Do people typically start MUS with Primer or Alpha?

[mo2]

Just curious.

[tomandlorih]

Started DD9 with Alpha in K mostly because she already had a lot of the Primer concepts down (place value, skip counting, basic addition and subtraction, etc.) .. My DS4 will probably need to start with Primer in K but he could still pick up quite a bit over the next year so we'll see. That doesn't seem like it answers your question.. LOL I guess it just depends on the child.

[mhaddon]

My oldest we started in alpha, we had already completed RS A so that was the reason. I started my other son in Primer, it is a good solid base, but moved way to slow for him. He's naturally more "mathy"

[CatholicMom]

Probably Alpha, but I don't know. Primer is a lot different than alpha in that it is for "pre-schoolers" and is not a mastery book. The author, Steve Demme, has a video explaining this on the website. He explains that you can (and should) skip around in the Primer book if need be, but Alpha lessons should be mastered in order before moving on. Very different. Primer is to kind of get their feet wet in a more informal way. Alpha is where it really begins. Also, everything in Primer is covered again in Alpha.

[Tess in the Burbs]

primer was easy for both my kids at age 4. It was fun and they went quickly through it. Alpha wants mastery though so we did slow down for a few facts to get solid. We didn't like the mastery aspect after Alpha so we moved to a spiral program instead. I will say that ds has much better math fact knowledge(in fast mental math situations) than my dd who didn't do Alpha. So it did a great job, but ds just hated the monotony of mastery.

[Alison in KY]

I used primer w 2 kids, I think they were 5 at the time. I loved it.

 

[Mom22ns]

I think most people start with Alpha. Those that start with primer are frequently families with older kids where the littles want to join in before they are ready for more formal math. Alison proves that isn't always the case though :)