 Hi you guys my name is Brittany and welcome back to my YouTube channel. You guys in today's video I am going to be sharing my homeschooling math journey. So if any of you guys are new here to my channel again I'm Brittany I'm a homeschooling mom to three girls I'm in my fourth year of homeschool and if any of you guys are old and returning subscribers you already know I have been through a homeschooling math saga in my home school I really feel like I've tried almost all the math curriculums out there I mean I really haven't but I personally feel like I have so in today's video you guys I'm just going to share with you all of the math curricula that I have tried out in particular with my oldest daughter our homeschooling math journey and how we ended up where we are with the math curricula that we are using in our homeschool I will highlight my top three favorite homeschooling math programs that I have enjoyed that I will potentially go back to with my younger kiddos if I do find that the curricula we are using isn't working for them so we're going to go ahead and get into this video I do have some notes that I'm going to be referring to so I can make sure this video is really short and concise for you guys and I also went and I found a lot of like math samples from my daughter's years using math curriculas and I put it in a binder so I can share with them with you guys I'm going to look through some of my footage on my hard drive and if I have any flip-throughs of any of these particular curriculums to show you I'm going to try to show as much as I can because I definitely know math is a hard subject not only for me but for a lot of you guys and I really hope this video can help you you know kind of pick and choose between some math curriculums that's going to actually work out for you in your homeschool if I can prevent anyone from going through this math saga that I have went through hopefully this video will help at least one of you guys I definitely will be happy so you guys we're going to go ahead and get started so I started homeschooling my oldest order when she was in the third grade and you guys I'm going to be completely honest I didn't do any research when it came to homeschooling math curriculums I literally typed in Amazon homeschooling math curriculums and a few popped up the first few that popped up was a becker arithmetic and horizons were like one of the top ones that popped up I did a few google searches they looked like they both were good curriculas and at the end of the day I chose the one that was going to get shipped to my house the fastest because we were in like COVID season and it was a becker arithmetic that was going to get to my house maybe a couple of days faster so I ended up going with that personally I was just looking for a traditional math curricula that I can just get through with my daughter at the time I didn't want to make or me and my husband wasn't making really any long-term homeschooling commitments we just knew we were going to homeschool at least for her third grade year so we just wanted something to just hold us get us through and that was kind of like what we did so a becker arithmetic you guys a becker arithmetic is not commonly court aligned it is pretty much a basic traditional uh spiral math program one thing I did enjoy about a becker arithmetic three was that this workbook is really really colorful and it's really tastefully done it's not too bam in your face um my daughter really appreciated like the spiral review at the beginning of each lesson they have like this little section right here where you will go through like the teaching portion with the student and then you had like some class practice you can do and then on the back of a becker arithmetic was like the independent practice for the most part you guys uh some days I was able to just give griel her a becker arithmetic read her lesson real quick and she was able to do her math independently all by herself and in that season that I was in I definitely needed it when I started homeschooling um my youngest daughter was only six months old I still wasn't like exclusively nursing her and then uh my middle daughter was only two so I just had to find like simple curricula just for me to be able to like get it in get it out get her math done and a becker definitely did it for us in our homeschool it was very thorough I really enjoyed the tests the speed drills and the mental math component that comes along with a becker now I didn't buy the teacher's guide uh when I was using a becker arithmetic three I just um read the instructions at the top if um my daughter needed any further instruction I found some videos on youtube I used a lot of math antique videos if it was a concept that she didn't understand the explaining that I did I popped that video in and then she did her lesson practice so I really DIY'd our math curricula for our first year and you guys I think a becker is just a solid curriculum because it worked for her now towards the second half of the curriculum I definitely will say was when I started to notice the rigor that a becker has um it started to get really really intense my daughter started to get stressed out about math it was no longer just that simple do-your-work sheet it really began like I really began to see the tears with math and that's definitely no fun in your homeschool when it hits that point and I definitely realized that math or that a becker arithmetic definitely flows at more of an accelerated rate which I mean for some kids that excel in math they would do perfectly fine but I noticed my daughter still needed that you know repetition that review and um I was thinking