being organized are helpful for running a homeschool. I love being able to look at other homeschooling blogs and see what they use for history, what another does for math, etc. So I'm now going to jump in the foray, and make my lists, and tell what I'm doing. Hopefully it will help someone, but if not, I'll at least have an organized way to look up my collection.