I have read Rachel’s book and really liked it, but am using rightstart as it is easier for me (4 children 1 a baby, fixing up old house canning…;)
1 thing I really like about Rightstart is the abacus. It is already set up to use and the baby can’t eat it;) If you want something less visually busy and time consuming to set up, you could easily add the AL abacus to Rachel’s lessons sometimes. I think Kate’s homeschool math website has ideas for using it with any math curriculum. The 9 is 5+4 and 7 is 5+2 so 9+7 is two fives (so 10) +4+2 has really helped my son easily learn his addition and subtraction facts. He is accurate and fast.
Now on to conquer multiplication….; ( I never really memorized these…