Has your child gone from SM to Saxon in the later years?

[plain jane]

I was wondering how the change went for you? After what level of SM did you switch and which level of Saxon did your child go into?

[4 Gifts]

:lurk5: I would love to hear the responses to this too!

[brownie]

We did! We wrapped up 4A and went into Saxon 7/6 with my 4th grader. We are only on lesson 14 but I think it was the right move! I love Singapore...really I do, but ds was failing, I was yelling, it was bad...

 

So we switched and honestly the material seems a bit easy, so far anyhow (I know it gets harder), but he got an 87% on his first test! That's great for us. He is making fewer mistakes each and every day....dumb mistakes are his major nemesis. He gets the concepts but can't execute carefully. I think the mixed practice is demanding more attention from him. The daily drill and mental math keep us on the ball, and best of all I can stop trying to make supplementary review sheets to review all the stuff he learned but forgot by the end of the semester!

 

Also, it is turning up little odd issues I didn't know we had (I guess because of the variety of problems?). He really doesn't get what a divisor and dividend are...he keeps mixing them up, which I think is revealing some underlying confusion about division when it comes to how to convert a multiplication equation to division.

 

Brownie

[Guest mrsjamiesouth]

I was wondering how the change went for you? After what level of SM did you switch and which level of Saxon did your child go into?

 

 

We used SM up to 4A. We quit in the middle of 4A and switched to Saxon 5/4, but it was too easy for him. He could have easily done 6/5 instead.

I wanted to go backwards a little because he could not understand long division. He finally got it at the beginning of this year. It was a very good switch for him. I love all the review.

[Ann.without.an.e]

We completed Singapore through 5B. As much as I loved it, I needed a more thorough teacher's guide for the middle/high school years. I wish I would have switched earlier. We moved straight into 8/7 with pre-algebra for this year (6th grade). I love Saxon. I feel like it is more thorough than Singapore and is leaving less gaps.

[KarenNC]

Our experience was similar to Brownie's. We quit Singapore at the end of 4A (interesting that....hmmm). I gave my daughter (then 4th grade mid year) the Saxon placement test and she came out in between 6/5 and 7/6. After examining the ones she missed and why, as well as looking at both the Saxon books, I decided to fill in a few concepts with the Key to .... books and start her this summer with 7/6. We had done Singapore from Earlybird all the way through to 4A, switching to the Standards edition for 3A/B and 4A.

 

I like it much better, as does she (the price of $25 for the entire year with the used books was also great;). I'm actually seeing her applying the mental math now and the timed practices are very helpful (even if she is still not very fast on most of them). As with Brownie's child, careless errors are the biggest issue---forgetting to list units, forgetting to reduce or reduce sufficiently, etc. Overall, she is carrying a high B (on a 10 pt scale) in the tests and problem sets, which could be a low A, I believe, if she would pay closer attention to detail.

[MariannNOVA]

My experience is similar to Brownie's and KarenNC's.......

 

DD11 finished with Singapore 4b at the end of fourth grade in private school. We began homeschooling for 5th grade and went to Saxon 7/6 as that was what she would have done in private school. This year we are doing Saxon 8/7 and i through in Kinetic Pre-Algebra and TT Pre-Algebra but the Saxon 8/7 really covers it all.

 

The twins are in 4a and 4b this year and I am sure I will do the same with them.

 

I purchased the Saxon teaching DVDs for dd11 and they are worth every penny.

[Janie Grace]

We stopped Singapore after 4B. It was getting way too hard for me to teach! We actually did Teaching Textbooks last year (for 5th grade) and she tested into TT7. It was fine, but this year (6th grade) we started Saxon (read more reviews and decided it was a stronger program than TT). She is doing Saxon 7/6 and I think it is a bit too easy for her. I will test her at the end of the year, and if she's ready, let her do pre-Algebra and skip 8/7, which I hear reviews 7/6 quite a bit.

 

We bought the DIVE CDs but she doesn't need them -- she is learning fine just by reading the lesson (gets at least a 95% on every test). I need to be better about having her do the timed tests. I know that's a weakness of SM and would be good practice. The mental math is a piece of cake after Singapore!

 

Incidentally, MFW curriculum recommends *exactly* this -- SM for elementary, Saxon after that.

[LunaLee]

:D We switched mid way through 4A to 6/5 last year-DS could have went into 7/6, but I figured it would be better to cover the things he missed within Saxon (instead of supplementing with other things) and move through the things he already knew.

 

We switched because the leap SM was wanting him to make from the concrete to the abstract was too great, and his brain just wasn't ready for it.

[brownie]

I agree - the demand on abstract thinking becomes too great for some kids in Singapore 4A, especially if they hit 4A before 4th grade. I think that was only part of our problem with ds10, but I am also running into it with my 2nd grader who is almost done with 4A. I just don't think he's going to be able to handle some of the expectations.

 

Brownie