There are a variety of different ways to teach math. Is mental math better than drill? Do you need to include life application skills? When do you introduce higher level mathematical thinking skills? These are all questions that have plagued me as I have tried to get it right. Math is one of those skills that I have always struggled with and I do not want to have my children do the same thing. Maybe that is why I struggle with the decision so much. Maybe I should just relax but I can't. I always second guess myself on this one.

I started out with Singapore Earlybird Math Series. This was perfect for the preschool years but what to do afterwards really bothered me. I didn't feel Singapore had enough drill although I loved the mental aspects of it. Kris did well with it and enjoyed the color so I decided to start him on the Singapore Primary Series. Feeling that Singapore alone would never be enough, I decided to combine it with Saxon Math.

Saxon Math, we soon found out, would be a lot different than Saxon Phonics. First off, skip K unless you are using it with a 3 yr old. All it is is guided manipulative play. Save your money and start with 1 for your K year. Everything covered in K through play is covered in 1. There was a lot of teacher prep, which as you know is a big downside for me, but I spent two weeks preparing for the year. We started and Kris hated it. It moved too slow, had too much repetition, too much black and white and wasn't at all fun to teach or learn. We dropped it after forcing ourselves through 16 lessons. I felt horrible since I spent the money on 2 Saxon Math programs and never used either. (I should probably sell them on EBay.) I ended up pulling all the drill sheets from Saxon and using those with Kris. It would have been cheaper to purchase Calculadders .... which does the same thing.

We were struggling through Singapore as well. He was doing the work just fine but I didn't think we were learning anything. A friend of mine (thank you!) found a Scott Foresman Exploring Mathematics workbook at a yard sale, knew I had been interested in it and sent it to me for free. It was a second grade book but Kris really wanted to try it. He loved the way it looked. Another friend sent me the schedule for this program by Janet Fitts. So.... I figured why not. It will be over his head. I will let him try a few pages and then if he still likes it order the 1st grade book. He loved it. Not only that ... it was the right level. He had learned much more than I ever though. This series, however, is no longer being published and maybe difficult to find. Check EBay and Academic Book Source for this series if you are interested. You will need the schedule from Janet to implement the program. Cost is $15 for a CD-ROM with schedules for K-8 along with the stories, answer key to chapter reviews, and enrichment ideas.

So.... this is how we came to a Singapore/Exploring Mathematics Combination. So far ... it is working well and what I plan on using with all 3 boys. We will also use the software programs for Singapore as well as Quartermile Math to help with my need for drill.

We considered Miquon as well but too many reviews of "if the teacher has a math phobia (that's me!) this program may be hard to teach" caused me to shy away from it. I may do this though when they are older for review. If you like the idea of Exploring Mathematics but don't want to hunt for out of print books ... I suggest looking at Horizons Math. From what I understand, it is the closest thing on the market to Exploring Mathematics.

After using Exploring Mathematics and watching Kris progress. I kept wondering if he was actually learning the materials or just getting the work done on the workbook page and moving on without really understanding the concept. This is my problem with math and I did not want to pass it on to my kids. I kept worrying that he wasn't mastering his facts. He was counting on his fingers or blocks or in his head to get the answer. He didn't simply know it like I wanted. I have supplemented with so many different materials hoping that they would help but it wasn't. And I couldn't get over that nagging in my head. He was almost done with second grade math --- did I really want to go onto third grade math with this feeling?