We Can Do by Moshe Kai with guest Robert Levy discussing Saxon Math.

[MarthaT]

JollyPhonics might be good! 

[Robert Levy]

I agree - there is a huge difference between someone who is 15 months and someone who is 3.5 years old.  I won't even begin to guess as to how I would approach someone that young - so you guys are having good results - so much the better.  As I've often said, my sample size is ONE, and I can't reset him to try out different approaches (not that I would, though).

[Mandabplus3]

Just thought I would give you an update on our Saxon progress.
We started of guns blazing at 2 sections per day. I quickly reasiled that perhaps our lives might turn into only math at this pace so we readjusted. The problem mostly stems from the lack of free time Natalya has due to her gymnastics. Did I mention she got tested for the next level and passed?  So next year her commitments are going to increase in time.
Another problem we encountered is that now that I am back a t work I can't mark 2 sections a day! ( I can't even fold the washing or mop the floors!  )
After careful thought we decided one section a day was a reasonable and not all consuming goal. It has been about 60-70 days since we started and she has done 50 lessons. I was hoping we would catch up on the ones she missed over her school holidays but unfortunately I didn't count on the fact that since I am working they still don't have any more free time as they are in care.
So at one section a day and 120 sections in the books we should manage 2 books a year no problem. I am a realist and will allow for a few days off here and there ( camping, competition season, my off days  ) she is getting quite a lot of the work done in the car on the way to and from school and Gymnastics. She prefers to do each section in two or three short sittings rather than all at once. But I am strict about finishing every question so I don't care how she gets them done.
There is quite a bit more American only type questions than I first thought. Money, measurement and temperature as well as dates all need to be converted. Mostly I leave it to Natalya to convert them but she often gets confused with quarters of measurement and quarters of money, mixing them up.
She probably asks me a question once on every second section and is working independently apart from reminders " Nat, do your math!" "Nat, Focus!" are the most common things out of my mouth  she makes 1-2 mistakes each packet but sometimes gets them all right. The onces she gets wrong are always silly mistakes or questions she missed/skipped or didn't understand so didn't attempt them. We always do those ones again 
I now have enough Saxon books to keep us in math for a while. I have 4/5 and 6/5 in digital. We are printing these and stapling them into sections. I give her about 5 sections at a time and she tries to get them done before I print more! ( she caught me out once as we ran out of ink!) I bought the older versions of 7/6 and 8/7 and have algebra on the way from an awesome brill mummy
I need answer keys for all of these older style books if anyone has any, they are very hard to get and I think I would love a scanned copy of someone elses  My brain hurts.
It's end of the school year here. I got my children's workbooks for school back. I looked through their math books and was shocked at how LOW the level of math they expected from them was. I mean I was truly shocked! And I am a teacher!  This school is fairly advanced in it's teaching of math so I can only imagine what the rest of the country is doing in math. Anyway even my daughter was surprised when she compared what she does in her Saxon to her school work. " no wonder I do the school math faster now mum" she said! She is easily 2 years ahead of her peers in math confidence, skills and calculation. Probably not yet in different techniques and new concepts but that will come before this book is finished. Interestingly the school still hasn't nticed she can do grade 5 math in grade 3. The teacher noticed she hasn't tested to her ability and that she is more confident but that's it.
Finally, having all the math focus in the house has led to the other two wanting to do math. I have my 6 year old doing a page in a grade 2 book each day but she is clearly unchallenged and has been nagging me to print out some Saxon for her. I am undecided as to the solution for her. It would be a big time commitment for me to start her on Saxon 5/4 now and I just don't have it. I am not sure what to do but may give her singapore 3A and see how she goes with it. Or I may give her the first 20 lessons in Saxon 5/4 ( the revision section) and see if I survive teaching her or not 

[TeachingMyToddlers]

Beautiful, Manda! So inspiring!  Tell your daughter all the BrillMommies say to keep up the good work!!

[nee1]

``Just thought I would give you an update on our Saxon progress. ‘’

Mandab, very good work on the Saxon Math progress and many thanks for the update.

