Ok I stopped at the local news agency today and went through the entire stand of excel books.
So I must agree they do look good. Based on the sample above I think the grade one math may be a bit easy to start and progress too fast. It looks completely different to this photo. It has lots of pictures to illustrate the math concepts. I really like it. I considered buying it for my 4 year old son to do during daycare rest time, I probably will but he is halfway throuh another book ATM.( by tomorrow you will find me at the newsagents again I bet!
) at around grade 2-3 they switch to the style above. Grade 2 looks great. The math seems similar to Singapore in layout for the early years. But it has a definate Aussie style to it
Whereas Singapore has an Asian style
. A photo wouldn't help as each page was vey different to the next.
The grade 1-4 grammar and comprehension books look perfect for homeschooling. The comprehension sections had a HUGE variety of short passages to read and answer questions from. Very interesting for children. It included things like instructions for melting crayon art, recipes, newspaper articles etc.
If you want to buy something each grade had a double topic book with both math and English in one. Here they were the same price as each topic separately. Most of our kids wouldn't need to Dinah an entire book on each topic for each grade so the 2 in 1 book would be perfect! Of the shelf at the news agency they are all $12.99. I assume they don't discount much more than that. Not sure if they are on book depository.
Signpost math mentals is the book my children use. So far we have completed grades 1,2,3 in it. I really like this one and have recommended it to other parents whose kids are not being challenged at school or in their homework. It doesn't take long to complete a daily section. Math mentals covers all the things we forget to teach well like time, calendars, bus timetables, word problems, reading thermometers, car tacos, fractions.... Each book gradually builds on itself in difficulty. the answers have some mistakes in them ( just so you know for marking
)
To choose between the two, choose excel if you want it to be your main curriculum and choose math mentals if you want a supplement to another curriculum. You could do both easily though neither take that long if you do it daily. I would do both and Saxon if I was home schooling math
Warning! Neither book TEACHES the concepts. Both are practice the concepts books not teaching books.
Edit: I am not sure if the math mentals my kids do is the signpost one or not, I will check tomorrow.
Digg
