Math dilemma

Math has been an area I’ve struggled with for the last four years. History: When my oldest was 6 I started him in MUS alpha, the videos and blocks were great, but the pages and pages of problems were not. My son hated writing. Hindsight being what it is, I see now that I could have just kept scribing for him, but with a baby underfoot it just didn’t seem to be working for us. The next year my DD started school too, she was five. I tried right start A with her, she mostly liked it, but it drove me crazy. Doing 2 minutes of tis, then 2 minutes of that, etc. it jumped around so much and I never knew what we were doing or why or where it was headed. Even she disliked the jumping around. I didn’t know what to do with my oldest that year, I did some of RS a with him just to fill time. I found MEP and began using year 1 with him. That went pretty well, though we did not finish it by the end of the school year. The following year I did not want to do Rs again, I used MEP with both kids. I started year 2 with DS and year 1 with DD. Wow was year 2 a step up in intensity. It became so teacher intensive and every lesson took us 45 minutes.   To keep it short we’d have to do just half a lesson, and I didn’t want to spend two years for every year of math. I had my fourth baby in the middle of the school year, and I just could not see keeping up MEP with four kids. Even the worksheet portion was not independent. Because I was spending so much time on math with DS, I often skipped doing math with dd. Which isn’t a big deal at 6yo, but it couldn’t keep on that way. In the spring I switched my oldest to Singapore standards. This school year, he’s continued with it and I switched dd to it too. I used Franklin primary arithmetic, a vintage book, to slow down and flesh out the early lessons for her. Working on subetizing, etc. it’s going pretty well now that I’ve figured how to do the ‘Singapore shuffle’. Lol. I’m using strayer upton orally for a few minutes each day to add review for my oldest, rather than the Singapore mental math and flash cards.

now that I’ve found SCM, I see the math suggestion is right start math followed by MUS. Looking back, I can see that this would have worked well with my oldest. And dd too. Also that RS has come out with a second edition that probably fixes most of my problems with it. Even though MUS didn’t work for my son at 6yo, I think it’s a good program and will probably go back to it for algebra. Since I’m finding SCM to be a good fit overall, I’m torn about whether to try their math recommendations. With my oldest, no he needs to stay with what’s working for him now, it’s too late in the game for him to switch to RS. For my dd, idk… She’s doing good with Singapore 1 right now. I guess mostly I wonder if I should try RS for my younger two boys? If they are anything like their older brother and struggle with writing (which I hear is a boy thing??) it might be a better fit. Otoh, I like using one program with everyone because it allows me to me more comfortable with the material and thus able to focus on teaching the child, adjusting to them. My third child will be 5 in the fall. He recently began reading BOB books, at his insistence. His writing is… Not legible. I’m planning to use HWOT with him to try and avoid some of the issues over handwriting my oldest has. He’s currently doing Singapore essentials A, only when he asks for it. Should I just stick with Singapore? Slowing down and fleshing out those early lessons, and scribing for him if needed? Or try RS? And just see how he does to decide whether to switch him to Singapore once he’s up for the writing or to keep on.