Anyone Have Experience With Saxon Math?

**GloriousWeed** · 09-18-2018, 10:51 AM

After a number of tears with Singapore 5 last month (which we've had with it on and off since Kindergarten), I'm done with it. Kiddo loves math when we do things away from the curricula so I decided it was time to try something new.

We are about to give Saxon 5/6 a go this week, and I'm wondering what we have gotten ourselves into. Hopefully something wonderful!

Compared to Singapore (even put with their two workbooks together), the workbook for Saxon seems gigantic and no frills, but the lessons seem more...friendly and gradual?

Kiddo seemed to respond well to it when he previewed it last week despite the fact it appears to be more work (one of my beefs with Singapore is it didn't seem to have enough practice).

Any tips?

**inmom** · 09-18-2018, 10:57 AM

We used Saxon math from about 3rd grade through 8th grade. It does seem like a lot, so here's how we approached it:

1) There is a ton of review in the first lessons. I gave my kids a test a day (which cover 5 lessons). If they were able to get 90% right, I continued giving them the tests until they came across concepts they had trouble with.

2) They would start with the "trouble" lesson, whether it be Lesson 7 or Lesson 25.

3) There are 30 problems per lesson (at least there were when we used it). However, I crossed off problems in which I knew they had a solid grasp of the concept. That left concepts I felt they still needed to review along with the new concept. I'm not a big fan of busywork...if they know the material, move on.

It seemed to work for my kids. It kept the tediousness of Saxon from getting to be too much but allowed them to consistently work on problems in which they needed more practice.

**mimic** · 11-26-2018, 09:48 PM

I did just the opposite: started homeschooling my daughter with Saxon Math. It was a thorough program, lots of repeat and review. I gather it's called "Drill 'n' Kill" for a reason! But it's also very popular. I made the rookie mistake of making dd complete every problem in the drill-set, each time. Pretty soon there were tears every time the math book came out. That was my mistake -- unless your child is having difficulty with a concept, just have him/her do the odd or even problems.

Since I burned her out on Saxon, we next tried Singapore. At first she liked it better. It moved much faster. But TOO fast. Not nearly enough explanation of concepts or review before moving on. I found myself having to make up extra worksheets from scratch to give her enough practice. We switched again, this time to Math U See. Expensive-ish, but it landed in our goldilocks zone. I really appreciated Demme's logical progression of concepts, even though it wasn't the order 'the school would teach it'.

However, if I'd just been a smarter/more experienced teacher in the first place, we could have done fine with Saxon. I'll reiterate my one piece of advice: don't make your kiddo do ALL the offered problems. It's too much.

**BethinMA** · 12-05-2018, 09:55 AM

I used Saxon with students as a special education teacher. I like that it has plenty of practice and that kids can become really independent because the lessons are so predictable. It's easy to plan lessons because the sequence stays the same and everything is consistent. Unfortunately, if any part of the program doesn't click for a child, you're going to have to find something outside the program because they don't teach multiple ways to solve problems. And in my opinion, the word problems at the earlier levels are somewhat repetitive and boring, but 5/6 has a bit more variety, if I remember correctly.