Saxon Math

We are finishing up with Saxon 76 today, and wow did we love that book! Big Kid learned so much from it, and thanks to the repetition he remembered it all! Ok, most of it ;) We just purchased a brand new set of Saxon 87, can't wait to break it open and see if it's as good as 76!

Choosing curriculum is so difficult, I truly feel that once you find a book or series of books that fit your child's style of learning, and your style of teaching, you should stick with it!!! Surprisingly most of the books we use were written for public school use, they just don't use them in the south. We use Saxon Math, Prentice Hall's Science Explorer series as well as their World Explorer series. We use the workbooks with the science books and with the geography books, they really do reinforce the material! We had such a hard time finding secular science books that were still thorough and "meaty". Prentice Hall fit the bill perfectly! I just started using the Prentice Hall Literature book for seventh grade, and so far we are liking it a lot. Big Kid had never read Rudyard Kipling's work, and the lit book had him read a short story of his. He loved it and asked if we could find a copy of The Jungle Book! If nothing else reading a classroom literature book will expose him to different authors and many different types of writing, which I feel all students need at some point.

Overall I am really really satisfied with the Prentice Hall series we are using, go figure! I thought I would never see a public school book, and here we are almost exclusively using them! They are the books used in New England mostly, says enough for me - where do schools produce the smartest children? Yep, you guessed it - not down south!!