MUS or ? ACE, CLE?

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  • MissusLeata
    Participant

    It’s the time of year when I start making the plans for next year. My second and 4th graders have been doing MUS for several years and we’ve enjoyed it. But I’m starting to feel like it’s not enough practice. They get the concept really well, but sometimes struggle with the procedures in math.

    But MUS has such a different scope and sequence than other programs that I’m concerned about switching. I’m looking at ACE and CLE and wondering if we could/should make a switch.

    If you’ve switched from MUS to another curriculum how did your kids do? How did you place them?

    retrofam
    Participant

    We have switched curriculum a lot.  My dd12 likes CLE a lot,  but I am going to switch her back to MUS for pre algebra on up. CLE geometry is not updated and the format sounds confusing.

    My older kids like MUS,  especially for high school.

    Should you switch depends on whether you want to switch again for high school.

     

    Ruralmama
    Participant

    What about getting a kumon book or some online site or flash cards for extra practice. No program is perfect. I have not actually used mus but many do like it. I have looked at CLE and like it in many ways but would say you might not find it conceptual enough…just depends what you want to mess with. O and CLE is spiral while math u see is mastery just so you know if you don’t already.

    I have been thinking about math recently too.I think I am going to go with Charlotte Mason’s scope and sequence through the book by richele babruna…but I see many good points in several programs. You know yourself and your kids best. Pray about it…that’s what I have been doing.

    Melanie32
    Participant

    Big Math U See fan here! I am wondering if you’ve been having your children follow the Math U See steps of learning, practicing, reviewing and teaching the concept back to you before moving on to the next lesson? I recently contacted MUS about an area my daughter was struggling with in Algebra and they reminded me to follow these steps for true mastery. We have now gone back through each algebra lesson and I have had her teach it to me before moving on to reviewing the next lesson. Things are going much better and it really hasn’t taken us nearly as long as I thought it would.

    The nice things about the early grade books is that you can print off additional practice pages from the MUS websites. That option is unfortunately not available for the high school levels. 🙁

    retrofam
    Participant

    Good points about how to do MUS.

    Since CLE isn’t very conceptual,  I added CTC’S Mathematical Reasoning also for dd12. She does a few pages a week.

    MissusLeata
    Participant

    My kids are really getting the concepts. I love that about MUS. I’m always amazed at how very well they get the concepts. It’s just the habit of following the steps that they aren’t always getting. The habit that is built with doing it over and over and over.

    I’ve spent the whole weekend looking at CLE and ACE and it looks like ACE is mastery and we would prefer that over spiral.

    Thank you all for your input and I’ll keep praying about it. 🙂

    Amanda
    Participant

    If you want a more traditional approach to math like CLE but need mastery instead of spiral, check out Rod and Staff.  The two programs are very similar in approach and rigor but CLE is spiral and R&S is mastery.  We have been using CLE for 4 years and have been very happy with it.  However, if one of my children needs mastery instead, we can easily switch to R&S.

    retrofam
    Participant

    You may want to email or call MUS.  They may have ways to tweak it that may help your situation, or a supplement to add.

    We have used Rod & Staff too, and it’s decent.

    MissusLeata
    Participant

    Does R & S require a lot of parent involvement? What I LOVE about MUS is that they have an actual math teacher. I’m not super good at actually teaching. :-/

    retrofam
    Participant

    It’s written for a classroom setting.   With CLE now that my dd12 is doing better,  she reads through the lesson presentation part in the teacher’s manual herself.

    Rod & Staff is similar,  and should have enough help in the teacher’s manual.

    It really depends on what works well for you and your student.

    Angelina
    Participant

    Smiled at your remark “I’m not super good at actually teaching math…”

    We had a situation similar to you a few years ago – where I wondered “did they really get enough practice on this?”   We were about a 1/3 of the way through Gamma, having supposedly “mastered” addition and subtraction in Alpha and Beta…but my guys still managed to get stale on the basic addition and subtraction facts.  Yes, I could have just supplemented with a drill program (in fact, I believe I was) but it irked me that they had “un-mastered” addition and subtraction so quickly.  I decided it was a least worth a shot to try a spiral program.

    Because, like you, I don’t love teaching math, I decided on Teaching Textbooks.  I liked that TT gives an on-screen, straightforward math lecture to start each lesson.  But I LOVED that TT gives the student the option – while they are working on their math problems – to click on a mini on-screen tutorial for any (or every) problem they are working on.  Even though I’d heard that TT isn’t considered rigorous enough, it was a great fit for us for grades 4-6.

