How do you combine Math programs?

[Coco_Clark]

I'm particularly interested if anyone has combined Singapore with Miquon, as that is what I am considering doing.  I think learning how anyone has combined any two (or more, we also use LOF occasionally) programs could help, however.

I see my options as:

- switching back and forth; either daily, weekly, monthly, or even by unit.

- doing one in the winter months and the other as a change of pace over the summer.

- making one my "core" and only pulling in pages from the other when I need extra support

 

I'm hesitant to just use part of both, I feel I need the comfort of knowing I finished at least one full program, if that makes sense. But I'm concerned if I do ALL of both we will slowly fall behind.  My son is about 3/4 of a year ahead right now and I'm not concerned about staying ahead or getting further ahead.  A lot of pulling in a second program is to keep him from outpacing his maturity or racing ahead too fast to create a strong foundation in the basics.  But neither would I like to fall behind because we are moving too slow, not if it isnt necessary.  We do school over the summer, but I'd only estimate about 40-45 weeks total of school a year, we do often take 1 or 2 week breaks.     

 

Any experience you'd like to share?

[My3girls]

MM is the primary curriculum. LoF is supplemental. During the school year MM is Mon-Thurs and LoF on Friday. During the summer just LoF, and I am looking into Murderous Maths for the summer as well.

[shinyhappypeople]

I combine two programs for my 10 yo DD.  Teaching Textbooks 4 is our primary math, Miquon is our supplement.  TT keeps us making forward progress, Miquon serves to improve her overall math-sense and fill gaps.

 

How I do it?  I refer to Miquon as her math lab, and TT as her regular math.  She does both everyday: usually 2-3 pages in Miquon and 1 lesson in TT.  

[Elisabet1]

There used to be a chart online for combining those two. For me, since Miquon is like a lab, I would run 2 math classes, one lab and call it "fun hands on" and the other math book with the Singapore Math stuff. I would probably stop doing the review pages in the textbook because you are doing extra in the Miquon.

[Gil]

Well I don't know that "math with dad" is a real program but we do a lot of math talk verbally throughout the day, in the bathroom or in the kitchen just free style. After we've talked through some topic, I will do something more formal for them on the white board and I usually put up a few problems for the boys to work through at their leisure and we talk about the Math Board. This has slowed down a good deal these last several weeks but they've been more engaged by where they are at.

 

I might put up equations, properties, pictures--whatever I think might be of interest. We do that about 4x a week. Math Mammoth is our main text--they do every problem of every page and we try to work every day. The boys also use Keys to, but only after we've visited the topic in "Dad Math" a few times and because they were pretty far ahead of Math Mammoth conceptually on several occasions. Thanks to Keys to the boys are really fluent in Fractions, Decimals, Percents and some aspects of beginning Geometry. I expect that they will breeze through all but 4 of MM6.

 

We use 2 supplements: ARME and SM (sunshine math, NOT singapore math). I printed out all of ARME grade 6 and just made up packets of 5 pages each--they do one packet a week, check their answers against one another and I settle any discrepancies. SunShine math we do as a group as often as we can. We usually go over about a page of the questions and any we (THEY) can't get during that meeting I put on the big board for them to mull over until one of them gets it.

[bensonduck]

I have a math-loving DD and we have combined Singapore, Miquon and now Horizons.  Singapore is our main program and we do pretty much all of it (skipping only those pages where she has demonstrated mastery), including IP, CWP, etc.  

 

We were using Miquon Orange for a little while in the beginning but it was not clicking with her and she sort of rapidly outpaced the material.  I don't think I integrated it well enough when she was still at a point where the Orange Book would have been helpful to her. We were doing it sort of by request in the afternoons and on weekends.

 

Now we are using Horizons as kind of a supplement/review.  She does her main Singapore lesson first thing in the morning.  Later in the afternoon (usually when her brother is waking up from his nap) she quickly goes through about 2 pages of Horizons.  She doesn't do nearly every problem at all.  Depending on the topic, she does 2-3 problems.  If she gets them correct, she moves on.  If she needs a bit more practice, we do a few more.  The whole thing takes maybe 10-15 minutes at this stage.  I have found that Horizons is a great fit for her because it is spiral and colorful.  It seems so different from Singapore and hits the topics with a different angle.  I don't worry about matching up topics - if we hit something first in Horizons, that's fine and we will do it in more depth when we get to it in Singapore.

 

Good luck with your decision!  I think there are many ways to combine programs and it may take some trial and error to see which works best for your student and family.

[momma2three]

DD goes to a program for homeschoolers 3 days a week.  They're supposed to bring in some work to do as part of their day.  I send her with Math Mammoth on those days.  I go over it with her in the morning before we leave to make sure she understands the directions (she's a pretty good reader, but some of the words are tough), and then go over it quickly at night to make sure she got everything.  If she didn't, we work on it some more.

 

She's home 2 days a week, and we do 2 days of MEP each of those days.  The 5th day of MEP is her "assigned homework" for the weekend.

 

We curl up in bed and do Life of Fred sometimes when she's bored and we're feeling snuggly.  She wanted to do some tonight, but I said that it was too late.  There's probably going to be a snow day this week, and we'll do some more then.  She thinks of it as a special treat.

[ondreeuh]

We combine Horizons and Math in Focus. Most of this year we did a lesson of Horizons in the morning, and then a bit of MiF 2-3 days a week in the afternoon. Lately we have been doing some MiF every day and only doing Horizons 2-3 days a week, but picking problems and condensing lessons since the MiF outpaced the Horizons by quite a bit. At first I didn't like that MiF isn't broken up into discrete daily lessons, but now I like it as we can often get through work that was intended to take 2-3 days in a single lesson, because it is explained so well. Other times I will spread out work that was intended to take one day into 2-3 if we are just busy or my son isn't able to focus. It hasn't been a problem being so flexible. We started 1A around October and will finish up 1B in the next month or two. Horizons covered ordinal numbers, weight, measurement, money and clock before MiF did, so when we reached those chapters (or will reach them) we can just quickly run through and test out. So basically we move forward on both programs, but accelerate through concepts that are already mastered by the other program ... so it works out fine.

[happypamama]

I was roughly alternating the two, a couple of days a week for one, a couple of days for the other. It worked well. We've been using Singapore for a while now, exclusively, per my son's request, but once it's finished in a few weeks, we'll go back to Miquon.