A home for their hearts Posted January 22, 2013 Share Posted January 22, 2013 A friend of mine who is a former kindergarten teacher whom homeschools her granddaugher is using Investigations in Number Data and Space. She said she used it when she taught and loves it. I loved her review of it but she told me it would be to hard for me to teach without training. She said that Envision Math would be the closer thing to it and easy to teach. So if you have used Envision math what did you think of it? I'm wanting something that teaches my dc to love math and not fear it. Would Envision math do that? Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Farrar Posted January 22, 2013 Share Posted January 22, 2013 Well, the program she apparently loves is TERC Investigations, which is generally loathed by many. Just google "TERC Investigations criticism" or "TERC Investigations reviews" and you'll turn up a LOT of harsh critiques. I've heard less about EnVision, but none of it was good either. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A home for their hearts Posted January 22, 2013 Author Share Posted January 22, 2013 Well, the program she apparently loves is TERC Investigations, which is generally loathed by many. Just google "TERC Investigations criticism" or "TERC Investigations reviews" and you'll turn up a LOT of harsh critiques. I've heard less about EnVision, but none of it was good either. Hmm I'll have to do some research on that. Can you tell me what you have heard about enVision? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Farrar Posted January 22, 2013 Share Posted January 22, 2013 I just know I heard some vague mentions of people saying it wasn't good, but I don't know for sure. A quick google search gave me... Some anecdotal reviews of Envision are here (scroll down past the one for Everyday Math) and they're all negative. But looking around, there were a number of positive homeschool reviews like this one. Since it's mostly a school program, you might try asking on the afterschooling board? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roadrunner Posted January 22, 2013 Share Posted January 22, 2013 My kids use enVision in school. If you search this forum, you will see some threads on it in the afterschool sub forum. It's an O.K. program. It borrows very heavily from SM (even bar diagrams) and certainly teaches conceptual understanding. On the negative side, it attempts to show different ways of approaching math and not focus on one. This was most apparent for me during addition. While SM focused on making tens, enVision dabbled in everything, including making doubles. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but can be confusing for some. My biggest problem with enVision is the lack of challenging work. Since it's done for classroom use, the level of difficulty is adjusted toward the middle and doesn't serve strong students well. I wouldn't use it for homeschool. We afterschool with SM and BA and MEP. Most kids in my son's second grade classroom use fingers to count. I don't know if this is normal or a poor reflection of the program or just plain bad teaching. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mommy_of_4 Posted January 22, 2013 Share Posted January 22, 2013 My sister works for a public school and was able to get me K-6th of Envision math for free. I looked at it but decided to only use it as a supplement. It seemed to jump around a lot and doesn't give near enough practice. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
umsami Posted January 22, 2013 Share Posted January 22, 2013 My kids' charter school used both Envision Math and Saxon. (They had math twice/day). While I liked certain things about it, neither my sons or I were a real fan of Envision. IMHO while Envision might be OK for bricks-and-morter, if you're thinking about homeschooling, there are lots of better choices out there. Right Start, Real Singapore Math, CLE, Math-U-See, Math Mammoth, Miquon, Etc. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Envision Posted August 17, 2014 Share Posted August 17, 2014 I have taught for over 30 years. Our school purchased the envision math program for the sum of over 10 thousand dollars. We are a small private school and did not have the money for this foolish investment. We jumped onboard bc they claimed to cover and teach the new cc standards. Their videos introducing each lesson also appealed to us. Kids like animation, right? Sadly. Their customer service is lacking. I kept getting switched around. No one could answer my question about logging in. Their cd videos are lame. My students (kdg) say "seriously"? They do not like them. Weird vocabulary, weak, shallow lessons, poor if any connection from classroom work to that nights homework. We thought we had done our research. This is a very poor program. Parents, students, teachers, & administration all very disappointed, confused, and unhappy. Oh! After the initial outlay of the thousands it cost my class over 600 dollars for the student materials again this year. That was for one classroom. We thought we were disappointed in Saxon but envision is weaker, more lame and very user unfriendly to students, teachers, and parents. Sorry. I own no stock in other programs. Simply trying to spare even one school our pain. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trulycrabby Posted August 17, 2014 Share Posted August 17, 2014 I purchased the 4th grade Envision Math Common Core Textbook and Student Workbook because the local school uses it and I wanted to see what they were doing. It's not horrible but it's not great, either. It's loosely based on Singapore Math, a fair number of ambiguous questions that DH and I were scratching our heads over (we are both very strong in math), and not enough practice problems for the concepts that are taught. I used it for one or two lessons like prime numbers, but nothing else. If you use it, I suggest you purchase the student workbook because it is better than the book. I agree with umsami there are lots of better choices for homeschooling curriculum and second her suggestions for curriculum. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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