Storyteller HATES math, although she's very good at it! Since she's our
When she hit algebra in particular, I wanted to make sure she was getting The Best High School Math education that she could get. Why? Umm....because. Why not?! She should have only the best education here, right?
Well, after MUCH obsessive research, I finally settled on Life of Fred for Algebra. We had done all the previous books together, and my math-genius husband thought it was a VERY solid program! So, it was a done deal! Life of Fred for Algebra!
But then, we got half way through the book....and it bombed for us. It was going so great too! We were factoring polynomials with ease...and then it came crashing down for her. It just jumped SO quickly from one thing to the next, that even when we used the extra practice problems, it just moved too quickly for her (and for me!). I LOVED algebra in school...I loved ALL math classes in school, and yet this one just crashed and burned so quickly. And so my dear 13 year old got so discouraged.
So we tried a more "traditional" math program. I went with Jacob's Beginning Algebra. It went smoothly for a bit, but she hated that one too. It was just too much work, too much graphing, too little to do with her life. So we finally bailed on that one too.
And then I found CTC Math, which I hoped would be The Holy Grail of Algebra for us. And again, it went great for a little while. But then that one too became too difficult for her to understand. I tried helping her occasionally, but without watching his videos, I couldn't remember exactly what to do...and even when I did watch the videos, sometimes we still couldn't work through the answers correctly.
And then one day, she became very frustrated when working on negative exponents and square roots, and just asked me, "Mom, why do I have to know all this stuff? When am I every going to use this in real life?" And you know what?! I had NO answer for her! I mean, I'm 38 years old, and you know the only time I've ever used this stuff? When homeschooling her! LOL!
And so, I decided that this wasn't worth it! She wants to be a writer. To create fictional worlds and allow people to escape reality through her written word. She doesn't NEED to have super rigorous math programs through high school.
I thought back to our earlier homeschooling days. When Storyteller first was pulled from public school after 3rd grade, her math skills weren't that great. She could DO math, but she certainly didn't understand it. And so we used Math-U-See for elementary school math. She started at the very beginning, the Alpha level, in 4th grade, and quickly went through all of the elementary levels in a year or 18 months. And it all clicked for her. Math became EASY for her.
After rejecting Math-U-See for high school several years ago, after reading some reviews that said it was "too easy" and "not rigorous enough" I decided enough is enough. For Storyteller, do I really care if her math isn't as rigorous as it possibly could be? NO! She's not going into math or science fields. So, let her be! Let her enjoy math again. Let her do a math program that will teach her what she NEEDS to know, but maybe not EVERY POSSIBLE THING SHE COULD KNOW about math. It will be ok!
And so today, we started Math-U-See's Algebra 1 program. She flipped through the books and was astonished at how EASY it looks to her now, after the failures we've had in the past. Could she skip through a lot of this book? Absolutely! But I figure if we go through it at a pace that works for her, that she can have the pride of completing the whole program. Also, we will catch anything along the way that maybe didn't make much sense to her.
I think we're finally on a great math path for her again! In fact, I told her she could probably finish Algebra 1, Algebra 2, and Geometry in the next year or so....so she could be FINISHED high school math by 10th grade....and she LOVED that idea! And I think Math-U-See will get her there!
I learned so much going thru basic arithmetic with Math-U-See. I've always been great at math, but this program taught me to See math in ways I never had before! I think it will be excellent for her (and for Ballerina)...and I'd rather them have a SOLID understanding of fewer math topics that they can build on later if they desire...than to have a very FRAGILE understanding of a vast amount of math topics!
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