towards the end of the year maybe I need to switch to something else if we continue with our homeschooling math journey or our homeschooling journey in general um and I was really really like debating that but one thing I will say is at the end of our homeschooling year when we did do our standardized testing um Brielle's math scores I mean I was just like so surprised at her math scores at the end of her standardized test so I knew a becker arithmetic was a strong math but I was just I was just concerned about like the tears the frustration that came along with it because of its accelerated pace one thing I definitely will say is that a becker arithmetic it does kind of lack a lot of geometry I noticed especially when I started to dabble into other curriculums um at least in this a becker arithmetic uh three and four level that I do have some experience with it didn't have as much geometry as other curriculars did um so that was one thing I noticed right off the back um so that was one thing about it and I feel like at the end of the day like I said before the only reason why a becker didn't work was because it just moved too fast if a becker moved a little bit slower I definitely probably wouldn't have switched we probably would have used a becker for her elementary years um so that is my only con so as far as a becker arithmetic three we've completed that book cover to cover I believe it's a total of 170 lessons in a becker so um we completed it and you know I was just like all right we gotta move forward to our next year I need to do some research in finding a new math curricula that was going to work for Brielle in our homeschool so you guys the second math curricula that I tried out in our homeschool was Singapore Dimensions and I went ahead and I got her level 4a for the fourth grade now you guys Singapore Singapore is commonly core aligned and it's more of a mastery I would say mastery slash spiral because each chapter you're only going over one concept so you might be going over place value for one chapter or multiplying fractions for one chapter dividing fractions they have a geometry chapter so every chapter you're going over something specific but in the workbook pages they do have like some type of spiral review where they do pull in other concepts that they went over in the previous chapter so I would say mastery slash spiral would be a good term for a Singapore Dimensions um I love that Singapore focused on mental math and problem solving um that was really really cool I love the incorporation of the manipulatives in Singapore because with a becker there was no manipulatives unless I came up with some things on my own there was a money unit in a becker and I went and got um a couple of games for me and my um oldest order to play but other than that it was no type of like actual manipulatives and I feel like sometimes when the kids have manipulatives they're really able to see and and learn how those math parts are being moved around and it's really really beneficial especially for you know the younger years even the older years um so that was one thing I really loved about Singapore Dimensions math um it focuses on conceptual math um I liked it as a video option for Singapore Dimensions now that they have I'm not too sure how far the video options go but at the time they did have the videos for Singapore Dimensions for A and for B for like an additional like subscription charge of course a becker has their videos with a becker academy too as well um I believe the becker videos are way more expensive than the Singapore Dimensions subscription for the year was um one thing I loved about it the lessons were really really colorful engaging um I love the fact how they always will have like some type of abstract thinking at the beginning of the lesson where it's like a big picture thinking and then uh they will break down the problem so I guess it goes into like that abstract pictorial and then you're using your hands and then you're actually uh writing it down in the workbook so that was like their method that Singapore did which I really really appreciate it um I feel like Singapore Dimensions even though this is a math curriculum I use the less amount of time it was my favorite to teach um maybe because my brain just thinks that way um I really feel like uh my cons about Singapore Dimension and the only reason why I stopped it and this is like my number one biggest regret when it came to math I stopped it because it was too teacher intensive I was trying to figure out where to schedule it in sometimes we were doing it early in the morning before my husband went off to work me and my daughter was waking up early but then we were tired or waking up so early before he went off to work then we're doing it in the afternoons when I was putting my younger two for nap time but during the afternoons my daughter was just like done throughout the day especially after all her other subjects she did um so it was just so hard for us to really figure out the right timing for us to do Singapore Dimensions and I felt like math was being put on the back burner which is a subject I definitely didn't want to neglect in our home school and that's ultimately which led me to switch uh back to something that was more familiar in our home school but I do regret that switch you guys and I'm going to be completely honest because uh Singapore Dimensions is a math curriculum that I definitely would recommend for any of you guys to check out to see if it might be something that works for you especially if you're starting off your kids from the beginning I really appreciated it um the only thing about Singapore in comparison to