R&S math grade 5 (and upper) question

[Nakia]

I am a big fan of R&S math. It works great for my mathy kid and not so mathy kid, which I have posted here before. Here's the deal, my mathy kid is flying through the 5th grade text. We have done 3 chapters in 2.5 weeks, and we will probably get chapter 4 done next week (partial week cause we are going on a long weekend camping trip) and then chapter 5 the next because we skipping so many lessons. I don't remember there being this much review in the past grades, but of course, I don't have the best memory and don't want to go dig out the old books. Should I let her fly through and then slow down when we get to the new material? I know that is one of the benefits of homeschooling but I'm scared she might miss something, ya know? She is a young 5th grader; just turned 10 last week.

 

I'm also guessing this is why so many R&S users are able to get the 8th grade book done by the end of 7th grade, yes? If we fly through the next few chapters, we will be done with the 5th grade book about 7-8 weeks before our school year ends. Of course, I know that we might need to slow down when we get to the more difficult stuff, but she just gets math, you know? And then we will plan to go straight into 6th. If there is as much review as the 5th grade, we will skip a lot of the intro of that one too.

 

Thanks for reading all my rambling. LOL!

[Cinder]

If they're doing well and understanding the concepts I think it's ok to let them move ahead. We were able to complete an R&S book as well as a level of Singapore Primary Math within a year because of that. I had ds skip R&S 7 because he had done SM through 6B without much trouble. Last year he did R&S 8 only and it did take the full year and he did every lesson.

 

Cinder

[Mom0012]

In past years I've skipped the first 30 lessons or so of R&S and then the last 5 or 10 review ones as well and we haven't had any problem. After R&S 4 though, I didn't skip anything in R&S 5 because I felt like so much new material was covered in 4, I wanted to give my son a chance to solidify that. He did really well through the first half of R&S 5, but I've been posting about he's suddenly been taking 2 hours to do math starting a couple of weeks ago (we're somewhere around lesson 100). Prior to that it was taking him 45 minutes - 1 hour with no problem.

 

So, I don't know if this is just my son or if you will see the same thing when you get further into the book (I hope not), but I don't see any reason to slow down if your daughter is doing so well.

 

Lisa

[Nakia]

In past years I've skipped the first 30 lessons or so of R&S and then the last 5 or 10 review ones as well and we haven't had any problem. After R&S 4 though, I didn't skip anything in R&S 5 because I felt like so much new material was covered in 4, I wanted to give my son a chance to solidify that. He did really well through the first half of R&S 5, but I've been posting about he's suddenly been taking 2 hours to do math starting a couple of weeks ago (we're somewhere around lesson 100). Prior to that it was taking him 45 minutes - 1 hour with no problem.

 

So, I don't know if this is just my son or if you will see the same thing when you get further into the book (I hope not), but I don't see any reason to slow down if your daughter is doing so well.

 

Lisa

 

I see your son is young too. When will he be 10? We started by doing every lesson this year (almost 3 wks ago), but she was complaining it was too easy and she knew it all, and it was taking her, literally, 15-20 minutes to get the entire lesson done. Plus when I was reviewing the teaching guide (which I love!!) I could see there was nothing new to teach her. She took the chapter 3 test today, and besides one careless mistake, she got them all right. That was with no lessons done from chapter 3. I looked through chapters 4&5 today, and I think with the exception of a few lessons from chapter 5, she won't need much, if any, review. I do see having to slow down by the beginning of chapter 6 because there is a ton of new material after that.

 

This is actually one reason I love R&S. It is so awesome for non-mathy kids, like my middle who needs TONS of review. And with Anna, we can zoom, if that's what she is able to do. And the teaching guide rocks! Plus you cannot beat the price!! I honestly don't know why more people don't use it. But to each his own. :D

 

BTW, Lisa, do you supplement with any other maths? We tried MEP, but it was a flop. I don't think we need to or have time to, but I think about it from time to time.

[Mom0012]

I see your son is young too. When will he be 10? We started by doing every lesson this year (almost 3 wks ago), but she was complaining it was too easy and she knew it all, and it was taking her, literally, 15-20 minutes to get the entire lesson done. Plus when I was reviewing the teaching guide (which I love!!) I could see there was nothing new to teach her. She took the chapter 3 test today, and besides one careless mistake, she got them all right. That was with no lessons done from chapter 3. I looked through chapters 4&5 today, and I think with the exception of a few lessons from chapter 5, she won't need much, if any, review. I do see having to slow down by the beginning of chapter 6 because there is a ton of new material after that.

 

This is actually one reason I love R&S. It is so awesome for non-mathy kids, like my middle who needs TONS of review. And with Anna, we can zoom, if that's what she is able to do. And the teaching guide rocks! Plus you cannot beat the price!! I honestly don't know why more people don't use it. But to each his own. :D

 

BTW, Lisa, do you supplement with any other maths? We tried MEP, but it was a flop. I don't think we need to or have time to, but I think about it from time to time.

