If you chose Jacobs Algebra over Saxon - why?

[hmsch4me]

I'm really contemplating this for next year - send ds to a homeschool high school for Saxon Algebra or do it at home with Jacobs. I wouldn't say I'm stellar at math, but I get through it. Any thoughts and experiences would be so appreciated.

[Maverick]

I chose Jacobs because I just like it better--for me it is a style issue more than anything else. Have you used Saxon before? You probably need to decide if you want to go with the class or do it at home--that is a bigger decision point than which text is used, in my opinion.

[Mom to Many]

I'm really contemplating this for next year - send ds to a homeschool high school for Saxon Algebra or do it at home with Jacobs. I wouldn't say I'm stellar at math, but I get through it. Any thoughts and experiences would be so appreciated.

 

We haven't used Saxon, but we chose Jacob's over Lial's, if that's any help. My son loves Jacob's conversational style and humor, and he feels that the math is presented well. I really like the continual review in the text, too.

[AngieW in Texas]

I don't do Saxon. I don't understand Saxon. I am and always have been a math person, but if Saxon had been the program at my school, I would have failed math.

 

I know it works great for some, but Saxon does not fit me at all.

 

I chose Jacobs for my oldest because whenever I read about a kid who sounded like my dd, Jacobs was the program that worked for that kid. My oldest is artsy, not math-intuitive, but generally good at math. She loved the cartoons in the book and often did the set 4 problems just for fun. She's using Jacobs Geometry now and likes it too.

 

My middle dd thought Jacobs was way too scary after all her years in Singapore PM. I had her try Kinetic Books Algebra, because it was much less intimidating. She finally decided to have the best of both worlds by using both programs, just switching from one to the other at the end of each chapter. It will take her 1.5-2 years this way, but that's just fine. She's only a 7th grader, so she had plenty of time. She's my math-intuitive dd.

[langfam]

We switched from Saxon to Jacob's because this DS can't work with the incremental method, namely the unsystematic way of jumping from topic to topic. He could not see how one concept connected to the other. It was like a big puzzle that he couldn't put together. The Saxon book was extremely frustrating for him. He doesn't feel that way about Jacob's. He's my non-mathy child and yet he finds it easy to read and understand Jacob's. But I still will teach him the lesson after he's read it, unless it's a very simple lesson. I especially like the summary and review chapter because it shows him how all the concepts have built on each other and how they relate to one another.