Saxon math K?

[brynndolyn]

I will be home schooling my 4 y/o next year for Kindergarten (he turns 5 this summer).  In the WTM book they don't recommend a formal K math program; however I am wondering if we should do one or not. My son can count to 20, understands basic addition and subtraction, we do calendar time every day and talk about the day of the week, date, month, weather.  I will also be hsing one of my other sons for 1st grade and already got Saxon 1 for him (he is in public K currently and will finish out the year there).

 

I don't mind spending money on a K program, I do have 2 younger children who would also use it eventually.

 

Any thoughts or experiences with this? If it makes a difference, my 4 y/o is learning how to read currently, and I feel like is ready to learn more. I require handholding, I'm not someone who is just great at coming up with lovely creative ideas on my own. I have 5 kids and my brain juices don't run as high as they once did. ;)  Any advice is appreciated!  

[thegirlwhopaintedtrees]

I found Saxon K too simple for my 4 year old when he was 4.   You might actually want to use Saxon 1 for your Ker and Saxon 2 for your 1st grader.    

[Chris in VA]

We did Saxon K in preschool and Saxon 1 in K, so take what I say with that in mind.

 

It sounds like he'd be ready to go into Saxon 1, honestly. You could give both your kiddos the Saxon placement test and see where they fit, and go from there.

 

Or, just bypass formal math for this year, and continue with puzzles (great for part-whole relationships, a bedrock of math and reading), cooking (intro to fractions and measurement), calendar (time to the hour, too--just use an alarm clock, or the ol' paper plate clock), patterns (use pattern blocks, make ABA/ABC/AAB patterns out of objects) and number sense (counting, dice, more/less, etc.). Play some games, like Snail's Pace and Trouble, and card games like War ("Battle"). 

[Okeychowie]

It depends on how mathy he is. I bought Saxon 1 for my son this year who turned 5 in July. He also knew how to count to 100 and do simple addition like how many forks would we need if we had two guests. I thought the same as you the k program seemed to light, but we've had a really difficult time. Specifically figuring out 3 ways to break a number into two groups. They give you apples cut in half and you draw seeds, but my son just can't get it. We've been on a Saxon break since before Christmas. We like it besides that one portion.

 

We're probably going to return shortly and maybe just skip that portion of the daily worksheet. It was causing a lot of stress for him and me. For now we've just been doing more of the stuff mentioned above.

[2queens&1princenmyhouse]

I have a ker who is doing Saxon 1 (he did Saxon K in his preschool program).

 

Thread jack: :)

With the apple seeds, I used actual apple seeds and DS and I took turns dividing them.  Say we had 6 seeds.  He would go first and take 4 and then that left me with 2.  Then I would go.  I always made sure that we didn't end up with the same problem.  It helped him to understand.  And I scribe for him.  The writing would be too much for my guy!

 

[Okeychowie]

Sorry for this question I tried to send a message but the site kept giving me an error message

 

I have a ker who is doing Saxon 1 (he did Saxon K in his preschool program).

 

Thread jack: :)

With the apple seeds, I used actual apple seeds and DS and I took turns dividing them. Say we had 6 seeds. He would go first and take 4 and then that left me with 2. Then I would go. I always made sure that we didn't end up with the same problem. It helped him to understand. And I scribe for him. The writing would be too much for my guy!

Thanks for the comment about Saxon. So did you physically use an apple while doing that portion of the worksheets? Seems like they were doing it forever and he wasn't getting the concept at all. I thought maybe I should just try with a tower of the linking cubes. Here's 9 cubes. There are a few different combination of numbers that when added together can make 9.

 

Would you always start with 0 seeds on the left and 9 on right, then move to 1 on the left and 8 on the right and so on? I would always have suggest a number for him to start with on the left side. He wouldn't really know what to do. Thanks for listening to my questions. I'm a first timer with son 5.5, son 4, daughter 16months and another boy on the way in June. I've been worried that I need to pick a different curriculum or something. Someone recently told me that he just might on be ready for that part and it will just click sometime I the future. Sometimes Saxon seems like a lot of work especially when in the future I will be using 4 different levels of it. Thanks again for any advice! You can message me.

[brynndolyn]

I have a ker who is doing Saxon 1 (he did Saxon K in his preschool program).

 

Thread jack: :)

With the apple seeds, I used actual apple seeds and DS and I took turns dividing them.  Say we had 6 seeds.  He would go first and take 4 and then that left me with 2.  Then I would go.  I always made sure that we didn't end up with the same problem.  It helped him to understand.  And I scribe for him.  The writing would be too much for my guy!