 

Gosh, I guess I need to update my signature. Those ages are from the beginning of last year and my son turned 10 shortly thereafter. He will be 11 in a couple of weeks. Well, your daughter sounds quite mathy compared to my son, I am sorry to say. We've never zipped through lessons in 20 minutes and I do the oral drill and teach him every day because he needs me to. In his defense, he is going through puberty, so I think that is part of the reason he is struggling more than he has in the past.

 

Last year, I had him take the chapter tests and then would start him somewhere around wherever he started getting less than 90% correct, so I think that's a great way to see where to place your daughter.

 

The only thing I'm supplementing with now is Hands On Equations. I've supplemented with Singapore on and off over the years, but R&S is taking him so long at this point, there is no time to add anything else in.

 

Lisa

[SilverMoon]

I let my mathy kid race through, so long as she can prove mastery of the concepts. She hasn't had a problem doing this yet, but R&S makes it easy to back up should she need it. She turned ten this summer and is in the 6th grade book.

[Nakia]

Gosh, I guess I need to update my signature. Those ages are from the beginning of last year and my son turned 10 shortly thereafter. He will be 11 in a couple of weeks. Well, your daughter sounds quite mathy compared to my son, I am sorry to say. We've never zipped through lessons in 20 minutes and I do the oral drill and teach him every day because he needs me to. In his defense, he is going through puberty, so I think that is part of the reason he is struggling more than he has in the past.

 

Last year, I had him take the chapter tests and then would start him somewhere around wherever he started getting less than 90% correct, so I think that's a great way to see where to place your daughter.

 

The only thing I'm supplementing with now is Hands On Equations. I've supplemented with Singapore on and off over the years, but R&S is taking him so long at this point, there is no time to add anything else in.

 

Lisa

 

I hope you don't think I was bragging. :blushing: She just seems to be mathy, but I then I am mathy too. At the risk of showing my super nerd side, I get giddy when I think about teaching algebra and geometry. :lol: The thing is she really does well with concrete, traditional, nuts and bolts math. We tried MEP, and it was a flop. Have you looked at it? I know many here rave about it, but it was so....I don't know...just different, and it did not work for Anna at all. I also HATED using all that ink and paper to print it. I don't need an entire curriculum, if I do decide to supplement, but I would like something already printed and bound, but that is just my preference. Instead of supplementing with another math program right now, we are doing some of the work from Building Thinking Skills which has some good math-type stuff in it. I go back and forth with the decision about supplementing. It seems crazy to add in something when this is obviously a solid math program, and it works well for her. But so many WTM'ers do it, so it must be the right thing to do! LOL! ;)

 

OTOH, my 2nd grader seems to be in need of some manipulatives or just something different. I won't change her from R&S (unless something really wild happens), but I have been thinking about letting her do some of the work from MEP. It might work more for her.

 

I let my mathy kid race through, so long as she can prove mastery of the concepts. She hasn't had a problem doing this yet, but R&S makes it easy to back up should she need it. She turned ten this summer and is in the 6th grade book.

 

Thanks for sharing! Makes sense to me. Do you supplement at all?

Edited September 3, 2010 by Nakia

[SilverMoon]

Thanks for sharing! Makes sense to me. Do you supplement at all?

 

I haven't formally, but she regularly does math on the side for the fun of it. Some kids do crosswords, she asks for math printables off the 'net. ;) For this school year she asked if she could have one week blocks to spend on Life of Fred spread throughout the year, so I'll pencil that in every 4-5 weeks or so.

[Colleen in NS]

Should I let her fly through and then slow down when we get to the new material? I know that is one of the benefits of homeschooling but I'm scared she might miss something, ya know? She is a young 5th grader; just turned 10 last week.

 

I'm also guessing this is why so many R&S users are able to get the 8th grade book done by the end of 7th grade, yes?

 

R&S fan here, with mathy kid, too.

 

I bought R&S 4 for my then-3rd grader, when he was partway through the year, because I realized that the A Beka workbook he was using wasn't enough - I had no clue back then about teacher manuals, with all the review questions, oral work, etc.. So I started R&S 4 with him. Then I decided to speed it up, because he "got" everything and he finished by mid-4th grade. So I bought level 5, and we sped through that by the end of 5th grade. Mind you, that wasn't the easiest thing to do, but I had a goal of being done the 8th grade book by the end of 7th grade, so he could start algebra in 8th and have a chance on getting to calculus in 12th if he wanted to. I was nervous about this speeding through, and there were tears at times, but I glossed over things I knew he got, and I did as much orally as possible. I also worried about skipping important things. But by the time he started book 6 in 5th grade, things were fine. He had no problems doing that book, and we could work through it at a more sane pace. I didn't skip as much either, because I figured the review was good, yet it wasn't as though he had spent years reviewing easy things. And I kept up (and still keep up - he's on book 8 now) doing as much orally as possible. I don't mean problems that you are supposed to "work out" on paper; I mean things like "16 oz. = ? lb." Doing this makes things a lot easier overall for us - takes him far less time, and gives us more time to do other things like Latin and logic. And he is still doing fine in math - he can't wait to get to algebra! :D

 

hth

[MIch elle]

Should I let her fly through and then slow down when we get to the new material? I know that is one of the benefits of homeschooling but I'm scared she might miss something, ya know?