some of the other curriculas that I am sharing with you guys it is pretty pricey when it comes to like the price tag but if you want to buy things used like maybe find your teacher's guides on ebay or facebook marketplace used and just only by the workbooks you definitely can make it more affordable but just brand new off the back it is one of the more expensive curriculums that I am mentioning today so uh that's Singapore Dimensions you guys and hopefully I can find some footage of Singapore to share with you guys if not Singapore's website they do have a lot of examples on their website which is really really um awesome you're able to see a lot of their sample pages so that is Singapore Dimensions that is one of my like home school regrets is dropping that curricula because uh the time that we did spend in the curriculum Brielle she did learn math um she did get frustrated sometimes but she was retaining the information and I really seen growth in her from the short time that we did use it and I believe we only used it for about two chapters which is about maybe a month of Singapore so that was it so in her fourth grade year we only used it for the month of August now when Singapore Dimensions didn't work for us or I guess work for like the timing and everything like that as far as work for us I just went back to old faithful I went back to a Becca arithmetic for you guys and as I mentioned earlier um it's nothing wrong with a Becca the only thing that was wrong with a Becca for my this particular child was that uh just the speed at which a Becca went it didn't teach like the conceptual and the why behind math it's like straight to the point problems you get in them you hone in them in and I really love that for like the reinforcement of math but it just didn't work for her so I was back at the drawing board when it came to homeschooling math curriculums and you guys um at the time the new simply good and beautiful math for just came out and I was like you know what let's go ahead and try out the simply good and beautiful math for um let's see if this one may work I knew simply good and beautiful math wasn't going to be a math that I was going to stick with in the long call I was just looking for a math to get us through the fourth grade because at the time I think the good and beautiful simply beautiful math only went to level five and I seen it was only going to go to about uh grade eight and I wanted to pick a math curriculum at that point that was going to go all the way you know to the end with her I was just like I just want to find something we can just stick with so hopefully this will just work just for this year let's just test it out and see how it goes um the simply good and beautiful math again it's not commonly core um or it's like spiral it does have like the suit and lead and independent practice it has video lessons that's included with the simply good and beautiful math um one thing I would definitely say is the simply good and beautiful math doesn't have any emphasis on conceptual math it's similar to a becca where it's just that you know spiral concept where they give you a new concept each day uh do you have any review or practice next day a new concept and it's solely uh built upon each other incrementally um again the video options are optional so if your kid doesn't want to watch the videos they can read like a little mini lesson in the beginning of the simply good and beautiful I will say the videos they were pretty engaging um they definitely try to incorporate like that you know real life into math um and of course the simply good and beautiful math you guys it's you know beautiful it's very colorful um it's game based and it focuses on making math fun at least that's what I noticed about the simply good and beautiful math um in the fourth grade in my personal opinion from coming from a becca and singapore I felt like it was a little bit behind in comparison to those two curriculas uh it still was focusing on multiplication and the master of multiplication in fourth grade whereas a becca in singapore they move past math fact fluency so that was one thing I noticed right away um it was strong in geometry um it did have like a lot of geometry games which I didn't really see in a becca uh so that was one thing I did notice off the back was that the good and beautiful did have like more geometry more uh games incorporated within it as far as that um um I did find that the good and the beautiful was very bouncy it didn't really have a rhyme or a reason to how the lessons flowed in my opinion um I felt like a becca and singapore from using those two curriculums then going to simply good and beautiful math I seen how they were more incremental in the way they taught the concepts whereas the good and beautiful was just bouncy and it was just bringing maybe fractions the multiplication division it didn't have that like incremental build that made sense um so I felt like it was more scattered and um that was uh ultimately what led me to stop using the becca because I wasn't seeing any growth with my oldest daughter it was just bouncy and it felt like in my personal opinion at this level it felt like I was just giving her summer review worksheets she wasn't necessarily learning or uh retaining the concept she was just getting more review and she might have grasped a concept or not so I did uh simply good and beautiful math from I think what was it from september until december we completed half of the good and beautiful so we did a good 60 out of the 120 lessons so I got a good footing in that curricula to really see what it was about and ultimately it wasn't a good fit for me and what I was