``We started of guns blazing at 2 sections per day. I quickly realised that perhaps our lives might turn into only math at this pace so we readjusted. The problem mostly stems from the lack of free time Natalya has due to her gymnastics. Did I mention she got tested for the next level and passed?  So next year her commitments are going to increase in time.
Another problem we encountered is that now that I am back a t work I can't mark 2 sections a day! ( I can't even fold the washing or mop the floors!   )
After careful thought we decided one section a day was a reasonable and not all consuming goal. It has been about 60-70 days since we started and she has done 50 lessons. I was hoping we would catch up on the ones she missed over her school holidays but unfortunately I didn't count on the fact that since I am working they still don't have any more free time as they are in care.
So at one section a day and 120 sections in the books we should manage 2 books a year no problem. I am a realist and will allow for a few days off here and there ( camping, competition season, my off days  ) she is getting quite a lot of the work done in the car on the way to and from school and Gymnastics. She prefers to do each section in two or three short sittings rather than all at once. But I am strict about finishing every question so I don't care how she gets them done. ‘’

As per time commitment to mark 2 sections a day, I feel getting the answer keys might be very useful and time-saving for you. The Saxon Math 5/4 sums are quite easy, but since you’re accelerating, the answer keys become highly useful. I'll have to check for them myself because I’ll definitely need them being that I’m aiming for acceleration too. Not sure if I can find them on Amazon or Abebooks, but I’ll definitely check. I’m assuming that if not for the gymnastics, you would have easily gotten 3 Saxon Math books completed in a year. But since gymnastics is her second love (apart from math), 2 books per year is not bad at all. That will comfortably keep her 2 grade levels up. Good job!

``It's end of the school year here. I got my children's workbooks for school back. I looked through their math books and was shocked at how LOW the level of math they expected from them was. I mean I was truly shocked! And I am a teacher! This school is fairly advanced in it's teaching of math so I can only imagine what the rest of the country is doing in math. Anyway even my daughter was surprised when she compared what she does in her Saxon to her school work. " no wonder I do the school math faster now mum" she said! She is easily 2 years ahead of her peers in math confidence, skills and calculation. Probably not yet in different techniques and new concepts but that will come before this book is finished. Interestingly the school still hasn't noticed she can do grade 5 math in grade 3. The teacher noticed she hasn't tested to her ability and that she is more confident but that's it. ‘’

And thanks for the heads up about the low math standards in the school. Robert was spot-on on that, and that is one of the reason I'm working towards my goal of keeping kid 3 years ahead in math. We'll see. So that even if the school decides to invent 50 ways of teaching addition, that won't bother me one bit, my kid would already have a solid math foundation from me that would serve him well for life. Your comment made me think: ``Could that be the reason why it is so easy to accelerate a child in math than in reading?’’ Because most schools do a poor job in math anyway, a child that is accelerated in math by the parents has a higher chance of success than one that is not?  Is that why Wajih and Zoihab were able to get such success at very young ages? I remember their parents’ testimonial here - http://www.channel4.com/programmes/child-genius/articles/testimonial-from-wajih-and-zohaibs-parents .

``Finally, having all the math focus in the house has led to the other two wanting to do math. I have my 6 year old doing a page in a grade 2 book each day but she is clearly unchallenged and has been nagging me to print out some Saxon for her. I am undecided as to the solution for her. It would be a big time commitment for me to start her on Saxon 5/4 now and I just don't have it. I am not sure what to do but may give her singapore 3A and see how she goes with it. Or I may give her the first 20 lessons in Saxon 5/4 ( the revision section) and see if I survive teaching her or not   ‘’

On your second daughter wanting to join in, if I were you, I would let her jump on the bandwagon. It's not every day you see a child wanting to do math, in fact it's rare, so I would let her join in. Seriously! You may start her from the Saxon 5/4 beginnings, and allow her go at a slower pace, and get the answer keys for this time. Because Nat has already mastered Saxon 5/4, Nat could help her with bits, and that is good for general sibling congeniality.
This is what Wajih and Zoihaib’s dad said in the testimonial about starting the younger kid in math due to the success of the older kid:

``Heartened by Wajih's extraordinary academic successes, we started applying similar techniques on his younger brother, Zohaib, who enjoyed several advantages over his older sibling, ie having a source of inspiration in Wajih, an ardent competitive spirit to do one better and an additional family member to turn to for technical help. This has resulted in Zohaib reaching the same milestones in mathematics as Wajih but at faster speeds.’’ QUOTE ENDS.

