Kindergarten Planning w/ Saxon 1

[MsAlimar]

Please excuse the jumbled thoughts as I try and ask some questions. I'm not really sure how to phrase them.

 

I was told that Saxon runs about a year behind so that you use K for pre-school, 1 for Kindergarten, 2 for 1st grade, etc. So we used K last year with our daughter and she loved it and did great.

 

Now I'm trying to plan her kindergarten year with Saxon 1 and I'm finding that it has 130 lessons and is intended to be used 4 days a week. We only school 3 days a week because we want to keep kindergarten light, like pre-school. Do people who do kindergarten AND Saxon school more days or for a longer period of time to do every lesson? Do they double up on some lessons to make it fit?

 

I've counted the number of "planned" school days and it only comes out to 105. It will probably be lower by the time we have some breaks and illnesses. I will obviously have to fix this for first grade to get 180 days in but for kindergarten I wasn't going to worry about it.

 

I am starting to think that I would just do one lesson of Saxon at a time and plan on finishing up next summer. Kind of a lite summer school with maybe some additional reading lessons. The idea is that if we finish over the summer (taking our time) then there won't be a need for review when we start first grade. Does this sound reasonable?

[christielee7278]

This is our first year to use Saxon so I don't know from experience, but I have heard that the first several lessons in each Saxon math book is review of the previous year. If that is the case for Saxon 1, maybe you can breeze through or even skip the review lessons to cut the lessons down to fit your schedule.

[TheCoffeeChick]

If you only get to lesson 103 and quit for the year that would be fine. Saxon 2 starts with about 30 lessons of review -- you won't be behind. :)

 

Also, there were a few lessons we skipped (or combined) in Saxon 1. If you are able to do the same, you could even get a little farther. I think it would be more important that you keep your goal of making Kindergarten a light year. If nothing else, you could always start at lesson 104 the next school year and then skip the review lessons in Saxon 2.

 

HTH,

[Macrina]

Saxon one gets heavy at the end for a five year old, too. So I would say take your time. I am finishing Saxon 1 with my K-er this month, we took all year with it. And I am glad we are finishing because the first 30 lesson of review when we start Saxon 2 in September are going to reinforce the difficult concepts. Personally I think it only runs 6 months behind, meaning Saxon one is really good for the second 1/2 of K and the first half of 1st.

[Brenda in FL]

I used only the meeting/lesson ideas in SAxon 1 for my Ks. They do no worksheets, and no fact sheets - in fact they really do almost no math facts at all in K and we never even finish all the lessons in Saxon 1.

 

When they start first grade they begin Saxon 2 as presented in the TM. (I do give them more time for the fact sheets though). I find that this has worked well - with no gap problems.

 

So I wouldn't worry too much about how much you get done in the year. And you will find that some lessons are easy to combine (but you may have to skip a few lessons to get to the next logical one to combine). An example would be working with ordinal numbers. Do the two or three lessons that teach ordinal numbers in one day instead of spreading it out. And then there will be lessons that maybe your child has already mastered that you can skip.

[daybreaking]

The academic part of Saxon 1 was fine; in fact, it often seemed below his level. The writing part of it, however, caused some struggles in the beginning. If I could do things over, I would have done more fine motor skill work before we started Saxon.

 

We did all the lessons, all the fact sheets and all the assessments, averaging about 3 lessons or assessments a week. There is a lesson and an assessment for each of the "5" lessons (i.e., 25, 35, 45, ...), so we split those over two days. I did not make our son do both sides of each worksheet. Basically, he did the entire front and then if he struggled with anything, I had him do that part on the back, as well as any problems that were different than the front. It took us longer than a normal school year, but for us, it was better to have lighter weeks as we went along.

[momto2Cs]

We used just the first half of Saxon Math 1 for K. We did it four days a week, one side of a worksheet each time. For my daughter's (upcoming) 1st grade year, we'll do the 2nd half of Saxon Math 1, and go into Saxon Math 2 as needed.

[CKaye]

I wanted to clarify something. I do not think that Saxon runs behind in the early grades. The WTM says that you don't need to do the Kindergarten book, but to just start the 1st one in 1st grade, 2nd in 2nd grade, 3rd in 3rd grade. When child gets to fourth grade they can start the 5/4 book. The 5 stands for grade level, and the four is for advanced fourth grade students. This is my understanding of what is reccomended, and of course there are those that plow through the early stuff easily. I just wanted to clarify what grade the Saxon numbers represent, please correct me if I'm wrong.

Thanks

[Brenda in FL]

I wanted to clarify something. I do not think that Saxon runs behind in the early grades. The WTM says that you don't need to do the Kindergarten book, but to just start the 1st one in 1st grade, 2nd in 2nd grade, 3rd in 3rd grade. When child gets to fourth grade they can start the 5/4 book. The 5 stands for grade level, and the four is for advanced fourth grade students. This is my understanding of what is reccomended, and of course there are those that plow through the early stuff easily. I just wanted to clarify what grade the Saxon numbers represent, please correct me if I'm wrong.

Thanks

 

No, you aren't wrong. But several private schools and homeschool curriculum (Veritas Press being one) providers suggest using Saxon one level ahead. The material is not too terribly difficult at grade level, so many homeschoolers just follow suit.

[Macrina]

We used just the first half of Saxon Math 1 for K. We did it four days a week, one side of a worksheet each time. For my daughter's (upcoming) 1st grade year, we'll do the 2nd half of Saxon Math 1, and go into Saxon Math 2 as needed.

 

I think this is perfect, as I do think it ones runs 1/2 a year "behind." Though it's true, the writing requirements are a lot, especially if you have a boy, I do most of the writing for my 5yo.

[japhmi]

Well, DD6 is over half way through Saxon 2, so it seems to run somewhat behind in our experience.

 

Here's what we did:

DD@4 - Saxon K and start Saxon 1

DD@5 - Finish Saxon 1 and start Saxon 2

DD@6 - Finish Saxon 2 and start Saxon 3

We expect to finish Saxon 3 by the end of this next summer.

 

Finish each book, and then start again on lesson 31 of the next book (give or take, look through those first lessons and see if there's anything you think your DC needs). You can do this especially if you don't skip summers (we reduce down to math twice a week during the summers).

[Mary C. in NJ]

I have been using Saxon with all my kids since K.

I have dd 11, ds 9, and ddtwins 7. If you choose to do math 3 days per week that is fine. It is great to carry math into the summer (as we always do). Typically the first few weeks of school many students are catching up on what they forgot during the summer esp. the younger kids. If you carry it thru, there will be no review!

 

Blessings,

Mary