Many years ago, I went to a local homeschool convention with one goal: to pick the best math curriculum for our children.
I spent the day wandering through the vendor hall, sampling this and that. There were 2 that appealed to me quite a bit: MathUSee (video based instruction) and Teaching Textbooks (computer based instruction).
I finally decided on MathUSee. It came with manipulatives and was very straight forward. It was fairly successful. The kids weren't dancing around with excitement about it, but most learned math concepts well from the videos and manipulatives.
Fast forward many years, and I've decided to sell off all my MathUSee and buy Teaching Textbooks.
Because...because...in the past years we've added many children, and I cannot find time to grade math properly. Teaching Textbooks is a computer based curriculum and all problems are graded by the computer, immediately. If a child misses a problem, TT will show a step by step solution of every single problem. TT then tabulates how the child is doing in a particular lesson, and the parent can check how they are doing on the computer.
Financially, this is a tad painful. Each TT computer program is more than $100. Today I spent $240 for 2 grades of TT, which will meet the needs of 3 of my kids because 2 kids are on the same level.
One painful thing about homeschooling is that sometimes, a curriculum doesn't work out as well as hoped. MathUSee was a good guess and it worked Ok for years, but I realized last year how much struggle I was having with grading. And if I fell behind grading, a child could be doing problems incorrectly for too long before I caught on.
So yeah...money "wasted"...yeah. But that is life. It is good to realize I can make mistakes.
One of the best pieces of homeschooling advice came from my friend Debbie, many years ago. She said that a mom can become obsessive about picking the best curriculum. It is wise to not be obsessive but to pray for wisdom, look around, and pick something. If it doesn't work out, gracefully change. That has helped me so much in a world with TONS of curriculum.
2 comments:
I have been looking into Teaching Textbooks for my 7th grade daughter. I have read many positive reviews! She is using the Key to Fractions series right now, but when she is done with that, we may go ahead and order TT!
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Megan, we are using it for our 2nd year and it's been a life saver. I started with MUS, then went to Saxon for a couple years then to Rod and Staff and we've finally stuck with TT - it's great, expensive, yes but it's great and the re-sell value is high.
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