 

I'm also guessing this is why so many R&S users are able to get the 8th grade book done by the end of 7th grade, yes? If we fly through the next few chapters, we will be done with the 5th grade book about 7-8 weeks before our school year ends. Of course, I know that we might need to slow down when we get to the more difficult stuff, but she just gets math, you know? And then we will plan to go straight into 6th. If there is as much review as the 5th grade, we will skip a lot of the intro of that one too.

 

Thanks for reading all my rambling. LOL!

 

There is so much repetition in the R&S math series that it is SAFE to skip repetitive problems & work ahead if your dc gets it.

 

After previewing the R&S math 7 & 8 book, I had my older ds skip R&S math 7 and move to R&S math 8 in grade 7.

 

I switched my younger ds to CLE math because I later learned that R&S math doesn't cover enough algebra and other concepts to meet our state's math standards (after my older ds took stds tests in grade 7 & 8).

[Mom0012]

I hope you don't think I was bragging. :blushing: She just seems to be mathy, but I then I am mathy too. At the risk of showing my super nerd side, I get giddy when I think about teaching algebra and geometry. :lol: The thing is she really does well with concrete, traditional, nuts and bolts math. We tried MEP, and it was a flop. Have you looked at it? I know many here rave about it, but it was so....I don't know...just different, and it did not work for Anna at all. I also HATED using all that ink and paper to print it. I don't need an entire curriculum, if I do decide to supplement, but I would like something already printed and bound, but that is just my preference. Instead of supplementing with another math program right now, we are doing some of the work from Building Thinking Skills which has some good math-type stuff in it. I go back and forth with the decision about supplementing. It seems crazy to add in something when this is obviously a solid math program, and it works well for her. But so many WTM'ers do it, so it must be the right thing to do! LOL! ;)

 

 

 

No, I didn't think you were bragging at all. My daughter is actually the same way as yours with math and it's just a very different experience than what I have with my son. I haven't looked at MEP, but, like you, I'm really not interested in doing a lot of supplementing at this point. I'm just happy to get through our R&S lesson for the most part.

 

Lisa

[johnandtinagilbert]

I'd try and look bigger picture. Consider RS doesn't hit Algebra, so decide when you want your child to start Alg. and plan accordingly using RS and whatever Pre-alg. program you're heading to. That way, you know RS solidifies your elementary math in a familiar and beneficial way AND you know when you plan to be finished with it so you can keep your timeline. I think that gives you the best of all math worlds :001_smile:

[Colleen in NS]

I'd try and look bigger picture. Consider RS doesn't hit Algebra, so decide when you want your child to start Alg. and plan accordingly using RS and whatever Pre-alg. program you're heading to. That way, you know RS solidifies your elementary math in a familiar and beneficial way AND you know when you plan to be finished with it so you can keep your timeline. I think that gives you the best of all math worlds :001_smile:

 

Just another perspective on this - R&S 7 and 8 do introduce some algebra concepts. When I was looking into this a few years ago, several people on the boards assured me that after their kids had finished R&S book 8, they easily went directly into an algebra course in a high school sequence of their choosing. They told me there was no need for a formal pre-algebra course.

 

I am going to use the old Dolciani books for high school math, and in looking at the alg. 1 book, I see that it starts off with concepts that are in the R&S 7 and 8 books. So it seems that this alg. course at least will have some review of what's in R&S.

[johnandtinagilbert]

Just another perspective on this - R&S 7 and 8 do introduce some algebra concepts. When I was looking into this a few years ago, several people on the boards assured me that after their kids had finished R&S book 8, they easily went directly into an algebra course in a high school sequence of their choosing. They told me there was no need for a formal pre-algebra course.

 

I am going to use the old Dolciani books for high school math, and in looking at the alg. 1 book, I see that it starts off with concepts that are in the R&S 7 and 8 books. So it seems that this alg. course at least will have some review of what's in R&S.

That's what I get for opening my big mouth :D We didn't go through 8, but somebody told me there was no Algebra. Thanks for keeping me straight.

[Colleen in NS]

We didn't go through 8, but somebody told me there was no Algebra.

 

There is even a tiny bit in book 7. We just finished 7 a few months ago, and **I** was very glad for the introductory explanations in it!!! Waaaaaay better explanations than I remember receiving in my school algebra experience! I think 8 will expand on those a bit, making the algebra course a lot easier to begin with. I love R&S's explanations.

[Nakia]

Again, thank you all so much!!

 

I love R&S's explanations.

 

Definitely one of R&S's strongest qualities!!

[Lolly]

That's what I get for opening my big mouth :D We didn't go through 8, but somebody told me there was no Algebra. Thanks for keeping me straight.

 

I am one of those who has taken students straight from R&S to algebra. Although R&S does cover some very basic algebra, you actually do NOT need prealgebra for success in algebra. What you DO need is a good firm grounding in mathematics. R&S provides that in large quantities. A student with good math skills can go straight from having good basic math skills with no algebra introduced into algebra. THis introducing algebra in elementary and middle school is a very recent (as far as the history of math goes) development. Kids used to go straight from basic math to algebra with no problems whatsoever.