Mathematics

So I thought we were doing so well with Mathematics.  We haven’t always done math every day (so bad I know) but when we have done it the one who is in school officially, Miss C, usually did at least 2 lessons a day.  So technically we did appear to be a bit behind if you compared us to children doing math everyday in the classroom but I wasn’t too worried about it yet.  We do so much math in our every day lives and talking about math that I count that too.  As an aside in case you didn’t know their father is a physicist who blessed me by introducing them to the concept of infinity.  I get asked at least once a week on what happens if you add 1+ infinity.  Try explaining that in a way that a 7 and 5 year old can understand.  🙂

Well we were using Horizons.  I was very happy with the K book.  Miss C has been using the Gr 1 book this year.  I was not too happy with how long it took to get to something other than addition.  There is SO much review in my opinion that there really was no real introduction of a new concept for her until about lesson 43?  Then it was introduced once and left alone for a while.  Now that might be part of the spiral approach and is good but for me it was maddening.  She wants to know more now.  She does however enjoy doing worksheets so I have let my probable search for a new math curriculum sit in the back of my head knowing I might have to.  I have not however been happy with the teacher’s manual for Horizons this year.  There are only activities of things to do each day, maddeningly repetitive especially when you do more than one lesson in a day and nothing on the actual worksheet she is completing.  I’ve actually had to look at the answer key to figure out what they are going for.  I do not like that.

Miss L, who is not officially homeschooled yet, does not like doing worksheets.  There is a lot of complaining involved with her doing Horizons.  So much so that she is sometimes still working on her first side of a page while Miss C is getting done with here second lesson.  So I had already been looking for other programs knowing that our current one was probably not going to work for her.  In my searching I had found MEP Mathematics which is actually a free program from the UK.  I’ve found a few different bloggers who use it, Tinderbox Homeschool was one of the first ones I encounter.  After a bit of an internet search, some searching on The Well Trained Mind forums, I found A Peaceful Day which actually has a great post on laying out how to get started with MEP.

This past week I ended up with a revelation of sorts.  Unpleasant but a realization that I needed to look sooner that later.

Miss L is almost done with Horizons book 2 for K level.  I have to get her something and I knew it had to be soon.  She keeps saying she wanted the green one (Miss C’s book) but I wonder if she will want to do it.  I would hate to spend money on something that we won’t use.  I already went there once with phonics and I do not desire to go there again.

So after much thinking and praying on things it looks like we are going to do a hybrid of sorts for our math curriculum.  We will continue to use Horizons but will supplement with MEP.  If we decide to switch exclusively to MEP we have that option.  There are days that there is so much going on that being able to say, here Miss __ go get your math book is so much easier.

I’m still not sure if I’m completely comfortable with the decision.  I worry I spent money on something that we won’t use in Miss L’s case.  But the sale was ending soon for 20% off and Miss L was complaining tremendously today about not having her green book.  Hopefully when it arrives it won’t be a struggle to get her to use it.  Now to just work out a happy medium of the two different math curricula in our week.

Blessings!