    By grade 7-8 (age 12+) – seeing that my boys had matured and were more accepting that school is actually going to be “hard work” sometimes (hee hee) – we moved to Saxon Math using the textbook alongside daily use of the Saxon Teacher CDs (these CDs, like TT, give the student the chance to click on a mini tutorial for any or every math problem they struggle with).

    I will admit that my decision was influenced somewhat by the fact that I have many h.s. friends using Saxon.  (I assumed they were crazy when I first met them 🙂    I’d heard previously that Saxon was dry and horrible – –  there was a time when I was appalled at the thought of using Saxon.  Even now, I would not say that I’d use it in grades 4-6.  We had too much FUN using TT in Grades 4-6 (and my h.s. friends using Saxon constantly complain about math during those years!)

    But, at the grade 6, 7 and 8 level, when kids are a bit more mature, can sit for a bit longer, and are more willing to work a little harder, Saxon is really not dry or terrible – or all that different from CLE, R&S and all the others I’ve looked at.  It’s all still math, after all.

    Now, I was able to borrow the Saxon books to “get our feet wet” – and this helped.  But once I had the Saxon Teacher CDs….I WAS SOLD.   These CDs are golden.  Now I never need to panic when the kids ask for help 🙂

    (for the record, I still do often sit with them and we watch the tutorial together…. I am honest with them that there are some concepts I don’t remember clearly enough from my own school days!)

    We are doing really well now with math and I am sleeping great knowing that I have all the “teacher support” I need alongside my kids getting a top notch math curriculum.

    HTH 🙂  just thought you might like another option to consider…

    Blessings,

    Angie

     

    2Corin57
    Participant

    I’m not an ACE fan based on the many negative reviews and personally seeing/hearing first hand eeviews from those who use it.

     

    What you could do is save one or two of the practice pages for each lesson, and use them in later lessons for more review. Also, you can go right on the MUS website, they have their very own worksheet generator, so you can print off review sheets as needed.

    I prefer MUS to CLE, even though we’re using CLE.

    mom2five
    Participant

    MissusLeata,

    I just wanted to chime in here and say that although it is not CM I have successfully used ACE Math with 5 of my 6 children so far (the youngest is only 3). We have also used  some Life of Fred. The pros for me and ACE is that they have a subject that they can do independently and there is plenty of instruction in the pace so that I can easily tutor as necessary. I can also decide that they don’t need to do every problem if they have mastered something. We have graduated three so far: one is in the work force,  one graduated from college and one is in college for nursing. So different things work for different families. Just wanted to throw out a positive review based on our experience. I hope you find the right fit for you and your children. 🙂

    MissusLeata
    Participant

    Thank you all for chiming in. I really think we’ll do ACE math because I think the scope and sequence will be more in-line with MUS.

    My husband and I both went to ACE schools, so, we are quite familiar with the curriculum, but it’s changed editions (maybe a couple of times) since the late 80’s. 🙂

    But I’m still considering the difference between using mastery or spiral.  Neither my husband nor I are very impressed with Saxon and I wonder if it’s the spiral approach that bothers me. It seemed to me that they introduce new topics too quickly. Does CLE introduce something new every lesson like Saxon (I’ve not seen gradeschool Saxon, so I don’t know if they do that in gradeschool or not. 🙂 )

    marmiemama
    Participant

    We’re a family who struggles with math, so we’ve tried many.  Ages are 21, 18, 15, 15, and 8.  Oldest did a mix of programs in the early years then for high school did MUS and TT.  The next did, same thing but more with MUS in high school.  Now…one thing I got really frustrated with is that the wording for the math on SAT’s is VERY different than MUS’s “math language”.  This posed a huge problem for my kids on the SAT’s.  So this year I did the unexpected and switched my two 15 yo’s to big, bad Saxon.  Got the DVD’s but the dog ate one. ?  They weren’t using them anyway but they were there if needed.  The jury’s out if I will stick to it next year. I do like that Algebra 1 and Algebra 2 have a geometry credit spread throughout the two, so there isn’t an extra year of geometry.

    For my 8 yo, he has dyslexia, and math gives him more of a problem than reading so I have ordered SCM’s Living Math. I’m anxiously awaiting its arrival!  For high school years for him, I may lean towards TT, but that’s a long ways away.

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