DD hates Horizons 2nd grade

[tissakay]

We are only into our third week of school, but my DD (7) is not a happy student. We used Bob Jones last year. Any suggestions.

[MissKNG]

What exactly is the problem? Too much repetition, moves too fast, too much color?

[Jennay]

Why did you switch?

[tissakay]

I'm not sure. I think that it's the way the lesson is presented -- too many problems on one page on the first lesson. She's completing the work, but she's also doing a lot of complaining. I'm trying to decided whether to keep it and hope things get better, or to buy a new set to replace it.

[tissakay]

Why did you switch?

To save some money, and because I didn't preparing all of the "extras" in the lessons - puppets, crafts, etc. I have six kids, and with four doing "school" the "extras" became very time consuming. Someone was always coming to me asking for craft supplies. Otherwise, I loved the Bob Jones Curriculum.

[lisak]

We've used Horizons grade 1 through part of 4. My thoughts on how to make it better:

 

1. Divide the lesson over 2 days -- that way it isn't as many problems on one day.

 

2. Do some of it orally where she tells you the answer and you write it down, or have an older sibling work with her in this part.

 

3. Use manipulatives. You don't have to purchase fancy ones, but use available toys for counters, etc. I remember using more manipulatives in the early years.

 

The print is pretty large in grades 1 and 2, then it gets smaller in grade 3, and then the lessons get longer in grade 4. So, we didn't have any troubles till grade 4. But my daughter is very math minded, so she would get the concept rather quickly and all of the repitition of the same kind of problems every day really got on her nerves. I quickly would cut some of the problems out. She would do one color of each kind and that helped.

 

We are trying Bob Jones this year and I do understand about the prep work on their teacher pack.

 

Good Luck to you.

[MrsMe]

To save some money, and because I didn't preparing all of the "extras" in the lessons - puppets, crafts, etc. I have six kids, and with four doing "school" the "extras" became very time consuming. Someone was always coming to me asking for craft supplies. Otherwise, I loved the Bob Jones Curriculum.

 

I've never used puppets or done crafts in BJU math. We're on BJU 3.

I teach the lesson. Period.

[Wee Pip]

I've never used puppets or done crafts in BJU math. We're on BJU 3.

I teach the lesson. Period.

 

Me, too! I love BJU Math. When we switched to Horizons, I really didn't like it and ended up switching back to BJU. We mostly stick to the workbook. I have the TM on hand when I need to check answers or know how to teach something. But we don't do songs, dances, crafts, or puppets:) Now, in a perfect world, that would be a wonderful thing to do...

[MrsMe]

Me, too! I love BJU Math. When we switched to Horizons, I really didn't like it and ended up switching back to BJU. We mostly stick to the workbook. I have the TM on hand when I need to check answers or know how to teach something. But we don't do songs, dances, crafts, or puppets:) Now, in a perfect world, that would be a wonderful thing to do...

 

I'm not even sure where that is. I've done 2 & 3 and maybe the enrichment area or the activities in the back of the book. But we still love BJU Math.

[tissakay]

I'm not even sure where that is. I've done 2 & 3 and maybe the enrichment area or the activities in the back of the book. But we still love BJU Math.

 

 

We were using the Distance Learning Hard Drive Option with all four older kids. Crafts were part of most of the daily lessons (maybe not so much for math). So I totally changed curriculums. My 5, 6, and 8th graders are using Switched On Schoolhouse.

 

I'm just not sure the Alpha Omega programs as as strong academically as the BJU program (there are the only two I have experience with).

[....]

Yep. We just switched from Horizons 2 last week to CLE Math 200s. My son was just crying - crying tears during his math lessons. It was horrible. I don't know what the problem was. He was also saying that it looked like too many problems. I also noticed that it made some giant leaps at the end of Horizons 1 and I think it really caught him off guard. He's a Wiggly Willy - BTW - and tends to struggle with schoolwork. :glare:

 

We're going to finish the Horizons 2 workbook - off and on as a supplement - some extra math problems for him to do. I think I might use some of the problems for my 3rd grader to review.

 

But, yeah. That happened to us, too. I really like Horizons, but I don't want him so upset to where he's crying.

 

I think the other lady's suggestion - to break up one lesson over two days - is probably your best bet, unless you're going to switch programs entirely. They're so little at that age, switching math isn't going to be the end of the world. Too bad, we really liked Horizons 1. :confused:

[lisak]

One more comment...I have found in Horizons that around lesson 120, it seems to be in the next grade level. It is teaching things more quickly than other curriculums, so I always felt if we got to 120 then we were finished for the year. The last comment (starrbuck12) is very consistent with this. So, if you split the lesson in half, cut problems out, or something else entirely, don't feel that you are not giving your child a good education. This is a solid program, but it moves fast and gives much review.

 

We have gone through 4 or 5 math curriculums at my house (Horizons, Saxon, Modern Curriculum Press, MUS, and other supplements), so I base my comments on what I have seen. Also, Horizons does not wok for every child. My older daughter didn't do well with it, hence many programs. The younger did well for quite some time.

 

The other thing I notice is that BJU has many fewer problems per lesson. I was looking at my daughter's grade 5 book yesterday, and it seems to have 18 or so problems per lesson. Now Horizons has at least twice that. Just the volume change might be a consideration as well.

 

Good Luck!

[parias1126]

My DD was the same way with Horizons. She just could not do it. There was too much going on in one space, too many colors, etc. We did MUS the last 2 years and I have found gaps so this year we are trying CLE. CLE really looks wonderful. There is not a lot of color and the problems are spaced apart from each other on the pages.

[Wee Pip]

If the problem with Horizons is strictly the number of problems, you could easily reduce those by crossing off what's "too many". Heck, I cut BJU's number of problems down, and it has a lot less problems per page than Horizons. One option: if you do so-many of one type of problem and get them all right, you don't need to do any more of that type.

[MissKNG]

I'm not sure. I think that it's the way the lesson is presented -- too many problems on one page on the first lesson. She's completing the work, but she's also doing a lot of complaining. I'm trying to decided whether to keep it and hope things get better, or to buy a new set to replace it.

 

I've cut out problems and even entire lessons if there was too much repetition.

[tissakay]

Cutting out some of the problems is working. She's doing much better now.

[FriedClams]

I felt there was a huge jump from Horizon 1 to 2. My DD was fine with it, but the DS faltered a bit. I found that copying some of the problems on index cards cut in half was a fun way to challenge him. It was fun. I'd hand one after the other. It took no time to get through some of the longer problem sets. [i'm a mean mom that rarely drops problems.] We also used a white board for fun too. Or wrote on the sliding glass door with a dry erase. Anything fun. We also used Timez Attack to supplement with the multiplication. Once the kids got the idea of multiplication we then used TA. It worked great.