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Math on the level and Making Math Meaningful
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Has anyone here tried Math On The Level? I would be interested in hearing your thought/experiences with that program and/or Making Math Meaningful. We are looking for a new math program- been using Saxon and we can’t take the drill and kill anymore! I really like math but my kids are starting to HATE it. 🙁 I have 7 kids-soon to be 8…so I don’t have a lot of time/energy/money to spend on a fancy math curriculum. Help!!!
We’ve used MOTL for two years and love it. But it is VERY teacher intensive. You are responsible for deciding what concepts your child is ready for and how to teach it. They give you many ideas in the manuals. Then you must make each child a 5-a-day sheet based on what they’re reviewing. It’s wonderful because I can tailor their learning to what they’re ready for rather than what the curriculum thinks they should be ready for. It’s also pricey up front but it’s all you’ll need for several years. There’s a helpful yahoo groups as well for questions and the author is on there quite frequently.
I’m heading out the door to milk but if you search the messages for Math on the Level, you’ll get a few discussion about the pros/cons.
We use MOTL with 5 of our children. We have 6 but little DD is just 2, though she often sits by and watches when I teach our 7 and 6YO DC.
Yes, it is time-consuming to make the 5 A Days, but they do work and will eliminate the drill and kill. They will also quickly tell you where your child is struggling on a concept.
I use it along with IXL.com, which we get at a deep discount through Homeschool Buyer’s Co-op. With IXL, I can add in more practice for certain concepts where needed.
I admit to not finding a total balance on when to teach a new concept and how to find the time to spend on certain ones that need more attention. But I can tell you that it does work and I can’t see ever switching from it as our main math curriculum and/or the philosophy behind it.
I have written on other threads more extensively. I gotta get in the shower, but I’ll try to put a link to those other threads here or you can try searching. They were within the last few months. HTH
We used Making Math Meaningful for a bit with one child…it is at the exact opposite end of the spectrum from Saxon as far as the spiral approach goes. All work is on one topic only instead of every topic learned thus far. Can’t say we loved it. MUS has a similar approach, but we like it better and it is very much not teacher intensive…which is becoming more appealing to me all the time in the reality of life (though still not so much in my mind:-) Used MOTL too…second what the others said. I didn’t stick with it long though as babies 4,5,and 6 came along somewhere in there!
Thank you for the math info. I went ahead and purchased Making Math Meaningful level 2-5. I guess I will see how it works for us. Hope I didn’t waste my money!
We found a used copy of the Simply Charlotte Mason Business Math Pet Shop and my older kids are really excited about it. They liked it so much, they paid their own money to buy the other two books, Sports store and Book store! They are calling it their fun math and getting a kick out of seeing whos “store” does better. It’s funny they said “don’t worry mom , we will still do our “boring math” along with our “fun math” 🙂
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