looking for in math so um I was just like oh it's december like can I you know continue with this math curriculum until uh what was that may like can I just make this one work um and I was thinking well maybe if I go ahead and start adding in some of the a becca worksheets and maybe a becca arithmetic four would be like her main curriculum and then we'll just kind of like mix and match a becca and the good and beautiful we did that for a little while before I just made the ultimate decision like when we went on our christmas break I was like I can't do this anymore I'm like piecing this together I feel like she's not grasping a solid foundation in math we're just all over the place and I really felt like I need to make a solid math decision for my oldest order so while we're on christmas break instead of me enjoying my christmas break you guys I was doing research on math curricula it's like what math curriculum goes all the way to the 12th grade I was looking at all the pros and the cons between all the math that we already tried which one is similar which one do I think will work out for briel so then you guys we landed on good old tried and true sacks and so here is the samples that I have of saxon this is saxon six five I did the placement test for her and because she was coming from a becca she had a little bit of singapore she had a little bit of the good and the beautiful she kind of placed in between saxon levels she placed um she was like one question wrong away from going into saxon seven six so I decided to go ahead and put her in saxon six five again she was still in her fourth grade year saxon six five is for us for uh people who are like struggling in math like a sixth grader that may be struggling in the math and a regular fifth grader so I was like you know what let's just go ahead and do saxon six five this can kind of go into her um fifth grade year and we'll just go from there we can just take our time technically because she placed in this level we're like a level ahead we got a little bit of leverage when it comes to saxon so I was like okay let's just give this a try along with saxon I did want that video component added into saxon because I did appreciate that about the good and the beautiful like the video components that they had so I went ahead and I tried out Nicole the math lady and you guys I'm not gonna lie Nicole the math lady she came in and saved the day I love how she took those saxon lessons she made them fun she made them engaging she has like her math corny break um Brielle really enjoys sitting down watching those uh math videos from Nicole the math lady and uh saxon you guys saxon six five we completed saxon six five for one uh we completed for I guess I can say a whole year because we started in January we did a little bit of saxon throughout the summer and then she ended up completing saxon in her fifth grade year the September of her fifth grade year so saxon math you guys saxon again it's not commonly core it's spiral it's a traditional math um maddox program it's independent and student led which is something I definitely still needed in my household again because I still have two younger kiddos that you know I'm trying to make sure they're not in everything while I'm doing school with Bree so I definitely needed something more of that student led where I can come in on the back end again uh we used Nicole the math lady but that's not the only video options with saxon math they have like the dive DVDs they have so many other video platforms that you can use with saxon which is amazing um I loved again that saxon replicated of the things that I really enjoyed about abeca where it has like that daily like speed drills that they do every morning they have the mental math component which again I enjoyed as well um I really liked those like math fact fluency she said they do with the kids because at this fate at this age you want those facts to be fluent because as they get into like long division long multiplication they just really have to be able to spew out those facts in order from them to be able to do those higher mathematic concepts and I love that about saxon and abeca how it had that like review and repetition as far as like those math facts which was great um again uh saxon is not colorful it's just black and white uh but my daughter was okay with that um one thing I will say again about saxon math is that saxon is a thorough math program however like Singapore dimensions saxon does not teach conceptual math so Singapore dimensions out of all the math that I told you is the only math that teaches conceptual math where the kids are learning like the why behind the math saxon really teaches the kids math through repetition so they get their lesson practice where they learn a new concept and in their mixed practice review uh each day they're reviewing older concepts taught from previous lessons so they always have that continuously spiral review um each day they are learning a new math concept however it's very incremental so it's not how uh the good and beautiful had it where it didn't make sense it was more incremental like abeca where it kind of made sense where they were going but my only problem that I was having with saxon with my oldest order was after we completed saxon six five towards like the ending part of saxon six five I was noticing that we had to stop and pause lessons because how the incremental how they taught the kids through like those that incremental approach where they would probably teach them part a of how to you know let's just say they were teaching them how to multiply uh decimals they will only teach them part a six or seven lessons they