Annabel Lee Posted March 25, 2014 Share Posted March 25, 2014 How are Saxon and Lial's alike for Pre-Agegra, and how are they different? Does one cover more than the other? Is one lacking in way compared to the other? What are the pros & cons of each? Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SilverMoon Posted March 25, 2014 Share Posted March 25, 2014 Lial's prealg is more like honors prealgebra, but the Basic College Math (BCM) from the same author is probably more comparable to Saxon prealg. The basic differences would be Saxon is "incremental" and feels like a spiral math program, lots of variety within each lesson, and has a simple, easy on the eyes appearance. You start at the beginning of the lesson and just work your way down, reading first, then working a big pile of problems.. Lial is mastery style, focusing on one major concept at a time, but the pages are busier and packed. You read in the middle of the page, and occasionally jump out to the margins to work some problems before going back to the instructions. After several pages of this you get to 2 pages completely full of problems. My strong math student did fine with Lial (doing only odd numbered problems), but my hyper DC who wasn't as strong in math could not handle the format of the books. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
................... Posted March 25, 2014 Share Posted March 25, 2014 We bought a Lial's Pre Algebra and the explanations were very clear and easy to follow. I enjoyed reading a few. However, I found it to be rather overwhelming in terms of layout. There are so many problems packed onto huge pages, and you would probably have to decide which problems to skip. I think most 6th or 7th graders would find the sheer size and layout rather overwhelming, and you as a mom have to be very involved to pick and choose the problems. However, there are not a lot of mastery-based choices for homeschoolers, for higher level math. And this one has all the explanations built right in, which is so unusual to find in typical textbooks. Meanwhile, we use Saxon and it's not really a "fun" math program either. It's no nonsense, to the extreme, black and white and about 42 problems to solve per day. You can't/shouldn't skip any problems because of the incremental spiral approach, so planning can be less work for you as a mom/teacher. Every lesson skips around with a Mixed Review that usually includes up to 25 different previous concepts. This should keep things fresh, but if something didn't stick the first or second time around, your student might get a little lost. So you really have to pay attention and re-teach once in a while. Personally, I feel that since Saxon can take us all the way through physics and calculus, it seemed like an obvious solid choice. It also has more support in terms of local classes and co-ops. They always use Saxon. So I feel that Saxon was a good long term choice, should we need outside assistance. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
................... Posted April 1, 2014 Share Posted April 1, 2014 Yes, we actually like Saxon for this child. It is clear and it works. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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