Further thoughts?

[busyparent]

I am also using saxon withs my girls , and everysince i read this thread i now have higher expectation from them so far they doing 2 lesson per day , but checking their answers have become a pain in the butt. ( i have 6 kids so is hard to keep up with the checking even with the answer key.
Iast week I found this website that is call saxon checker ,the kids will enter their answer in the computer and the checker will check and not let them go to the next question until they get the current problem right . it sounds like an answer to my prayers.
I am thinking to give it a try, just waiting for my homeschool budget to kick in.
here is the website
http://www.draardsmassaxonmathchecker.com/

[Mandabplus3]

Yes I do need to get the next kid started! Great quote Nee1, just the    I needed! I am printing as we speak to take a couple of packets camping.
As to the school levels being so low, well it's not actually the math functions that are low it's just that the questions they have them do are really really basic. For example when they were doing area of a rectangle the hardest rectangle had a side 5cm and one 2cm! Sure they learnt area but they didn't get to practice any calculation! This one they have known since they were in prep! 2x5 isn't enough for grade 3 I reckon. Her Saxon has harder problems and has them getting harder as they remember the formula. I like that. All the questions she is doing in Saxon are harder than the ones she does at school even when the techniques are the same.
Most of the books I got from betterworldbooks, finding answer keys is just harder as it's difficult to determine whether you are buying the right thing. I think these should be available online somewhere as the books are not the same anymore so copyright issues are irrelevant. I just havnt found any online yet. Te computer marking sounds interesting but I don't think it would work for us. Time at the computer is a precious comodity here too. I have kept ALL of Natalya's work so when the next two kids do it I can mark quickly using her answers. That way I am only doing the calculations once!  for the higher levels if I can't get the answer keys I will organize with the math teacher at school to mark them. By then she should be far enough ahead to be a "special case" and it shouldn't be difficult to convince him I don't want my lack of time to slow her down. I am hoping to find time to put all the answers into a PDF to share.
Two sections a day is quite achievable. It is a big time commitment and would need to be in two sittings. If home schooling 2 would be my aim. One a day in our case has Natalya 2/3 years ahead of grade level by half way through her school year and 4/3 levels ahead by the end of this year. Due to the timing of our school years it's harder to calculate out. Even at this rate she will excell beyond her peers purely because the quality of the questions is more challenging.

[Jenene]

I was going to wait a few weeks to post on this subject but seeming this thread is active again (and I have a few minutes) I thought I would post now.  We decided to start our 5 year old son on Saxon 5/4 thanks to the free PDF that was linked on one of the threads.  It has been 9 weeks - we have just begun week 10 - and he is up to lesson 98.  I've been very happy with Saxon and really like the spiral method they use.  It seems that if he doesn't completely understand a concept that within a few days of just doing 2 or 3 questions a day he gets it.  Whereas I think if we sat down and tried to do a whole page of the same type of question that it would just end up so frustrating - for both of us! 

At the moment we usually do 2 lessons a day mon to fri and either catch up or lately we have been able to do a couple of extra on the weekends.  Even though we homeschool we aren't going to continue at this rate and for Saxon 6/5 we will drop back to 1 a day on average.  I'm hopeful that as he gets older and matures that we will be able to increase the amount of lessons though.  At the moment he likes me to be sitting with him while he is working and needs lots of reminders to stay on task.  As he gets more independent we will increase the number of lessons. 

As for the American money/measurements etc... There is quite a lot of them but I simply haven't bothered about converting it.  I figure it is just another concept that he can learn.  And if he can do Saxon 5/4 with no problems at 5 years old than knowing the difference between American measurements and ours isn't going to be an issue later in life.  I was pleased to see that the metric system is included though. 

Doing this has made me realize how much he could achieve if he (and every other child) was given more opportunity. 

I Found the quote about the two brothers interesting as I was just talking with my husband about this same thing as my 2 year old is now doing a beginning school type math workbook that I had as she wants to be included.  She is also writing letters/words earlier than I remember him doing as we'll.  she is very competitive though.

Finally, I would be interested in any more Saxon workbooks, answer keys etc.. That anyone has links to as we are now going to have to start looking for them to continue on (and shipping to Australia is not likely to be cheap). 

