Posted by Contrarian Librarian on 8:14 Jan 17
In Reply to: Mastering Mathematics? Opinions anyone? Looking at this for dd8, who has math struggles. TIA! nt. posted by Anita in Ohio
but had a couple of significant drawbacks for us.
First, it is absolutely a mastery-based program. You learn a skill, you master it, you move on. Very little in the way of review. This is no problem for some kids -- it was for mine, who needed regular review.
Second, while the workbooks cover the basics (the four operations plus fractions and decimals), you have to forge your own way with the other areas of math (i.e., time, money, temperature, geometry). The teacher's manual has suggestions on how to teach those areas, but if you aren't really confident in coming up with your own problems and teaching the concepts (I wasn't), that can be difficult.
On the positive side: the workbook pages are clean and uncluttered; not too many problems on a page. There is some humor in the instructions. The instructions are very clear. Within a given topic (i.e., addition) there is plenty of practice, and the concepts build logically on one another. While the TM is big and scary-looking :-) it really has a lot of resources in it, including teaching schedules, pre-tests, teaching suggestions, etc.
For the money, I think it's a good program. As I said, we had some problems with it that ultimately made it unworkable for us, but your experience might be completely different.
HTH. :-)