(I promise I’m getting to math after this little intro, keep reading)

Happy New year! So it’s now 2020, how did 2019 go for you? For me there were some highs and there were some lows. The school year successes were definite highs. Our church suffered the loss of 2 very prominent persons in 2019, a definite low. Some positive spiritual growth in my own life was a high but the low is that I can often fall back and feel defeated with life’s challenges. Here’s to a new year with more highs than lows, if that’s God’s will. Just because that’s what I want, doesn’t mean that’s what I’ll get. A reminder I keep in my head is that God’s will for my life, the plan, the story he put me in, is perfect, because he is perfect, so I need to embrace it even if at times it’s painful. That is not always so easy to do, or maybe it’s never easy to be thankful for the pain, but take comfort in that God’s plan for your life is his perfect plan. We were not promised a trouble free life as followers of the way, which is Jesus Christ. Do we always follow God’s will for our life? Most likely for most of us the answer is no. As we grow we need to learn to give complete control to God, total surrender. As we do that, we need to listen to what God’s telling us, or by looking at what God is showing us. He does this through many avenues but one thing is for certain, you need the indwelling of the Spirit to know this and you need to have a strong relationship with he who created all things. How do you get that? You talk to him daily, you read his word to get to know who the one is that created you and just how much he truly loves you. He loves you so much that he gave his son to die for you. You humble yourself before him, repent your sins and ask forgiveness, praise him for being him, the God of the universe who shows mercy, give him priority in your live and live to honor him.

Now let’s talk about how your homeschool year is going, or rather, mine. If you’ve never been here before, welcome, let me ask you to review my older posts so you know what’s going on in this blog. I homeschool in the state of Pennsylvania in the USA. Currently homeschooling a 7th grader and a 9th grader. Though those are their technical grade levels, both my children are doing course work above their grade level. I’m not telling you that to brag, I’m telling you that because I don’t want you to think you have to stick to one grade level where the public schools might do so. For example, my children are currently working on a 10th grade grammar course and doing well so far. I chose this book based on where I felt they were at from the work they did last year. Now this course is 3 years ahead of my daughter and 1 year ahead of my son, but my daughter had always done well with grammar and composition. It can be a bit challenging for her, but they do this work together. You can see mini reviews of course materials if you look through my posts. This is our 3rd year of homeschool and we’ve tried many different curriculums. Some we liked, some we thought were okay, and some we don’t like as well. Below I’m going to discuss math.

Our first year of homeschooling was for grades 5 and 7. I hadn’t used any cirriculum and relied on reviews, and cost, and principles in order to choose course materials. I settled on Lifepac by Alpha Omega press. I decided that because I couldn’t teach math that a workbook with lessons and practice problems would work for us. It sort of worked but I can tell you that was the absolute worst year for math for us thus far. There were tears, many tears. In public school there were also tears doing math homework, but now I had more tears and I was frustrated because I couldn’t help my children understand. What I have found in the 3 years of homeschooling is that teacher guides in the materials we’ve chosen, only provide answers and very little, if any explanation. Lifepac is a solid choice, don’t get me wrong, we loved it for history and even english, but it didn’t work for us in math. There was way too much material to cover and way too much work. Each Lifepac course has 10 workbooks. The children can do these on their own, but there is some teacher involvement. That part worked for us. They suggest 40-45 minutes a day, Monday through Friday and about 3-4 pages depending on the page work in order to complete all 10 books in a school year. That simply didn’t work for us. There was too much work. Each workbook has at least 3 self tests and one unit test that are graded. This is a mastery course and as such AOP recommends you not move on until the grade is an 80% or better which they say shows the child’s level of understanding. Though both my kids struggled with these workbooks, my 7th grader struggled the most. Perhaps partly it was because he had come out of common core standards from the public school and he had to learn a new way to do old problems. Neither of my children completed all 10 workbooks though we made a solid attempt.

Not wanting to repeat that frustration and tears I was then on a mission to find something else for the next school year. I landed on MasterBooks. Since my son had not finished what would have been pre-algebra via Lifepac, I decided he would repeat pre-algebra. So this next school year my daughter was in 6th and my son in 8th grade. MasterBooks has a series for the elementary level called, “Math Lessons for a Living Education”. They start at 1st and go up to 6th grade. My daughter actually enjoyed math that year and that was a totally new thing for us! My son started with “Principles of Mathematics Book 2” and he also enjoyed it. My daughter was able to understand the lessons and they were short but engaging with just enough work (included in the text) not to be overwhelming. You need the teacher guide for schedule, quizzes and answer key. My son was so excited about POM 2 because it explained concepts well and answered his questions of why something is done that way. Principles of Mathematics is done a bit differently than the former. There are worksheets to do following the short lessons and you have quizzes and tests throughout. The work level is not overwhelming at all. You will need to buy the teachers guide for worksheets, schedule, quizzes, test, and answer key. The text contains the lessons only. My children did so well and there were NO TEARS! I felt excited to have found something that worked for us. Another plus is that MasterBooks puts together a printed schedule for you. No lesson planning on your part! You make the schedule fit your homeschool day.