 

Thanks for the info about writing for him. I had this really awesome idea today to have my 4.5 y/o work on writing numbers, with tracing pages. He traced them great and we talked about the correct way to write the number (where to start, where to finish, you know the drill).  So then I was like "Maybe you can write them by yourself!" Not so much. Any number with anything besides straight lines (which is most of them!) was a complete disaster and he was so frustrated with himself by the end of it even though I told him it was OK and he could do something else instead. My little perfectionist. :( But I think writing for him would work really well.

 

Thanks for all the responses, I think I will plan to start my 4 y/o with Saxon 1 this fall and I guess I'll get Saxon 2 for my 1st grader as I'm pretty sure he has already done most of the Saxon 1 work in public K. And thanks for the info about the placement tests, for some reason I had no idea about those so we will utilize those for sure.

[Spring Flower]

 

Thanks for all the responses, I think I will plan to start my 4 y/o with Saxon 1 this fall and I guess I'll get Saxon 2 for my 1st grader as I'm pretty sure he has already done most of the Saxon 1 work in public K. And thanks for the info about the placement tests, for some reason I had no idea about those so we will utilize those for sure.

 

I think that is a good plan. Saxon reviews so much he won't miss anything from K. You can always slow down if things get too tricky later in the text. 

[2queens&1princenmyhouse]

Sorry for this question I tried to send a message but the site kept giving me an error message

 

 

Thanks for the comment about Saxon. So did you physically use an apple while doing that portion of the worksheets? Seems like they were doing it forever and he wasn't getting the concept at all. I thought maybe I should just try with a tower of the linking cubes. Here's 9 cubes. There are a few different combination of numbers that when added together can make 9.

 

Would you always start with 0 seeds on the left and 9 on right, then move to 1 on the left and 8 on the right and so on? I would always have suggest a number for him to start with on the left side. He wouldn't really know what to do. Thanks for listening to my questions. I'm a first timer with son 5.5, son 4, daughter 16months and another boy on the way in June. I've been worried that I need to pick a different curriculum or something. Someone recently told me that he just might on be ready for that part and it will just click sometime I the future. Sometimes Saxon seems like a lot of work especially when in the future I will be using 4 different levels of it. Thanks again for any advice! You can message me.

 

There is something about the "&" in my username that won't allow pm's.  Why I could choose it in my username to begin with is beyond me, but whatever.  I have so many better things to gripe about.  :tongue_smilie:

 

Anyway, yes, we cut two or three apples and dug out the seeds.  Then for the days after, I would just let him get whatever he grabbed and we would put them in the middle of the table.  I would tell him to count them.  So let's say there were 9.  Then I would tell him to choose some for me (he gave me 3) and he got the rest.  Then we counted his plus mine equaled 9.  Put them back and do it again, but this time, I would just check to make sure that he didn't get the same number.  We did this a few times until we had three or four different facts for 9.  Sometimes I wrote the different problems on our lap-sized white board and sometimes not.  We did this through play for a week or so before we moved to the paper work.  By that point, he had enough concrete example that he was able to just draw x number of seeds on one side and then figure out how many should go on the other. HTH

 

Thanks for the info about writing for him. I had this really awesome idea today to have my 4.5 y/o work on writing numbers, with tracing pages. He traced them great and we talked about the correct way to write the number (where to start, where to finish, you know the drill).  So then I was like "Maybe you can write them by yourself!" Not so much. Any number with anything besides straight lines (which is most of them!) was a complete disaster and he was so frustrated with himself by the end of it even though I told him it was OK and he could do something else instead. My little perfectionist. :( But I think writing for him would work really well.

 

Thanks for all the responses, I think I will plan to start my 4 y/o with Saxon 1 this fall and I guess I'll get Saxon 2 for my 1st grader as I'm pretty sure he has already done most of the Saxon 1 work in public K. And thanks for the info about the placement tests, for some reason I had no idea about those so we will utilize those for sure.

 

I still scribe math for my 11yo DD.  Writing out long division becomes overwhelming and she breaks down.  She can tell me exactly what to write and where, so I figure she knows how to do it.  Plus, I make sure that I'm "occupied" for a few each lesson so she does write some.  :thumbup1:

[Lecka]

I am looking into some pre-K/K math ideas for my younger son....

 

I am just going to add, that for my older son, the game Sorry helped him with the concept with the apple seeds.  There is a card for 7, where you are allowed to divide your move between two pegs.  

 

He was very interested in this for a while before he got it.  I showed him many times, how I could move two pegs 1 and 6, or 2 and 5, or 3 and 4.  

 

When he started -- he could pick the first move himself, then I would help him figure out how many for his second peg.  

 

Eventually he started doing it himself.  

 

I think it helped that he was very motivated b/c he loved the game Sorry, that he got so many examples before he did it himself, and that he started with only working with the number 7.  He understood the number 7 before ever splitting apart any other numbers.  I know it took him a lot of games before he got this concept, but I think it helped him a lot to learn it from a game.