would teach them part b so my daughter even though we had our mixed practice you know that was there my daughter would sometimes forget the part a and then they were trying to teach her the part b so we had to stop and pause and go back to the part a so she can understand it and it was just like stalling her lessons now one thing about saxon is saxon has a lot of mixed practice reviews and a lot of people and users who use saxon a lot of us do either the evens or the odds my only concern about only doing the evens or odds with saxon is the program is designed for you to do all the problems and i see why it's designed for you to do all the problems because if you just do evens or odds you may be missing um a problem each day that the kids haven't had a chance to review and then they're forgetting the concepts and at least that's what was happening with my oldest daughter when we got into saxon seven six saxon seven six again same format same flow it just was taking her so long to do math i was finding just with her doing her speed drill mental math mixed practice evens or odds in her lesson practice she was doing math some days you guys for two hours just because at that phase and it's so crazy for me to say that right now but at that level the problems the long division the multi division multi multiplication everything had more than one step so one problem wasn't taken two or three seconds um the word problems while they were very excellent and thorough and sometimes i do miss the word problems there were more than one step and uh you really have to focus on getting those word problems right while my daughter's retention was still there in the math she was just getting lost with the way that the lessons was incrementally building it was taking her long and the frustration with math it was just there and i knew i had to do something about it um so we were in december this is december of 2021 when this was going on so i was just like you know what i have or 2022 excuse me december 2022 was this was going on so i was like i have to figure something out but i was just like this this is happening again like why are we keep on having these mid-year math curriculum switches we did saxon for a whole level and i just thought saxon was going to be it for us in our home school and i was really really frustrated you guys um i made a video on my channel all about my switch from saxon to the math we're using now which again is math you see um and i was so at that point you guys i was so frustrated i was just like i don't want to make another math curriculum switch but you know if i don't make a math curriculum switch like where are we going ahead in our home school it's just frustration it's tears you know we're back at point a so i knew i had to make the switch i knew it was time for me to find something for briel and it was just like uh not again but you guys uh we as homeschooling parents we just we will fight for our kids and we will do the best for them and even though saxon was working in some ways and you know no curriculum is perfect and sometimes you just have to grit your teeth and just stick and commit to something saxon was something i knew i couldn't grit my teeth and commit to with this particular child i had to make a switch with her so i was trying out math you see primer with leah with my four-year-old at the time we just was doing maybe a few sheets we were doing like maybe one or two worksheets a week just kind of like getting her feet wet because at the time she was just getting introduced to new math concepts she was only four i just wanted her to get like a fill of school and things like that so we started math you see primer and she loved it and when briel seen the blocks and the engagement with math you see she was like you know mom do they have a math in that level for me like can can we just try something so i was like you know what yes brie they do i knew at the end of that year after we finished saxon seven six i wasn't going to continue with saxon i did a lot of research with math you see and i knew i was going to try it with her so i went ahead and i made the switch to math you see for her she placed at that time in between math you see epsilon and math you see zeta so um i was just like you know what i'd rather take her back in math even though i know she knew most of the fractions because math you see is mastery so each one of the math you see books only goes over one concept so yeah you guys in the beginning of math you see they are just doing um addition subtraction what is it multiplication division and then in the next levels that we were in because i knew she already mastered those concepts i knew um she was either going to be in epsilon which was just going over the fractions or we were going to be going into zeta which was the decimals and percentages so i decided to go ahead and put her in epsilon even though i knew she mastered some parts of fractions she didn't master them all i was like let me just go ahead and take her back in our homeschooling journey so we went into math you see uh january of 2023 and you guys now it is january 2024 and brielle has finished two levels of math you see in one year which is amazing now you guys we just started math you see pre algebra and i cannot believe like we are at this point in math you see math you see is mastery is a mastery based program it's conceptual math with the epsilon they have like these fraction overlays and those fraction overlays really helped her hone in the uh mathematic concepts when it came to the fractions uh at the beginning i was kind of nervous she was going to become dependent on the overlays but she didn't uh if she kind