Are you still with me? Now let’s talk about this school year. My daughter is now in 7th and my son is now a highschooler in 9th grade. Since MasterBooks worked so well for us I decided to stick to it. My daughter is currently working through “Principles of Mathematics book 1”. She isn’t nearly as excited about Math this year. This course is exactly like book 2 in structure. Both book 1 and 2 are written for 7th-8th grade level students. They don’t call this course pre-algebra, but it has algebra concepts so it’s okay to call it that. POM 2 is labeled as pre-algebra. If you aren’t sure what level your child needs they do offer free assessment tests. She typically doesn’t like math and struggles but she’s doing well. These courses really help students in their understanding of concepts. Overall I intend to stick with MasterBooks for her next year. I won’t have to buy the textbook as I have kept my son’s from last year. You will need the text and teacher guide for this course. MasterBooks is very affordable though, especially compared to other courses. They are able to work independently through the lessons and practice problems also. If your child needs more involvement from you, you can certainly do that or you might find another curriculum more to your needs. Now on to my 9th grade student. I also decided to use MasterBooks though I was hesitant because as they go up in grade math typically gets harder. If you’re great at alegbra you will likely have little issue. I am not great at algebra and I never was. My son has always done very well in math so I was semi-confident we could get through this. He began Jacobs Elementary Algebra. I bought the text book, the solutions manual and the teacher guide. Later when we were struggling I ended up buying the DVDs. Let me break this down the best I can for you.

The lessons are very short. My son does not like how short they are because he feels like there isn’t enough instruction. The DVDs do not add to the course and so I do not recommend you spend the extra money. We were hoping they would explain more but that has not been the case for my son. At a minimum you will need to by the text book. If that’s all you get you will have a complete course minus set 1 and 4 answers, quizzes or tests. Inside the text book there are 3 sets of practice problems. Set 2 problems are the ones that cover the chapter you just read and the answers are in the back of the text book. Set 1 problems are review from the previous chapter. You won’t find the answers in the text book so you would need to pick up the solutions manual for those and for set 4 questions, which are optional challenge questions. Those 2 books will give you a complete course but you will likely want to add quizzes and tests. In that case, pick up the teacher guide. I wish the quizzes and tests were included in the solutions manual because the teacher guide contains unneeded worksheets. These worksheets are called set 3. Set 3 is EXACTLY like the set 2 problems in your book and please do not make your child do both sets. The amount of work in set 1 and 2 or set 1 and 3 alone is overwhelming. So with both set 2 and 3 practice problems there are about 8 or less numbered problems, however each number has multiple steps, like a-j. There are too many problems. This workload has completely stressed out my son. We had to cut way down on the work. Do evens or odds. The lesson literally takes him 5-10 minutes to read while the work takes him at least 50 minutes. Doing math longer than an hour a day, to me, is too long. He can’t complete anything if he doesn’t spend that kind of time. I had pre-planned on a 50 minute class time but he often goes much longer.

So, not only is the workload way to extensive, he often struggles because of very little instruction on how to actually do the problems. This course is not a good fit for us. As I said earlier, my son usually did very well in all his math courses. He had been getting A’s and B’s. He now is struggling with a C average. This is the only course this year he’s having trouble with. At this point in time, we are about mid-year and seriously considering dropping this course. It’s a bummer because I invested so much money into this course and in general we love MasterBooks courses. This course together is around $200 with the DVDs. For a little less than that is an online program from CTC Math. I can’t review that yet but that’s where we are leaning. We looked into Life of Fred and Teaching Textbooks as well. There is also Switched on Schoolhouse by Alpha Omega, which though is digital, is likely similar to LifePac. We ordinarily shy away from anything online, like CTC and Teaching Textbooks because of poor access to fast and reliable internet where we live. If you understand algebra well and are able to teach it to your child, than none of my issues will be your issues except maybe the massive amount of work there is.

To recap you on Jacobs Elementary Algebra, you will need to buy the text, teacher guide and solutions manual to have the most complete course with practice problems, answers, pre-planned schedule, quizzes and tests. If you don’t worry about quizzes and tests you might be able to get away with just the text book, however you will not have answers to all problems in the text book. Note that the solutions manual has only answers, no explanations and many times there is no work shown how they got that answer. I do not recommend the added expense of DVDs because they add little value to the course in our experience. I also do not recommend you make your child do all the practice problems. Have them do a few from set 1 for review and either do set 2 or the set 3 problems (which are worksheets but there is no room for working out problems). Take my advice and don’t make them do every single problem in set 2 or set 3 because each one has many parts. This may depend on how fast your child can work algebra. If they excel at it, than it won’t be an issue and you can even have them do set 4. If you have questions from someone who has the course at her disposal and currently has a teen working on it, please post a comment below.

Where does that leave us for next year? Lord willing we are still homeschooling then. I plan to have my daughter, who will be in 8th grade, finish out with MasterBooks by using Principles of Mathematics book 2. I already own the text so I only need the teacher guide. For my son, that is up in the air at the moment but I have no plans to continue with MasterBooks, unfortunately (though I will continue to use them for Bible and Science). Next from them is Jacobs Geometry. While we do plan on a geometry course it likely won’t be that one. These are my opinions and what doesn’t work for us might just work for you and what works for you might not work for us. You know your kids best.