Math help - 7th grade spiral math?

[bethben]

We are doing Saxon 7/6 right now and are halfway through.  My daughter NEEDS constant review.  She will forget stuff constantly; even from day to day.  The problem is - she gets really frustrated really easily.  Math was the only reason I sent her to school and even with going to school, every night I re-taught her math.  I have the ability to teach her math but every day I am getting a headache because she is constantly huffing and puffing.  I think the number of problems defeats her a bit.  I need something a little more straightforward and something with less problems.  Her dream is to be a marine biologist so she will need math.  I need something that will get her to decent math scores eventually while not making me want to rip out my hair.  Would Math U See fit?  Nothing computer related.

[SilverMoon]

Math U See is the opposite of spiral. 

Horizons is my favorite spiral math book of all we tried over the years. It only goes through 6 before heading to prealg though. You can google up a placement test for it to see where she'd land. There are small sets of several types of problems in each lesson, so old concepts are kept fresh and stealthily grow in difficulty. 

[alisha]

This has helped me get ideas to look into, in the past: http://homeschool-curriculum-reviews.com/math-curriculum-selector/

[fourisenough]

Christian Light works beautifully for my DD who sounds similar. FWIW, we are normally strictly secular curriculum users, but CLE is so good that I’m willing to make an exception. The small chunks of new info with plenty (but not too much) review in manageable, slim worktexts is the key to its success for us.
 

If she isn’t completely fluent with multiplication facts, give her a chart and move on. Be sure to give her a placement test so you start in the right level.

[bethben]

So, I gave her a placement test for MathUSee.  I was just having a lot of trouble trying to figure out where her gaps are.  Apparently, her gaps start at fractions so we have to back up quite a bit with MathUSee.  I made her do the test without me helping at all or giving hints.  She failed miserably.  Though, on some other days, she could have done all the problems well.  Obviously what we are doing is not working at all.

 I do eventually want to put her back into public school but am waiting to see how this year goes.  They are using Singapore poorly.  She barely completed Singapore 5A last year and is going into 7th, so she's pretty behind.  If we could make math less frustrating, she's a pretty easy kid to homeschool.  She loves to read and loves history and science.  Her school last year was a train wreck and there's not really a lot of better ones out there where we live.  She had 5 math teachers last year which did not help.  The one who was good at teaching was shifted to the "smart" kids so the low math class that my daughter was in got essentially whoever was left over.  I really think I need to back down to MathUSee Epsilon and try to complete two levels in a year.  I think there is enough in her head that we can cruise through some concepts, but there are enough gaps that I don't think I have a different choice.  Her dream right now is to become a marine biologist but the math component is going to trip up that dream unless I can get her on a different track.  I need her to successfully complete math on her own.

[kristin0713]

My DD had huge success with CLE for 7th and 8th grade.  It really, really prepared her well for Algebra 1.  

[Soror]

I'm putting my dd in MUS, she is in 5th, the plan is to work on the last part of 4th and 5th MUS. Last year I tried her w/ CLE, we need more time on concepts less problems), and MM was good for nailing concepts over and over but got too deep and not enough review (even doing some from various sections at a time). I tried her again on CLE this year and we need to just take more time with some concepts and focus on fewer things.

Fingers crossed. MUS is mastery but does also have review sheets in each chapter. The worksheets are very non intimidating. It is not as hard as other programs but that is ok. Trying to make her do something harder than she is capable of doing just leads to her feeling defeated and bad at math.