[michjas]

Have you tried the Aussie Homeschool website http://aussiehomeschool.com.au/ and look in their classifieds section. I have seen some Saxon books for sale and maybe some as freebies - just go through the ads and see what's available.

[Jenene]

Thanks, Michjas.  I hadn't looked on that site.  On there now and there are some decent prices.  Will have to keep my eye out for the next few books we need (and anything else that looks interesting )

[Robert Levy]

Hi people,

I realize this isn't a thread to bash public schools, although lots of us do it by default.  But this jewel just popped up here in Texas.  What's happened is that virtually all of the public schools in Texas (80% of them) did an end-around to get away from the annoying accountability requirements of our state.  They did it right under the noses of parents, legislators, or others that think they follow education (myself included).  Essentially the schools, through a state-chartered organization, developed a curriculum that they keep so secret that teachers have to sign a contract threatening criminal penalties, if they disclose any of it, to anyone, even parents.

They have completely circumvented state law which guarantees access of class materials to parents and they managed to do it through some loopholes they found in the way our school funding system works.

So, for those interested, simply type "CSCOPE" into Google look down the page a bit (past the propaganda links) and you'll see what's going on.  It's spooky that they could pull it off without virtually no one knowing it, or at least understanding the significance of it.  For background, here in Texas, we have an elected State Board of Education, whose job it is to review and rate curricula.  The schools don't like it, since many times what's approved lines up with Texas values, rather the values of the schools.  So they got around it.

I only bring this up so that parents understand just how devious these people can be, and that they should never trust the primary education of their kids (i.e., reading and math to them).  For example, with CSCOPE, there are no textbooks, it's all on the Internet...and only visible to teachers, and can change in an instant (if the webmaster decides to do that).  So what really stirred this up were parents that wanted to help their kids, but had absolutely nothing in the way of reference material.  No books, no handouts, nothing.  I heard a parent complaining about that last week on the radio.  But, of course, that was only the tip of the iceberg, as the curricula appears to be terrible, and would have never been approved here, had they gone the conventional way.

[NPLight]

Jenene, do you still have the Saxon PDFs? the links are not valid anymore and I would like to have a look to see which is the right level for my eldest (8 years old).
Thank you very much in advance.

[Jenene]

NPLight I have send you a personal message.

I do have the PDFs saved if anyone else needs them.  Although after using the PDF for 5/4 I did end up buying a second hand set of 6/5 as I decided it was worth it to have the solution manual.

[Mela Bala]

Bob,

I have a cousin who is a teacher in the public school system and she is always raving about how the school is going paperless.  I am impressed with the capabilities of technology and do think our children should learn how to use them but I was shocked nothing beats a book with a highlighter.  I simply can't fathom staring at a screen hours and hours while expecting your brain to learn and understand the info without getting a headache.  Now hearing that the subject matter is questionable makes me cringe thinking about all the young minds that will never be given the chance to reach their full potential.  They are robbing the world of its future.

[Mandabplus3]

Oh my you have just scared the crap out of kerileanne! She lives in Texas. I doubt Alex will ever see the inside of one of their schools.
Even wthi full access at times I find it hard to put my finger on exactly what they are teaching at school. The curriculum is open to interpretation and that interpretation can make a huge difference to what is taught. In our state there is only one line in the curriculum about handwriting. ONE LINE! it certainly doesn't cover fonts, typing, print or cursive. It's just covers legibility. That's all they deamed important apparently.  Math interpretations would make a difference to the level of difficulty taught within the math strands. Not to mention the amount of practice time and whether any math facts are memorised.
Our Saxon is still progressing nicely. We are managing just under one a day now that school is in full swing and gym is 6 hours a week.
Tiana has just started and I may need a lot of wine to keep going with her but I haven't set her any goals yet so that will help. I am of course completely open to bribing my children to complete their extra studies  school and home work is expected as is piano practice for the older 2. Saxon is a extra so bribes are available  Tiana and I are just polar opposites so it will be a long ride no mater what with her. 
I have the PDFs also if anyone missed out. But they were probably removed from the website because it was illegal to have them there      I assume they still have some copyright.
Ps I wish I lived in the states right now SOOOO jealous! 

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