of faced out of it and she was able to see that mentally she got the fractions we completed epsilon at the end of her fifth grade year which was amazing i was happy like okay at least we finished one math at the end of her um you know um year school year at least i can say we completed something so i was happy we completed that level so i was like okay cool so well actually we did complete two maps because she completed saxon six five and epsilon so yeah so she completed two maps technically at the end of her fifth grade year so i was really happy about that so you guys we uh started math you see zeta in june and um i don't really know if i can count like the lessons she did during the summer because she was only doing it like three to four days after the week we wasn't as consistent with math you see zeta during the summer but once we hit in our school year at the end of july was when we became consistent so i guess i will still say june she worked in it from june until december and she completed this level um i think math you see just works out for brielle because math you see they go over one concept at a time that's it she masters it for the whole week towards the end of the week when they have those systematic review and practices they have um like three of them so it's de and f so they are like the systematic reviews and practices that will bring back in the older concepts that she's learned now one thing that's cool about math you see that i don't hear too often is that when we were doing epsilon epsilon still had a lot of the multiplication and division from gamma and delta in it in the systematic review so even though the focus is fractions she still had multiplication and division in here and in zeta even though this level is just focusing on decimals and percentages they still had fractions from epsilon in here so it does still have somewhat of review so if you guys are worried that your kids are going to forget the concepts i do like how they already have that built in the systematic review within the book so they're not going to forget the concepts that they learned in a previous level which is amazing i think that's probably why math you see worked out for us i just really love just the clean pages it's simple it's thorough it's to the point and we're able to go at her own pace so if it's a lesson she learned she's able to just kind of like uh speed through that week and if it's a lesson that's taken her longer we can take our time we can even go on to the math you see his website and generate more worksheets if we need to take our time on that particular lesson so i really find especially for kids like my daughter whose math is not her strongest subject but when she has it she's confident i definitely will say math you see is great for that type of learner if you have an accelerated learner who's great in math i don't know if i would recommend math you see um it would be good because they're able to go at their own pace but i would definitely say uh trying things like singapore dimension would probably be better for a kid that's more accelerated uh in math uh that can think outside the backs outside the box especially with the uh concepts that in the way that singapore dimensions teaches it but if you have a kiddo like my daughter math you see just works out great for her so i'm excited now that we are in math you see pre algebra and just to kind of see how she goes with math it's working for her we're going to stick with this even though i have been tempted to change her math curriculum now that she's getting up there i think i'm making a decision to we're sticking with this and you know if it's not broke i'm not trying to fix nothing so we are sticking with math you see um i love that now at this level they do have the um here i'm gonna grab it right here they have the algebra decimals and inserts that she uses over top of like the older um math you see blocks so she's still able to use manipulatives even in this higher level of math is which i really really appreciate um she's going over negative numbers right now and i love how she was able to do and use the blocks when she was doing that a concept which was really really amazing so math you see has been a hit in our homeschool as far as my younger kiddos coming up i have a kindergarten or in a precare um you guys like i love math you see but i love math with confidence for them in particular with math you see so with my younger kiddos we're doing math with confidence and i think i'm always going to pair math with confidence with math you see until you know i find they like one better than the other for my younger ones but for the most part math with confidence math you see are the two math curriculums that i'm sticking with in my homeschool um i really really enjoy these curriculas my top three curriculas that i share with you guys in today's video definitely is singapore dimensions saxon and math you see if you are looking for a curriculum try out one of those three i feel like out of all those uh curriculums they are the strongest and i feel like they are the most well rounded curriculums and all the concepts being taught that's just my personal opinion from my personal experience so you guys i really hope this video wasn't too long and i really hope you guys enjoy coming along as i share my homeschooling math journey um it definitely was a long one but i'm so happy with where we are at in our homeschool with math things is flowing things is sticking we are consistent and we're getting through levels and um i really hope that you guys all like i said again enjoy this video and as always i look forward to seeing everybody in my next one bye